A Study In Anatomy

X. Deviation

Miles had been blackout drunk exactly once in his life. It had been at a house party back in New Garden, two years before his parents' divorce, Seneca City, and a life surrounded by zetamorphs. In fact, it was just a week or so after he'd first met Tyler in a biology class. He'd been a transfer student and instantly popular thanks to his good looks and natural charisma.

There had been a mutual attraction from the beginning, although Miles hadn't recognized it. All he knew is that he liked Tyler, and his usual method of flirting (inviting guys home so he could blow them) didn't seem to work. For one thing, Miles kept getting nervous about pushing for sex, which hadn't ever been an issue for him. The other thing was that Tyler liked to turn his invitations back on him, so instead of private time in his bedroom, they ended up at a movie theater or the county fair.

That was how a plan to hang out at Tyler's over a weekend his parents were out turned into a house party. Someone had supplied booze, and Miles had decided drinking a lot might impress Tyler. As stupid as that idea had been, it had worked, mostly. Early in the evening, Miles had furtively tugged Tyler into his bedroom where they'd finally had sex for the first time. The confirmation that Tyler liked him too had been exhilarating, and he was so gratified by the experience that he didn't realize how wasted he was until it was too late to do anything about it.

His brain had politely edited the part where he was sick from his memory. He did remember spending most of the night staring at the ceiling fan in a spare bedroom, desperately trying to force the geometry of the room conform to the usual constraints of straight lines and level floors.

In the present, he was going through a similar experience. Instead of the euphoria he associated with being drunk, though, he mostly just felt confusion. The room seemed to be spinning, and he kept getting this inexplicable, sweet taste on the back of his tongue.

He was also having a hard time remembering exactly how many drinks he'd had before he'd let the zeta he'd been flirting with escort him to one of the private rooms. First, there'd been the beer he'd ordered from the cute lynx manning the service station near the pool on the second floor.

That had been early in the night though, and lots of people had offered to buy him drinks. He'd only accepted one of those, in the form of a rum and coke. Or had that been his third? He thought someone might have handed him a second beer at some point, and now he was thinking about it, there might have been another rum and coke in there as well. He also remembered some apple cider down in the lower bar, but he couldn't remember if that was from his last visit or this one.

The nagging sense that something was wrong kept interfering with his ability to focus on what was actually happening to him in the present. All those sensations felt like they were happening to someone else while his mind kept playing through other memories, often in ways that felt far more vivid.

He felt like a character in an old sitcom – one of the guys who tried to date two women at the same time without them finding out (why were they always straight couples?). The character would run back and forth between dates, making increasingly stupid excuses to leave and go to the other one, until he inevitably fucked something up and everything blew up in his face. Except here, it was like both dates were sitting at the same table, but neither of them could tell the other was there.

He realized his body was trembling, and that brought him momentarily into the present. That definitely wasn't right. When he looked down at the zeta underneath him, he half expected to see russet and cream fur, blue slitted eyes, and chocolate brown ears. Instead, he found himself looking into the green eyes of a felinid zetamorph with gold fur and black spots.

Of course. The cheetah. That was who had bought him the rum and coke. Miles had liked the way his eyes looked when they caught the light of one of the outdoor torches, and he'd had a charming smile. So, he'd decided to take a risk and accept the drink (and the conversation). After all, it had worked out all right with Virgil.