Even God Himself Is No Match for the Raw Power of a Drunk CatBoy
The final part of my sixth anniversary celebration this year is this bonus chapter, which also celebrates the observance of National CatBoy Day, which also takes place today. So happy anniversary, thanks for sticking with me, and I hope you all enjoy Drunk Ray!
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Ray kind of wanted to dance.
They’d travelled all day and gotten to the town of Tanned Well and the inn Cal wanted to stop at, which Ray liked because it was called the Black Cat, and they’d all been having supper and chatting with each other, and there were a lot of people here, and it was so exciting. It looked like they had a party here every single night. This was the first time Ray had ever been in an inn and it was so cool.
There was a man playing a flute and people were dancing on the other side of the common room and Ray wanted to dance with them, but he didn’t know the steps to the dance they were doing. He knew the steps to a lot of dances, the ones he’d learned from Jenny and Dory and Nils and everyone else. But he didn’t know what dance these people were doing. Parts of it looked a bit like the Wake Two Step out of northern Yavhore, but the rest of it was a mystery to Ray and he didn’t want to get up and dance and look like an idiot by not knowing what were obviously pretty easy steps.
“Did you want to dance, Ray?” Wes asked him, noticing him looking.
Ray blushed, returning his attention to the table. “No, I don’t know the steps to that one.” The problem was that it seemed like everyone was doing a slightly different version of the same dance, which meant there might be differences in how people did it at different ages or different backgrounds or something, and dancing was such an important part of most cultures that if Ray did it wrong he might offend everyone and then be chased out of town, which would suck when this was his first time in an inn and he hadn’t even properly said hello to the inn’s cats. They were both black and were named Dandelion and Minstrel. Dandelion was sitting on the bar watching everyone, and Minstrel had run off somewhere after Cal had tried to pet her.
“I don’t think there are really steps,” Wes told him, watching the dancing people. “They’re just dancing.”
Ray shrugged. “I don’t want to do it wrong,” he explained. “We’re leaving very early in the morning tomorrow, right?”
“Probably slightly later in the morning,” Cal told him, drinking some wine. Ray had also had half a cup of something that might have been wine before it had been watered down into weak juice that had just tasted like cup. “Because we’re going to be hung over.”
“He means he’s going to be hung over,” said Beatrice, rolling her eyes.
Cal didn’t disagree with Beatrice for once and downed his wine, calling for more.
Ray watched the serving boy bring a jug of wine to the table. He was named Dart and he was Ray’s age. There were two of them, Dart who was tall and had dark hair, and Harper, who wasn’t as tall and had lighter hair, and was a bit chubby. He was the innkeepers’ son. They kept sending glances at Ray, the both of them, but Ray hadn’t really known what to say to them. “Can I be hung over too?” he asked.
“Well, you have to drink first,” Cal said. “You don’t get to skip right to the shitty part.”
Ray snickered. “I know. I meant can I have some real wine? I’ve never been drunk before and I’d like to try it.”
“Sure,” Cal said, nodding at Dart to pour Ray some too.
“Just don’t drink too much,” Beatrice advised. “It’s nice at first but too much or too fast will make you feel like absolute crap and you will skip the fun part.”
Beatrice knew a lot about drinking too much, so Ray nodded and gulped down the wine like Cal was doing. “Bleh,” he said, sticking out his tongue. “That tastes really bad, why do you like it?” It tasted like feet.
“It’s an acquired taste.”
Candy had always said that acquired tastes were things that people taught themselves to eat even though they tasted like ass, but Ray had tasted ass the other day and this was worse. Ray nodded. “Can I have another cup? I don’t feel very drunk.” He felt very normal, in fact. That was a bit disappointing. He hoped that his weird physiology stemming from the experiments that had been done on his mother hadn’t rendered him immune to the effects of alcohol. Lots of people seemed to like the effects of alcohol and Ray wanted to see if he was one of those people.
“Give it a few minutes,” Mick told him. “It doesn’t kick in right away.”
“But it will kick in,” said Sully, drinking his own cup. “And since you’re short and tiny and young you won’t need very much.”
Ray pouted. “Cal’s short and tiny and young and he’s had four cups.”
“Five, actually.”
“Cal also drinks too much so his body is used to it,” Lillian told Ray.
Ray sighed. He wanted to be drunk now. But fine, he could wait five minutes. He stood up. “I’m going to go to the privy,” he said, wandering away.
Instead of going to the privy, he went over to the bar to pet Dandelion. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Black Sky. It’s okay if you don’t want to call me that since it’s technically a dog name, but I thought that might be preferable to my human name. What’s your real name?”
Dandelion purred at him. Ray had met several real cats since Cal and Grey Rain had freed him from the jail he’d grown up in, and none of them had ever talked back to him. He’d find one one day that could talk, but until then the purring at least made his hand tingle. “I bet it’s something super cool like Mouse Overlord or something, right?” he asked, petting Dandelion more.
Mouse Overlord got up and walked closer to Ray, so Ray picked him up and kept petting him. “I’d take you with me to the privy but I expect you wouldn’t like that,” he told him. “I don’t really need to pee that much, I just said that so I could have an excuse to get up from the table and come pet you without everyone thinking I wasn’t cool. I know it’s silly to worry about being cool in front of humans, but these humans are the coolest people I know and I like them a lot, so it’s actually very important.”
“Um…”
Ray turned around, saw Dart standing there. “Hello,” he said. “I’m sorry if I’m in your way.”
“No, uh. I was just wondering if Dandelion talks back to you. On account of you’re also a cat.”
Ray giggled at that, flicking one ear. “No, he doesn’t. I’ve been trying to talk to cats for a while but it turns out quadrupedal cats can’t talk. It’s really very sad, I’m sure that they’d have a lot of interesting stuff to say, especially living somewhere as awesome as this place is.”
Dart nodded along, watching Ray’s ears. “Are, are they real? Your ears? And your tail?”
“Yes, an evil sorcerer gave them to my mom and then I was born with them,” Ray explained. “Well, I mean I was born with different ones, obviously. These ones. Would you like to look more closely? You can if you like.” He put Mouse Overlord down on the counter. “I’ve recently learned the importance of giving people permission to touch me, so I want you to know that if you’d like to touch my ears or tail or other body parts you have permission to do that.”
“Oh…okay,” Dart said. He smiled, and he reached over and touched Ray’s ear, rubbing it gently between his fingers. It felt really nice, so Ray leaned in a little and let him do it more, purring. “It really is just like a cat’s ear,” Dart said, sounding surprised. “It’s real fur and everything.”
“Yeah,” Ray agreed, undoing the button in the back of his pants and holding out his tail. He didn’t actually need to undo the button because it was just a sort of belt that kept his pants from falling down because he had to wear them so low under his tail, but unbuttoning things was fun. “Here, here, touch my tail.”
Dart touched it, smiling. “You’re so soft.”
“Not all of me is soft,” Ray promised, biting his lip. Oh wait, when had they gotten so close together? “Um. Do you want to find out if my tongue is scratchy?”
Dart nodded, and he kissed Ray, and Ray kissed back, purring into his mouth as Dart rubbed his ears. “You’re a good kisser,” Dart muttered.
“Thanks,” said Ray, resting his forehead against Dart. “So are you. I’d like to kiss you more.” He would also like to do other things with Dart and maybe also with Harper. They were the only people his age in the inn.
“If you want later, um, Harper and I sometimes take some of the night’s leftover wine and drink it in whichever room is his that night once everyone’s asleep and mess around,” Dart offered.
Ray grinned. “I’ll definitely be there! I’m just going to go tell my teammates not to wait up for me and I guess also wait until it’s actually later and I’ll see you there!”
“Great,” Dart laughed, giving Ray a grin. “I’ll tell Harper you’re coming.”
Ray nodded. “I am going to be cumming, right? Just to be clear but when you said mess around you did mean like the naked kind of messing around? I just don’t want to miscommunicate and show up horny when it turns out you wanted to play cards.”
“Oh no, it’s definitely naked messing around,” Dart promised, nodding a lot. “Sometimes we do play cards, but like the horny kind of cards where the loser has to do horny stuff for the winner.”
“Okay great!” Ray beamed, then hopped backwards to show how graceful he was. He’d learned gymnastics from Cole. “I’ll see all of you later, then!”
He hurried back to the table, where he took Travis’s wine because it looked like he wasn’t drinking it. “Good news everyone, I got invited to be horny with Dart and Harper which is awesome because they’re very cute and I was hoping to be horny with them, also I still don’t think the wine is working, can I have more?”
“You just drank a cup,” Travis told him.
Ray looked down at the empty cup in his hand. “Yeah but like it was a small cup, can I have a little bit more, please? I really want to try being drunk and I can’t do that if you guys won’t let me have wine.”
“Here,” Cal said, giving Ray the last of his cup because he was awesome like that. “Drink that.”
Ray downed it, wiping his mouth before kissing the top of Cal’s head. “Thank you, you’re awesome. Dart and Harper don’t want to mess around until everyone’s gone to bed, so there’s still plenty of time to hang out. Oh! Joey, come dance with me!”
He pulled Joey out of his chair and over to where people were dancing. “I don’t really know how to dance,” Joey told him.
“That’s okay, I know a lot of dances! Here, I’ll show you how to do the Wake Two Step, my friend with beetle eyes taught it to me!” He started doing it, hopping from one foot to the other. He couldn’t quite remember what to do with his arms, but that was okay because he just span around a few times instead. “See?” he said. “It’s easy.”
“Uh, okay,” said Joey, who hadn’t really had enough wine. He tried to dance, and he was bad at it, but he was trying and that was what mattered because nobody who ever got good at anything was ever not bad at anything, or at least that was what Ray was pretty sure Tobin had told him once when he was learning arithmetic. And he’d probably been right, because once upon a time Ray hadn’t been able to add two numbers together and now he could multiply five digits without writing them down, so Joey could definitely learn how to dance with a little practice.
“Here,” Ray said, taking his hands and showing him the steps. “Like this.” Joey did it again, and Ray kissed him because he did it right and he should be happy about it. “See, that was easy!”
He stepped back, and bumped into someone tail-first. “Sorry!” he turned around, and there was Harper, blinking. “Oh, hi!” He leaned in and kissed him, then leaned back, horrified. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”
Harper grinned. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not, I shouldn’t have kissed you without asking if you wanted me to. I apologize for transgressing your boundaries, boundaries are very important. Can I kiss you?”
“Sure.”
“Great.” Ray smiled. “Uh, can I kiss you again?”
Harper laughed, and he kissed Ray this time, and he was better at it than Dart and the top of Cal’s head. He also had a boner, which was nice because it made Ray feel represented. “I have to go back to work, but I’ll see you tonight. My room’s at the very end of the hall up on the third floor. It won’t be locked.”
“Okay,” Ray said, letting Harper go. He bumped into Joey, who hugged him while looking at Harper.
“He looks sturdy,” Joey said. “Maybe I’ll wrestle him. Or! No wait, that guy there!” Now he was looking excitedly at a very tall man with a nice moustache. “I’m going to wrestle him!”
“Hm,” said Ray, nodding. “That seems like a bad idea, because you’re short and you’ll get hurt.”
“Uh, no,” said Joey, who was a bit flushed in the face. Maybe he had had some wine. “I’m a dragon and I’ll win for sure.”
“Do you usually win against people that much bigger and heavier than you?” Like Sir Owen, who he lost against all the time. And Wes, who he also lost against all the time even if Wes called him sir and sucked his dick whenever he wanted.
“I beat Louis once!”
Hm, said Ray again, but in his mind this time. “You know what I think?” he asked. “I think a lot of things but I mostly think you use wrestling as a substitute for sex and if you’re horny you should just say so and nobody has to get hurt, and also we’re all very impressed by you all the time so you don’t need to prove you’re impressive by wrestling people six times your size. It’s okay that you’re short because so is Cal and he’s God and also everyone loves him, just like everyone loves you just the way you are too.”
Joey blinked at him. “Huh?”
“I don’t know, I’m still not drunk,” Ray whinged. He kissed Joey on the cheek as Travis came over. “You guys have fun dancing.”
“Okay?”
He left them there to dance and went over to sit in Cal’s lap, swiping his cup. “I’m still not drunk,” he complained after he’d emptied it.
“You definitely are,” Cal said, arm around him.
“But I don’t feel any different,” Ray explained, leaning back against Cal.
“Really?” Cal asked. “Because you had one cup of wine and suddenly you forgot to be nervous and you started dancing and making out with people and talking to mean cats.”
Ray scowled, turning around in Cal’s lap so they were facing each other and wondering in what terrible place Cal had managed to encounter mean cats. “Those are things I do normally,” he explained. “See?” He kissed Cal, because he knew it was always okay to kiss Cal, because they were kind of in a relationship and Cal had given him permission to touch him whenever he wanted. So Ray kissed him to make his point, and then kept kissing him because he really liked kissing Cal, Cal was basically the best person except for maybe Grey Rain, though Grey Rain had been demoted a few places for a while, but he was back now, but he also wasn’t here for Ray to make out with.
Oh, they should set up a portal so Ray could go make out with Grey Rain. But no, no, he was making out with Cal now and it was rude to think about someone else while he did that, so he thought about Cal and how much he liked Cal and how cool Cal was and he started undoing Cal’s pants because he wanted to give Cal a handjob. Cal deserved a blowjob at least, but Ray never wanted to stop kissing him and he did only have one mouth. “Ray, we’re in the common room…” Cal muttered, into Ray’s mouth.
Ray nodded, purring. “You’re right,” he said. That probably mattered but he didn’t remember why, and Cal kept kissing him so he kept kissing Cal too, happy when Cal’s hands slipped under his waistband, reaching to undo the already-undone button in the back of his pants and then just playing with Ray’s tail when he found his job had been done for him by a forward-thinking cat. Ray was then made even happier when Cal unlaced the front of Ray’s pants to let his dick out. Sometimes Ray thought of his dick like a small tail even though it was different because it didn’t have bones in it even though it was called a boner sometimes, so it all lined up, just like how his exposed dick was now lined up with Cal’s.
Ray didn’t want to stop touching Cal everywhere else, so he didn’t touch their dicks, just let them rub together as they kissed, and Ray ground himself against Cal over and over and over and over and soon he was shaking and purring and then he came and wow, orgasms were fun.
Sliding down out of their kiss, Ray rested his head on Cal’s shoulder. “I love you,” he said. “I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course it’s okay,” Cal promised, arms around Ray. “I love you too.”
Ray nodded. “Good, because even if it’s your prerogative not to return my feelings I’d have been sad if you didn’t. Also I’m going to have sex with Dart and Harper later, what’s the usual level of sexual experience for a boy my age? I don’t want to have expectations too high and then be disappointed because I’d really like us all to give each other good memories of it, right?”
“Right,” Cal told him. “Just expect to have fun and you will. Listen to them and make sure they listen to you. Don’t worry too much about what specific things you’re going to do.”
That made sense to Ray, because the best part of sex wasn’t where everyone’s dick went (though he did like it when Cal’s went inside him), it was where everyone’s feelings went. “Okay. Also I love you and I want more wine.”
“Here,” Cal said, pulling a cup from somewhere. He was talking kind of slowly. How come he got to be drunk and Ray didn’t?
Oh, well. Ray drank the wine, and smiled. “Thanks. I’m going to go make out with more people and see if I can find Minstrel and also go to the privy since I forgot before. But I’m going to come back and give you a blowjob later and also I’m having a lot of fun, Cal, I know we haven’t actually gone anywhere yet but I’m having so much fun and this is everything I’ve ever wanted and I really love you and I’m so grateful to you because you’ve really given me actually everything I’ve ever wanted for real.”
Cal smiled. “I’m glad you’re having a good time, Ray. Having you here means a lot to me.”
“Me too.” Ray might cry, oh, he shouldn’t cry, he still had a boner.
“Okay, go find the privy. I’ll always be here when you come back.”
Ray nodded, because that was true, got unsteadily off of Cal’s lap, wondering why this part of the floor was so uneven, that was so dangerous. He tucked his shorter tail away but didn’t do up his pants, and Ray walked away, noticed Sully standing by the bar, and thought that nobody was making out with Sully, and that was really a shame.
Ray smiled and prowled over to him. Whatever, alcohol was stupid anyway. Ray was perfectly happy without it.
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How Best to Use a Sword 