21

My super genius could only get me so far with breakfast.

"Alright, unless you want slobber on your toast, get up." I tugged on his sleeves with my teeth. "I need your thumbs."

No, I wasn't being heartless. It was a good ol' 9 in the morning and he'd been awake for the past ten minutes just laying there and staring at the opposite wall like a Psyduck.

"What, you need to go pee?"

I gruffed and shook my head, taking his arm with me. How uncouth, really. I could use the toilet just fine...with some finesse and careful balance.

"Okay okay, jeeze. I'm getting up."

And he did so with the usual amount of wincing and moaning. I crutch walked him towards the kitchen, but was made to take a pit stop at the bathroom.

I sighed while my head was turned away. "I'm getting really tired of catching glimpses of man parts."

"It's considered rude to talk to someone while they're doing their business," said Steven, since the chatterbox couldn't let my "nine-ninetales" go unanswered.

Finally I got him to the kitchen, where I dragged out a frying pan, butter, eggs, and then sat there and looked pointedly at him.

He grimaced. "Uh, anything I touch burns."

I looked to the ceiling. "I just need your damn thumbs. I'll do the rest." And then I got up on my hind legs to pull out a butter knife, which I dropped next to the butter.

Steven sighed and slid his hands down his face. "Okay. Um…do I need to butter the pan or something?"

I nodded.

"Uh…okay…is that enough? Bark when I have the stove hot enough."

And like that, with lots of yes and no's, barks, nips at his sleeves, and glares, I managed to boss the oaf into making himself fried eggs without burning them. And he knew how to make toast on his own, thank Arceus, but a rock could have done that.

Steven was ridiculously pleased with his baked chicken embryo.

"I did it…" he looked at me, beaming. "It's…and it taste good! Oh gosh, did I—it always burned before."

"Probably because someone didn't force you to stay by the stove and watch it," I said. If he was anything like Collin he probably kept trying to watch TV or read a book while cooking.

"Hey, I heard that tone. This is a big deal to me."

"Technically, I did it. With your thumbs."

He smiled, as though I'd complimented him, which, for all he knew, I had.

"Yeah, it's thanks to you." He rubbed my ears. "Thanks."

Once I had him sitting on the couch and eating, I went out to bring in the mail and the paper like a good dog, nevermind being a fox. I also went out and pulled down the dried laundry from the line and dragged the basket in with my teeth. One by one, I brought the full baskets of laundry to the couch. Thankfully, the idiot didn't need me to spell it out for him, as he started to fold.

"Now that I think about it," he said around a mouthful of toast, a shirt in hands. "I've never seen you, you know, pee or poop or anything."

I shuddered. "And you never will!"

He flinched. "Whoa, no need to snap. Didn't realize that was a no no topic."

As he ate and folded, and I did some light tidying with the duster in my jaws, he chatted at me about the various rare minerals that were actually the feces of various rock, ground, and steel type poke'mon. He pointed out a few, but I purposely didn't look back because, with my luck, I was dusting around said poop piles and, for my peace of mind, I'd rather just keep on believing they were all rocks. This cleaning everything with your mouth and nose was getting real old. I wanted haaaaaands.

At some point, I started to phase him out. Something about listening to one person's voice with barely any pauses in between each words. Wears out the receptors in your brain or something. I had the feathers going about a polished lump of a thing that glittered in the late morning light. A lot of his stones glittered, and since it was the one thing I could appreciate about this job, I took a seat and admired it for a bit.

"-and I had the strangest dream about this beautiful girl last night, with black hair and blue eyes-"

I whipped my head around so fast I got a poof of dust in the face from the dusters feathers.

Thankfully, Steven Loquacious Stone had his focus on a battle with a fitted sheet.

"-but it felt like a nightmare. She was in this dark room that kept changing and she was pale as a ghost. Probably was a ghost. And I kept hearing this man yelling all this stuff, horrible things, really. It was like he was in there, but wasn't. Never saw him. Kind of glad." He looked up then, having given up on making a square and rolled up the fitted sheet like a sausage. "You have any dreams?"

I nodded, then went to the front door to shake the duster outside, feeling the pound of my heart down to my toes.

Why did that hit me so? Yeah, I had black hair and blue eyes...and his dream sounded startingly like mine...but what was the likelihood? And it wasn't like I was the type of girl to be called 'beautiful.' Not ugly, sure, but…

But what was beautiful about a talentless, useless recluse?

I shook my head hard with the duster tight in my jaws, clenching my eyes and holding my breath and imagining I was tearing about some sort of prey rather than getting a facefull of dead skin cells and dirt.

After sneezing several times, I returned to find Steven gingerly trying to stretch. He hissed as he did so.

"Freaking stitches…" He reached back, only to wince again and touch his side. "Freaking ribs."

I dropped the duster off underneath the kitchen sink and returned with a wet rag in my jaws. I found a sunny spot on the thick rug beneath his coffee table and got to work attempting to clean whatever I could reach with it.

"What chya do'n?"

I paused mid stroke of the rag. Then, figuring I had already acted weird enough, I continued on. Not that it did much good, but it did get the top most layer of dust off.

"That's...different. I always thought fox poke'mon cleaned themselves like cats or dogs. You know, with their tongue." At my glare, he put his hands up apologetically. "Hey, not judging." After a few minutes of watching me struggling, he asked, "Would you like some help?"

Yes please. And I yielded the rag to him.

We eventually ended up in the bathroom, with him sitting on the toilet and me in a bathtub with a shallow depth of steaming hot water. He had to wear cleaning gloves in order to protect his hands from the heat of the water, but since he had only been able to find one (wasn't like he used them all the time), I'd get turns of rubbery poking any occasional finger prods.

"I'm glad I can do something for you in return," he said as he stroked around my neck with his bare hand and his gloved one scrubbed my back.

My chest rumbled, not quite a purr, but pleased sounding nonetheless. As he worked up to my face, shivers ran down my back, flicking one of my long tails out of the tub and throwing water across the room.

"Can't say I've ever had a poke'mon with fur. My father was allergic. Didn't matter that he was almost never home, Mom always went out of her way to make sure the house was as comfortable as possible for him. She even made sure dinner never had any onions in it just in case he came home to eat. You have any idea how many recipes have onion in it? Probably, with how well you know how to cook."

"I'm a Ninetales, not a chef," I mumbled. And I wouldn't have called myself a chef as a human either. I only knew enough to cover the occasional meal when my mother didn't feel like cooking or when Collin whined for something other than a sandwich.

Thankfully, he avoided my rear. Poke'mon or not, I don't think I could survive having a man wash my nether parts. He did take the time to clean each of my tails, though without the careful politeness Carlos had.

Thinking of Carlos made me think of Chevy, and my chest ached.

The rag paused.

"What's wrong?"

I snorted. It wasn't like I could tell him, language barrier and all.

Still, he brought a hand back up to my head and gently scratched around my ears, which I only realized then were folded back. Betrayed once again by body language.

"Was it something I said?"

I sighed. So we were doing the yes and no game. I shook my head.

"Remembering something bad?"

I hesitated. Then shook my head.

"Missing someone?"

...I nodded.

His thumb stroked under my eye and then over my ear. My shoulders weakened at the touch. I just stopped my jaw from hitting the faucet, and if I had been human my eyes might have watered up with tears.

"I get that. I get that a lot."

And he brought his face close to rest his forehead against the soppy wet pile of my bangs, holding my head up with his hand. Warmth trickled down my spine from where our bodies made contact.

"You might not be so bad," I whispered.

Course, he didn't understand.

"It's okay," he murmured. "You'll see them again someday. Even if they're dead. It'll just take longer."

The wistful lowering of his voice made me whine, and after a second longer he let me go.

He didn't have a blow dryer. And he only owned three towels, which were all soaked through before I'd gotten half the water out of my fur. I thought I'd just go outside to drip dry, but instead of a warm, summer breeze I got a gust of chilly ocean air, which swept through me like knives of winter. I recoiled back into the kitchen, whimpering and coiling in on myself as the chill turned to pain that grated on the fire in my belly till it was cinders. Steven somehow managed to limp himself to the closet and back with two thick, wool blankets. He coaxed me back to the rug in the sun before throwing them over me.

"Looks like I'll need to buy a heavy duty blow dryer before your next bath."

Shivering and damp, I decided I hated the ocean.

But maybe living with Steven wasn't so bad.