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The day Tanner returns home to find a new plant in a pot on his doorstep really isn’t any different from any other day.
He doesn’t think much of the plant’s mysterious appearance. He’s known in his neighborhood for having a green thumb and, although it’s rare, it isn’t the first time someone has given him a dying plant and expected him to nurse it back to health.
“Hey there. Who are you?” he murmurs, picking up the plant and bringing it inside. It’s withered, like it hasn’t been properly cared for in a while, and on top of that it’s showing signs of being rootbound. He sets the plant in the entryway and says, “Don’t worry, I’ll get you all fixed up.”
He puts away his things and checks his phone—no new messages. He frowns and stuffs the phone back in his pocket.
“Okay then, let’s take a look at you,” he says to the plant, and hauls it onto his kitchen counter. It’s a little under three feet tall and looks almost like a miniature pine tree. “A Norfolk island pine, perhaps?” he guesses. A not uncommon houseplant in many places, though an unusual one for Canada as a plant that usually prefers a warmer climate, but Tanner can make it work. It’s summer right now, and he has a small but lively greenhouse out back that stays nice and toasty all winter.
The needles are looking dry and yellowed in places. Tanner pushes a finger into the soil and wonders out loud, “Jeez, when was the last time someone watered you?”
Normally, with a plant this dried-out, he would put the pot in his kitchen sink and leave the tap on for ten minutes or so, but this pot is a little too big for that. Instead he brings it outside and sets it on his back patio, checks the drainage on the pot to make sure it’s adequate, and then hauls up his hose and sets it on a heavy sprinkle.
“You’ll need to be repotted too, but we’ll start with a good dousing. That ought to bring you back to life,” he says. “I think I have a nice, sunny spot for you inside. You’ll be set to rights in no time.”
The branches rustle gently in the breeze, almost as if in response.
“You’ll need a name, too.” Tanner names all his plants. He takes out his phone again and glances at it: still nothing. He sighs and puts it away. “Maybe I’ll name you Fir.”
That’s a pretty stupid idea, but it is a pine, and Tanner is pining, and Fir is named after a pine. It kind of seems like fate that he should name this plant after Fir.
*
Part of the reason he’s so anxious is that Fir hadn’t been in the office that day. Usually if Fir has plans or is going to be out sick he’ll text Tanner to give him a head’s up; they share an office, after all. Even if he’s too sick to manage it in the morning, he always finds time at some point during the day. Yet today is Monday, and Tanner hasn’t heard from Fir since last Friday.
It’s fine, though. Fir is probably just resting. He probably has a cold or something.
Fir the Norfolk pine, on the other hand, is already perking up a little by the time Tanner shuts off the hose.
“I think I have just the right pot for you,” Tanner says as he winds the hose back up, “but we’ll do that in a couple days. I don’t want to shock you.”
He checks the plant and pot thoroughly for pests—luckily he finds no traces of any hitchhikers—and then he goes inside to attend to some other chores while waiting for the soil to fully drain.
His house has a beautiful, south-facing bay window that’s perfect for plants with high sun needs. He has a couple other larger potted plants around it already, but he moves most of them to his screened porch to make room for the Norfolk pine. The ailing pine needs the sun more, and the screened porch also gets excellent sunlight anyway; he could put the pine in his greenhouse, but it’s already stuffed to the brim, and he wants to keep a closer eye on it anyway, at least for now. Unfortunately the pine is a little too short to sit on the floor and still get enough sun, but that’s not a problem.
The window seat has a custom upholstered cushion, but he can’t very well set a pot on that so he tosses it into a corner and puts a rubber drip tray onto the wood surface instead. It’s uglier, but whatever—the plant will be happy, and Tanner needs to make sure it’s good and healthy again before winter if he wants it to have any chance of surviving the long months of shortened days.
He reheats yesterday’s leftovers for dinner and hauls the pot inside before dusk. “This is a primo spot,” he tells Fir the Norfolk pine. “You’ll be happy here.”
It must be his imagination, but he could swear the plant’s branches rustle ever so slightly in response.
*
Tanner’s street has mostly human residents, but Fir’s next door neighbors are wood nymphs, and the guy a few houses down from him is a werewolf, and Tanner is pretty sure the lady who lives in the house on the corner is a vampire. Fir says she’s only that pale because she works nights, but that doesn’t explain the abnormally pointy canines Tanner is convinced she flashed him that one time.
And then there’s Missy.
“He’s not in,” Missy calls, nosy as ever, from where she’s hunched in the ancient, creaking rocking chair on her ancient, creaking front porch. She watches Tanner balefully, but that doesn’t necessarily mean much because as far as Tanner has been able to tell she does everything balefully.
Missy is the old lady who lives across the street from Fir. She’s batty and a terrible snoop, and Tanner darkly suspects her of being a witch. Not the cool, helpful kind either, but the annoying, meddling kind. Tanner has been acquainted with a few witches in his life, and so far none of them have been the cool, helpful kind. There seems to be something about witching that calls to the sort of people who eventually become crotchety, nosy old ladies.
Tanner waves and says, “Thanks!” even though he really wishes she would butt out for once.
Fir hadn’t been in the office again today and Tanner wants to stay and wait, maybe ring the doorbell a few more times or peek in through the windows just in case Missy is wrong and Fir is home and laid up in bed, but unfortunately he’s sure she’s right. She would be the sort to watch her neighbors through a slit in her curtains if she weren’t far too shameless to bother with such subterfuge; instead she spies on the neighborhood blatantly, from her front porch, and Tanner has no doubt that she keeps strict tabs on the comings and goings.
“You’d best be getting home,” Missy calls, and the hairs on the back of Tanner’s neck stand on end. Mirko, her black crow familiar—“He’s just a pet, not a familiar,” Fir always insists, but Tanner knows better—perches on the back of the rocking chair and caws quietly. Even that sounds baleful.
“Right,” Tanner mutters, and reluctantly climbs into his car. Fir only lives a twenty minute walk from him, but it’s also on his way home from work, so it made sense for him to stop by now. Where could Fir have gone so suddenly, without telling anyone? Because he hadn’t even told their boss, apparently—she had popped into their office earlier today to ask Tanner if he’d heard anything. So Fir hadn’t called in sick, or put in for vacation time. He’s just gone.
Tanner starts the car and pulls out his phone again: still no new messages. He gives in and sends Fir a text: “hey bro, where are you? i’m kinda worried, boss said she hasn’t heard from you either.”
He watches for a minute, but it doesn’t even tick over to read. Could Fir be somewhere out of service range? He sighs, sticks the phone back in his pocket, and backs out.
*
The Norfolk pine looks a bit better, Tanner notes when he trudges into his living room. It must not have been neglected for too long if it can bounce back this quickly, and Tanner is pleased by its progress. If it keeps improving at its current rate, he has high hopes for its chances at survival.
“Hey little guy,” Tanner murmurs. “I hope you got some good sunlight today. How are you feeling?”
The pine obviously doesn’t respond, and Tanner shakes off the weird, tiny part of himself that had almost expected it to.
“I got you something at the store on my way home,” he says, carefully feeling each branch to determine which ones are truly dead and will need to be pruned away. “But first, let’s get you in a new pot. This one is way too small for you. Give me a couple minutes and I’ll get you squared away, okay?”
Normally he would wait a few days to repot a new plant, but it’s easiest to do while the soil is still wet enough to clump.
Tanner’s friends all know he loves plants—it would be hard for them not to—but none of them know how much he likes to talk to them. That’s a side of himself he hides from other people, because it’s embarrassing. He doesn’t like people to see him being soft.
He does his usual evening rounds, examining each houseplant and checking every pot’s soil for dryness and quality. He waters on a rough schedule—most of his plants get watered twice a week, some less frequently, some only very rarely—but he likes to quickly assess each plant and make decisions day by day; it only takes him about twenty minutes, and there’s something zen about it.
When he’s done he hauls the Norfolk pine out to his garage.
The garage is a chaotic space, filled to the point it only barely fits his car. Tanner tends to cycle through hobbies like he’s at the Tour de France; every couple months something new captures his attention and he does a deep, deep dive into it. This often involves the purchase of lots of hobby peripherals, so the garage is crammed with neatly labeled bins containing birdwatching equipment; fancy paper, awls, and faux leather for bookbinding; piles of Dungeons & Dragons manuals; and even a home beer brewing setup. The only hobbies that have stuck around through it all are gardening and video games.
Right now the car is in the driveway instead, because he needs the space. It’s blisteringly hot outside and his backyard has little shade, so it’s either do the repotting in here or out under a beating sun that won’t start to set for a few hours yet.
The pine is far from his largest houseplant—that honor belongs to George, the seven-foot Monstera in his entryway—but it’s still nearly half his height, pretty wide around, and surprisingly heavy. In fact it feels heavier than yesterday, which is strange because by now a lot of the water in the soil should have evaporated or been absorbed, and if anything it should be lighter.
That’s fine though, because it’s still not too difficult to get the plant on its side and carefully tug it out. Tanner has a beautiful old ceramic pot, one he found at a garage sale a couple weeks ago and has been meaning to find a use for, and it’s the perfect size for the pine. He drags it out from behind a stack of boxes and into the middle of the floor.
It only takes him about half an hour to finish repotting and fill the gaps with fresh potting soil, and he chats away the whole time about not very much, just whatever comes to mind. He takes the time to prune off the dead branches as well, and that does a lot to improve the look of the pine.
When he’s done he drags the pot back to its spot on the window seat and says, “Okay, remember I said I got you something cool? Let me go and get it.”
He grabs the big box from his car trunk and brings it inside. “It’s a humidifier,” he explains as he sets it up. “I know you like it more humid than it usually gets around here, so I thought this would help.”
He fills the humidifier bowl with distilled water and stands back to admire his work with pride. The plant looks good there, like it belongs, and he silently thanks whoever left it on his doorstep.
He’s already got a good water-soluble fertilizer that should be suitable for the pine too, but that will have to wait until next summer, after Fir the Norfolk pine has fully acclimated to its new environment. That means Tanner has done all he can do for now, and it’s up to the pine whether or not it wants to survive.
He makes sure to murmur encouragement to it, gently petting the branches as he does. It’s summer and his house is already more humid than he finds comfortable, but it’s worth it to make sure the pine is happy. It’s a gorgeous plant despite its sorry state, and Tanner is looking forward to seeing it reach its full potential.
“I wish Fir could see you,” he says before collapsing onto the couch and booting up his Switch. “I bet he’d get a big kick out of you. He never minds when I ramble about my plants.”
Tanner does a lot of rambling about his plants when they’re in the office, and Fir always puts up with it with good grace. He even seems to enjoy being introduced to Tanner’s plants whenever he gets a new one, and Tanner has caught him hanging out by himself in the backyard greenhouse, breathing deeply, a content look on his face. “I’m coming back in in a second,” he’d say. “It’s just peaceful here.”
Honestly, that’s probably part of the reason why Tanner—well, no, it’s not worth dwelling on, especially since Fir has apparently seen fit to vanish from the surface of the earth without even bothering to give him a head’s up. It’s just that until now Tanner had thought, had hoped, that maybe Fir also—no, goddamnit. Tanner mercilessly kills that line of thought.
“Fir is just my coworker,” he explains hurriedly as he scrolls through his games library, trying to decide what to play. “We share an office, and he— I don’t know. He’s fun. We get along well. We’re friends, I think.”
He certainly would have considered them friends until the last couple days, but Fir’s complete disappearance has him rethinking things. Surely Fir would have let Tanner know if he were quitting his job, right? Surely if they were friends he would have said something, if he were planning some elaborate trip around the world, or whatever the hell is happening with him right now.
Fir the Norfolk pine says nothing, as plants tend to do. It seems unimpressed by Tanner’s explanation, or rather that’s what Tanner would think if he had a tendency to anthropomorphize his plants, which he definitely does not.
“We hang out outside of work too,” Tanner mutters, for some reason compelled to defend himself. “It can’t entirely be in my head.”
There’s a soft rustling sound that for a moment he’s sure came from the pine, but that’s ridiculous. It must have been wind blowing through the trees outside.
*
“You know,” calls Missy, “sometimes a plant wilts even under perfect conditions if it doesn’t receive enough love and attention.”
Good grief, does she follow Tanner home to spy on him? Or maybe she sends her stupid crow familiar to do it for her. Tanner knows he’s never, like, brought a plant over to Fir’s house or anything. And Tanner’s plants are all doing great, thanks very much.
He had been trying to avoid her gaze by waiting until it was dark and walking over on foot, but of course that was a futile effort. The second he rounded the corner onto Fir’s block he’d felt her sharp eyes on him.
“Yeah, thanks,” he says curtly. None of Fir’s lights are on, which means Fir surely isn’t home.
Tanner knows he shouldn’t keep coming by, but it’s Friday already and Fir has been missing all week. Tanner has been starting to wonder if he should file a missing persons report or something, but he knows he’d be laughed out of the station. And what if Fir had a family member die or some other major emergency that required him to leave town in a hurry, and Tanner would just be making his life that much harder by setting the police on him? Anyway the police are probably already swamped with the reports for the lost children that Missy probably eats for dinner.
Across the street, Missy continues to stare at him from the glow of her front porch. Mirko makes a long, low cawing noise at her side, and she pets his feathers absently.
“Do you know where he went?” Tanner asks. If anyone would know, it’s her.
“Yes,” she says, with a voice like nails on glass.
That’s a good sign, but...? Tanner waits, but she does not elaborate. “Where?”
“He’ll be back when he’s back,” she says, which is no help at all.
“But—” Tanner begins, and cuts off when she stands, the rocking chair creaking under her as she uses its arms for support to hoist herself to her feet.
“You’d best be getting home,” she says, and then she and her familiar vanish into the house. It’s the first time Tanner has ever seen her front porch empty.
Fir’s werewolf neighbor passes by, apparently out taking his impressive sideburns for a walk. “Nice night, eh?” he says. “Full moon tomorrow.”
“Have you seen Fir at all?” Tanner asks.
The guy shoots him a wolfish grin and a half-shrug and continues on. Tanner gives up and trudges back home.
*
At least Fir the Norfolk pine hasn’t vanished and left him alone, although after a couple days of improvement it has now started to droop again. Tanner can’t figure out what’s wrong—he’s tested the soil pH (perfect), measured the air temperature and humidity (ideal), double and triple checked for rootrot (none to be seen), and even installed a small light sensor on the window seat to monitor how much sunlight it’s getting during the day (should be plenty).
Sometimes plants just die and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Sometimes it’s the shock of a new environment, or the plant was already on its way out and no amount of care was ever going to save it. Tanner doesn’t want to give up though. It feels important, and even though it’s only been a few days he’s grown sort of attached.
It’s a nice plant to talk to, that’s all. It’s close to the couch and takes up a good amount of his peripheral vision, and it’s nice to talk to something while he’s playing games. It helps him to be able to narrate his actions and explain his thoughts, even if no one’s really listening.
Unfortunately, there’s only one thought occupying his mind right now.
“I miss Fir,” Tanner admits, and then the corner of his mouth turns up in a brief half-smile. “I mean my coworker Fir, not you. You’re right here.” He sighs. “Maybe I shouldn’t have named you Fir. It’s just making me miss him more.”
He’s probably imagining it, but the pine always seems to look a little better after one of their little talks. He’s read that talking to plants is good for them—something about the extra carbon dioxide from a person’s breath—but he’s never put much stock in it.
He’s not putting much stock in it now either, but he keeps talking anyway.
“Fir is just really funny,” he says. “He’s a pretty quiet guy, but he always has these ideas that make me laugh. I feel like we’re always in sync, like we just sort of think the same way, and he never gets annoyed when I get obsessed with something new and talk his ear off about it. He’s really good at games, and it’s always fun to play with him. Usually I get tired of being around the same person day in and day out, but I’ve never gotten tired of him. He’s just, you know. Fun.”
He’s been staring blankly at a pause menu for a while now, but he doesn’t really feel like playing anymore.
“Maybe Fir never really liked me that much at all,” he continues morosely. “Maybe he was just putting up with me, and this is his way of escaping.”
He finishes out the night earlier than usual and slinks off to bed. Before he goes he takes some time to run a hand lightly over each branch, feeling the needles for dryness. They’re drier than he would like, but the soil is still damp when he pushes a finger into it.
Realistically, he’s done everything he can for Fir the Norfolk pine. If he fiddles more with soil and humidity and everything he’s more likely to do harm than good. If the plant is meant to survive, it will. That doesn’t mean it’s not disappointing, seeing its drooping branches, the slightest tips of yellow of some of the needles. It was looking so good just a day or two ago.
Tanner goes to bed discontent and disappointed, but what else is new this past week?
*
On Saturday morning Tanner can’t help but drive by Fir’s house again. He knows he’s not going to find anything, but he’s starting to get seriously worried. Fir hasn’t even read his texts yet, and sitting still has become impossible.
“Seriously, you still haven’t done it?” Missy snaps from across the street when he gets out of the car.
“Huh?” says Tanner.
“You’d best be getting home, boy! You’re running out of time!”
“Time for what?” Tanner asks, bewildered.
“Get! Scat!” Missy points a gnarled finger and Mirko swoops, pecking and clawing at Tanner’s head until he’s chased back into his car.
“Crazy bitch!” he mutters to himself as he turns the key and backs quickly out.
*
Fir actually likes Missy, which Tanner thinks is insane. Fir thinks she’s funny, and sometimes he sits on her porch with her and listens to her mad gossip. He once told Tanner he likes the tea she serves him, and then he’d laughed and smacked Tanner on the arm when Tanner asked if she’d brewed it in a cauldron.
“Oh come off it, she’s harmless,” he always says whenever Tanner complains about her.
“Don’t you hate that she’s always watching?” Tanner asks, already knowing Fir will shrug and say, “It’s not like she’s out there with binoculars or coming up to peek in windows. She means well. She’s helped a lot of people in the neighborhood, you know.”
Tanner doesn’t know what Fir means by “helped” and frankly he doesn’t care. He wouldn’t want the sort of “help” Missy could provide even if he were drowning and she had the last life preserver in the world.
*
Sunday marks a full week since Tanner last heard from Fir. Their last interaction was in the early evening the previous Sunday: Tanner had texted Fir a silly cat gif, and that had sparked a short but fun conversation. It hadn’t cut off abruptly or anything, it had ended at a natural stopping point, but normally when a conversation starts between them it feels like they both make more of an effort to keep it going.
What if that wound up being Tanner’s final ever interaction with Fir? A lighthearted back and forth about cat memes would hardly be the worst final interaction, but they’d had so many deeper, more meaningful conversations.
He’s wallowing. He knows he’s wallowing, but it’s not like he can stop.
Fir the Norfolk pine is a good listener, at least. It bears all of Tanner’s complaining without showing any signs of irritation, not that Tanner knows what that would look like in a miniature pine tree. It’s looking worse than ever though, and Tanner is starting to accept that it’s probably not going to make it. He’s seen plants bounce back from worse, but he also knows a dying plant when he sees one.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do better for you,” he says, caressing the branches. At this point there’s no good reason for it; he just feels like he should be comforting, even though it’s only a plant. “At least someone will have shown you a bit of proper love before you go.”
He drops his hand and stares morosely through the branches.
“I really thought Fir and I were friends,” he says. “I mean maybe he had some major family emergency or something, but it’s been a week and our boss hasn’t heard from him at all either, so I think he must’ve skipped town. And he clearly didn’t think I was a good enough friend to tell.”
He’s been thinking it for days, but putting voice to it now makes it all worse. From the corner of his eye, for just a moment, he almost imagines he sees the pine’s branches quiver.
“I really miss him,” he admits. “I know it’s only been a week, but still. I liked being around him. I just. I think I love him.” He hesitates, because he’s never actually said it out loud, but what’s he scared of? “No, I do love him. I love Fir.”
It’s freeing to finally get that out in the open, but he’s not able to enjoy the feeling for long because the second he finishes speaking a massive cloud of purple smoke poofs into existence, filling the room.
He coughs and waves his hand in the air and chokes out, “What the fuck!”
An achingly familiar voice cuts through the smoke with a “Holy shit!” and Tanner inhales a sharp breath that has him doubling over in another coughing fit.
He wipes at his eyes where tears are threatening to well, trying desperately to clear them, and somehow manages to force out, “Fir?” between coughs.
Slowly the smoke starts to clear, and sure enough there’s Fir, sitting on his knees on the floor, looking startled and amazed and hacking breathless coughs into his fist.
“Where the hell did you come from?” Tanner blurts out.
Fir is still coughing violently, so Tanner almost can’t even understand him when he manages, “I’ve been here the whole time,” between wheezing gasps.
Tanner more or less fails to hear him, because the smoke is finally starting to clear now and that’s when he notices his ceramic pot, previously occupied by soil and a dying plant, is empty. It seems like a strange thing to focus on when his missing friend has suddenly materialized in his living room, but surprise causes the words to slip off his tongue: “Where’d Fir go?”
“Eh?” Fir says. He’s still coughing weakly, and he looks slightly gaunt, too thin and too pale, like he’s spent a month being violently ill.
“I meant, I mean,” Tanner stutters, “I mean my plant, I, uh, I named it—”
He sharply cuts himself off, because Fir does not need to know he’s been pining that hard.
Fir looks at him, then gives the empty pot a very pointed look, and then coughs again into his hand. “Well,” he says, after a strangely tense beat of silence, “I admit it. You were right about Missy.”
“I was— huh?” Tanner says dumbly, still trying to process everything. What the hell happened? He still has absolutely no idea.
Fir looks up at him with a little, shy smile, the sort that drives Tanner crazy. “She’s definitely a witch.”
Realization hits Tanner all at once. “Oh, no shit! You were—? I should’ve known she’d done something to you. I’m gonna kill her!”
He whirls around, but Fir says, “No, wait,” and Tanner stops in his tracks. When he turns, Fir is looking up at him with wide, green eyes. Slowly, Fir pulls himself to standing on wobbly legs, and Tanner automatically moves to help support him. Fir flashes him another little smile, and says, “Did you mean what you said?”
At first Tanner doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but when the realization hits this time, it hits him like a brick to the face. “Fuck,” he mutters. “You could hear me? That whole time?”
“Well, sort of,” Fir says as Tanner helps him over to the couch. There are dark circles under his eyes, and his voice is rough from disuse, and Tanner has never been so relieved to hear it. At least until Fir adds, “I don’t know if ‘hear’ is the right word, but I understood everything you said, somehow.”
Tanner looks at him in horror. Fir makes himself comfortable in his usual spot on Tanner’s couch—because of course he has a usual spot—and then looks up at Tanner expectantly.
“You said you love me,” Fir prompts him.
“Did I?” Tanner says faintly. That stupid purple smoke must be stuck in his lungs or something, because it’s kind of hard to breathe.
Fir looks down and twirls a loose thread on the sleeve of his sweater between two fingers. He sounds painfully uncertain when he says, “I mean, I thought you did.”
“I—” Tanner swallows around the lump in his throat and plops down beside Fir on the couch. “I guess I did, yeah.”
“And—” Fir begins, but Tanner is done messing around.
“And I meant it. I’m sorry if that bothers you,” he says.
He’s not looking, he can’t bear to see if Fir looks disgusted or annoyed, so he’s not expecting it when Fir slumps against his side. His head lands softly on Tanner’s shoulder, and when Tanner looks down he’s got his eyes closed, smiling contentedly.
“Me too,” he says.
“Oh,” Tanner says dumbly. Then again, “Oh.”
He puts an arm around Fir and leans them back more, relishing the feeling of Fir’s body against his even as he’s still wondering what the fuck just happened.
There’s a long, comfortable silence, and then Tanner says, “I don’t know how the hell you’re going to explain this to our boss.”
*
“Finally,” croaks Missy from her usual perch. “You sure took your sweet time, didn’t you?”
“You!” shouts Tanner. He moves to stomp across the street, but he stops in his footsteps when Fir grabs his elbow.
“Chill, Tanner,” Fir says. Tanner can hear the smile in his voice even over the sound of his blood boiling in his veins.
“I’m not an idiot,” he contends. “You were dying! What would’ve happened if you’d died as a plant?”
“It was fine though, wasn’t it?” Fir says. He does look like his usual self again at least, already no longer gaunt and sickly even though it’s only been a few hours.
“Oh, calm your britches,” Missy calls. “I knew you’d man up eventually.”
That meddling old crone, seriously. Tanner shoots her a withering glare, even further incensed when she fails to wither. Mirko lets out a caw that sounds unfairly smug, and Tanner can’t believe Fir never realized she was a witch before. Her house is even designed so it appears to be on stilts, for fuck’s sake. At their ends, hidden behind those neatly-pruned azalea bushes, is probably a set of enormous chicken feet.
He can practically hear Fir roll his eyes at his back. “Come on, let it be,” Fir says, and drags him inside.
Tanner pushes Fir up against the wall in the foyer the moment the door closes behind them and kisses him, because he’s not about to let some old bat keep him from enjoying this. Fir snorts a laugh, and Tanner deepens the kiss to shut him up, pressing close and enjoying Fir’s warmth, the way he has to tilt his head up to meet Tanner’s lips, the long line of his throat when Tanner cups a hand around the nape of his neck.
Like hell he’d ever admit it, but he guesses maybe he’s thankful.