NSFW for language and emotional tension
Bad Vibrations
By JWolfman

In a strange way, Adam Tevela felt some relief that the Newark Pride drafted him and not the Santa Ana Spectrums, the team that even their local radio shows pressured to draft him. Many of his fans were from his own native area, namely Southern California, and being in Newark placed him an entire continent away from the area he grew to love since birth. However, Adam was a proud West Coaster 'forced' to live on the East Coast, and the Newark fans didn't exactly welcome his presence warmly and strangely he took that as a blessing in disguise. He loved meeting the fans, but he understood why some of the veterans of the FBA took their privacy very seriously. 

Strangely enough, a simple hiking trail park forty miles from Newark became his outdoor place of solace from the crazy and stressful world of FBA and its harsh obligations of training and media confrontations. Quiet and heavily forested, it provided him a world without the urban sprawl typical of Newark, plus it kept him away from the oft-crowded beaches that now could only serve to distract him.

As the leaves among the trees surrounding him turned to earthly colors of brown, orange and red, Adam huffed as he jogged along the trail, his breath condensing quickly to steam once it touched the winter morning air. Although his jogging pants and a simple Newark Pride hoodie jacket covered the majority of his linsang fur patterns and markings, his large ringtail, almost as long as the entire length of his 6'9" frame, stuck out like a flare in the eyes of anyone whom could recognize him from a mile away. Thankfully he picked this place almost specifically due to the fact he rarely confronted other people here. After several miles, Adam slowed to stop and pulled back his hood to expose his entire head to the chilly elements, and pulled the cords to take off his earbuds as he glanced around. Spotting a nearby tree trunk, he tiredly sat on it to take a breather and grabbed a water bottle from one of his pockets.

"Adam?!"

The female voice startled him to immediately stand back up, his ears pivoting to aim toward the source of the sound before his entire body followed suit to face her as she approached. Due to his music earbuds, he failed to hear this woman earlier and he wondered how long she had been trailing him... 

"Huh? What...?" He tilted his head, recognizing the ruffed lemur as she walked closer to him. "Christie... what the hell, dude?"

Christie Selas stopped to face him just outside of arm's reach, panting slightly as she had been running in a hurried pace since she spotted him earlier. They met each other just once before, before the FBA Combine when Adam was at Trent St. Croix's party and she showed up as a member of the Harvaardwak cheerleading team. "Finally... damn, I kept calling out your name but... oh. Earbuds..."

Adam frowned. "You stalking me?"

"Heh... yeah, sorry..." Christie panted and calmed herself down, not perturbed about the accusation. "I needed to see you so um... I followed you to here."

Adam shook his head. "Should've just asked me for a number when we met last time."

"I didn't think I have to see you again!" Christie sucked in another deep breath but finally she sat on the same tree trunk Adam sat on earlier. "Damn, I know I'm pretty fit but you just keep running and running... gimmie a moment."

"Hmph. Your sister brought you down here for something?"

One of Christie's paws curl up into a fist and a glare flashed across her face as she looked up at him. That was how they met at that Croix party; Christie was supposed to lure him into a potiental embarrassment in public but she had a change of heart, going against the wishes of her sister. "No, damnit!" Then she paused, as if stopping herself. 

Adam noticed her hesititation to say more. "Well what then?" 

Christie softened her expression and voice. "You ever wondered why Yesina hated you personally?"

"Pfft, because I was the face of UFLA on the basketball court, you know that. She's the face of Fucks University*, so of course she would hate me."

Christie rolled her eyes slightly. "Oh come on, it's much deeper than that. Don't be so naive."

"Why then?"

Christie sucked in another deep breath and stood up. "Do you remember a girl named Bethany Sarnel?"

Adam's ears flattened back against his skull and for a moment he glanced away and shuffled his feet slightly. That was all the cues Christie needed for an answer, but he spoke up anyway. "What about her?"

"She wants to see you."

"Why?" 

Christie opened her mouth to speak, but hesitates again before a sound came out. She turned away, her large white tail curling around herself as she grabbed it. "I.. I think it's better if you just go and see her. She and Yesina are good friends."

Adam flinched upon hearing the releveation and he shook his head. "If you know why, you should just tell me."

Christie stomped her foot in frustration, pivoting again to glare back at him. "You wouldn't believe me!"

Adam frowned, his ringtail whipping left and right more rapidly. "Try me! Yesina tried to embarrass me before, and she used you to do that for her! But you didn't follow through and..." He sighed. "Look, I'll believe you... what's going on?"

The ruffed lemur bit her lip and gazed down at the ground. She shuffled her steps tentatively and then finally shook her head, pulling out a folded piece of paper. "This is her address," she said, grabbing Adam's hand forcefully to slap the paper on it. "Go see her. Please..."

Christie leaned away quickly but Adam clenched the paper and her hand with it, stopping her. She whimpered curtly at the grip and her eyes flashed back to him in a watery gaze, but Adam's grip remained firm. Again she tried to pull away, her voice cracking. "Let go..."

The panic and urgency in her voice startled Adam enough to let her go, and he could only watch her turn away again to leave in a hurried pace. He took just one step toward her, but she brisky ran off.
"Christie!"

She didn't answer, quickly disappearing amid the thick trees of the surrounding forest. Adam muttered a soft curse and looked at the note she gave him. A Brooklyn address... not too far from Newark. "Beth... what the hell, dude...?" He whispered to himself and held the paper tightly within his fist. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Adam stood before the door marking Bethany's address and took a deep breath. It was a brick duplex house typical of the neighborhood within Brooklyn, with potted plants dotting along the sidewalk and steps leading up to the door, and an old bicyle chained to a railing next to it.

A familiar-looking golden tamarin opened the door and silently looked up at Adam's face, her eyes expressing some surprise upon seeing him, but the rest of her body showed calm. She swallowed dryly. "Adam."

"Beth," Adam replied, not certain on what else to say to a woman he hadn't seen in three years. She still looked mostly the same as he remembered her, with her natural golden-colored mane and pelage to go along with her slighty pudgy frame.

Bethany's posture finally breaks into awkwardness and she glanced left and right before retreating into her house, leaving the door ajar. "Come in..."

Adam sighed but after a few moments of pause, he stepped inside to escape the New York chill. He glanced around to notice Bethany's UFLA school jersey framed on a wall, along with a glass case of basketball trophies she won since her high school years. The display distracted him from her momentarily, but he flinched when Bethany closed the door shut.

"So you came here anyway... I honestly didn't think you would."

Adam pivoted to face her, a paw coming up to scratch the back of his head. "Christie Selas gave me your address... said you wanted to see me."

"Yah," she replied with a sigh. "How long as it been? Three years?"

Adam silently nodded, glancing around again. He frowned upon noticing a few toddler toys laying around near one of the living room couches, but didn't point those out to her. "I'm... surprised you still have these trophies and that jersey on the wall. Considering what happened--"

"I know what happened," Bethany cut him off curtly, her voice suddenly firm. "I know that I left suddenly..."

Adam supressed the urge to scoff. Bethany was UFLA's top shooting guard three years ago, and there was talk about her being a top-ten prospect for the FBA. Then she suddenly disappeared... not just from the team, but from the college entirely. No word or explaination... or any warning or foreboding. One day she was at team practice as normal, and the next day, she left. Some of her teammates even feared that she was killed.

A question crossed Adam's mind... long dormant but it frequently haunted him soon after her disappearance. "Why did you leave?"

Bethany expected that question but she still cringed. She massaged her forehead with her eyes closed, wondering how to answer that question, and then much to Adam's confusion, she simply walked down a hallway to another room. Adam stood still, watching her and wondering why she didn't answer, but then she came back toward him with a very young boy, bearing some resembalance to his mother's golden tamarin looks but also with spots on his fur and an unnaturally long banded tail. A hybrid of sorts, but strangely familiar...

Bethany held the boy's paw tightly, as if forced to show this boy to Adam against her will. She finally picked him up onto her arms and carried him to her chest-level. "Adam, this is Gregory... he's your son."

Adam paused, the revelation digesting into his mind slowly. Even his tail stiffed up, his expression gazing onto the boy with shock but mostly confusion. He immediately dismissed the relevation as bullshit, but his eyes again caught the boy's spots and tail, and how similar they are to his own fur patterns and tail. As much as his mind yelled at him that this couldn't be possible, he suddenly felt she was telling him the truth.

"Wha...?" He wanted to say a million words, but only managed most of one. His tail twitched and his knees buckled him to the point of him stumbling backwards to sit onto a couch with a low-sounding thud. As for Gregory, too young to understand the gravity of the whole situation, he only murmurred and looked back at his mother silently. Bethany sighed, casting doubt on herself on whether this was a good idea or not, and simply walked back down the hallway with him, leaving Adam alone in the living room silently.

Adam's paws reach up to his face, the fingers shaking. A mess of thoughts collided in his mind, ranging from disbelief to denial to utter confusion. His ears catch the sound of Bethany's footsteps returning to the living room and his watery eyes peer between his fingers to see her again, without Gregory this time. This time his jaw clenched and he stood up.

"What the hell is this, Beth?" He said with a higher pitched tone, borderline yelling. "You wanted to talk to me, you brought me here, and then you show me... what the hell?!" He grabbed his own ears absently.

"I left because I found out I was pregnant," Bethany calmly explained, as if she trained herself for years just for this moment. 

Adam quickly shook his head, one of his paws pinching his forehead. "No no no no... that can't be my kid. No no no... no. Just no,"

Bethany frowned. "I didn't sleep with anyone else at the time, Adam."

"It was just one night!" Adam's voice finally raised to a screaming tone and he held up one shaking finger in the air. "One... fucking... night. One night!"

"Apparently that was enough, damn it!" Bethany's voice raised to counter his. "I left behind everything because of you! Because of that one night! You had a girlfriend at the time didn't you? And then you got in my hotel bedroom that night and--"

"I know what happened!" Adam barked back and he grasped his tail tightly as it curled around him. "I don't believe this shit! You disappear suddenly and now, three fucking years later, you have someone give me your home address and now you... holy shit I need to fucking sit down..."

He flopped back onto the couch, his paws again covering his face. Bethany leaned against a wall, crossing her arms and thankful that she closed and locked the door to Gregory's bedroom. "When I found out I was pregnant, I knew who the father was immediately. But you... you're obsessed with your image, Adam. How people think about you. Despite all this, I still cared about you, so that's why I left."

"You didn't leave me a note... not one phone call."

"What was I supposed to say, Adam?" She said, exasperated. 

"Anything! Anything would be nice!"

"I'm sorry then," Bethany replied with a soft sigh. "I moved back to Brooklyn here and been raising Gregory ever since. I spent a long... long time on what to do, Adam. How to talk to you about this, what to do with everything."

"Why now?" His eyes gaze back up to her. "Why, after three years, you chose now?"

"I lost my job two months ago, and I've been struggling paying for all the bills and rent." Bethany steeled herself, bracing her body up against the wall behind her as she sharply inhaled. "And you're going to help me out of it."

Adam paused again, the puzzle of her intentions slowly becoming clear in his mind. "Help you out...? What? Beth, I... I don't know if I can help you. I mean... if word comes out, it'll destroy me! It'll distract me and it'll be the only thing people will want to talk about, especially the goddamn media... I don't think it's something I'll be able to take well."

"You want Gregory to be a secret? Is that what you want?" She glared at him.

"Beth, I..." He stood up, shaking his head slowly. "Don't get me wrong, but... this is too much. I can't have this known to other people. Please... understand where I'm at."

"Oh I know where you're at. You're Adam Tevela, a Top-24 prospect, drafted in the top ten and now you're a professional. You've fought hard to keep your womanizing, whoring image as a dark secret. That's why I left without a word... because back then, even our UFLA teammates would call me a bitch and a whore or something. And you... you would deny sneaking into my bedroom and fucking me--"

"It wasn't rape!" Adam blurted it out defensively.

"I know it wasn't!" She shot back. "This is partly my fault too... but now it's time for you to own up too, Adam. Gregory's your child too!"

Adam groaned, already predicting what she wanted but he needed to ask. "What do you want then...?"

"A hundred grand." Simple and to the point.

Despite the simplicity of her demand, it took several moments of dumbstruck-realization before he could even garner a response. "What?"

"Per year. For the rest of your career in the FBA. I'll give you until New Year's to pay up..."

"What?!" He repeated with a sharper tone.

"A hundred grand per year until you finish your pro career. The Newark Pride's paying you millions..."

"What the fuck?" The words came out just above an exasperated whisper, but he sharpened his tone again. "I'm not paying you that much!"

Bethany raised her chin slightly, bravely resisting the aura of his anger rising to a near breaking point. "Then I'll go to the papers. I'll go to the radio stations, FSPN, and I'll tell every--"

She suddenly yelped as Adam charged right at her with a burst of speed and fury, slamming her head hard against the wall with his paw tightly around her neck. His fangs bared close to her eyes and his ears tightening against his skull flatly, he snarled deeply and her squirms only provoked his fingers to clench onto her neck tighter. Bethany's hands gripped onto Adam's wrists but she couldn't pry his paw off her and her eyes pleaded back at him. She wanted to speak, but she couldn't breathe.   

"Don't... you dare," Adam said with another snarl, ignoring the sound of her straining breath. His fur bristled but upon seeing her eyes, he lowered his gaze toward his own fingers as they dug deep into the flesh of her neck, and he realized what he was doing. He glanced back up to her face, but it wasn't Bethany's face looking back at him in his mind, but images of other faces. Faces belonging to different women that found themselves in the same exact position with him in the past. Sherry. Jennifer. Tatiana. And now Bethany. Like the sound of a record breaking in his mind, he quickly let go and retreated a few steps from her. Bethany let in a loud gasp and she slumped to sit on the floor against the wall, breathing heavily while clutching her neck in pain.

He felt the instinct to apologize but he quickly suppressed it, believing that would just make matters even worse. Still he opened his mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out. Bethany looked up at him and coughed.

"Get out..."

Her words broke the silence enough to snap him out of his trance and he looked down at his paw, the same one that was clutching around a smaller person's neck just seconds ago. "Beth, I.."

"GET OUT!"

Her scream startled him and he hurriedly ran to the door, quickly opening it to face the winter chill and he escaped from the house. As the door closed behind him, he stood amid the cold and with his knees weakening again, he staggered himself to sit on the concrete steps. For years, basketball became more than just a hobby for him; it became a release. A way of venting via distraction and refocus, but even the game's not perfect. He made mistakes before... terrible, horrifying mistakes. He wanted to project this image of himself being not just a great basketball player, but also a great person. An easy-going, comforting, laid-back surfer dude of a person. For a long time, that image he worked hard to maintain made him popular in college, and made him a well-hyped FBA draftee and now earning him a lot of money as a player for the Newark Pride. It was an image he obsessed with, but the sins of his past nagged him silently. Not enough to overwhelm him, but just enough to let him know that it's there.

He reached into his pocket to pick out his cellphone, although his fingers were so shaky that it took him several frustrating tries just to press on the touch-screen to navigate his way to the twitter app. 

'youseff i'm in brooklyn, pick me up. now plz, hury.'

He rapidly pressed the 'send' button, not even realizing that the tweet to his teammate Youseff Goulten was supposed to be private but instead it was public. He barely gave his twitter feed another thought and he curled himself up on the steps, covering his head with the hoodie and even his thick tail wrapped around him.

A response from Kevin Malka on twitter alerted him the fact that the earlier post he made to Youssef was actually public, and he groaned in disgust. He quickly opened the option to delete the twitter post but paused, changing his mind. An amusing thought of that post being screen-capped crossed his mind, which does happen with FBA twitter feeds whenever something unusual or controversial pops up. He sighed and decided to just keep the post there. When Julian Cross-Kiraly, his best friend since the FBA Combine replied, he wanted to talk about everything but hesitated. No, stay off twitter. Twitter's dangerous.

After an hour and a few private notes to his teammate about his location, Adam finally spotted Youssef's car approach near him to a stop and he slowly stood up. He glanced back at the door of Bethany's house behind him and then slowly walked toward Youssef's car, clutching his own tail. Once he climbed in, he tightened his body into a ball of fluff and not even bothering to buckle himself in.

"Eish! Adam, what's going on?" the spring hare Youssef asked, but when Adam didn't answer immediately, he just shook his head and drove the car out of the curb. 

"Just get me home," Adam murmured, his tail partially covering his muzzle. "You know where it is, dude."

Youssef scoffed. "Kyk, you can tell me. What were you doing in Brooklyn?"

"I was seeing someone," Adam replied, if only as an attempt to stop Youssef from prodding him. 

"And? What, did it go bad?"

"Very," Adam said with a loud huff. "... Girl problems." Understatement of the year.

"Geez. Think you should just stick to basketball and surfing, man. With the way the team's going, we need all the focus we can get."

Adam shivered, clutching his tail tightly and he buried his face onto it. He let out a soft whine, alarming Youssef since this kind of emotional outburst was strange coming from the normally carefree Adam. 

"You crying?"

"I'm fine!" Adam sharply barked back, jumping Youssef slightly in reaction. He suddenly growled and punched the car dashboard in front of him several times.

"Hey! Not my car!" Youssef said with his tail whipping in irritation. Upon seeing the few dents on the dashboard, he shook his head and muttered to himself in Afrikaans.

"I need to talk to my agent..." Adam fumbled his paws for his phone, only to pause once he grabbed it. "No... I have to think." He shook his head with a sigh and buried his face back onto his tail that's already moist there on the spot from his tears. "Should've fucking used a condom."

"What?" Youssef thought he heard the certain term at the end, but due to Adam's tail muffling it, it was unclear.

"Nuthin... just nuthin, dude..." The linsang curled himself up tighter on the seat, falling silent once again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That night after a long shower, Bethany slumped onto her bed and simply laid there stomach-down. The tears on her face had dried and the sores on her neck long ago faded, but she could still hear Adam's low-feral growl close to her ears. Despite Yesina's warnings about him, his physical reaction took her by surprise, and it's haunting her. The look on his eyes, those fangs of his, the feel of his breath at her face...

Her cellphone rang, snapping her back to reality. Upon seeing the Caller ID, she huffed and pressed the button for call speaker before placing the phone back on the bedstand. 

"Beth?" Yesina's voice called out. "You there?"

"Yah," Bethany simply responded.

"You alright? My sister told me that she gave Adam your address..."

"He came over earlier, yah... I told him everything."

"Did he believe you?"

"I think he did. Even showed him Greg..."

"How did he react?"

Bethany paused, conflicted on what to tell her. However, that silence was more than enough for Yesina to realize it did not go well. "Beth? Did he attack you?"

"Yah..." She finally responded after a long pause.

"Damnit."

Bethany flipped her body over to sit on the bed and raised her knees to hug her arms around them. "Why can't I just talk to the media? Force him to pay child support?"

"No," Yesina replied, her tone sharp. "It'll drag on for months and months and you won't get the money from him for quite a while. You need it now, right? Or you'll get kicked out of the house?"

"Hrm... I know. But... I keep feeling this is more than just about money. What's your stake on this, Yesina?"

"I already told you before on what he did to me."

Bethany cringed. "Yah but... I think you're taking this too far. What he did to you was bad but... it was a prank, wasn't it? And it was years ago..."

"He. Humiliated. Me. Look, I know how obsessed he is about his stupid image of being a good guy and shit, so I know he's going to want to keep this whole thing secret."

"So you think he's going to pay me? I did give him until New Year's... I told him that."

"He will. Soon, you'll get a big fat fucking check in the mail. Or cash. Or whatever to keep the payment secret. And you and your son Greg will have a happy life, finally. Isn't that what you wanted, Beth? For Greg?"

"Yah..."

"Good. Things will go smoothly, trust me. I know you must be tired, so I'm gonna hang up. Thank you for doing this, Bethany... but you're more than doing this for me. You're doing it for yourself and most importantly, for Greg."

"Yah..."

"Good night..."

Bethany softly grunted and grabbed the cellphone to hang up and let it drop to the floor. Feeling the tears coming back to her eyes, she curled up on the bed and cried herself to sleep.   

The End?

* 'Fucks University' is a degratory term directed toward the Furiversity of Southern California (FuSC), a rival college of UFLA within the city of Los Angeles