Why Did the Snakes Cross the Road? Part 2

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Morphology-Based Phylogeny

So folks-- it's been a while since I delved into ficlet and fan fiction land. I'm not even sure I have enough for an ENTIRE ficlet about Dex and Kane--but I have just enough time before I fall asleep to give it a try.

This was initially inspired by a meme about morphology-based phylogeny.  I swear, somebody in my FB group posted it, and I showed it to Kim Fielding who said it should be made into a ficlet.

And I live to serve.

*  *  *

Dex watched as Kane squinted at his homework over the kitchen table.

"Unca Kane has a headache," Frances announced. She put down her crayon to pat his hand and then resumed coloring. The deal had been she could do her work with her Uncle Kane while Dex made dinner--but she had to be very quiet.

Kane muttered, "Uncle Kane is looking at some damned weird words. Hey, Dexter--come over here and read this for me."

He didn't ask often, so Dex left the chicken he was simmering for dinner, washed his hands and came around the table.

"Morphology," Dex said.

"Yeah--I know that one. It means body type, right? We learned the root words. So, physical thing. Does it have hair, does it have skin-- that stuff."

Dex smiled at him, damned proud. "Yeah. Good. So you know that one. Do you know the other one?"

"Phylogeny-- that's like phylum. Like type. Like classification and stuff."

"So..." Dex waited for him to put it together.

"No--I get it," Kane said. "I just don't get it."

Frances squinted at him. "Get what?"

"Well, it's classifying stuff. Like, you know, are we all mammals. But it's based on the body things."

Dex nodded, not sure where he was going with this.  "Yeah..."

"But that's confusing. It's like... like, saying if it has hair, it's gotta be a mammal. But Frances has stuffed animals that have hair, and they're just stuffed animals."

Oh. "It's gotta be alive, silly!" Frances laughed gaily, and Kane grimaced.

He obviously wasn't done with this idea yet.

"Okay then--what about hairless cats. They're mammals, but they don't have hair, right?"

"Well that's not all true." Dex had visited the vet part of Tommy's Pet Smart a few times, trying to figure out if he and John could own part of that franchise. It didn't seem to make sense, but he knew a lot of his guys would be happier leaving porn if there was a job dealing with animals that they could get somehow.  "I've petted a hairless cat before--they actually have hair, but super short hair. It's like bristles on a pig, but his skin is softer."

Frances had a "bullshit" line between her brown eyes that activated when she was skeptical about how the world worked. "Kitties have pig skin?"

"No," Dex said, wondering how to explain this better. "Pigs have tough skin, and this kitty has a soft skin, but pigs have short hairs that bristle when you rub them backwards and hairless cats have short hairs that bristle when you rub them back."

The bullshit line got deeper. "When why are they called hairless kitties? Why aren't they called bristly kitties?"

"I do not know that," Dex told her, "and my chicken needs tending."

"Do chickens have bristles?" Frances asked, pretty much harrying him on his way to the kitchen.

"No--well, yeah. Their feathers are like bristles close to the skin."

"Do we eat those?" Frances asked, and Dex foresaw a future in which no chicken was served in their household for many many years. They'd have to resort to tofu, and Kane would rebel and leave him with all the animals and Dex's life would be over.

"We do not eat the feathers," Dex said carefully. "There are no chicken bristles in the food." Oh please don't let her ask where the meat comes from. Please don't let her ask where the meat comes from.

"But do we eat the chickens that bach-bach and lay eggs?"  Frances asked suspiciously. Kane suddenly shot upright, looking panicked. Oh yeah--it occurred to him too that if Frances decided she didn't want to eat the nice birds, with or without feathers, they were in for some long damned meals in the future.

Dex felt time telescoping down to a small dark bubble, where plucked chickens danced to taunt him and people brushed their hair with hairless cats. "Yes, bunny. Those are the chickens we eat."

"Oh." Frances nodded and went back to her coloring.  But Kane couldn't leave it alone.

"Oh? That's all you got, bunny? Oh?"

Frances looked at him, bullshit line appearing between her eyes. "Well, they're the special kind of chickens, right? The ones born without heads and feathers? So they must be for us to eat."

"Uh..."  Kane looked at him, panicked.

"Yeah," Dex said, lying his ass off to an innocent child. "Those are the special kind of chickens. We don't eat the other kind."

"Cause those are like people," Frances said.

"Sure," Kane told her, sounding stunned.

"Like coconuts. They have hair too."

Kane let out a little moan and laid his head in his arms. "I get it now," he mumbled. "Dexter, make it stop."

Dex distracted her by telling her to go wash her hands and clean up her color crayons and books.  She ran off to do just that, and Kane let out a sigh of relief.

"Oh my God, Dexter!"

"I know!" Dex hissed, turning the chicken one more time. "One false word and we're eating tofu for the rest of our lives!"

"I know, right!" Kane scrubbed his face with his hands. "I'll tell you one thing--knowing all those long words might be part of being smart, but making a category for things that depends on just a couple of body parts is hella stupid."

"Morphology based phylogeny," Dex said in wonder. "I mean, you never know what's going to cook your chicken, but you don't think it's going to be that."

And the bears and the bats and the balls...A Dex/Kane ficlet

So, stories-- even short ones come from a couple of places.

This one comes from a moment at Coastal Magic where Lisa Kessler and her friend talked about how bears and fruit bats can auto-fellate themselves. 0.0

And it also came from a moment on Friday, when Squishie had me remind her to bring her Valentines to school. Because I'd remembered to GET the Valentines, and remembered to have her BRING the Valentines, but in a house where Valentines Day was like Second Christmas, I had neglected to buy so much as A CARD or piece of chocolate for my youngest children.

Oh holy crap--can you imagine the panic?

I've got stuff in the car now, and there shall be gifts tomorrow, but I'm saying.

I almost dropped a load in my shorts--and more importantly, I almost dropped a PARENTING BALL. I figured Dex might know how I felt.


***

"Hey, Dexter, check this out!"

It was Dex's turn to make dinner, and he was doing a complicated Thai fusion thing so he took a deep breath, added his last ingredient, and set the vegetables on simmer.  "Coming!" he sang, and was not reassured by Kane's low, dirty chuckle.

"Yeah," Kane said with satisfaction. "So's this guy."

Dexter looked at the picture on the computer screen. "Holy God," he said. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, and then opened them again. "Is that a..."

"A bear giving himself head?" Kane nodded. "Yeah-- when I saw the caption, I was thinking big hairy guys-- I wondered why that would be in the Huffington Post."

"I'm wondering why this is," Dex grumbled. Animal peen. Jesus fucking Christ--after the debacle before Christmas with the teacher and the picture of the turtle giving flowers, he was just about fucking done with animal peen.

"I don't know, but apparently they give each other head, too." Kane chuckled again, the rumbly, filthy sound doing promising things to Dex's libido. "And they're not the only animals who do oral.  See?"

"Fruit bats," Dex said flatly. His would-be boner wilted in his shorts. "Fruit bats give oral."

"Yeah, but usually only het."  Kane's magic chuckle was apparently unbeatable, because it was working again. "Fruit-bat-fuckers don't know what they' re missing.

"I would have to agree with that," Dex nodded, and then something in the corner of the screen caught his eye. "Wait-- what is that?"  Oh God.

"What-- the clickbait?"

"No--the red thing!" Oh hell. Oh no. What day was it! No. No no no no no...  Dex pulled out his phone. "Oh shit! Valentines Day is tomorrow?"

"Yeah-- you remember. I helped Frances make Valentines for her class on Thursday?"

"I worked late," Dex said numbly. "I worked late Thursday, and you got her Friday and we went to the park today and..."   Oh God. Dex had always been the good kid--the kid who'd done his homework and had his paperwork in early and... Oh God oh God oh God... He put his hand to his chest and tried to fight off a ten-elephant anxiety attack.  "Valentines Day is tomorrow?"  He ran to dinner and checked on it and then ran back to where Kane was sitting because the big Goober was sitting on the chair with his jacket on it.  He tugged at it, babbling the entire time. "Jesus, Kane, get up. We need... you know, stuff. For Frances. For... for..." For you, you big goombah! "For Valentines Day! For... flowers and chocolate... there's a protocol. She'll be crushed, she needs happy!  For the love of God, Carlos, let me have my jacket so I can go be the grown up and buy our kid some fuckin' happy!"

Kane stood up and grabbed his shoulders, turning him around and shaking him gently. Which, with Kane's mass and strength, meant he was just a hair short of rattling Dex's teeth in his head.

"Dexter," he said firmly.

"Still here," Dex said, body vibrating with the need to go out and fix it. 

"I got Frances happy shit. Don't sweat it. Stuffed animal, card, chocolate, all from the both of us. She'll be fine."

Dee's panic decreased by the weight of exactly six elephants. "But... but Kane," he said, feeling the failure acutely. "I didn't get anything for you."

Kane's fingers stopped biting into his biceps, and the hand that cupped his cheek was exquisitely tender.  "Dexter."  He pulled Dex in and kissed his forehead. "Look at us," he said. He wrapped his arms around Dex's shoulders, applying an outstanding amount of pressure, forcing Dex to relax against his chest and easing the electric wire that had been shoved up his spine with the realization that of all the balls he and Kane had dangling in the air, he had almost dropped one.

"I'm looking," Dex said, feeling miserable. "I'm looking at how much time I've been at work this month, and how long it's been since we've been to the park. I'm looking at that glop I've got on the stove and how we'll probably end up feeding Frances chicken soup again. I'm looking at the fact that you've got work and school and you cleaned the house for the last two weeks and--"

"Sh..."  Kane nuzzled his temple. "Stop. I'm looking at a guy working a sixty-hour work week so he can rehabilitate old porn models into upstanding citizens. And the same guy took me and my niece and made us a family, and gave us a home and keeps us eating good and remembers to send me out for school supplies so our kid doesn't look like the dumb one in school. You got busy. I seen it. You stay up late, you come to bed, I nail you to the mattress and you get up when you think I'm asleep and do that one last thing. You fall asleep when you're reading to Frances, and you cut your workout in half so you can work with the guys individually and train them to do what you're doing, so this business can grow and you can have more time. I get it, Dexter. You're fuckin' busy."

"I dropped the ball," Dex said miserably. "And I"m gonna get fat."

"Naw-- you lost weight, I think, cause you ain't eating right. And it's okay if you dropped a ball, cause that's what I"m here for. I caught it."

Suddenly Dex felt every minute of the last crazy busy month, and most of those minutes had been missed sleep as he tried to cram too much activity into too little time. "I'm so tired," he confessed into the sudden quiet. Behind them, on the stove, a suspiciously unappetizing smell began to waft.  "And I don't want to eat the crap in the pot."

"Deal," Kane said with feeling. "Here. You go throw that shit away, I'll get Frances's coat-- we're going out tonight."

Chili's was not exactly a romantic getaway, but the tables had the little computer screen with the kids games, and Kane and Dex pretty much giggled their way through the healthy choice menu while catching up on each other's week. When they were done, they stopped for frozen yogurt and Frances fell asleep in the back of the car on the way home.

"Dexter," Kane said, sounding competent and in charge from behind the wheel.

"Yeah?"

"When we get home, I'm gonna put Frances to bed, and I need you to do me a favor."

"Yeah, sure."  God, he felt relaxed. It was like he'd had those elephants on his chest for a month and hadn't felt them until just that moment when he thought he'd totally fucked up.

"I need you to not go to your computer. I've got like, twelve hours of good TV taped--your TV. Come sit with me and watch it, okay?"

Oh man--Dex's eyes burned. "Yeah," he said softly. "That's a deal."

He fell asleep in the middle of The X-Files which was too bad, because he loved the reboot and wanted to catch up on all the eps before it went off the air.  All he knew was that one minute Mulder was looking rumpled and attractive in a middle-aged man way and Scully was looking regal and amazing, and the next minute?

He was lying on his back in bed while Kane engulfed his cock with one hot swoop of his mouth at the same time he breached Dex's ass with two spit-slackened fingers.

"Whoa!" Dex flailed, trying to remember walking down the hallway or getting undressed or even foreplay, because there must have been some-- Kane got off kissing his body, and shit did not just start where they were right now!

He pounded the bed with his fists, his brain a kaleidoscope of compressing images while his body coiled itself to launch.  "Oh God!" he managed. "Blast off in three--"

He didn't get to two or one, because Kane was suddenly up and inside of him, his cock already dripping with slick, Dex's legs straight up in the air and spread just enough to wrap his calves around Kane's shoulders. Everything inside Dex's head exploded in fireworks and it was a good thing his eyes were closed because he felt the smatter of his own come splat across his chest and face--and Kane didn't stop. Pound pound pound--Dex began to plead, incoherent nonsense, all of his skin alight and on fire for Kane's girth, stretching him, filling him, pounding his prostate into jelly.

Oh God--oh damn-- his entire body rippled, clenching until his stomach muscles ached, as a dry orgasm wrung him until he was limp sinew and brittle bone, and as he melted into the mattress, Kane grunted, a primitive, earthy sound, and spilled into Dex's body.  He dropped Dex's legs and fell on top of him, their gruff pants loud in the sudden silence.

"Oh my God," Dex breathed, still in shock from having sex while he was deeply asleep. "That was..."

"Fucking amazing," Kane said smugly. "Don't lie."

"Wasn't gonna. No brain cells to lie."

They were still joined, and he felt Kane's grumble deep in his ass, but he didn't even have the strength to giggle.

"Seriously," he said, falling asleep even with Kane's body on top of his. "I can't imagine life not loving you."

"Aw, dammit Dexter."  Kane nuzzled his ear. "This was supposed to be my gift to you."

"The sex?" Sex mumbled. "That's great. But all of you--even better."

He fell asleep knowing that in his stomach.

*  *  *

The next morning Dex slid out of bed quietly and dressed, comforted by the fact that Kane's window-rattling snores didn't even lessen in decibel. He pattered out to the living room where he found Frances cuddled on the couch, asleep next to the giant pink bunny that Kane had apparently laid out for her.  He pulled the couch afghan up to her chin and kissed her forehead.  Go, Uncle Kane--way to catch the parenting ball.

Her snores didn't lessen in decibel either as he slipped out into the morning.

He got back before either of them knew he'd been gone, and when Kane thumped across the floorboards in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt, the hot chocolate was warm and ready and the doughnuts were arranged on a plate on the table.

"Aw, Dexter!" Kane yawned. "Lookit you! A night out, a little nookie, you're Captain Family again!"

.Dex turned from the stove and stepped right up to Kane's bed-warmed space, resting his head on a broad, muscular shoulder. "I can be anyone you need," he said sincerely. "As long as you just keep catching my balls." Oh hell.

Kane's deep rumbly sexy-as-fuck chuckle vibrated right in his groin. "I will catch your balls any time, Dexter. Any fuckin' time."

Santa Turtle With a Flower

Aherm. You all asked for it. That's all I've got to say.  Oh! And every time I typed "Dex" my damned computer tried to make it "Sex"-- I think I out-Dexed autocorrect eventually, but if you see "Sex said," or "Sex and Kane exchanged glances" know it was the damned program and NOT me! Swear!

* *  *

"Ka--Carlos, quit playing with the manipulatives." 

Kane didn't even look up at him. "If they didn't want us to play with the toys, they shouldna left them here for us to play with," he mumbled. He'd gotten into the bucket of math toys and was making patterns out of the colored stackable blocks.  

"We're trying to look like parents here," Dex hissed. God. They were in a teacher's classroom. Frances was going to pre-school now, the kind where they trained you for Kindergarten. She'd been coming home all happy and excited about learning, and suddenly they'd gotten the note. The note that said their kid had said something inappropriate and now they were in trouble. So here they were, two weeks before Christmas, looking around the classroom like it was worse than a pit of snakes.

Kane probably would have preferred the pit of snakes. 

At the moment, Mrs. Richards, a tiny--as in, sub-5-foot-- woman, was talking soberly to a giantess about no sugary drinks in the lunch, and Dex was trying to remember what Frances had been eating for the past two months.

"What'd you put in her lunch yesterday?" he asked, because Kane had been in charge of dropping off. 

Kane looked up at him blankly. "Bologna, cheese, mayo, wheat bread, apple slices, one cookie and a quarter for milk," he recited. "Why?"

"Well, it's not that." Dex barely refrained from tapping his toes. Dammit-- that note could have been a little more forthcoming.

Little Mrs. Richards said goodbye to the giantess, who lumbered away in what Dex could sympathetically see was mortification.  The tiny teacher--in her fifties, with dyed reddish hair and bright brown eyes--grabbed a folder from the desk and came to sit down at the child's desk where Dex and Kane were sitting with their knees up to their chins.

"How are you all?" she said. "We're Frances Nuno's guardians?"

Dex pushed himself up off the tiny little chair behind him, and bent down to shake her hand. God. Four-foot-nine, maybe. He'd never in his life "loomed" over anyone at the same time he'd been made to feel uncomfortable.

"Hi, ma'am, I'm David Worrall. This is my husband, Carlos Ramirez, we're Frances's uncles."

Woman didn't even blink.  "So lovely to meet you. Do sit down." She winked. "Or, remain sitting, Mr. Ramirez." 

Kane looked up from the blocks and said, "Look, Dex, when you do your times tables in color, it makes a pattern."

Dex blinked. Well, he was right, it did. "That's great," he said sincerely, because he loved watching Kane discover stuff that he'd missed when he'd been small.  There was a wonder on his square jawed face, a purity of heart. It was why he had so much fun playing learning games with Frances. "Kane, uh, Carlos, this is Mrs. Richards. Mrs. Richards, this is Mr. Ramirez."

That made her blink. "Oh-- that makes sense," she said, nodding. "Frances calls you Uncle Dex and Uncle Kane. I didn't realize they were nicknames-- I thought your extended family must be quite large."

Oh shit. Dex swallowed. "Well, uh, yeah." Great. They had a four year old girl calling them by their porn names. They were going to hell.

"So, is one of you named John or Galen or Chase or Tommy?" she asked, still smiling.

Dex shook his head. "No--those are... well, friends. I mean, John's my boss, uh, Galen's his boyfriend.  And Kane's, uh, Carlos's, I mean, you know, Kane's. But... you know. Family."

She nodded. "Oh, of course, I understand. And Uncle Ethan and Uncle Jonah--"

"Also friends," Dex confirmed. "Ethan provided daycare for her for part of last year."

"Yes, I got that impression. She was not happy to leave the babies--I haven't figured out whose they are, but I gathered she only got a couple of months with them."

"We visit," Kane said, voice wounded, and it was time for Dex to intervene.

"Yes-- well, uhm, besides family, was their any other reason for the conference?"

Mrs. Richards gave him a professional smile. "Well, first of all, Frances is very bright. I know you were worried about her language acquisition because she'd been sick as an infant, but she's catching up phenomenally. She says that her Uncle Kane helps her at night, and that he pretends he's not very good at reading to let her help."

Dex and Kane met gazes and Kane grimaced. He'd actually gotten to high school reading level this year, but he still had problems with some words he hadn't been able to pronounce when he'd been small with a cleft palate. Some sort of mental block. 

"Kane's wonderful with her," Dex said softly. "They're really good together." 

The little hobbit or pixy or gnome or whatever smiled. "That's so good to hear. And I understand that not everybody's family situation is usual or the same. But... well, I just have some concerns about her basic knowledge of animals."

Dex straightened, his eyes going big. "Animals?"

To his left, Kane said, "Uh-oh."

That tiny smiled in the wrinkling face became decidedly uncomfortable. "So, Mr. Worrall, we asked the children to tell us a story about animals, and to draw us a picture."

Dex said, "Uh-oh."

Kane said, "Oh my God."

She pulled out the drawing--very colorfully done, in five kinds of crayon. 

"Could you gentlemen explain what this is?"

Dex said "Oh Dear Lord."

Kane said, "I had no idea she saw that."

Mrs. Richards said, "Yes, but what is it? She kept calling it a flower. She said that when the turtle saw his favorite snake, Tomas, he brought it flowers."

"Aw," said Kane. "Isn't that sweet? She thinks the turtle's courting!"

Dex stared a him. "Courting."

"Yeah! Like when I bring you cookies because I fucked something up and I don't want you to be mad."

"You bring me..."

Kane chuckled, the sound disproportionately low and sexy in this child's classroom full of colored paper projects, bright fuzzy yarn, and manipulative toys. "Flowers, Dexter. Get it? Flowers?"

Dex said, "Oh my God."

"So... the turtle does have a flower?" Mrs. Richards asked uncomfortably.

"Well," Dex said, "Uh, all turtles have flowers. All, uh, boy turtles have flowers."

"Oh my God," Said Mrs. Richards.

"Yeah, uh..." Dex looked over his shoulder at Kane, who sort of shrugged. "See... this turtle here is a box turtle. And we usually keep him and his... uh, buddy, outside in a brick tank under the tree. But it's been really stormy lately, and their tanks a little flooded, and they like a little water, but you don't want them to get too cold, you know?"

"So you bring them inside."

"Yeah," Kane said, nodding. "And we have to put them in their old tank, but, you know, turtles get big, and then they break your house!"

"So, the turtles got out?" Mrs. Richards said, sounding a little stunned.

"Yeah," Dex nodded, grateful she seemed to be getting it. "And one of them we could keep in the bathtub.  But the other one kept getting out--"

"He got sort of a hard-o...uh, crush, on my snake," Kane said seriously. 

"Your snake-- so, that's Tomas?"  Like she was making sure.

Dex nodded. "Yeah-- which is sort of fruitless--"

"Tomas is sort of in love with Dex," Kane said, chuckling. "It's not even funny-- that snake fell in love the first time he escaped and found Dex's, uh..."

"Leg," Dex said darkly. Whenever Kane left Tomas out, that animal had an uncanny ability to find Dex's balls. It was like a superpower. 

"Yeah," Kane smirked. "Uh, leg. But this turtle, he's got a crush, and so every day when we leave, he escapes the bathtub and crashes--"

"He broke the door!" Dex said, outraged. "Like, pushed the door so hard it busted the little lock. That fu...uh, animal is breaking my house!"

"Yeah," Kane agreed. "Sorry, Dexter. We should give him to Chase and Tommy-- they've got a big heated terrarium in the baby's room. Anyway-- so we get home the other day, and, well, the damned turtle is, uh..."

"Courting," Mrs. Richards supplied, her eyes big.

Dex nodded. "Courting. He's, uh, courting the snake. Against the glass side of the terrarium."

Dex had actually worried that the terrarium would crack, and then the turtle had finished and they'd just needed a shitton of windex.

"With his 'flower.'" Mrs. Richards clarified.

Dex nodded weakly. "It's not really a flower." 

"She gave the turtle a santa hat," the teacher said, her voice as dry as toast.

"I saw that."  Dex tried his best smile. "It looks great."

"She says all santa turtles bring flowers for snakes, and she knows this because Uncle John and Uncle Galen told her that."

"I swear," Kane muttered. "Galen is a sarcastic, snarky sonuva--"

"But apparently, Uncle Galen told her that the snakes usually hid inside the flowers, and now she's very confused."

"He's a lawyer," Dex  told her without blinking. "They've got a very dry sense of humor."

"So I gather," Mrs. Richards said. "What I would like to know, is how we're going to explain flowers and snakes to a four year old girl."

"Just tell her the turtle's in love," Kane said simply. "Turtles bring flowers, men bring... flowers or, you know, sometimes snakes, and that bringing a gift is never a bad thing even if the snake wants another snake."

Mrs. Richards sighed. "Or I could just tell her that turtle is in love, and turtle penises look like flowers, and that all the men she knows are gay."

"That would work," Dex said, nodding helpfully. "But I think she's figured out about all the men she knows."

"Does she know any women?" Mrs. Richards asked.

"Yeah, yeah-- Kelsey helps Ethan and Jonah watch kids. And, uh, she knows you!" Kane could be charming too when he turned on his dimples.

"Well then. Now that I know what that picture is, and we're all on the same page, I think I can let you gentlemen resume your day."

Dex managed to stand up again, and he gave Kane a hand so Kane could leverage up too. "Thank you, ma'am--"

"Uh, Mr. Ramirez?"

"Yes ma'am?"

"You need to leave the manipulatives here."

Kane sighed. "I swear-- kids have all the best fun."

*  *  *

Dex was still reeling in mortification at the end of the day. He and Kane had taken separate cars to the teacher conference because Kane had school that day, and he got home a little late because he'd needed to pick Frances up from Ethan's after he got off work. He'd tried-- in vain-- to explain the turtles with flowers and santa hats debacle to Ethan and Jonah, but those hosers had lost their nut at the part where the turtle had been fucking the terrarium, and so his humiliation at having the teacher call them in for turtle porn remained unassuaged. 

He walked into the house, Frances trailing after him, wondering what he was going to pull out of his ass for dinner, only to be met with the smell of homemade Kane-made pizza cooking, and a variety of things on and next to the kitchen table. 

Next to the kitchen table was a large, trench-shaped terrarium that hugged the dining room wall and took very little space in their soon-to-be-cramped house. It was made of inch-thick fiberglass, and looked like it would hold against the turtle's very determined courtship--at least until spring hit and they could put the turtles back in the brick terrarium outside.

ON the table was a big old vase of real flowers. With a stuffed snake around the vase.

Kane was in the kitchen tossing salad--actual food, this time, although Dex was starting to feel a strong urge to toss Kane's salad for him at bedtime.  

"Hey," he said, smiling at Kane through a sort of hazy joy. 

"Hey, Dexter. You recovered yet?"

Dex shook his head. He and Frances had held the "Turtles in love" discussion in the car on the way home and he was still traumatized. "Nope," he said bleakly. "Still a little..."

Kane grinned and came around the counter. "Frances, bunny, go put your backpack in your room, okay?"

"Okay, Unca Carlos.  Love you!"

"Love you too."

He kissed her on the top of her little head and she skipped off, probably to play with her dolls before dinner.

Then he stood and pulled Dex by the hips until their groins touched. "You sure you're not recovered?"

"We got called in for a teacher's conference because our niece saw turtle porn," Dex said, feeling the embarrassment deeply. "They're gonna take away our parent card for this, Carlos."

Kane laughed gently, and pulled Dex's head so he could whisper in his ear. "Would you like to see my snake, Dexter? Cause it sure would like to explore your flower tonight?"

Reluctantly, Dex smiled. "Sex? Can we call it sex?" he asked plaintively. 

"I'll go you one better, Dexter. You and I will fuck tonight, until neither one of us can see straight. After this afternoon, we're totally due."

Dex kissed him-- he had to. Because snakes and turtles might be destined for unhappy endings, but he and Kane were going to have a happy ending of their own that night, and he was so damned grateful he could cry.