Introductions

Moving days weren’t unknown to Paul.  It wasn’t like he made a habit of moving his home often, but he couldn’t quite help himself, either.  Getting tied down, getting stuck to one little spot for too long... it was enough to drive him crazy.  After all, if you had the means and the will to uproot yourself every couple of years and resettle somewhere new, why not?  Paul would have been the first to admit that the wanderlust was strong in him.
He looked up and out as he sat on the back of the moving truck he’d rented for the trip.  Brown eyes took in the little white house in front of him, and a smile creased his lips as his gaze drifted across to the other houses around him.  They were modest like his own, but he knew that his new home had something that none of the others had.  They had him, and probably very few other humans in the immediate area.
It was why he’d chosen the neighbourhood.  He’d heard about the anthro population of the little town, and the way they almost outnumbered the humans.  Paul would happily be the first man to admit a great amount of fascination with those creatures, so like humans and yet so far removed.  His smile grew as he caught sight of a vulpine mother, pushing along a stroller with a gurgling little fox cub wrapped up within.
The sights, sounds and smells were nothing like the other places the middle-aged man had lived before, and Paul took them in as his pushed himself up and out of the truck.  He brushed a hand through his short brown hair as he turned around and began to pull a few chairs out of the truck.  The other truck, the help he’d requested and the rest of his belongings were still a couple of hours away, caught in traffic that Paul himself had only just missed.  There was no sense letting them do all the work, and he began to unload the truck as best he could by himself.
It wasn’t hard work.  Most of the heavier stuff – the TV, the fridge, the bed and the like – were with the other truck.  Still, the effort was able to bring a quick sweat across Paul’s brow, and he leaned against the edge of a small end table as he swiped the back of his hand across his forehead.  “Summer’s a bit warmer here than I’m used to,” he mumbled, as he pushed off the table and turned to pick it up.
A flash of black at the corner of his vision caused the man to turn quickly around, and his eyes widened as he glanced up.  Panther, his mind immediately screamed at him, as that smiling feline face gazed down at him silently.  He had to be a good five inches taller than Paul’s modest six foot height, and his green-blue eyes sparkled in the light as he cocked his head.  “It’s a bit hotter than normal for here today, too,” he said as he leaned against the edge of the truck with a chuckle.  “Should be at least six degrees cooler tomorrow, so don’t get yourself so worried just yet.”
Despite the panther’s words, Paul quickly ran his eyes up and down the feline’s body.  He wore no shirt, with just a pair of khakis covering his legs.  Muscles tensed beneath the panther’s fur, and it was obvious for Paul to see that the feline before him worked out a fair bit more than he did.  He self-consciously sucked in his gut to hide the little extra thickness there as he drew himself upright and smiled back.  “Well, that doesn’t sound too bad then, does it?”  With a hand extended, Paul’s smile broadened.  “Paul McBride.  Good to meet you.”
“Samuel Winters, and it’s a pleasure.  Just call me Sam.”  The panther took Paul’s hand into his paw and shook it vigorously.  “Welcome to the neighbourhood, Mister McBride.  Irish?”
Paul just chuckled as he pulled his hand back, and he caught a flash of gold on the panther’s ring finger as his paw withdrew.  “Few generations back the family was.  Just a name to me.”  He winked as he lifted his head.  “‘Course, that don’t mean I can’t pull off th’ voice when I like,” he added, tone shifted to a thicker Irish accent.
It drew a deep, loud laugh from the panther as he shook his head.  “Not gonna work on me, sorry.  I’ve got some family who moved out that way a couple years back.  You sound way too cockney.  Nice try, though!”  He grinned as he glanced into the truck, and dropped one large paw down on the end table.  “You want a bit of help with this stuff?  No sense working at it by yourself in this kinda heat.”
While Paul opened his mouth to reply, no sound really came out.  The taller panther just chuckled as he reached in and gripped at the edge of the end table, and he lifted it out while his body slipped between the human and his belongings.  “I... guess it can’t hurt,” he finally replied, as Sam laughed anew and gently set the table down on the sidewalk.
With the panther’s help, unloading the truck and moving everything inside was a lot easier.  Paul briefly brought up the subject of the feline’s exposed black fur as a reason to keep him out of the sun, but Sam had insisted that it wouldn’t be neighbourly to simply let the human do all the work by himself.  That too brought a smile to Paul’s face; he’d learned that Sam was one of his new neighbours, and lived with his wife across the street from him.
“Who, the missus?” Sam said, as Paul asked after his wife.  “Oh, she’s great.  Finest female you’ll ever lay your eyes on, human or otherwise.”  He laughed as he caught a hint of a blush on Paul’s cheeks, and set down the chair he’d carried to give the man’s shoulder a light slap.  “I tell you what.  She’ll be heading home from work in a couple hours.  What say we come pick you up after you get yourself all settled in here, and we go out to dinner?  Welcome you to the neighbourhood properly, let you get to know us, that sorta thing.  Sound good?”
Paul winced as he glanced around at the spartan living room.  “Oh, I don’t know if I can,” he admitted reluctantly as he brought his eyes back to Sam again.  “I’ve gotta get everything set up so I have somewhere to sleep tonight, gotta get everything unpacked, gotta sort out food, so I can-”
“We’re gonna worry about getting you food,” Sam interrupted with a smirk.  “And I’ll stick around to make sure you get everything squared away just right, if you want the help.  But I’m not gonna let you do all this yourself, with some movers who’ll scuff your brand new walls with a sofa.  Right?  Hell, you can even pick what type of restaurant you wanna go to.  We’ll find somewhere where you can bring back the leftovers.”  He winked as he patted Paul’s shoulder.  “We’re a friendly bunch, and we like meeting the new guys here.  What we’re not good at is taking no for an answer.  So...”
With a curl of his lip as he looked Sam up and down, he finally relented and offered a little nod.  “Well, that sure doesn’t sound too bad,” he replied after a moment, and brought his gaze back to meet Sam’s.  “But you’re not gonna go spoiling me or anything, alright?  Just a getting-to-know-you exercise?”
If the panther’s grin could grow any wider, it might have split his head in half.  “One of the best reasons to go out to dinner!  Now you hold on right here for a second, and I’m gonna call the wife.  Let her know we’ve got some fresh meat she’s gonna wanna meet.”  With another pat to the shorter male’s shoulder, Sam turned around and fished a phone out of his pants.
For a moment, Paul considered heading back outside to grab some of the other pieces of furniture left on his lawn.  Instead he simply slumped back down into the nearest chair and watched Sam walk off.  His eyes skimmed down the panther’s back and, despite his best efforts, fixed on the feline’s backside.  That tail swayed and twitched slowly as he spoke into the phone, and it gave Paul an almost unhindered view of his new neighbour’s rump.
A twinge of concern raced through Paul as he quickly averted his eyes.  He knew from first-hand experience the way the world was and, more specifically, what sort of things just weren’t acceptable.  A lot of humans frowned on ogling after the beings they shared their world with.  Even some of the anthro people did.  If he had a dollar for every time it’d gotten him in trouble-
“It’s on!”  Sam’s voice broke through Paul’s wandering thoughts, and drew the man’s attention back up to the tall feline’s face.  “You just gotta tell us what kinda place you want, and we’ll head out as soon as you’re right to roll.”  He frowned a little as he nodded down at Paul.  “You’re lookin’ a little red in the cheeks, there.”
Inwardly, Paul mentally cursed himself.  He knew he shouldn’t have been staring.  “Just a little puffed, I guess,” he replied quickly as he forced a smile.  “Been working our butts off just to get this stuff inside, after all.  I’ll be alright.”
Sam just chuckled and nodded as he stuffed the phone back into his pocket.  “Well, good.  I was worried you weren’t feeling so good, and you’re gonna have to be alright for tonight!  You go have a sit down for a moment, and I’ll get stuck in on the table still out there.”
Before he could reply, Paul watched Sam just smile and trot right back out of the room.  He sighed as he sat himself down slowly and let his head loll back, and he rubbed slowly over his face.  “Oh yeah,” he muttered around his fingers.  “Yeah, this is gonna go real well.”

Sam hadn’t stayed all day; the panther had told Paul he had other things he needed to take care of before they met up for dinner.  He hadn’t left without giving the man an address to one of the better Chinese restaurants in town, and Paul certainly hadn’t let him leave without another lingering glance at the feline’s backside.  Even as he’d mentally chastised himself for it at the time, he’d known he simply couldn’t have helped himself if he tried.
He only barely made it to the restaurant in time, too.  The other moving truck had been further delayed, and the pair of muscular otters that came with it barely took the time to move most of the heavy stuff to Paul’s porch before they’d pulled away in the truck again.  They’d given him glares when he’d offered them more money in exchange for helping him properly set up the furniture, but they’d told him point-blank where to shove that cash.
And so he was late when he’d shown up, still partly damp from the frustratingly fast shower he’d forced himself to take after he’d hauled all his belongings as far into the house as he dared.  Even his clothes were rumpled; the simple, blue button-up shirt and black jeans were the only things he could find on short notice that were fit for any kind of company.  The only thing he found himself thankful for at the moment was that with the sun heading towards the horizon, things had begun to cool off considerably.  
The air conditioning inside the restaurant was enough to make him relax a little further, and he sighed quietly as he glanced over at the short, elderly lizard female that stood behind a counter.  “Hello,” he said with as much brightness as he could muster, “I’m Paul.  I was meant to meet-”
He was cut off as the lizard’s eyes met his, and she frowned deeply and silently thrust a single pointed finger out across the restaurant.  Paul blinked for a moment before he followed her claw-tipped finger with his eyes, and finally caught sight of Sam and another panther off in one corner and almost behind a buffet table.  “Thank you,” he offered the lizard, before he started over.
Her soft harrumph behind him was almost lost, but it was enough for Paul to feel a little self-conscious.  As his gaze flicked around, he quickly discovered that he was the only human in the whole place.  It didn’t surprise him too much; in the town of fifty thousand, only about a hundredth of the people were human.  It was more off-putting than he’d expect it to be, though.  Where he’d come from, there had been as many anthros as humans.  That had been a lot better for him, until-
“Paul!  Over here!”  The man was snapped out of his memories by Sam’s familiar shout, and his eyes focused again on the panther pair.  Sam wore the exact same pants that he’d worn when they’d met, though he’d had the decency to throw a brown t-shirt over his formerly-bare chest.  His smile was familiar, and his obvious enthusiasm was enough to draw a smile to Paul’s lips before he realized that it drew him the attention of the rest of the restaurant’s patrons.
The female feline that sat across from Sam though was new, and Paul’s eyebrows lifted slightly as he gave her a quick look-over.  She wore a long black dress that matched the hue of her hair and fur, and it ended in little crumples at her knees as she sat with one leg folded atop the other.  Her hair was tied off in a ponytail behind her head, and it was braided as it wound halfway down the length of her body.  It draped over one of her shoulders as she turned to glance towards Paul, and he caught a flash of bright, green eyes as she smiled warmly up at him.  Her face was much more angular than Sam’s, sharper and possessed of a very defined beauty that human faces just couldn’t capture.  She waved him over before she folded her arms down beneath her breasts, the motion enough to push them up a little higher.  “C’mon, don’t worry.  We’re not gonna bite you.  And nor are they!”
As she waved a paw to indicate the rest of the room, the other anthros all turned back to their meals.  Paul realized he was blushing as he glanced around again, before he nodded and took the last couple steps over to stand beside the table.  “Well, you can’t blame a guy for being a little worried,” he replied as he pulled up a seat to Sam’s left and the female’s right.  “I’m the guy your husband was probably talking about,” he added, as he offered her his hand.
The pantheress studied it for a moment before she chuckled, the sound surprisingly deep as she took Paul’s hand in a tight grip with her own, considerably larger paw.  “That he did!  Hope he didn’t give you too much trouble while he was helping your stuff inside.  He scuffed the walls a couple times when we first moved out here.”  She grinned as Sam glanced away.  “I’m Maxine, but just call me Max.  It’s great to meet you, Paul.  We don’t get many humans out here.”
Paul shivered as he pulled his hand slowly back from that much bigger paw, and he folded both hands in his lap as he nodded.  “Yeah... I gotta admit, I didn’t expect this kind of reception when I moved out here.  I don’t know what I expected, but...”  He shrugged and leaned in over the table as he lowered his voice.  “It’s like they really don’t like humans here.”
Despite Paul’s lowered tone, Sam just leaned back in his chair and even raised his voice.  “Well, they don’t have any reason to treat you like that, Paul.  So far as we’re concerned at least, you’re people just like anyone else.”  A couple of coughs nearby tables choked off into quiet little growls as Sam smiled and leaned back in.  “Don’t mind ‘em.  Yeah, this isn’t exactly a human-friendly town, but so what?  You seem alright to me.  Little skittish, though.”
Inwardly, Paul sighed again.  It’d started in the forties, years before he was born.  Genetic research was all the rage as the second world war kicked into gear, and the first anthros had been created in laboratories in an attempt to create genetically superior soldiers.  The United States, Britain, Russia, Germany and Japan had all pushed hard to bolster their forces with warriors who could see in the dark like cats, scent out their enemies like dogs, and fight with unparalleled ferocity.  It’d been the Germans who succeeded first, though it wasn’t long before both sides unlocked the keys to genetic modification and warfare.
Then the war had ended, and suddenly a whole new series of fully sentient races were left with nothing to do.  The first anthros, vat grown but fully self-aware and capable of propagation, began petitioning the human governments of the various nations for rights and asylum and the like.  It took twenty more bloody years for the anthros to win their rights as equals to humanity.  “It makes a lot of sense to me,” he finally replied as he leaned back in his chair.  “Took you guys a long time to win your place.  Even in big cities, you find anthro enclaves.  It’s not that you don’t like mixing with humans, just...”
“Old hostilities run deep,” Max interjected with a wave of her paw.  “Course, there’s not too many anthros out there that still remember the days when we were first grown, so the ones around these days don’t really have a right to complain.”  She smirked as she shrugged.  “After all, I like being alive and I wouldn’t be here if those experiments never took place.  Anyway, history’s not my best subject and genetics are not my specialty.  What say we actually get some chow?”
Sam nodded immediately and rose from his seat, but Paul hesitated before he followed suit.  “Uh, is everything here okay?” he asked quickly as he glanced between the two felines.  “I mean, is there anything here that would make you uncomfortable if I was eating it...?”
Maxine turned to Paul with an expression of confusion on her face, but Sam just laughed and shrugged.  “Nah, you got nothing to worry about with us.  They don’t actually serve cat in this restaurant.  If we were canine, you might want to be careful eating with us at the Korean place down the street, but...”  The panther grinned wider, though a couple foxes and a jackal at a nearby table shot him a dirty look.
Though the words were enough to set Paul a little more at ease, his wariness remained.  He caught a couple odd looks from the others in the restaurant as he moved around the various buffet tables arrayed throughout the single massive room, and he loaded his plate with considerably more stir-fry and noodles than he otherwise would have.  Just because the felines he was with were okay with him eating some of the things on the menu didn’t mean everyone would be.  The couple didn’t seem to have any such restraint, and their plates were laden with beef and chicken and pork enough to get Paul through a whole day by the time they made it back to the table
“So Paul,” Max asked as she skewered an egg roll off the man’s plate with a single, sharp claw, “what do you do for a living?  What brings you to our fair town, so far from other fleshies like yourself?”
Paul blinked at her choice of words – ‘fleshy’ was what some anthros used as a slur when referring to humans – but shrugged it off at the warmth of her voice and the jerk of the table as Sam lightly kicked her under it.  “I... uh, I actually live off my bank account,” he replied as he worked his fork down into his stir-fry.  “I used to do construction work, but I got lucky a few years back.  Won the lottery, put it all in the bank, and now the interest more than gets me by.”
At that, both panthers glanced up from their plates and stared at him.  “Holy... you’re Triple-Lucky Paul McBride, aren’t you?” Sam asked.  “The guy who won first division in the national lottery when it rolled over three times... shit, man.  Lucky son of a bitch.”  He laughed as he shook his head, and Max chuckled as she turned back to her food.  “You know, that’s not what most people thought you’d do with that kinda money.  Most of the theories involved a private island with scantily-clad ladies at your beck and call.”
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted by the thought,” Paul replied, as he felt his cheeks burn again.  “But all that money wasn’t exactly burning a hole in my pocket, and I figured it’d be better to retire and live pretty comfy rather than bust my ass working for people I didn’t like.”  He shrugged and smiled at Sam’s still-bemused expression.  “I guess I just did the responsible thing.  It’s given me a lot of leeway with where I live and what I do with my life.  How about you guys?”
Maxine looked up in time to see Sam shovel a muzzlefull of thickly-sauced beef into his mouth, and she rolled her eyes at her husband as she turned towards Paul.  “The big pig there’s in public relations,” she replied for him, as the male panther vigorously chewed.  “Technically he works at a local branch of some big software company that I don’t really give a damn about, but he does most of his work from home.”
“She barely knows how to turn on her laptop,” Sam interjected with a grin, before he yipped at a return kick under the table from his wife.
The pantheress mock-glared at him before she smiled sweetly back at Paul.  “He does a lot of traveling about, though.  He speaks at big events all over the country.  Sometimes it takes him away for weeks at a time, but we make do with what we’ve got.”  She puffed up a little as she sat up in her seat.  “And I’m a manager down at the local gym here in town, and one of the instructors.  Worked my tail off for that position, and I do love the work.  Managerial stuff’s not so fun, but the instructional part is.”
“She’s the reason I look like this,” added Sam, as he lifted both arms above the table for a quick flex.  While he wasn’t made of muscle like some of the body builders Paul had seen, there was clear definition beneath the short sleeves of his shirt.  “The garage is massive, so we converted half of it into a little home-gym for me.  I just try to keep in good shape, but... well, I tend to push it a bit, heh heh.  Buffest computer geek you’ll probably find!”
Paul’s eyes traced over those arms for as long as they were raised, and he chuckled and shook his head to try to hide the slight flush to his cheeks at the sight.  “Yeah, I looked a bit more like that while I was working construction.  You get out of it for a decade and you tend to get a little belly.  I’m not too bad though, I think.”
Both Max and Sam nodded and smiled at Paul, as he quickly grabbed himself another mouthful.  The pantheress glanced over at her husband across her glass of water and, once she found he was busily attacking his own plate, turned back at Paul again.  “So, if it’s okay to ask... what did bring you out here, hun?  This isn’t a very human-filled neighbourhood, after all.”
The question was enough to snap Paul’s head up as if he’d touched a live wire.  His eyes fixed immediately on Maxine, as a hundred different possible responses tingled on the tip of his tongue.  He opened his mouth to reply, to offer any one of them, but found himself unable to do anything but simply seal his lips again and glance back down at his plate.  “It’s really nothing worth going into,” he finally replied.
When he lifted his gaze again and found Maxine staring at him with an eyebrow raised and one ear perked forward, obviously not buying that response, he shook his head.  “If you really want to know, I really had to leave the last place I was living in a hurry,” he finally admitted.
“Hey, if you don’t want to talk about it, it’s okay,” Sam said, as his expression turned to one of concern.
But Paul shook his head again and gave the panther a slight smile.  “No, it’s okay... really.  Just a little weird to talk about with anthros.  Or... well, humans too.  Or anyone who can talk back to you.”  He took a slow breath.  “Basically, life was pretty good where I was.  Nice big town, plenty to see and do, but not quite a massive city, you know?  It was a good place.  I could have settled down.  “Things don’t work out that way, do they?”  
He chuckled softly as he glanced up at the ceiling and pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment.  “I was seeing someone, and it go out.  No one was really happy about it, and it caught a little bit of negative local attention.  Not a big national thing; there’s more pronounced examples of it elsewhere, with a few prominent figures, but-”
“She wasn’t human?” Maxine interrupted with a smirk.
Paul worked his jaw for a moment as he glanced over at her, and shrugged with a sheepish grin.  “He wasn’t, no.”
Both the panthers recoiled a little at that, before the pair of them started to quietly laugh.  The reaction gave Paul pause for a moment.  Of all the reactions he could have received, that was not the one he’d expected.  “Not that there hasn’t been a ‘her’ here and there, too,” he added, as fresh heat rushed into his cheeks.  “There are sometimes.  Sometimes even other humans.  And yeah, I know it’s not exactly a society-accepted thing, but... just how I am.”
Sam reached over the table and clapped one large paw across Paul’s shoulder as he continued to chuckle.  “Well, you’ve got nothing to worry about on our parts.  Max and I’re pretty tolerant people at the best of times, and we just like liking people.  So you’re doing just fine, at least with us.”
“Still a little surprised, though,” Max said, as her own laughter died slowly away.  “I mean, it makes sense now why you’d wanna move to some little town out in the middle of nowhere that’s full of people who probably aren’t going to like you very much.”  She winked and leaned forward.  “Now I just wonder how hot we’re getting you, hun.”
There was no hiding that blush, and Paul knew it.  He couldn’t help his eyes drifting lower over her body at the implication any better, though he had the presence of mind to not let his gaze linger on her breasts for more than a second before he pulled himself away.  After all, her husband was just to his right.  “Well... I mean, you’re very attractive... both of you,” he quickly added as he tossed Sam a cautionary glance.
He needn’t have bothered, as the male feline just looked amused at Paul’s discomfort.  “But... I’ve only just met you both, and you’re already married, so I wouldn’t even dare, and I couldn’t just do something like that so soon, and...”  He ran out of words, and Paul’s jaw worked at the air silently for a moment as he tried to find some more.  When they wouldn’t come, he settled on a shrug and turned his focus firmly down to his still mostly-full plate.
“Don’t mind her,” Sam finally said as Maxine began to giggle quietly.  “She just likes being a big freaking tease to any male she comes across.  Looks like you’re just going to be the newest vector for it.  I’d express a little sympathy, but I doubt you’re going to mind much.”  He smirked.  “After all, like I said earlier, she’s the prettiest thing you’re gonna find anywhere.  Least in my eyes, she is.”
Maxine, for her part, just shook her head and smiled over at the all but glowing cheeks of the man sitting between her and her husband.  “Aww, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to actually embarrass you.  Just poking a little fun, is all.”  Her smile warmed and widened as Paul risked a glance up at her and finally met her eyes.  “It’s all good.  I promise!  Look, just keep in mind one little thing for me, okay?  One small thing?”  When Paul nodded, she continued smoothly, “We’re not gonna be like most of the other anthros in town, hun.  We’re pretty easy-going about a lot of things.  You don’t have to be worried around us, okay?”
Despite the embarrassment that still burned his cheeks and the thoughts that had flashed rapidly through Paul’s mind, he couldn’t help but smile back at Maxine.  He caught Sam’s nod and his own grin, and the warmth from his cheeks drained out into the rest of his body.  “I... yeah, okay,” he finally managed as he glanced between the couple.  They smiled wider at him as he relaxed back into his chair.
The day had been swelteringly hot, he’d almost put his back out hauling his belongings into his house, in a new town with a population hostile to even his species.  It was a new start under bad circumstances, and Paul felt as though all the world was against him.  And through it all, the sight of the couple to either side of him set one thought through all of that to reach his heart and curl his lips into a grin.
Things can always get better.