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Noise! Good God, the noise of this place... I guess it'd been a while since I'd last found my way to the mall on the weekend. Since my ex and I broke up last year, I never really went anywhere other than to work if I had a job at the time, or to Tyler's house for the occasional gatherings of our little group - him, myself, Lexi, Sandra. Hadn't seen her all week, now that I think about it. On the way from the parking lot to the little side entrance of the mall, I considered sending her a text to check up on her, but - Tony's smooth voice interrupted my train of thought:

"Wow," he cooed, looking up at the tall walls. This mall had a big panelled glass ceiling along the center walkways, so you could look up to get either blinded by direct sunlight, or just see the clouds rolling by... or, in some months, hear the drumming of the rain magnified some ten times by that glass. "It is a lot... bigger than I expected..."

"Oh, it's even bigger on the inside." I slid my phone back into my pocket. Last text I'd gotten had been from Dad, received right after I'd pulled into the parking spot: Have fun! :) If u see one of those hybrid roto plunger things, pick it up for me. Will reimburse u. "I'll be honest, I'm still not sure I can find my way around this place."

"Ohh. I know the feeling."

Once we got to that entrance, I went in first and held the door open for him... and watched his muzzle as he looked all around the big atrium, shops with their bright signs lining one wall, the entrance to the mall's built-in movie theater along another, the large ice skating rink taking up a large portion of the ground. Yes, we have an ice rink here. The second floor walkways allow a great view of what's going on.

"It is usually like that whenever I change schools... right after I get used to the place and when I can find my way around, my mother tells us we are moving again..."

My ears remained permanently folded back against all the sounds of the mall, the hundreds of other conversations, the sounds of the ice rink and movie theater, far too many kids screaming, the clattering of doors and whatever else... and Tony spoke low, quiet, as if all of this commotion made him nervous. Hell, maybe it did: it _did_feel like he walked a bit close to me, his tail every now and then flicking over against mine. For a while it made me jump each time, but then I got used to it.

"You know..." I glanced over at him, but he was looking elsewhere. Over at that one hippie-looking shop, with all the earth tones and the bead curtains and the little wisps of fragrant incense always curling out into the aisle. "You say that like it happens often. Like you move around a lot. That... doesn't seem like something you should have to do often."

Instead of replying at first, he just grabbed my sleeve and tugged me across the walkway to the shops along the other wall - so I thought something was wrong. But, no: instead, he'd just wanted to check out one of those neat technology shops, a bright smile on his face once he turned to me to judge my interest in it. You know the ones, with the nice massage chairs and the fancy robotic toys, the music systems where you plug in your phone and it broadcasts to any speakers in your house, the heated beds and pillows and whatever. Honestly, I was just kinda stunned with his eagerness and confidence, in grabbing my sleeve like that... his half-revealed claws had traced along my skin through my fur when he'd done that, and sent the strangest of shivers up my arm towards the root of my neck.

"...Sorry," he said once we'd gotten inside. In here the air was noticeably cooler, a bit more humid. You could breathe in through your nose, hold that breath, let it out, and feel... I don't know. Like you'd just taken a sip of some really good water. "I got excited, I remember we had one of these back when I was a kitten, and my father would bring me to it whenever he came home... ah. He is in the military. That is..." The cheetah picked up one of the little robot toys on display in the window, something that - according to the info plaque - said it hunted insects and spiders in the house, and that you could also hook it up to your doorbell so it would say something whenever someone visited. Weird. A second later, he saw the Do Not Touch sign, and set it back down with a sheepish grin. "That is part of why we move around."

"Yeah. I remember. That's gotta be tough."

"Oh, it is not so bad. My father does, ah-" Here, he wiggled his fingers in the air in front of him, as if typing on a keyboard. "Computer things. Program? And engineering. Pays well, and there is no real danger there... there is a lot more to that I do not know or understand, though."

It was nice being able to spend some time with him, to hear him speak more confidently and steadily. I could remember how he was back at lunch on Tuesday or Wednesday or whenever it was, when he had to leave for his orchestra thing: tripping over his words, pausing to think, sounding like shyness had a firm hold around his throat... and then here he was, stepping smoothly along the aisles as he looked at different things in the store, reaching out to just barely graze his fingerpads over the boxes and the signs. Every now and then, his amber eyes would flick back to me, and a little smile curled up on his lips.

"My father," he went on - and stopped where he stood to pick a box off the shelf. It looked like a little egg-shaped MP3-player dock, with the main appeal being that it was waterproof? And, being an egg, it was also weighted and thus couldn't fall over... and came with a setting that allowed it to bounce and rock with the beat of the music. Neat. "He knows English. Knows better than me, or my mother, or my sister, all combined... my mother says that he was the one who first told her, back before they got married."

"Aww. That's sweet. These days, all my mom says my dad did right is give her me and my brother. Hey - do you want anything from here? Dad gave me a bit of extra money, so I could..."

"Ohh, no, no. Too expensive anyway." He set the box back down and then smiled up at me again, starting towards the next aisle. This store was pretty small: counter up front, most of the center area taken up by exhibitions and promotions, just one walkway around between that and the shelves against the walls. So I guess, technically, there was just the one aisle. "I do not think I know anybody that has actually bought something from here..."

"I do."

His ears perked. "Really?"

"Yeah, but I think he was lying about it." Knew him back in elementary school, this little ferret kid who got really annoyed if you called him short. Name was... Eric? Craig? I don't even remember. We shared the same homeroom in third grade, and then I think he moved away. "He also said his aunt owned the big mansion on the corner of... of... Jasmine and Rose streets, I think?"

"Jasmine and Rose..." Tony turned towards me as we started making our way out of the store, paws resting in his pockets. "Smell nice?"

"No, actually. That mansion had a huge shrub of baby's breath flowers growing out front all along the fence by the sidewalk. Smelled terrible."

He laughed, and that made me smile, and I guess it was pretty funny, so I started laughing too. Just like before, Tony kept close to me while we made our way through the mall, though he'd lost some of that tense nervousness that I'd sensed in him. We passed by the video game store, glanced inside but decided against it, kept on going... along the way he seemed to open up more and more, grinning more openly, relaxing with his speech and word choice. As we passed the food court he grabbed at me again, this time lighter, this time wrapping his paw around my wrist instead of just on my sleeve.

"Matt!" he said, excitement coming clearly through in his voice. "Can we get something to eat? I have some money - I can cover half, if that is okay..."

As it went, though, we couldn't decide on a single place to eat from, and ended up splitting up to go to separate sides of the food court and pay for our own meals. For a moment I was worried I'd lost him in the crowd, since there was all of this noise and all of these unknown scents everywhere and no sign of slim, sleek cheetah. I'd walked through the aisles between the tables at least three times before I caught sight of him, standing off towards the sandwich shop on the other side of the food court. He looked up and saw me, too, when I'd gotten about halfway to him - and after a brief talk, we decided to go off and sit at one of the benches over near the walkway overlooking the atrium instead of staying in the food court to eat.

"So," I said, lifting my slice of pizza to my muzzle. It had that look to it where the cheese looked nice and fresh, but the little bits of meat on it seemed a bit _too_perfectly cubic. "Got a sandwich, huh? What'dja get?"

"Oh, it is... nothing special..." He picked the edges of it apart - a single thing of flatbread, folded over itself - and showed to me the rather underwhelming interior. "Ham and cheese."

"And... nothing else?"

"Ah! That is what he_said, too! The _nutria at the counter!" Then, he squeezed the bread back together, stuck his tongue out at me, and took a bite. "That is what they always say. Nothing else, is that all. Pfeh."

"Hey, man." My pizza wasn't as hot as I'd like it to be. After I'd taken that bite, I held the slice towards Tony beside me. "I don't like red tomato sauce on my pizza. I get shit for that, too."

"Because that is weird, too!"

The two of us kind of glared at each other for a moment... and then both broke out laughing, and settled comfortably against the back of the bench. Though we had more than enough room here for both of us and maybe two other people, Tony and I sat close together right in the middle, my tail curled around behind me such that his elbow occasionally brushed up against it...

He didn't seem to mind, though, and flicked his own tail between our legs so that it would do the same against my ankle every now and then. When all that remained of my pizza was the crust - stuffed, of course - I rested my arms in my lap and tilted my head back, looking up towards the paned glass ceiling above. Clouds had started to roll in, the soft whitish-grey sort that come and go before the day is out. It had been a while since we'd last gotten a good rain, and that pattern would apparently not be broken today.

Tony had finished his sandwich already, and now sat with the wrapped balled up between his paws. "Matthew?"

"Whoa." My ears perked at my full name; I rolled my head over in his direction and lifted my paw to take a bite out of my crust, but missed on my first try and ended up squishing sticky cheese against the fur of my cheek. "Antonio?"

The cheetah beside me shifted where he sat, and squeezed that ball of slightly-greasy paper. "What is... ah, what is the word..."

For some reason, I couldn't get him to look at me right now. Just a brief flash of those amber eyes, muzzle pointed down towards the spot between us - and then he looked away. "Yeah?"

"Ah. I had a... _dream_last night..."

"Oh yeah? Good dream, or bad dream?"

He shifted again, and then finally looked at me. I brought the half remaining of the crust to my mouth and took another bite. Weird that the best cheese of the pizza, they put _into_the crust. "Good. Um. You were in it."

Admittedly, that made my tail wag. "What, really? What did we do? Take over the world or something?"

"No..."

"Did we... I don't know. Get an A on our astronomy project? Which, by the way, I need to really start?"

"No."

"Um..." I popped the last of the pizza in, and chewed on it while thinking. Tony's ears remained half-folded back, whiskers forward and eyes still avoiding mine. He reached up and scratched behind one of those ears. "Okay, I dunno. What happened?"

Those whiskers twitched back and forth, his lips tightened and relaxed as if he'd started to say something and then changed his mind... and then he cleared his throat, swallowed, and looked at me full-on. "Ah... you know, now that I said it, I ah... I cannot remember... that is funny, isn't it?"

Something in those eyes... "Oh, yeah, I get that all the time. Anyway - I'm good to go; how about you?"

"Oh. Ah. Yes, we can go..."

The cheetah remained a bit quiet for a little while after, but soon opened back up again. Whatever it was that had clouded his thoughts right there, well... I guess it was a passing thing. We strode at an easy pace along the walkway, every now and then slowing down to peer into a shop or stopping to look at those weird little middle-of-the-aisle kiosks, selling the cheap phone cases and the emoji pillows and whatever.

Until, at least, we came to the gelato stand, outside in the lobby between the bookstore on the second floor and the balcony-of-sorts overlooking the ice rink. I couldn't help but notice Tony eyeing the thing as we passed by. I had both my paws in my pocket, fingers of my right feeling both the cloth back of my wallet and the edge of the extra twenty that Dad had put out for us... so this time, it was me who lightly grabbed Tony's wrist, and pulled him back around.

"Hey," I said to him, "what flavor do you want? I got some extra money, so... we can..."

Those little ears of his perked upright, and he looked at me with surprise. "I - what? No, no no, Matt, you do not have to..."

"Oh, c'mon. It's no big deal." The lady working the stand, a pretty stoat or mink or something like that, gave me a smile once she noticed me coming up. "I'ma choose for you, if you don't tell me."

From behind me: "Aaaah - I like - I like the, ah, the bubblegum flavor... with the little chunks of the gum in it..."

I returned her smile, and tapped the glass above the tub with the sunset-pink one. "Hi. Yeah - bubblegum, please."

"Okay. What size?"

"Um... what the hell, large. 'S'only two dollars more."

Another few seconds, some shuffling of money between paws, a mutually exchanged thank you... and then I turned around and pressed the cup into Tony's paws, a cute little green plastic spoon sticking out of the gelato, like thick, smooth ice cream. He looked up at me, and I swear there was some kind of blush warming his cheek and ears.

"No chunks, I think," I said, and fell back into place beside him. "Um - you wanna sit somewhere, with that? I was thinking we could dip into the bookstore right up here, and then head home..."

"We can go in and look, while I'm..." But he trailed off, and spooned another bit into his mouth. Little pink tongue, a more muted, fresher pink than that of the gelato, flicked out and circled around his lips. His enjoyment came out plain and clear on his muzzle, in his eyes and in the little smile as sweet as the stuff itself that spread across his face. "Oohh. This is good. Um - thank you, Matt..."

"Oh, yeah, it was no problem. I could see you wanted it, so I figured... why not, y'know?"

The smile spread a little bit wider, and then I found my tail wagging a little bit as well, seeing how happy just that little thing had made him. Whenever going into a bookstore, I never really have much of an idea where to go - not because I don't read often, but instead because pretty much everything interested me. Those educational books that break complicated concepts down into layman's terms (with the included pictures, too - that was the most important part); the partially-rooted-in-truth high-school slice-of-life stories, some telling about fun romances, some a little harder to believe with, like, crime and superpowers and such; the spooky stories, the medieval fantasy, the space sci-fi with the aliens and the lasers and such. Whatever.

Tony seemed content to hang around close by me, even after I let him know at least twice that he could go off and find something to look at. But instead, he just shook his head and said "no, I am okay", between bites of his gelato. The shelves in this store stood a little bit close together, made clearer to me once the two of us had actually gone down into one: never for longer than a couple of seconds could I take a step without some part of this cheetah brushing up beside me, be that his arm, or his shoulder, or another slight tickling from his short claws, or that tail just briefly curling around my leg again.

Not bad touches, no. Just little things that tickled at my skin or made me jump, the first few times with me turning to him and saying "oh - sorry, you startled me" and him just giving a sheepish grin and apology.

Neither of us really minded, though.

At more than one point I noticed he'd slid a book off a shelf and was looking over it, gelato held in his other paw - he'd done quick work on that, even for it being a large - and I'd ask if he was interested in that, if he wanted to pick it up... and each time, each time, he looked surprised and embarrassed again, and shook his head and put it back.

Hope he didn't think I'd already done enough for him. Because, like... going to the mall, just wandering around a bunch of stores without getting anything, then gelato? Hardly was much of a treat. Though, actually, that sounded more like-

-slight nudging of an elbow against my side. When I turned, Tony stood there with that sweet smile on his muzzle again, and the cup of gelato and little green spoon held out towards. I looked at it, and then looked at him.

"Do you want to try? It is good."

Really on any other occasion, I would've said no - especially since that pizza got me a lot more full than I'd expected - but, just... I don't know. Something about it, something about him. Of course you gotta spend time with someone to figure out just how good of friends you'll be, and... I don't know. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy hanging out with Ty and Lexi, and with Sandra too when I have the energy for her, but with Tony...

I don't know. This bookstore felt like a universe entirely separate from the rest of the mall: in here, the only noise caught by my ears was the pleasant, quiet hum of the air conditioning, just barely audible beneath the also-quiet music they played, some of the single-singer-over-an-acoustic-guitar style stuff that fades in and out of popularity. This place had a coffee shop appended off behind us, but the conversations from over there remained tame and muted, more little rumbles adding to the other sounds.

And, then, there was the characteristic scent of a bookstore, fresh cardboard book covers and unturned pages, slight sweetness added from the coffee and pastries sold in the other corner. All of that, with the faintest of dry, sandy spice added to it, that aroma hovering off this cheetah standing in front of me. Gentle tingling of that, with the artificial fruity-sweetness of the gelato... how could I say no? My fingers brushed gently over his as I took it from him, dipped the spoon into the surface - it gave easily, smoothly; I've never had gelato before - and then tasted it...

...and nodded. Sweeter than I'd expected, nice and cool, kind of more like frozen yogurt than ice cream. Tony's eyes lit up at my response, and then did so further when I went in for a second spoonful. His fingers, just barely touching against mine when I handed it back to him, were nice and warm against the cold of the cup.

"That is good," I said, and laughed. "If I'd known that, I woulda gotten myself some, too. Next time, right?"

The cheetah stopped with the spoon halfway to his muzzle. "...Oh! Yes. Next time."

"So, then..." I slid one of the books off the shelf to glance at it, then changed my mind and set it back in where it belonged. "I'm not seeing anything else I want, so I'm ready to head out when you are. I'm - sorry if this wasn't exciting as you expected it to be..."

"Ohh, no, no, it is no problem. It was, um..." For a moment, he focused on scooping out the last of the half-melted gelato. "It was nice, getting to hang out with you. That was... that was what I wanted."

We both fell quiet as we made our way out between the shelves and into the main of the store, heading for the big glass doors at the other end. We'd have to walk around a bit to get to where we'd parked, but that wouldn't be much of a problem. It was nice outside today.

Now that I think about it, though, it's not like I have any other plans for this weekend that I can remember...

"Hey, actually," I went on after a while, and looked over at Tony. He walked beside me, arms hanging easily down at his sides, contented smile on his face. "There anywhere else you wanted to go? We've got time. And some extra money, if you wanna go somewhere. My pizza was all of, like... four dollars..."

Yet again he looked as if he tried to say something, changed his mind, and then paused to think about something else... but that smile remained on his face, kept his ears and whiskers up and his tail still behind him. "Would you maybe want to come over and visit me and my mother? I have mentioned you to her, and she wants to meet you, and - oh, no... we are still unpacking, that is... never mind-"

Normally I'd say oh, that's no problem or something along those lines, but seeing the sudden change in his face and mood...

"Hey, what if I help you guys out? I can't imagine you've got much left to do."

At first, his eyes lit up and his smile widened even further, but then... "Ohh, no, Matt, I could not ask you to... you have already done so much for me today-"

"No, no! I want to. It'll be fun."

"Really?"

I smiled in return. "Of course."

A quick moment of silence... and then his grin returned. "I will let my mother know."