 
### Gold Standard

by Kyell Gold

Published by 24 Carat Words at Smashwords.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

Cover artwork by WFA. See more at <http://www.furaffinity.net/gallery/wfa/>

Heart and vines elements on cover by Rogue Design and Image. See more at <http://www.clipartof.com/portfolio/pamela>

"Aquifers" originally appeared on Yiffstar.com (now SoFurry.com), subsequently as part of "Waterways." © 2005, 2008 Kyell Gold.

"In Between" originally appeared on FurAffinity.net, subsequently as part of "Out of Position." © 2009, 2010 Kyell Gold

"Secrets" originally appeared on FurAffinity.net, subsequently as part of "Out of Position." © 2009, 2010 Kyell Gold

"Don't Blink" originally appeared in Heat #4 from Sofawolf Press, subsequently as part of an upcoming League of Canids collection (2011). © 2007, 2011 Kyell Gold

"Jacks to Open" originally appeared on FurAffinity.net. © 2006 Kyell Gold

"Race to the Moon" originally appeared in New Fables 2009. © 2009 Kyell Gold

"Drifting" originally appeared on FurAffinity.net. © 2009 Kyell Gold

"How to Get Through the Day" originally appeared on FurAffinity.net. © 2011 Kyell Gold

"The Prisoner's Release" originally appeared in Heat #1 and #2, subsequently as part of "The Prisoner's Release and Other Stories." © 2002, 2007 Kyell Gold

###  Table of Contents

Introduction

Aquifers

In Between

Secrets

Don't Blink

Jacks To Open

Race To The Moon

Drifting

How To Get Through The Day

The Prisoner's Release

Further Reading

Introduction

Thanks for picking up this collection! I put it together to be a manageable introduction to my work, with complete stories (there are stories that later became parts of novels, but they have endings) that won or were nominated for awards, either on their own or as part of a larger work. All of the larger works are available in print from Sofawolf Press or FurPlanet, and online from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers.

Most of these stories have been available in various venues online for free for quite some time, but they have not previously been collected into a nice package. If you're familiar with my work, you will find old friends herein, and maybe some new ones.

If you are not familiar with my work, I should warn you that these stories contain varying amounts of gay sex in varying degrees of detail. If that sort of thing bothers you, then I encourage you to try out these stories anyway. You can always skip over the parts you don't like. I have tried hard to construct good stories that include the sex, but don't depend on it, and I've heard from many people who are not into gay sex who still enjoyed my stories.

Each story has an introduction explaining where it came from and whether it's part of or related to a larger work. You can find more about me and my work at my website, www.kyellgold.com, and I am also on LiveJournal (KyellGold), Facebook (Kyell Gold), FurAffinity (Kyell), SoFurry (Kyell), and Twitter (@KyellGold).

Welcome to my worlds. Hope you have a long and happy stay.

-Kyell, June 2011
Aquifers

In 2005, I had written a good number of short stories, and I was interested in doing a more in-depth exploration of coming out, and a romance that would be strong enough to pull someone out of his shell. I set the story in high school, where a lot of kids question their sexuality, and posted it to a free website in late August.

Well, a lot has happened since then. The story was a familiar one—high school coming-out stories are perhaps the second most common gay furry story, after the "converting a straight friend" story—but "Aquifers" was a little more in-depth than the traditional one. I heard from hundreds of readers that they loved the story, identified with Kory, and wanted more. "Aquifers" quickly became my most favorited story on the site, and as I thought about it, I realized that there could be more story to tell.

I wrote "Streams," a much longer part, and posted it a year and a half later. And by then, I already knew that I wanted to finish the story. Since part 1 had been named for underground waterways, and part 2 for aboveground waterways, of course it made sense to call the third part "Oceans," and the complete novel "Waterways."

"Waterways" was published by Sofawolf Press in 2008, and won the Ursa Major for Best Novel. It remains one of my most popular titles. I am proud to present to you the story that began the novel: "Aquifers."

[return to TOC]

Under the water, everything else disappeared. The heavy, dry world dragged him down, but the water was his element. Kory wished he could go to school in the water; in the northwest, he'd heard, there were aquatic schools for otters, beavers, mink, and water rats. But he didn't live in the northwest, and there were no aquatic schools in Hilltown.

Only two public pools, even, and they were always crowded with non-aquatic kids, splashing around and screaming in the shallow water. He cut from one side of the deep end to the other, holding his breath as long as he could so that he could knife through the water, eyes open but unfocused, reveling in its rush through his fur, the low rumble that was all the outside world filtered through its insulating layers. In the water, he could go anywhere, do anything.

He angled to the surface for only the space of a breath. The other swimmers in the deep end were laboring near the surface, struggling to do their laps. He slid under them with ease, swimming in circles, touching one wall after another.

A shadow lurched towards him. He changed direction fast, and stars exploded around his head as he hit something much harder than water. He pressed both his webbed paws to his head, bobbing to the surface. Kicking to keep himself afloat, he leaned against the edge of the pool. The shock wore off quickly, letting in sharp, searing pain. "Ow. Ow ow ow."

"Man, I'm really sorry," said a low tenor voice behind him. He smelled wet fur and musk. "You okay?"

"Yeah." He found the spot on his head that had hit the wall, probed with his fingers, and winced. Experimentally, he ducked under the water, but the coolness only soothed a little, and his head started to throb from the pressure. Time to get out, definitely.

He broke the surface again, hung there, and sighed. Behind him, the same tenor said, "It doesn't look too bad."

Kory 'd figured the guy would've taken off once he said he was okay. He turned and looked up.

Crouched on the side of the pool, a young fox about his age smiled back at him. His fur was the color of night, glossy with water, except just under his throat, where a shock of white dripped. His long tail lay curled behind him, plastered to the tile around his long legs. "I mean, there's no blood in the water," he went on. He had deep, dark eyes, but his smile was warm and genuine.

Reflexively, Kory sniffed his paw. "No, I'll be fine. Just need some rest."

"If there was blood," the fox went on, "you'd have to watch out for the sharks."

Kory blinked at him. "Yeah," he said slowly. "Those pool sharks are bad news."

The fox laughed. "A sense of humor is a good sign. You probably don't have a concussion."

"Concussion?"

"My mom's a nurse," the fox said. "Concussions can be pretty bad. And the victim might not know he's got one." He stroked his chin with a paw. "You probably shouldn't swim any more. I know it's not my business."

"Wasn't planning on it," Kory said. He rested his elbows on the edge of the pool, looking up at the fox.

"Then, uh," the fox looked away, "can I buy you a coffee or something? I feel really bad about that still. Besides, if you've got a concussion, you might lose consciousness in the next hour."

Kory was about to say no, but the clock on the wall behind the fox caught his eye. It wasn't even three yet, and he'd hoped to stay out until at least four, which would get him home just in time for dinner. And then he looked at the fox again, at the deep black fur and the patch of white fur on his chest, and the smile under the dark eyes, and something made him say, "Sure."

"Great." The fox stuck out a paw. "I'm Samaki."

"Kory." The otter lifted a paw and grasped the fox's. Samaki had a strong grip, confident, but not too hard.

"I'm gonna hit the shower," the fox said, releasing Kory's paw and standing in a fluid motion. "Takes me longer to dry than it does you, I bet."

Kory just nodded. Now that the fox was standing, he could see two other patches of white on the nearly-nude obsidian form. Dangling just above the floor, the tip of the long black tail was white, though grimy from resting on the dirty tile. And beneath the trim stomach on the left hip, a small patch of white fur poked out above the dark blue Speedos the boy wore, matched by two triangles below, one pointing down the inside of each thigh. Kory blinked, abruptly aware that he was staring at another boy's groin, and looked up. "Yeah, I'll, uh, I'm done too."

Clambering onto the side of the pool, he cursed the clumsiness he always felt when getting out of water. He still had to look up at the fox, he found; Samaki was a good foot taller than his five feet one inch, which left Kory's eye level right at the bottom of the white patch on the fox's chest. He must be an athlete, Kory thought to himself. Good chest, good shoulders, good arms, good heavens, am I really thinking this? But it was natural, he told himself. Rivulets of water drew his eye to the curves of the chest, and the shoulders that flowed gracefully into well-toned arms. Kory wondered which sport the fox played. All of the foxes he knew were in track, but Samaki was tall enough to play basketball, if he wanted.

"Haven't seen you at this pool before," Samaki said as they walked to the locker room. "New to town?"

"Nah," Kory's short legs had to hurry to keep up with the fox's long strides. "I usually go to the Caspian."

"Oh," Samaki said. "I hear that's nicer."

"It's okay," Kory said. "Pool's bigger, and there's a section just for aquatics there."

"Not many `quatics in this `hood," Samaki said.

Too late, Kory realized that Samaki must live around here. "This is a nice pool," he said. "Water's clean, and there aren't too many guppies."

"Guppies?"

They'd reached the locker room. "Non-aquatic cubs. Their parents bring them to the pool hoping they'll learn to swim, or just to get rid of them, and they splash and run around and shriek and get in everyone's way."

"Guppies." The fox laughed. "I was one once. I think I'll start using that."

"Be my guest." Kory was oddly pleased by the approval.

He hesitated outside the large group shower. Normally he'd take his suit off, but having met Samaki, he felt, ironically, shyer than he would if they were strangers walking into the shower together. He walked in with his suit, and was relieved to see Samaki do the same. They didn't talk in the shower; Samaki rubbed shampoo all over himself, while Kory just rinsed. This pool didn't carry the right shampoo for his fur, whose natural oils kept most of the chemicals off anyway, so a good rinse would have to do until he got home.

The dryers were individual booths. Kory selected one of the two that was not occupied nor marked out of order, stepped in, and closed the door. Now he took his suit off, stood in front of the blowers at the back of the stall, and hit the switch. Warm air poured over him in waves. The throbbing in his head even eased somewhat as he closed his eyes and enjoyed the warmth.

He peeked out of the door when he was done before emerging. Samaki was nowhere in sight, but over the scented dryer air, Kory could smell the fox's musk. He padded around a beaver who was cleaning his long, flat tail, and opened his locker.

Just as he was getting his shirt on, movement caught his eye. He looked up to see the black fox emerging from the dryers, naked and holding his blue bathing suit in one paw. With dry (or mostly dry) fur, he looked puffed-out and comical, and he must have known it, as he smoothed down his fur with his paws. Still, he was as striking as he'd been by the pool, especially his long, fluffy tail with a newly-clean bright white tip. Kory could also see the full patch of white between his legs now, but didn't allow his eyes to linger there long.

Samaki waved cheerfully to him and walked over his way. "I'm right here," he said, indicating a locker on the other side of the beaver, who was just finishing up. Kory turned back to his own locker, getting the last few things out of it, and when he looked back, the black fox was just pulling a pair of black briefs up his legs, hiding the white patch again.

He wasn't looking at Kory, but the otter didn't want to just walk out without saying anything. On the other paw, he didn't want to call attention to the fact that he was watching the fox put his underwear on. So he waited until Samaki had tugged on a pair of shorts that ended just above the knees, and then coughed and said, "I'll just hang out outside."

"Hold up, I'm almost done." The fox pulled out a white tank top and forced himself into it, then threw a light jacket over his shoulders. "Okay, let's go."

"Getting too warm for this already," he remarked, sliding the jacket off and swinging it over his shoulder as they stepped out into the street.

The light breeze felt good against Kory's damp fur, but the day was still surprisingly warm for late March. "It's been warmer lately," he said inanely.

"So, where do you want to go?" Samaki asked, turning to him.

Kory looked around the street. The half block between the bus stop and the pool entrance, which he'd seen for the first time that morning, was all he knew around here. He glimpsed a familiar green sign a block in the other direction. "Starbucks?"

Samaki's ear flicked. "Sure," he said. "But that one's kinda crappy. There's a better one a block and a half that way." He jabbed a finger towards the bus stop. "You mind?"

"Nah, go ahead. I don't really know the area," Kory said.

"It's not quite Caspian around here," the fox said as they started walking.

"But you've still got Starbucks."

Samaki laughed shortly. "They're pretty ubiquitous, don't you think?"

The four-dollar word surprised Kory. "Yeah, I guess they are," he said. He rubbed his head.

"Still hurt?" The fox's ears sank.

"Don't worry about it," the otter said. "Really, it's just a knock on the head. I've had worse."

"I still want to make sure it's not a concussion." They rounded the corner onto a smaller street, lined with closed metal gratings and faded awnings. Only two stores looked as new as the Starbucks at the other end of the block, and one of those was an adult book store tucked into an alcove, set back from the street.

They walked past a small pizza place whose smells made Kory's stomach growl. He glanced around at the litter on the street and the faded window signs, then back at the fox. Samaki's muzzle was turned slightly toward him, but even though the fox looked quickly forward when he saw Kory looking at him, Kory saw in the bright light that the dark eyes were not black, but a deep violet. He'd never seen eyes that color before.

"So what'll you have?" Samaki said as they pushed the door open and entered the cool, familiar coffee shop.

Kory took a moment to look around at the art, the scattered chairs and tables, the rack of newspapers and the items for sale. This Starbucks was much the same as all the others he knew. They were a comfortable, known environment, and he felt safer here. Even if he didn't know where he was when he walked out that door, he knew where he was in here. "Uh, just a tall coffee, I guess." He usually ordered a hot chocolate, but that sounded like a kid's drink.

Samaki shook his head. "No caffeine."

"Oh. Decaf, then."

"Milk and sugar? I usually dump a lot in mine."

"Yeah. Lots," Kory added with a grin. "Sounds good."

"Okay. I'll get it. Go ahead and sit down." The fox waved him toward the chairs and walked up to the counter.

Kory walked slowly to the only padded chairs in the shop, fortunately empty now, and swept his tail aside as he sank into one. He watched Samaki order, smiling at the barista as he leaned against the counter, big fluffy tail arched confidently behind him, and thought about the midnight fox with the violet eyes. He was good with words, no question, and he seemed earnest enough about his clumsiness in the water. The thing that bothered Kory was that the fox seemed a little too solicitous, as though he expected something from Kory.

Problem was, the otter had no idea what that might be.

All he could do, he decided, resting his aching head against his paw, was find out more about the fox. It wasn't as if he was fighting off friends with his claws these days, anyway. So when Samaki returned with two cups and set one down in front of him, the first thing he said after "Thanks" was "So what school do you go to?"

"Hilltown P.S.," Samaki said, blowing on his coffee. "You?"

"Carter," Kory said.

"So what brings you to Hilltown Municipal? Caspian closed today?" The fox took a sip and leaned back.

"Uh, no." Kory looked around. "Just felt like a change of scenery, you know." He certainly didn't want to tell Samaki about the poem, or about Jenny. "How about you? I don't see many foxes at Caspian usually."

"Oh, I like to mix it up. Got to keep in shape since I dropped track. Swimming's easier on the knees, anyway."

"So you used to run?"

Samaki nodded. "Along with every other fox in HPS. Dropped it when I started working last summer. You do any sports?"

"Nah." Kory drank his coffee. It was sweet and milky, but the coffee taste came through clearly, a nice nutty flavor. "Only thing I'm good at is swimming, but I never wanted to do it all organized with rules. That ruins it."

Samaki nodded and smiled. "I wasn't very good at track, if that helps. I never got to go to any of the meets, just the practices after school."

"I don't have anything against jocks," Kory said. "My best friend's on the swim team."

"Good. We're not all peanut-brains. Some of my teammates have actually learned to read."

Kory chuckled. "I know. Just." He shrugged, taking another drink of his coffee to think of something else to say. "Never that interested in sports."

"Me neither, if you want the truth." Samaki tipped the cup to his narrow muzzle again, and then looked at the otter, his long tail twitching at the tip. "I'm just a decent runner. If you're good at something, you should go ahead and do it and not be ashamed of it, don't you think?"

Kory frowned, but the fox's eyes were casual and innocent, and it wasn't possible that the remark had been pointed. Still, the words made him squirm slightly. "Yeah, I guess." He looked back. "So what else are you good at?"

The violet eyes widened slightly. "This and that. I do okay in classes. How about you? If not sports, then what?"

"Classes. Books. I like to read."

The fox cocked his head. "What do you read?"

"Science fiction and fantasy. And some biographies."

"Nice." Samaki nodded and took another drink. "What's the latest thing you read?"

"Uh.I'm reading the Foundation trilogy. Just picked it up a month ago." Kory remembered that he was supposed to be asking the questions. "What about you? Do you read much?"

"Some science fiction. I haven't gotten to Foundation yet, though. Asimov, right? How is it?"

"Not bad." Kory relaxed. Telling someone you read science fiction often got you a glazed look, an uninterested nod, or a smirk. Either that or they would ask if you'd seen "Event Horizon" or some such drek. Most kids considered books something you needed to read to pass English, not something you wasted precious free time with. "Some interesting theories, I guess, for the fifties. Story's a little slow."

Samaki grinned, and they talked about books for another half hour. The fox knew Clarke and Heinlein, liked McCaffrey and Lackey, and adored Harry Potter, as Kory did. They discussed whether Hermione would end up with Ron (Kory's opinion), Harry (Samaki's), or neither, until Kory's cell phone rang.

He took it outside, flipped it open, and said, "Hi, mom."

"Hi, honey. Where are you?"

"Just getting out of the pool. I'm heading right home."

"All right. See you when you get here."

"Okay, mom." He snapped his phone shut and headed back in.

"Sorry," he said, picking up his empty cup. "Parents. I should get back."

Samaki stood and nodded. "Me too. It looks like your head's okay." He paused. "Just in case, though, maybe I should call to check up on you."

Kory hesitated only a moment. "Sure," he said, and gave the fox his number. Samaki took out his own phone and tapped the number into it. "How do you spell `Kory'?"

"K-O-R-Y." The otter peered at the phone. "Can I get your number?" The question popped out and Kory couldn't quite figure out why he'd asked, so he added quickly, "So when I have to go to the hospital, I know who to call when they ask if there's anyone I want to sue."

Samaki laughed. "You got it." He rattled off his number and Kory tapped it into his phone, getting the fox's name right on the first try.

"Thanks for the coffee and for being concerned about me," he said as they walked back to the bus stop.

"Least I could do," Samaki said. "I still feel like a total stooge. Guess I need to practice swimming a little more."

"Come down to Caspian sometime," Kory said. "I'll show you our Starbucks there."

"Ooh, I can only imagine. Is it fabulous?"

"Oh, so fabulous." Kory grinned. "Hey, there's my bus."

"Nice meeting you, Kory." Samaki shook his paw quickly. "Take care of that head!"

"Thanks again. See you!" Kory ran for the bus and made it to the stop just as the bus pulled up. He got on, paid his fare, and sat down on the side of the bus facing the sidewalk. Samaki was standing on the sidewalk, one paw tucked in his pocket, the other waving to Kory, his black tail flowing behind him.

Kory settled back into the bus seat and smiled. It was worth the bump on the head to have met someone he could talk about books with, who was engaging and intelligent. Most of the people he knew like that lived in other states and were only reachable through his computer. Here was one who was a short bus ride away. He reviewed the afternoon in his mind, looking for something that might not be right, but all he could come up with was, again, the feeling that Samaki was waiting for something else from him that he hadn't given. He spent enough time worrying about this that he forgot to prepare for his arrival home.

"Where have you been?" his mother snapped as he walked through the door. He could see her craning her head from the kitchen to look at him. "Dinner's almost ready. Go clean up."

The lightness he'd felt on the bus vanished, and now he felt the throbbing in his head acutely. He walked across the living room, skirting the edge of the central pool that joined all the rooms of the ranch-style house, and walked across the bridge and down the short hall that led to his and his brother's rooms, opening the door on the left wall and closing it behind him.

Through the window to his right, he saw his brother walking up from the back yard. He dropped his stuff on the bed under the window and flopped down on it. Just lying in his own bed in his cozy room made his head feel a little better.

Outside, he heard the splash as his brother dove into the pool from the back yard, and a moment later the younger otter's head bobbed up in the small corner of his room that was open to the pool.

"Hey, Kory," he chirped.

"Hey, Nick." He turned his head to look at his brother. Nick had the same broad muzzle and dark brown fur that Kory did, but where Kory had his father's brown eyes and small ears, Nick's eyes were blue like their mother's, and his ears stood up over the tuft of fur on the top of his head even when it wasn't lying flat and wet, as it was now.

Last year, Nick had insisted that they stop calling him Nicky; at thirteen he wanted to grab whatever dignity he could. At the time, Kory hadn't thought he would be able to, but now Nick had grown into the name, both in stature and, surprisingly, maturity. Kory almost felt that the little screaming brother who told tales and threw dirt at him had been exchanged for a wiser, quieter brother when he'd dropped the `y' from his name.

"Dinner's almost ready."

"I know. I'll be there in a minute."

Nick rested his arms on Kory's floor. "Where'd ya go today? I went to the pool but I didn't see ya there."

"I just wanted to get away for a bit. Who was at the pool?"

"Nobody. I just went there to look for you. I was over at Mickey's."

That meant Mom had asked him to check up on his brother. Kory lay back again. "You going to swim to dinner?"

"Well, I don't have time to dry off." Nick snorted.

"Mom'll flip."

"So what else is new?"

"Okay, hang on." Kory rolled out of bed and stripped down to his swimsuit. "Race ya," he said as he dove into the water beside Nick.

His brother yelped, but he only heard the first part of it as the water closed around him.

Nick was on the swim team, and had been faster than Kory for years. Only by tricking him could Kory hope to win. He did this time, barely, popping out of the water and scrambling to the kitchen table, dripping. His mother gave a little squeak, and turned to glare at them. "Kory James," she began, but Nick interrupted her.

"Cheater," he said, and stuck his tongue out at Kory.

Kory glanced at his mother, feeling the flush in his neck and chest he got when he'd done something fun that he knew was wrong. "Nick did it too."

"And how much older are you than him?" She dropped a dish of potatoes on the table with a thunk. "I wish you boys would get dressed for Sunday dinner. I try to put something nice on the table, and you're sitting there dripping all over the furniture."

"Mom, we dress up five days a week," Nick said, his wet tail slapping the floor as he rearranged his seat.

"Don't slap your tail," his mother said immediately. "Weekdays we don't have much time because you have homework to do. Sunday it would be nice to sit around as a family."

"We can do that wet," Nick said, shoveling potatoes onto his plate as his mother placed the fish next to them.

Kory shifted one of the fillets to his plate and scooped the buttery sauce over it, then took the potato spoon from Nick. His mother, meanwhile, had sat down with the bowl of green beans. "Don't forget your greens," she said, shoveling a pile onto Nick's plate.

"Mom," he said, "Not so many."

"Don't fill up on potatoes," she told him, and piled beans on Kory's plate as well before taking some for herself. They waited until she'd arranged her own plate and then bowed their heads.

"For what we are about to eat, for the blessing of each other's company, and for our continued happiness, may the Lord make us truly thankful," she said.

They chorused, "Amen," and dug in.

"Kory, Nick said he didn't see you at the pool," his mother said after a minute. "You said you were going to the pool, and when I called, you told me you were just leaving, but you didn't get home for another hour."

"I went to the municipal pool," Kory said.

"Why on earth would you do that?"

He shrugged. Nick said, "I know why."

Kory glared at him. His mother said, "Nick, let Kory tell me. Kory?"

"Just felt like going there," he said. "Okay?"

"Did it have anything to do with Jenny?"

"No." He chewed a bite of fish far longer than he needed to.

She looked down at her plate and took a dainty bite of green beans. "I ran into Jenny's mother at the market this afternoon."

In the pause that ensued, Kory knew she was waiting for him to tell her what she already knew. He took another bite of fish and said nothing. After a moment, his mother continued.

"She told me you and Jenny aren't seeing each other anymore. Is that right?"

He took another bite, but she wasn't going to let him off the hook this time. He swallowed. "I guess."

"I see. When did this happen?"

"Yesterday." He focused on getting his dinner down as fast as he could, so he could leave the table.

"We saw them in church this morning, and you didn't say anything."

He didn't see a need to reply to that, so he crammed potatoes into his mouth. "Don't bolt your food," his mother told him. "I just don't know why I had to learn about these things secondhand. Do you know how embarrassing that was? Mrs. Kish asked if you were doing all right, and I didn't know what she was talking about."

"Sorry," he mumbled through flecks of potato.

"Don't talk with your mouth full." She paused. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, mom," he said. "Can I be excused?"

She looked at his plate, which was mostly clean. "No," she said. "We've got banana cream pie for dessert, and I want us to sit around and talk. Tell me what the municipal pool is like. Is it as nice as Caspian?"

"No," he said. "It's smaller and more crowded." Then he decided to give her something to worry about, to stop her asking more about the pool, because he didn't want to tell her about Samaki yet. "I banged my head on the wall. I was trying to get out of this kid's way..."

It worked. His mother gasped and leaned closer. "Where?"

He showed her the spot. "Oh, Kory," she said. "It's swelling up. Let me get an ice pack."

The rest of the dinner was spent with her fretting over him, because those municipal pools might be full of disease, you never know. He let her worry, not pointing out that he hadn't broken the skin. The ice did help, really, and the banana cream pie (from the market, not homemade) was delicious. He was in a somewhat better mood when he swam back to his room and lay on a towel on the floor to dry off.

Nick surfaced and rested his arms on the floor, his nose only a foot from Kory's. "You went to the municipal pool because of the poem, didn't you?"

"Shut up, Nick."

"Hey, I think it's cool," his brother said. "I couldn't do it."

"Nick..."

"Why do you care what those dipwads think?"

Kory rolled over and stared up at his ceiling, where he could just see the glow-in-the-dark stars he'd put up when he was seven. "It's complicated," he said. "You'll understand when you get to high school."

He knew that would irritate Nick. He hoped it would end the conversation. Instead, he heard a huff, and then Nick kept talking. "Well, I think it's dumb. What happened with Jenny?"

"Nick..."

"Come on, Kory. I liked her. Why'd you dump her?"

Kory closed his eyes. "I didn't, okay?"

"Oh," Nick said, his voice small.

"Please, Nick," Kory said, resting a paw over his closed eyes.

"Yeah, sorry, I..." Kory felt his brother touch his arm gently. "I'm gonna go to bed. Hope you're okay."

"I'm fine," Kory said, and then felt bad. "Thanks, Nick. I'll tell you about it later. Just don't feel like it now."

"Okay." He heard the soft ripples of water as his brother slid down and swam back to his room.

The truth was, Kory had thought he'd be relieved to be broken up with Jenny. They'd had a nice summer together, then slept together a few times, and that had changed their relationship. Suddenly she wanted to talk about other people's relationships, like how Sal and Allie were doing, and things Jake Conly had said to Amanda that Amanda didn't understand, and what did Kory think of all that? He didn't care, truthfully, and apart from their double dates with Sal and Allie, he started making excuses to avoid Jenny unless it was in a public place like the pool. He'd retreated to an online book group, until he looked forward to logging on in the evenings more than he looked forward to seeing Jenny.

So he'd thought he wouldn't be upset if she dumped him; in fact, he was almost trying to get her to do it so he wouldn't have to. But he hadn't expected her to do it Saturday, when he wanted to talk to her about the previous week of school, when he really needed a sympathetic ear. Instead, it had been all about her, and how this was really too much, and she'd been talking to Chris Stafford-Chris Stafford!-and he'd asked her to the prom and she'd said yes.

He was surprised by how hurt he'd felt. No, he didn't want to be dating her, but he wanted to be the one to decide to stop. He'd been in a funk for most of Sunday, except when he'd been swimming, and when he'd been talking to Samaki.

The violet eyes and easy smile of the black fox crept back into his thoughts. If their engaging talk had been any indication, Samaki would enjoy the online book group too. He turned his cell phone over thoughtfully and wondered if Samaki would really call him. He could call the fox; he had his number and it wasn't even seven o'clock yet. Would the fox be eating dinner? Maybe it was a little too soon to be calling.

Too soon? Kory laughed at himself and set down the phone. It wasn't like he wanted to date the fox.

Though.come to think of it, he wondered now if the fox wanted to date _him_. He'd certainly been very friendly considering they'd just met. And had he gotten dressed a little too slowly, maybe showing off for Kory's benefit? Kory pulled his tail to his chest and scritched through it with his claws, thinking about the luxuriant ebony tail the fox had. Maybe Samaki had been hitting on him. He should call up and set the fox straight.

But what would he say? He didn't really know any gay people that weren't in movies or on TV. It was odd to think of Samaki that way; until that moment, he'd just been a friend, with a vast unexplored landscape, as if Kory had landed on a new planet. If he were gay, then all his actions took on a different cast, and maybe he really was more alien. That didn't mean they couldn't be friends. He just couldn't ever tell his mom. But if the fox thought he might be gay...well, he should say something, he shouldn't let that rest. It wouldn't be fair to either of them. He picked up the phone.

But what if he were wrong? He weighed the phone and set it down again, continuing to stroke his tail. Gay guys had a gay-dar or something, didn't they, to let them know whether someone else was interested? Surely he'd have seen that Kory wasn't gay. No, maybe he was just another lonely soul, with nobody to talk to about the books he was reading.

Hard to believe, though, as handsome as he was. Kory couldn't believe the fox would have any difficulty finding any kind of companionship he wanted. So maybe he was gay, and that explained his loner attitude.

"Grrr." He clutched his head. Best just to finish up his homework and worry about it next time he heard from Samaki, which would probably be never. He'd probably just asked for Kory's number to be polite, and walked away thinking what a dork he'd just swum into at the pool.

Though he had waited and waved goodbye to the bus. He didn't have to do that.

Kory sighed and grabbed his math homework. He'd ask Sal about it in the morning.

Like Kory, Sal was smaller than the otters on the high school swim team. They'd been friends since Kory could remember, going to church together, movies together, even playing Ultima Online together a few years back. Then Sal had discovered girls.

Kory had been mostly blind to the changes going on around him, but Sal began to act like a tourist in a strange new land. "I got a date with Jessica," he'd hiss. "Check her out. No, don't turn and stare!" Her primary claim to beauty appeared to Kory to be the now-prominent breasts straining against her sweater, because otherwise her features hadn't changed. He didn't think that was such a big deal, but the next week Sal had gleefully reported to Kory how they felt, the first in a long string of kiss-and-tell incidents.

Kory listened with polite interest, but it wasn't until the summer that he finally realized that this wasn't just a new game Sal was interested in, but a change that was happening to all his peers, one he was expected to share in. It was even harder for him to keep up, since he was seeing less of Sal than he had in the years when they'd spent the whole day together.

Sophomore year had been the first year Sal and his friends on the vocational track left the school every afternoon to get training for real world jobs. Sal was going to be a computer technician. "I'm gonna be the guy the big guys have to call to get their machines fixed," he was fond of boasting. "For you, Spike, I'll do it free." Sal still called him `Spike' after his Ultima Online character, but he didn't want Kory to call him `Ike' any more.

This morning, he was in a particularly good mood, so Debbie, a pretty sophomore skunk who was his current girlfriend, must have spent at least one of the nights of the weekend. Sal refrained from telling him about it, though. "Hey, Spike," he said. "I heard about Jenny. You okay?"

Kory shrugged. "I'm fine. How did you hear?" It must be all over school by now, he thought.

"Debbie's older brother's dating Jenny's older sister's best friend," Sal said, stretching his lanky form and curling his tail up behind him. "So what did she say?"

Kory dropped into his seat. "She said she didn't understand why I didn't write poems like that to her."

"That's all? That's weak."

"That and Chris Stafford asked her to the prom and she said yes."

"Stafford?!"

"Yeah."

Sal shook his head, unable to muster any more words. "Freakin' Stafford," he said.

"Yeah." Kory saw one of his Warcraft buddies come in and waved to him across the room. Jason waved back and went to sit with Dev. The two of them were hardcore gamers, and though he enjoyed playing with them, they didn't consider him dedicated. He sometimes hung out with them; they were nice enough in small doses.

"Hey, Sal," he said into the silence. "Say I bumped into a girl at the pool, and she...slipped and banged her knee. If I bought her coffee after, and then asked for her phone number, you think she'd think I was hitting on her?"

His friend turned to him with a grin. "Did you get the phone number?"

"Uh...yeah."

Sal punched him on the shoulder. "Back on the horse already!"

"Ow." Kory grinned. "C'mon, would she think I was hitting on her?"

"Heck, yeah," Sal said. "But if she gave you her number, she didn't mind. You didn't call her yet, did you?"

"No. But what if she thought I was just being friendly, like I said she should give me her number so I could check up on her knee?" Sal laughed. "She wasn't, like, thirteen, was she?"

"No!"

"Then she knew and she didn't mind. So here's what you do. Call her tomorrow night. Not tonight, that's still too soon. See if she's free Friday night. Me and Debbie will go to the park with you. What species is she? Otter?"

"Uh, fox." Too slow to think of another lie.

Sal cocked his head. "Fox? At the pool? It's not Sharisse, is it? Please tell me it's not Sharisse."

"It's not Sharisse."

"Good. So who is it? Gina's dating that tod from Westgate, Ellen's seeing Jim Brush, and Tanya Torick is dating that foreign exchange student, the fennec. Not one of them, right?"

"No, she, uh, goes to Hilltown P.S."

Sal raised his eyebrows. "She was at Caspian?"

"No. I went to the municipal pool. Just to get away."

Geoff Hill, a large raccoon, stepped into the room and ambled back to them. "Oh, great," Sal muttered. "Just ignore him."

"I know," Kory muttered back.

"Hey, Rainbow," Geoff said in a falsetto, and the class tittered. "I got a pome for ya. `Roses are red, violets are blue, who's the biggest wuss in school? it's you!' Har har!" He dropped into his seat behind the two of them, still laughing at himself.

The sad part, Kory thought, was that several of the rest of the class were chuckling along with him. He sank down in his seat.

"Asshole," Sal muttered. Kory shrugged. "Don't worry. They'll forget it pretty soon."

"Not while Deffenbauer has it posted in the hallway cabinet."

"We could bust it..." Sal shut his mouth as their teacher walked in, and opened his math textbook. "So...did you do the homework?"

They talked about school while Kory thought about what Sal had said. So Samaki _had_ been hitting on him-and by giving him his phone number, Kory had effectively said, "Sure, stud, let's get it on." Well, it was nothing a phone call wouldn't clear up, he was sure. The fox was friendly enough, and once he heard it was all a misunderstanding, he'd happily go on his way. Maybe they could even stay friends. Samaki didn't seem as obnoxious or predatory as most of the gay people he'd heard about.

That night, though, when he called up the fox's entry on his cell phone, he was unaccountably nervous. What was he going to say? "Sorry, I'm not gay?" What if Samaki wasn't gay? He paced back and forth in his room, and just as he'd decided to close the phone, that Samaki wasn't going to call him back anyway, it rang.

Looking down, he saw Samaki's name flashing, and automatically picked up the phone.

"Hi, Samaki."

"Hey there." The fox's voice was cheerful and light. "Good, I was worried for a minute you might've given me a bogus number. How's the head?"

"Oh, fine, as long as I don't think about it." The "bogus number" comment sounded like something someone who'd been hitting on him would say.

Samaki laughed. "Sorry."

"Oh, no, I didn't mean..." He laughed too, worry receding. "It's okay."

"No blackouts or dizzy spells?"

"No, I'm fine, really."

"Well, that's good."

There was a pause. Kory tried to decide what to say next, but the fox beat him to it. "Hey, I was going to try to hit that new movie on Friday, _Planet Death_." For a moment, Kory thought, _oh, no_ , and then Samaki said, "It's supposed to be terrible. Want to come along and make fun of it?"

"Sounds like fun," Kory heard himself say.

"Great!" The fox sounded almost relieved. "You know where the Landmark 8 is?"

"I can find it online," Kory said.

"Cool. I'll call you later in the week when they have the show times up. It'll be the sevenish one."

"Okay. Or you could just e-mail."

Samaki hesitated. "Sure. What's your e-mail?"

They traded addresses. Kory entered Samaki's in his online address book. It looked like a generic cable address. "Do you do any stuff online at all?"

"Not much," Samaki said. "Some homework. We only have one computer in the house for all of us."

Kory looked at his computer and felt a little ashamed of having it. His family didn't have much, but they had DSL and they each had a computer. "You have a lot of brothers and sisters?"

"One older sister. She's away at college. Two younger brothers and one younger sister."

"Wow."

"You?"

"One younger brother, that's it."

"Nice not to have to wear hand-me-downs, huh?"

Kory grinned. "I thought you said you didn't have an older brother?"

"My sister wore jeans. And t-shirts with flowers. I shouldn't be telling you this, I just met you."

Kory laughed. "It's okay. My brother hates wearing hand-me-downs too."

"Why, do you wear t-shirts with flowers on them?"

"Worse," Kory said. "Dragons. Oh, I don't think I should be telling _you_ this."

"You went through a dragon phase too?"

"Uh..."

He heard the fox's soft chuckle. "Still kind of in it?"

"Kind of." He looked at the dragon poster on one wall. "Do you ever play online games?"

"Not really. It's hard with not having much computer time."

"Oh yeah." Great, Kory. Nice guy you are. Why not tell him how great the rich kids' pool is while you're at it?

"I play some games. The guys on the team play poker once in a while. My brothers and I play card games too. I used to read to `em, but since they got older they don't like that so much. I still read to my sister, though. She's four. How old is your brother?"

"Thirteen," Kory said.

"Cool," Samaki said. "You got any homework tonight?"

"Yeah. Working on a paper for English."

"Hey, me too. Want to hear what mine's about?"

"Sure." He sat at his desk and listened to the black fox talk about his English paper, and then he told Samaki what his was about, and they talked about homework for forty-five minutes.

The next night, Samaki sent him an e-mail with directions to the theater and a note: "Math homework tonight. Quadratic formulas. You any good at that?" And they spent another hour talking on the phone, letting math lead them into science and science fiction and other favorite books they shared.

On Wednesday, Sal asked him if he'd called his girl, and it took him a moment to remember what his friend was talking about. "Oh, uh, yeah, she's busy Friday night. Sorry."

"You going to see her Saturday? We could go out to Kern's maybe."

"No, she kind of, uh, blew me off. I don't think it's worth calling again."

"You give up too easy. I bet if you call again, she'd go out with you."

"Just leave it, okay?" Kory slouched in his seat.

"Tell you what," Sal said after a moment of silence. "There's this place I know, over by the college. College women like high school boys. I got laid a couple times there," he added nonchalantly.

"You never told me about that."

"You were dating Jenny. Didn't seem like you needed it."

"You're dating Debbie!"

Sal shrugged. "Yeah, well, what she don't know.so, you in? I'll take you there."

Kory realized that his friend was making a sacrifice, telling him about his "special place," but he found the whole thing rather distasteful. "Nah. You know Friday and Saturday are the only nights Mom lets me play Warcraft."

Sal gave him a long look. "So play Saturday night."

"I can't, I.look, there's this group I'm supposed to go out with and.do some mission. Planet Death, it's called. They're going Friday night. I.I'll go with you some other time, I promise."

And fortunately, Sal lost interest at that point.

Friday night, Kory told his mother he was going out to the movies with Sal. She told him to be back by 11.

"What movie?" she wanted to know.

"Uh..." She'd never agree to _Planet Death_.

"I don't want you seeing an R-rated movie, Kory. Even if you are seventeen."

"I know. I'm not. We're going to that Schwarzenotter movie, _Girlie Men_. It's PG-13."

Her muzzle turned down. "Isn't there anything better playing? Well, all right. A little more Hollywood decadence won't kill you, I guess."

He caught the bus a few blocks away and rode to the Landmark, feeling a little giddy. He kept seeing Samaki's jet-black muzzle and bright white smile in his mind. They'd talked on the phone every night that week, about homework and games and books and friends, and Kory was really looking forward to seeing the fox in person again, his worries about whether or not Samaki was gay pushed to the back of his mind, if not forgotten.

The black fox gave him that smile and a cheerful wave as he walked up to the theater. "Hey, you found it. I got our tickets already. How's your head?"

"It's fine, thanks." He shook the fox's paw and followed the fluffy black tail into the theater, watching the white tip bob back and forth. "How's it going?"

"Okay." They stopped in front of the concession stand. "Do you want popcorn?" Samaki asked.

"Sure." Kory handed him a ten. "That cover the ticket?"

"Yeah, it was eight...here." The fox gave him a couple ones back. "You know, it's cheaper if we get one medium instead of two smalls. If that's okay."

Kory grinned. "Sounds fine. But I won't share your drink."

He didn't know why he'd said that, but Samaki seemed unruffled by it. "I drink Diet Coke. Most guys don't like that." He stepped up to the counter and placed their order.

"Ugh." Kory stuck his tongue out as they walked away with popcorn, drinks, napkins, and straws. "I hate that aftertaste."

"Yeah, but it's healthier."

"I dunno, all those chemicals?"

Samaki took his straw into his muzzle and sipped on the way to the theater. "Mmmm, chemicals."

Kory laughed and sipped his regular Coke. They settled into two seats in the theater and chatted until the theater darkened.

Kory had never been big on people who talked in movies, but the first time Samaki leaned over to whisper a comment to him, it was exactly what he'd been thinking, only funnier. He coughed around a mouthful of Coke, and whispered back, and they kept that up through the whole movie.

It was a terrible movie, and Kory couldn't remember one he'd enjoyed more.

"Who," Samaki said as they left the theater, laughing, "would be frightened of little chipmunks?"

"They did have bright red eyes," Kory reminded him.

"And claws of...what was it?"

"Diamondine," Kory giggled. "The hardest substance in the universe."

"Still..." Samaki cocked his fingers into a gun and aimed at imaginary chipmunks on the sidewalk. "Pow! Pow! Pow! Problem solved."

Kory chuckled. "No kidding. Man. That was awful."

The fox stretched. "I don't feel like going home yet. You have time to grab a shake? I know a great place."

Kory checked. "Yeah, as long as I get on the 10:15 bus I'm cool."

"Forty minutes? Plenty of time. Come on!" Samaki dragged him down the street into a small shopping center, walking fast along the sidewalk to a small shop with a red and white-striped awning. He held the door and bowed. "After you."

Cool air ruffled Kory's fur. He swung his tail in to make sure it didn't catch in the door and breathed in the rich, sweet fragrance. Samaki led him through the small round tables to the ice cream counter, where a young goat raised a hand to wave. "Hey, Sammy," he said, looking over Kory's shoulder.

"Hi, Chuck," Samaki said. "This is Kory. First time here."

"Great!" The goat smiled. "You on the swim team?"

Kory shook his head. Samaki chuckled. "No, he can have the full milkshake."

"Usual for you?" the goat said, already starting to scoop some ice cream into a silver milkshake cup.

"Yeah." Samaki turned to Kory and grinned. "What flavor you want?"

"What's a `full milkshake' mean?"

"Oh, when I ran track they made me these frozen yogurt shakes. Almost as good and half the calories." Samaki patted his stomach. "It's hard to break the habit."

" _Almost_ as good." The goat grinned at Kory. "You get the real thing." He shoved the cup under the old-style milkshake machine, and the whirr of the mixer filled the room.

When it subsided, he poured the shake into a cup and set it on the counter. "So, what flavor?" he asked Kory.

"Just vanilla."

"Malt?" Kory hesitated. "If you've never had it, I recommend trying it," the goat said.

"Okay, sure." He returned Samaki's encouraging grin.

"My treat," the fox said when the goat slid Kory's shake next to his.

"I can get mine," Kory said, but Samaki waved a paw.

"I dragged you here, I insist. You take me to one of your favorite places and you can treat."

Kory had his wallet out, but the fox was handing a ten to the goat, saying, "Don't take his money, Chuck," and when the goat took the ten, Kory thought he saw a brief wink back at the fox.

They sat down, slurping the first cold mouthfuls as they went. "Wow," Kory said. "Nice."

"I haven't had a malted in a while." Samaki sucked another mouthful and then clutched his head dramatically. "Ow! Brain freeze."

"Don't gulp it," Kory said. "That's what my mom says."

"I know, I know."

Kory didn't know what made him do it, but he slid his shake across the table. "Want a taste?"

Violet eyes regarded him under one raised eyebrow. "I thought you didn't want to share your drink with me."

"Not when it was a Diet Coke. That stuff's nasty."

"All right," Samaki said, and lifted his straw from his shake, tapped it reasonably dry, and opened the top of Kory's shake to slide it inside. He took a gulp and lifted the straw out, closing his eyes. "Mmmm. That is heaven. Thanks."

He pushed the shake back across, and then said, "Want to try mine?"

"Sure." Kory took a taste in the same fashion. He let the frozen yogurt roll down his tongue, as sweet as the ice cream, but with an acrid flavor behind it. "You're right," he said.

"About what?"

"It's _almost_ as good." Kory grinned.

He felt relaxed and loose, sitting across from the black fox in the ice cream parlor. They talked about school and friends, and he told Samaki about Sal and his string of girlfriends, and that led Samaki to ask if he was dating anyone.

"No," Kory said. "I got dumped last weekend." The words spilled out naturally. To his surprise, he felt only a small twinge as he spoke.

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"It's okay. It was probably for the best."

"What do you mean?" The fox's ears swiveled forward.

"Well, things just weren't going anywhere. I mean, I don't know if you're seeing anyone or if you know what I mean, but sometimes it's just like you stay together because you don't know what else to do, not because you want to."

"That sounds like the wrong reason to stay together."

"Yeah, it probably is." Kory sighed. "But it was easier than breaking up. Until someone else asked her to the prom."

"You didn't ask your girlfriend to the prom?"

"I didn't think of it until it was too late!"

Samaki chuckled. "Then `scuse me, but I think you did the right thing."

Kory nodded. "I know. But it's not easy." He looked up at the fox. "You seeing someone?"

Samaki shook his head. "Nah."

"Really? I'da thought the vixens would be beating down your door."

"Why?" The fox tilted his head. Kory began to feel a little warm. He took a drink to stall.

"Well, you're an athlete. You used to be, anyway, and you still...I mean, all the jocks in our school have women hanging around them like.like a cloud of comets or something. You never know which one is going to be coming close at any particular moment, but they're always there."

Samaki leaned back and laughed. "That's great. I'll have to remember that one. No, the track team rates pretty far down on the list. Plus, uh." He hesitated, taking another drink of his shake.

The nagging suspicions about Samaki returned. Kory didn't want Samaki to tell him he was gay, not now. It would ruin this nice moment. He changed the subject before Samaki put his shake down. "How long have you been coming here?"

"Oh, years. My mom and dad used to take us out here for a treat, and when I starting working, I always put aside enough for one shake a week."

"What's your job?"

"I help stock at the grocery store on weekends."

"I had a summer job at my mom's office, just doing filing and stuff. She won't let me work during the school year, though."

"Too bad." By now, Kory recognized Samaki's gentle sarcasm.

"Yeah, I.oh, no." He'd glanced up to his right. The clock on the wall read 10:13.

Samaki pushed his shake aside. "Come on," he said, jumping to his feet. "We can make it if we run."

"Maybe you can," Kory said, but he got up anyway, and waved to the goat as they ran for the door. "Nice to meet you!"

"Come back soon!" Chuck the goat said as the door swung closed behind them.

They ran together down the dark street, paws slapping the sidewalk in time. Kory, a few paces behind the fox, admired the fluid grace with which he strode, and the billowing of his tail behind him. _I bet he'd be a track star if he put his mind to it_ , he said to himself. He felt clumsy and awkward by comparison, his tail a heavy weight behind him. It was very useful in swimming, but a burden to run with.

They dashed around the corner. The bus sat idling at the stop. I'll never make it, Kory thought despairingly, but the bus stayed there as they drew closer, and closer. Then it started up with a rough cough, lurched forward, and pulled away just as Samaki reached the back corner and slapped it with a paw, yelling, "Wait! Wait!"

To no avail. The bus chugged down the street. They saw it stop two blocks down, as if taunting them to follow, but Kory was already winded. He panted hard, paws on his knees.

"I'm sorry," Samaki said, his long tail curled under his legs. "Maybe my mom can drive you home."

"It's okay," Kory puffed. "There's.another bus.fifteen minutes. I'll be a little late."

"I'm sure she wouldn't mind. We're about a fifteen minute walk from here, and then it'd be about half an hour."

Kory considered. His mom would freak out, absolutely have a conniption, if she found out he'd taken a ride with a strange woman. Strange, to his mother, was anyone she hadn't shared a meal with. But his mom didn't have to find out. And he would get to hang out with Samaki a bit longer. "Okay," he said.

The fox's muzzle lit up with a bright smile. He put a paw on the otter's shoulder, rubbing briefly. "Great! Come on, this way."

They walked down the street together at a more leisurely pace, through a few blocks of the main shopping district, passing only a few people. Samaki turned down a dark street and strode confidently ahead, his light shirt and white tailtip bobbing ghostlike in the darkness. Kory took a couple steps in and hesitated, letting his eyes adjust. He heard the fox's steps stop, and saw eyeshine as Samaki turned.

"Oh, you don't have good night vision, do you? I'm sorry. Here." He reached out a paw. "It's just this one stretch. It's a shortcut."

Kory placed his paw in the fox's and felt the warm pads close around his fingers. The warmth was nice in the night air.

"It's not dangerous," Samaki said as he padded slowly down the street. Kory felt more confident with the fox's paw around his, and matched his pace. "The people who live on this street are all nocturnals-foxes, raccoons, mice, possums, one skunk family down that way--so they petitioned the city to get the street lights turned off on the street. It's not dangerous, either. They do a neighborhood watch. A couple years ago there were some drug dealers that tried to set up shop here, but they ran `em off."

Drug dealers, like gay people, were something Kory read about online or heard about in health class, not something that merited only a casual offhand mention. "Are there a lot of drugs around here?"

"`Bout average, I guess," Samaki said, and Kory felt him shrug. "I don't bother with `em."

After a long pause, the fox said, "You ever try `em?"

"Jeez, no!" Kory shook his head. "I heard about one kid in my class, this mouse who tried some stuff, but I didn't know him real well. None of my friends ever had any."

"I know some guys on the football team who tried some steroids."

"Does that stuff really work?"

Samaki shook his head. His form was visible now as a dark patch in the grey twilight at the end of the dark street, resolving as they stepped further into light. "I guess it does, sort of. If that's what you want."

Streetlights, lit here, shone softly on a quiet, residential street that reminded Kory of his own, scaled down: well-trimmed lawns and low white fences bordered a small cottage. Plants and bird feeders adorned woodfenced balconies on a four-unit apartment building. Kory hadn't seen many apartment buildings in his neighborhood. "Like budding houses, waiting to fully blossom," he said, inspired by the sight.

"That's great," Samaki said. "I really like that."

"Oh, it's just a thought," Kory said.

"It's a nice image," the fox said, and Kory shrugged.

"I used to know a kid in one of those apartments, but he moved away," Samaki said after a moment.

Walking past the building, the otter saw a masked face in one of the windows looking out at him, and realized that he was still holding onto Samaki's paw. He let go, as casually as he could, and Samaki didn't comment. Kory stuck his paw in his pocket.

"Just around here," Samaki said as they reached the end of the next block. They crossed the narrow street at the stop sign and walked half a block down to a small house with an old VW Fox in the driveway. Samaki led Kory up a small flight of wooden steps onto a white painted porch. Lights burned in the first story and the television flickered with a low murmur, but the second floor was all dark. As the fox opened the front door, Kory smelled the musk of several foxes, strong but not unpleasant.

"Hi, guys," Samaki called softly as he walked into a narrow hallway, leaning against an open door. Kory's paws sank into plush carpet, clean but worn. Over Samaki's shoulder, in another room, he could see the arm of a sofa and a television set showing an old movie he didn't recognize. He looked around the hall at the framed art prints, not as large or as elaborate as the ones his mother owned, but interesting: a photo of a hillside pocked with dark holes and red foxes, a still life with brilliant purple flowers, a family portrait where Samaki stood out black in a sea of red. A stairway directly in front of him led up into darkness, and the room to his left that smelled strongly of food was also dark. Before he could look around any longer, Samaki grabbed his paw and pulled him into the living room.

"Who's your guest, hon?" a female voice said from the couch before Kory even made it into the room. He walked in and saw a short, slender red fox on the couch, leaning against a pillow, the television reflected in her eyes. She turned to look at Kory and gave him a broad smile, then paused the movie and got up, smoothing down her jeans. She wore a blue shirt with a faded flower pattern on it and had several beads of various colors woven into the fur between her ears.

"Hi, dear. I'm Samaki's mother, Mrs. Roden." She said it "road-in."

"This is Kory, Mom," Samaki said. His tail was swinging from side to side.

"Hi," Kory said, and stuck out a paw. "Pleasure to meet you, ma'am."

She smiled and took his paw. She was barely as tall as he was. "The one from the pool, right? Pleased to meet you too, Kory. I didn't expect company this late."

"Kory missed his bus, Mom," Samaki said, his ears twitching at the mention of the pool. "Can you give him a ride home?"

"I think so, sure. Let me find my keys and leave a note for your father in case he comes home while we're gone. Samaki, you'll stay here to watch the kits." She walked over to a side table and rummaged through her purse.

"Do I have to, Mom? They're asleep, they'll be okay."

She considered that only for a moment. "No. I don't know when your father will be home."

"Oh, all right." He sighed. "Thanks for coming down, Kory."

"Thanks for the movie," Kory said, and smiled. "I'll talk to ya soon."

"Bet on it." The fox's tail was wagging, and he gave Kory a good shake of the paw that made Kory think of the dark street they'd walked down, paw in paw.

"Kory, where do you live?" Mrs. Roden said, closing the door behind them.

"Over in Westmont," he said. "On Strawberry Lane back of Lincoln Highway."

"I know about where that is, but you'll have to guide me when we get close." The vixen smiled. "You want to call your mom and tell her you'll be a little late, Kory?"

"Uh, no, that's okay." Kory would then have to explain where he was calling from and why it was going to take him half an hour to get across town. "I think we can make it in time."

Mrs. Roden laughed. "I appreciate your trust," she said. "All right, here we go."

Kory slid into the passenger seat and drew the seatbelt across, looking around the car as he did. There were several bare patches on the seat itself, and both the seat and the back of the driver's seat that he could see bore numerous claw marks and gouges. Kory pulled the seatbelt across himself, aware of the strong foxy smell in the car that was older and deeper than just Samaki and his mother. He inhaled again, searching for Samaki's scent, but it was hard to pick out of the mixture.

"So how was the movie?" Mrs. Roden asked, backing down the drive. "Terrible," Kory said. "We had a great time."

"So you like bad movies too?"

"I liked this one," Kory said. "We had a lot of fun."

"You don't go to Hilltown P.S., do you?"

"No. Carter High."

"How do you like it?" She turned onto the main street.

"It's okay."

She glanced at him. "How's your head feeling?"

He shrugged. "Really, it was nothing. I wasn't used to the smaller pool."

"Samaki was really worried. I don't see any sign of swelling, though." She asked him about symptoms for a few minutes, and Kory remembered that she was a nurse. He asked about her job and the hospital where she worked, until his exit came up, when he had to focus on directions.

Kory guided her through the small suburban maze and to his driveway. The larger, nicer houses on his street loomed ostentatiously to him after walking through the smaller, pushed-together houses on Samaki's. Mrs. Roden only said, "Such a pretty lawn," her admiration free of jealousy as far as Kory could tell.

"Thanks so much for the ride, Mrs. Roden," he said when they stopped.

"You're very welcome, Kory. Come back and visit with us sometime. Samaki's been telling us about you and we'd be happy to have you over."

Kory grinned widely. "I'd like that. Thanks again.," he said, getting out and waving.

Mrs. Roden waited while he walked up the driveway and then left as he tried the door and found it open. He waited until they'd rounded the corner and glanced at his phone before opening the door. Good: 10:54. He sighed with relief and walked into his house.

As he closed the door, he heard his mother call from the living room. "Kory?"

She was sitting on the couch, paws folded in her lap. Only the lamp on the end table was lit; the circle of light threw shadows across her muzzle. Something was wrong; he knew it immediately, even before she said, slowly, "Sal came by looking for you."

It took him a moment to remember that he'd told her he was going out with Sal. "Mom..."

She turned large brown eyes on him. "Kory..." The words were difficult for her to get out. "Are you...are you on drugs?"

"Mom! No!"

"I know you've been going through a difficult time, losing Jenny. It's natural for a young man to feel alienated and turn to sinful things in an attempt to feel better. We can get help for you. There's a group I read about, they have a wonderful center and it's just ten miles away. They put you together with other boys going through similar problems." Now the words were spilling out unchecked.

"I'm not on drugs, Mom." He took a step forward. "Really."

"Then why..." She sniffed the air. "You smell like skunks."

"It's not skunk, it's foxes," he said, annoyed.

"Well," she said. "You're grounded for a week for lying to me. Now tell me the truth."

He said, "Mommmm..." to buy time while he figured out the minimum he needed to tell her.

"The truth, Kory, or it'll be another week at least."

Across the water, Nick's door cracked open. The light was off, but he knew his brother was listening. "I went out to a movie, Mom, just not with Sal."

"Whom did you go with, then?"

He could feel the current of the conversation, tugging him inexorably towards what he knew would be the result. He battled it anyway. "This other friend of mine."

"What's his name?"

He stalled for time. "You don't know him."

"That's why I'm asking you. What's his name?"

"Samaki."

"Samaki what?"

"Roden."

She mulled the name over in her head. "I don't know him."

"I told you," he said.

"Don't talk back to me, cub," she said. "Is he a school friend?"

"Not really." He squirmed under her stare. "No."

"I see. Where did you meet him? It wasn't church."

"No. At the pool."

"Hm." He could see her thoughts; the pool was at least a place you had to pay to get in, and it was a Good Place. "When was this?"

"Last weekend. We talked on the phone a bit and he invited me to a movie tonight."

"Which movie?" She said it casually, but Kory wasn't fooled.

"I told you," he said, uncomfortably aware of the ticket stub in his pocket. "'Girlie Men.'"

She relaxed a little more, and then said, "Last weekend...so it was at the municipal pool."

"Uh...yes." He saw her stiffen again. The municipal pool was not as Good a Place as Caspian. "He's really nice, Mom. We talk about schoolwork. We have a lot of the same subjects."

"What school does he go to?"

"The public school."

She didn't like that either. "There's a lot of drugs down there." He didn't respond to that. "So you've been helping him out? I'm sure your classes are more advanced than his."

They weren't, but Kory realized that she thought Carter was supposed to be better than the Public School System, even though it was part of it. "Uh...yeah."

"The Lord does smile on charity," she mused. Kory sighed. At this point, the worse of the two outcomes had been avoided. She would let him remain friends with Samaki. But she would want to meet him. And that meant dinner.

"Invite him to dinner next Friday night," she said. "I don't like not knowing your friends."

"All right," he said immediately.

"I just worry about you boys, growing up without a father. I can't be here all the time for you."

"I know, Mom," he said.

"I worry because I love you, Kory. You know that, right?"

"You and God, Mom."

Now her muzzle broke into a smile. "That's right." She stood up and hugged him. "Oof. Go clean that stink off you before you go to bed. And give me your cell phone."

Whatever lightness had crept into Kory's mood vanished. He liked the smell, and he didn't intend to wash before bed. He pulled the phone out of his pocket and handed it to her. "Good night, Mom."

"Good night, sweetheart." She kissed him on the nose, since she couldn't reach the top of his head any more. "Whew!" She waved at the air in front of her nose. "I hope he'll wash before he comes over."

Kory rolled his eyes and walked across the little bridge to his room. When he climbed into bed, he breathed in the scent of the foxes on his fur, and carried it into his dreams.

He was sitting in school with Samaki, and they were in a history lesson. He realized that he wasn't wearing any pants, and he hoped the fox wouldn't notice. Then he saw the fox's thick tail fall away from his lap, and saw that the fox was naked as well, his white patch gleaming in the midst of his black fur. Samaki was smiling at him. "You can touch if you want," he said softly.

"What about the teacher?" Kory said back.

"Let's teach each other," Samaki said.

Kory reached over and touched the gleaming white fur, and then felt the fox in his paw. He felt the same warmth he felt when holding the fox's paw, and an extra jolt. "It's all right," Samaki said, and Kory looked deep into the violet eyes.

"You can touch me too," he said.

The fox wasted no time, his paw reaching over. Kory felt an electric thrill and shuddered, and jerked awake in bed, panting.

His room was dark save for the stars on his ceiling and their reflection in the water. He looked around, the residue of the dream pounding strongly through him. It took him a minute to slide back from the dream world, but his body took longer. What did that mean? He didn't even know if the fox was gay. Was he? He scrabbled through his mind to recall the psychology chapter of his social studies class. Was it rationalization or projection if he was suspicious that the fox was gay because it was really what he wanted?

That was ridiculous, though. It was just a dream, it didn't mean that that was really inside him or anything.

But his body was still responding to the dream, no matter how much he thought about it. That doesn't prove anything, he told himself. I wake up like this most mornings. It's not related to the dream.

Even so, he tossed and turned until he looked up and realized that dawn had crept up on him without him realizing it. He went for a swim to clear his head, and when he came back and logged in, he found an e-mail from Samaki asking if he'd gotten home in time. Seeing the words typed on the screen, he could almost hear the fox's voice, and that brought back the memory of his dream. In the daylight, fully awake, it seemed much sillier to be worried that the dream represented secret desires inside him. Samaki was a friend, that was all.

He sent a quick response telling Samaki about his grounding and the invitation to dinner, and was excited to get a quick answer back. The fox must have been on the computer checking first thing in the morning. He said he would ask about dinner but he thought it would be okay, and sympathized on the cell phone loss, offering to be online at certain times in the evening so they could set up a chat. Kory thanked God for the small favor of his mother not yet knowing about IM.

Sal came over in the afternoon, but was intercepted by Kory's mother at the door. He heard only her sharp, "I'm sorry, Sal, Kory's grounded and can't have guests." He turned up the music in his room and nodded silently when she came to his room later to tell him about the visit.

Homework occupied him for only part of the day, even when he tried to work on some things due beyond Monday. He wasn't supposed to play games or surf the web when he was grounded, but his mother rarely checked and he felt he was being punished enough to allow himself a little bit of surfing.

It wasn't until that night, lying in bed, that the images of the dream flashed through his head again, unbidden yet unstoppable. _"Let's teach ourselves." A long, black tail whose white tip traced an arc to the ground. White island in a black sea. "You can touch." The feeling in his paw._

His body strained painfully, feeling like it was about to burst. Fists at his sides, he stared at the ceiling, trying to focus on something else. If he touched himself while he was thinking about the fox, that would make his whole dilemma much worse. He tried to remember Jenny, the way her body had felt, but he kept seeing Samaki over and over, and finally he knew if he didn't do something, he would lie awake all night. He slid his paw inside his pajamas and gave himself a quick, panting release. After that, sleep came quickly and was dreamless. But the morning was troubled.

He got ready for church, the dream still on his mind. He knew that there was a whole parcel of sin tied up in having impure thoughts, let alone about other boys, and now it was worse because he'd not only had the thoughts, he'd acted on them. Kind of. Church, he hoped, would help him clear his mind and gain some perspective.

After Mass, his mother habitually stayed to talk with the priest, a tall Dall sheep who liked to be called "Father Joe." He'd come to their church only a couple years ago, single-handedly changing Kory's view of church from a duty to something engaging to be looked forward to. Nick still found the sermons boring, but Kory loved the sheep's animated manner and found himself reflecting on the sermons during the week. It helped that Father Joe never preached the doom and gloom that Kory'd grown up with, but focused instead on self-improvement and helping others.

Kory had, in fact, been somewhat startled to find that his mother preferred Father Green, the older priest, to Father Joe, who was part of what she disparagingly called "the new church." Over the past two years, her complaints had fallen off as she'd spoken to him more often. Now, she and the Jeffersons, a wolf couple who lived a few blocks from them, were talking to him about an upcoming bake sale. Normally, Kory would have followed Nick outside, but now he loitered by the door, hoping to get a moment alone with the priest before leaving. After his mother and Mrs. Jefferson started in on who would bring the bran cakes, he lost his nerve and turned to go.

Father Joe's deep voice stopped him. "Kory?"

He turned and saw the sheep's large, dark eyes and gentle smile. "Yes, Father?"

"Would you help me pick up the hymnals? I could use an extra paw."

Kory shuffled. "Uh..."

"He'd be glad to," his mother said, pushing him towards the priest. "Go on, Kory, we'll be outside when you're done. Thank you, Father Joe."

"God bless, ladies, Mr. Jefferson," the sheep said, bowing his large curved horns gracefully.

The church was empty except for Kory and Father Joe once his mother left, still chattering with the Jeffersons. The sheep waved Kory down one row while he took the next one forward, keeping pace with the young otter as they collected the books. "So how's it going, Kory?"

"Okay." Kory's stomach was churning. One second he wanted to blurt out his problem, the next he didn't want to say anything.

"School all right?" Father Joe gathered books easily into his large arms.

"Yeah."

They reached the end of the pews and circled around to the next two. Father Joe didn't look at Kory, just walked along the row picking up books. "Anything bothering you?"

Kory's throat seemed to close up. He tried to say, "Not really," but it came out as a squeaking sound. He clamped his mouth shut, embarrassed, and ducked his head.

"It seemed like you wanted to talk to me. Are you having doubts about faith?"

"Uh, no." He breathed a little more easily.

"Rats. I was hoping. That would be an easy one." The sheep looked down with a smile that Kory couldn't help answering. "Problems at home? A lot of children with single parents have problems. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Oh, it's not that...I mean, it's okay." He reached the end of the pew and they turned one more time.

"Your mother really wants the best for you." Father Joe examined one of the hymnals before adding it to his stack. "Sometimes what parents think is best isn't always what kids think is best."

Kory nodded. "I know."

"So...is one of your friends doing something you think is wrong, and asked you to join them? Maybe you're wondering whether to turn them in, if it's illegal, but you still want to be a good friend?"

Kory shook his head. "No."

They turned to start the frontmost two rows. "Well," Father Joe said, "I do greatly appreciate your help with this, and I wish I could help you in return. But we're down to the last two rows, and if it's not faith, family, or friends, I'm not sure what's left. I can't imagine you'd come to me with girl trouble." His eyes twinkled a bit as he said that.

"No," Kory said. The comfortable banter helped him make up his mind. "I had...a dream," he said.

"Oh, dreams." Father Joe shook his head. "Nightmare?"

Kory shook his head. "Not really."

They reached the end of the pew and stood silently for a few moments as he struggled to find words. "It was about...doing something...I don't think I want to, but it was..."

"But in the dream, you enjoyed it?" Father Joe said gently. "And now you're wondering if that means you would enjoy it outside the dream?"

Kory stared at the sheep. His mouth had gone very dry.

"It wasn't anything violent, was it? No, I don't think..." and then he paused. "Did you have a dream about another boy?"

Kory felt his legs shake. "No!" he said, hearing the lie echo in the large space of the church.

Father Joe looked right at him. "It's all right to have dreams, Kory," he said. "They're messages, but they don't always mean what they show on the surface. Sometimes they're just God's way of asking us to think about some part of our life. I have some duties to attend to now, but if you want to talk more, come see me next Saturday morning, okay? I'll clear some time for you."

"Okay," Kory whispered, though all he wanted to do was run for the exit.

Father Joe put a hand on his shoulder. "Adolescence is a confusing time, Kory. Don't be afraid to ask for help."

"Okay," Kory said again, "thanks." He was afraid to say any more.

"Thank you for the help with the hymnals." Father Joe smiled and released his shoulder. "Don't worry, Kory. It was just a dream."

Kory nodded and backed into the pew, then turned and walked quickly out the door.

He nodded at his mother when she asked if he wanted tuna fish for lunch, and mumbled, "Nothing," when she asked what he'd talked about with Father Joe. He was remembering all the stories about Catholic priests molesting young boys and suddenly wondered why Father Joe was so eager to set aside time for him. He didn't seem like that sort, but then he supposed that they never did, that boys were easy prey for someone they felt they could trust.

But it didn't matter, because he wasn't gay.

On Monday morning, he found that explaining to Father Joe had been a walk in the park compared to explaining to Sal.

"So you blew me off for another guy," the other otter said after Kory had told him what happened, sitting alone in a corner of the cafeteria eating lunch.

Kory sighed. "I forgot," he said again. "I'm sorry."

"Look, none of the guys are picking sides or anything with you and Jenny. Debbie asked where you were Saturday."

He hadn't felt any great desire to hang out with the old group, but it hadn't occurred to Kory that he might not be able to. The thought sat uncomfortably in him. "Thanks."

"So why didn't you tell me about this guy? Is he, like, a spaz or something?"

"No, he's really cool." Kory told Sal about the movie, about the books they'd talked about, about the conversations over the phone and the ice cream parlor.

"You meet this guy, what, a week ago and suddenly he's your best friend?"

"Yeah, he's my best friend," Kory snapped. "I went back in time and grew up with him."

Sal squinted at him. "Hang on...a movie? Ice cream? That sounds like a date."

"Jesus, no!" Kory covered his mouth and looked around, but nobody was paying attention. Not that anyone in the school cared about taking the Lord's name in vain anymore.

"All right, all right," Sal said, "Just funnin' with ya." He started telling Kory about his weekend and what he and Debbie had done, to which Kory made as little response as he felt he could get away with.

Things with Sal remained cool all week, but the thugs who'd been harassing him about the poem seemed to finally grow tired of it, so Kory felt that things had balanced out. He talked with Samaki over IM and e-mail during the week, and got increasingly nervous about the fox's visit Friday night, for no reason he could determine. If his mom didn't like Samaki, it wouldn't be the end of the world.

Nevertheless, he paced around his room Friday evening as six o'clock drew nearer, and at 6:01 he began hovering in the living room, watching the doorway. When the doorbell finally rang two minutes later, Kory ran the five steps to the door and flung it open.

Mrs. Roden wore a pale blue dress and a bright smile. Samaki stood to her left, grinning in a collared white shirt and khaki slacks. Behind her, holding onto one black paw, was a small vixen who looked to be about four. She peered shyly at Kory from behind her mother's tail.

"Hi, Mrs. Roden. Hi, Samaki," Kory grinned.

"This is Mariatu," Mrs. Roden said. "Come say hi, sweetie."

Kory grinned, ushering them into the foyer. After some coaxing, Mariatu was persuaded to remove the paw from her muzzle and say a soft "hi."

"I shouldn't stay too long," Mrs. Roden said. "I left Ajani and Kasim out in the car."

Kory's mother came out and greeted the brush of foxes, and Kory was glad to see her smile as Samaki shook her paw very politely. He noticed that the black fox had combed his fur and was wearing some sort of flowery scent to conceal his musk.

His mother said, "Welcome, Samaki," but then turned to Mrs. Roden, whom she could look in the eye. "It's so nice to meet you. Kory doesn't tell me anything," she said.

"Oh, at that age they can be very difficult," Mrs. Roden said, ruffling Samaki's headfur. "Is he your only?"

"No, he has a younger brother. I don't know where Nick is."

"Probably in his room." Kory said, halfway to showing Samaki the living room.

"Well, I'm sure he'll be out eventually. So you live over in downtown, Kory tells me."

"That's right." Mrs. Roden settled against the wall. "Samaki, could you go keep an eye on your brothers?"

"Sure, Mom. Kory, wanna meet `em?"

"Yeah." Kory followed the fox outside, listening to his mother lob more questions at Mrs. Roden.

"How you doing?" he asked, aware that he was wearing a big grin.

"Doing good. Glad to see you." The fox's tail brushed his as it wagged.

"Me too." He saw the old Fox at the foot of his driveway and a couple shapes moving around inside. Snarls and yips floated out through the open window.

Samaki trotted the last few steps. "Hey, stinkers, cut it out!" he called as he got near the car.

Two reddish muzzles poked out of the open window. "Where's mom?" the older one said. He looked about Nick's age.

"She's talking to Kory's mom. She told me to make sure you don't rip each other's tails off while she's gone."

The other cub, about eight, said, "Why did Mariatu get to go in and we hadda wait in the car?"

"Because you smell so bad," the older one said, kicking off an exchange of "Shut up!" between the two of them, which Samaki broke up with a grin to Kory.

"Hey, you two. Say hi to Kory."

"Hi." "Hi, Kory."

"Hi," Kory said. "You guys are..."

"Ajani," said the older one.

"I'm Kasim," the younger said, and tilted his head. "Are you gonna be Samaki's boyfriend?"

In the silence that followed this remark, Samaki's ears folded back, and Kasim said, "Ow!" as Ajani elbowed him and said, "Shut up, dipwad!"

"What?" Kasim said.

"No, he's not," Samaki said. "Why don't you both sit down now?"

They grumbled, but did so. The black fox turned to Kory. "Little brothers," he said with a grin that looked just a little forced.

"I know how it is," Kory said. "Wait `til you meet Nick."

"Yeah." Samaki reached back and scratched his ear. He looked into the car, lowering his voice so they couldn't hear. "I love `em, though."

Kory looked in, too, at the four shining eyes looking out at them. "They're cute. Are you the oldest?"

"Now I am. My sister, Kande, she's off at college."

"Where's she going?" Kory itched to ask him about his brother's remark, his heart speeding up a bit, but if Samaki didn't want to talk about it, he wasn't going to bring it up.

"State. Main campus, though, not Hilltown campus."

"That's cool."

"You looked at colleges yet?"

Kory shrugged a bit. "Mom sent me some links."

"I was thinking about-"

The door opened before the fox could finish his sentence. His mother and Mariatu walked out, with Kory's mother behind them. Mrs. Roden's words floated down to them. "Thank you so much, and thank you for having Samaki over."

"Pleasure to meet you," Kory's mother said, remaining at the door as the vixen waved and then walked down the driveway.

"I get to sit in front," Ajani said from inside the car, scrambling through the two front seats and getting halfway before his brother grabbed his tail. Ajani yelped.

Samaki reached in to hold Kasim. "Hey," he said, "Mom said Ajani could sit in front."

"I don't wanna be in back alone with her," Kasim said sulkily.

"She's your sister," Samaki said, and ruffled his ears.

Mrs. Roden reached them and opened the door. "Scoot over, Kasim, and help your sister in." Kasim slid across the seat and didn't otherwise move at first, then grudgingly reached out a paw, which Mariatu took. She kept looking at Kory with wide eyes, and then smiled and waved her other paw and said, "Bye bye."

"Bye," Kory said. "It was really nice to meet you."

She giggled as she climbed into the back seat, where she sat and watched him.

"Bye, Sammy," Mrs. Roden said, and kissed him on the muzzle. "Mrs. Hedley's going to drive you back home. That way I don't have to wait for your father to come home to come pick you up. I know you know the way, Kory, but I wrote down directions for her anyway."

"Okay," Kory said. "Thanks for letting Samaki come to dinner."

The vixen laughed, and her eyes sparkled as she put a paw on Kory's arm. "Oh, bless you, Kory, but I couldn't have kept him away. I think he'd have snuck out and taken the bus if he had to."

"Mom!" Samaki protested.

"Sorry, dear," Mrs. Roden said, but she gave Kory a quick wink and he grinned back widely. "I told your mother we want to have you over for dinner too, maybe next week or the week after."

"Thanks." The wink made Kory feel warm and confident. "I'd love to."

"All right then. Be good!" She waved to them and got in the car.

They waited until she'd rounded the corner and then went inside, where the smell of salmon was already pervading the house.

Nick showed up, dressed but still damp, right as the rest of them were sitting down at the table. When his mother had finished serving the salmon, she started on Samaki, asking him about his school and his family before she'd even gotten all the food on the table.

"And what does your father do?" she asked as soon as they'd said the "Amen," in which Kory saw Samaki join.

"He works at the Ford factory outside town," Samaki said, "and over at the Hilltown campus of the state U. at night."

"Oh? What does he do at the University?" Kory saw his mother's interest perk up a little.

"He's a Facilities Maintenance Technician," Samaki said. "He started there so he could get benefits for my sister to go to State."

"That's great." They ate in silence a little longer. "What's your sister studying?"

"Sociology," Samaki responded promptly.

"Do you know what you want to study?"

"Not yet." He smiled. "I'm interested in lots of things. Journalism maybe."

"Are you going to go to State too?"

"Probably." He gulped down a bite of fish. "This fish is terrific, Mrs. Hedley."

"Thank you." She smiled, but Kory saw her muzzle purse slightly. State was not one of the colleges she'd sent him to look at.

Over the rest of the meal, she asked about his church, his neighborhood, his family, and his school. Kory and Samaki told her how much overlap there was in their subjects, and Samaki said he was taking some advanced work in school, which she praised him for.

He remained poised, polite, and proper throughout the meal, and actually seemed to be enjoying talking to Kory's mother. Nick stayed quiet for the entire meal, except to ask to be excused, and Kory didn't say much more. He felt a strong relief when his mother finally said, "Well, you boys probably don't want to sit here talking to me all night. Go on. I'll clean up, Kory."

"Want me to send Nick in?"

She shook her head. "No, I'll be all right."

"Thanks for dinner, Mrs. Hedley," Samaki said. "It was delicious."

"Thank you, Samaki," she said. "Go on, go play."

"I think it is _so_ cool that you have a pool inside your house," Samaki said as they walked back through the living room. He crouched by the edge and trailed his paw in the water, his tail resting on the living room carpet. "Why would you ever go out to a pool?"

"To get away," Kory said, trying not to remember Samaki crouching in his swimsuit at the side of the municipal pool. "This pool's small, too. Even the municipal is bigger."

"Caspian's pretty big, eh?" Samaki stood up. "I love this bridge, too. It's like a little Japanese garden."

Kory grinned. "Watch your footing. It's always wet."

"A railing would be nice," the fox said.

"Then we couldn't jump up onto the bridge from the water. I used to put my brother in jail under the bridge."

Samaki laughed, stepping safely onto the far side between Kory's and Nick's doors. "I used to make my brothers be chickens and put them in the `coop'."

Kory felt a flutter of worry, opening the door to his room. He watched Samaki's muzzle as the fox stepped in and looked around, watched the violet eyes take in the posters, the computer desk, the bed, and the pool.

"This is awesome," Samaki said. "The pool comes in here, too. So you can just slip in and out through the water. It's like having a secret base!"

"Everyone else can get in, too," Kory pointed out.

Samaki grinned at him, padding from one side of the room to the other, looking at everything, his tail wagging. "I think it's really cool."

Kory saw only the room he'd grown up in. Then he looked again at Samaki's expression and looked around and saw the pool, the posters, the computer, and slowly, he smiled.

Samaki ran his fingers along the posters on the wall. "Cool dragon," he said with a grin, his tail wagging. "ELO... haven't heard them. Good?"

"I thought everyone knew them." Kory turned around to put on ELO's Greatest Hits, and when he turned back, Samaki was at his computer desk, looking at a scrap of paper. "Hey, uh..."

The fox read slowly, "Water spills from the morning / coating the grass to start the day / the night is washed away ..." He looked up. "That's good. You wouldn't let me read any of your poems before."

"Now you know why," Kory took the paper from him. "That's not good, really. Just some stuff I was scribbling."

"It is good." Samaki looked around. "You have anything else?"

Kory weighed the question. "I've got a couple things."

"I'll show you some of the stuff I wrote, if you show me more poems." The black fox leaned against Kory's desk and swished his tail.

"The articles you were talking about for the yearbook?"

Samaki nodded. "And some stuff from the school paper." He flicked an ear. "This is ELO? I like this song. I never knew who it was."

Kory nodded, and sat down at the computer. He stalled, pretending to decide which files to open, really wondering what he should show the fox. He badly wanted to show him _the_ poem, but the fox might misinterpret it. After all, he hadn't even shown it to Jenny.

Of course, he hadn't wanted to.

No, he would start with some earlier ones, about dragons and swimming. Those weren't too bad. He pulled them up and let Samaki sit down.

While the fox leaned forward, eyes scanning the screen, Kory paced behind him. _If he doesn't like them,_ he told himself, _it's okay, a lot of people don't like poetry._ He found himself pressing his paws together, and sat down on his bed, trying not to look anxiously at the fox and failing.

Samaki turned his head and saw Kory on the bed. He smiled, warm eyes setting Kory at ease before he even spoke. "They're good. I like them."

"Really?"

"Yeah! Why would I lie?" The fox chuckled. "You could enter a poetry contest or something. This is as good as anything I've seen in our school."

At the mention of a contest, Kory stiffened. "I, uh...I don't think I'm good enough to win a contest," he said.

"Sure you are," Samaki said. "I'll make it my mission to make you believe in yourself enough to win a poetry contest. I hate seeing talent go to waste."

"No, really, I..."

The fox slid from the chair and was sitting next to Kory on the bed in a moment. "I told you, I think if you're good at something, you shouldn't be embarrassed about it."

The proximity of the fox brought his musky scent back to Kory, full force. The otter tried to ignore it, but couldn't help jumping a little when the fluffy black tail brushed his long brown tail on the bed. His whiskers twitched, the dream returning to his mind until he forced it out. _Don't think about that now, are you insane??_ But he had to keep his paws held firmly in his lap to keep them from wandering over to the soft black fur.

"It's just not..." He struggled for words, forcing his other thoughts down. "You're the first person who's really liked them."

"Your mom doesn't?" Samaki spoke softly.

Talking about his mom helped. "Oh, mom doesn't count. I could write `the cat sat on the fat mat' and she'd think it was Milton. I mean, my friends...you know, maybe if I wrote poems about sports, or boobs..."

The fox laughed, and patted his knee. "You have to write about things you're interested in."

The warm paw on his knee, the scent, the brush of the tail, and the residue of his dream were making Kory's jeans tight. "Strange Magic" was playing on his stereo. "I'm interested in boobs," he blurted out. "Uh...I mean..." He looked at Samaki's expression as the fox withdrew his paw. The vulpine muzzle was smiling, but the smile seemed forced and a little sad.

"Look, Kory," he said. "Uh...I didn't want to bring it up, but I don't want you thinking and wondering about what Kasim said..."

"It's okay," Kory said. His heart was pounding.

Samaki was quiet for a bit. "I'm not interested in boobs," he said. Only then did Kory register the stiffness in his posture and the way his paws were clenched together tightly. He realized how hard it must be for the fox to tell him that, harder than it had been for Kory to show the poems to him. He reached out and rested a paw on the black-furred wrist closest to him. He could feel the fox's quick pulse beneath the warm fur.

"I was wondering," he said. "It's okay. I don't care."

Samaki's shoulders sagged, his smile brightened. "Really?" And then he chuckled. "You mean you can tell?"

Kory grinned. "You were kinda hitting on me at the pool."

The fox's large ears flicked and violet eyes smiled. "I tried to be subtle. I figured if you were interested, you'd pick up on it, and if not, you wouldn't notice. Most straight guys couldn't even imagine another guy hitting on them."

"I had to ask," Kory admitted. "I wasn't sure."

Samaki laughed. "You asked someone? Who? Someone online?"

"No," and Kory now found himself embarrassed to admit that he'd asked Sal.

"Your mom?"

"Oh, no." Kory looked at the bedroom door and his smile faltered. "She'd freak."

"So who?" Samaki poked his side. "Come on."

"Hey!" Kory giggled. "My friend Sal."

"Sal?"

"He is an expert in flirting. I kind of pretended you were me and I was a girl.he said I was getting a lot better at flirting."

"I guess that's a compliment." The fox swished his tail against Kory's again, and the otter felt that shiver. His tail was sensitive, that was all. Jenny used to like to stroke it, too.

"If you want to take a compliment from a guy who goes to college bars to get laid."

"I'll take whatever I can get." Samaki smiled. "Hey. I appreciate you being cool. I know it could be awkward and all. But really, I won't hit on you any more."

"Okay." For some reason, Kory's heart was still racing. His paw still rested on the fox's wrist, warm black fur under his pads. He was remembering the fox taking his paw down that dark street.

"Too bad," he thought he heard Samaki murmur, and the fox certainly had a coy smile on his muzzle as if he'd said something like that. But Kory couldn't be sure, and the next thing Samaki said was about _Foundation_ , which he'd picked up and started to read. "It's interesting," he said, "This whole theory about predicting large group behavior."

Kory's heart slowly returned to a normal pace. "Cool to think about."

"What I want to know," Samaki said, "is what if you want to predict what just one person is gonna do? Or two?"

"Individuals are unpredictable," Kory said. "That was part of his point."

"Are they? Or is this Seldon guy just too full of himself to bother with them?" The violet eyes sparkled.

Kory laughed. "I'll have to ask the group about that."

"Your online one?"

"Yeah. Hey, did you want to join?"

"Maybe. What kind of stuff do you talk about?"

Kory scooted to the computer to show him some of the old messages, kicking off another round of conversation about _Foundation_ and about the friends in the online group. Before they knew it, Kory's mother was knocking on the door to take Samaki home.

Kory scooted into the back seat with Samaki rather than ride shotgun, their tails bunched up on the seat between them. They started off talking about books again, but his mother intervened at the first pause in the conversation. She took up where she'd left off at dinner, and the half hour dragged on, Kory staring at the fox's white tailtip on the seat between them, forcing himself not to reach out and touch it. Twice he looked at Samaki and caught the fox looking back with a bright white grin as he answered some inane question or another.

At the Rodens' house, Kory got out to say goodbye. As they shook paws, Samaki said, "My mom was serious about you coming for dinner. Let's set up a time."

"Okay. I'll talk to my mom and work it out. Maybe next weekend."

"Sure. Hey, Kory.thanks again. For being cool." Samaki squeezed his paw.

"No problem," Kory said. "I don't want to find someone else to talk to about _Foundation_."

Samaki laughed and waved, walking back to his house. Kory watched his tail wagging behind him as his mother pulled away. He felt warm and good, a feeling that lasted exactly halfway home.

His mother was talking about how nice Samaki seemed, even though she hoped he wouldn't visit often because the smell lingered. That made Kory think of the scent as the fox had sat on his bed and told him he was gay. He started to wonder if they could remain friends, with one of them potentially interested in the other, even though Samaki had said he wouldn't push anything, and he didn't even know if the fox _was_ interested in him. The lurking feeling that his body was interested, even if he thought he wasn't, made him shift uncomfortably in his seat. He stared morosely out the window. Samaki _is_ gay, he thought. I acted like an idiot, when I could have asked him...what? Not that I wanted to try something, he thought, though he knew he was only saying that to reassure himself. His body knew what he wanted more than he would admit to himself. Whenever Samaki was around, it told him so, loud and clear.

If this happened every time he thought about Samaki, he might have to stop seeing the fox, and he enjoyed the fox's company more than he enjoyed being with any of his other friends. To cut himself off from that friendship felt wrong. But the alternative.he didn't, he couldn't.

He barely noticed when his mother handed him his cell phone. "I'm tired," he said, but instead of going to bed, he sat at his desk surfing the web, looking for anything about high school kids attracted to the same sex. The only postings that made it through the parental filter were both stories of boys in high school talking about how they'd realized that they were gay. One was a wolf; one was a muskrat. Both of them said the same things. _I liked looking at boys. Girls didn't do it for me. I finally had to admit to myself that I was gay._

Frustrated, he switched off the computer. That's not me, he said to himself, pacing around the room. Finally, he undressed and dove into the water, letting its silence surround him. His mother rarely swam anymore, and Nick was already in bed, or else had snuck out as he often did, so he had the indoor pool to himself. He swam round and round in circles, thinking about nothing, rushing through the warmth and looking around at the uniform blue all around him.

After a ten minute swim, he really was too tired to continue. He climbed out and lay down on his mat on the floor, and fell asleep while he was drying off.

Everyone else had brought their swimsuit to the pool, but he was naked. If he got in the water, he thought, they wouldn't notice. And nobody seemed to, until it was time to do the couples swimming. He looked around and grabbed Jenny's wrist, but when he looked into her eyes, they were violet, and her muzzle was black and slender. "Hey," someone said, "are you gay or what?" No, no, he tried to say, but he was holding Samaki's wrist and they made him get out of the pool. But when he got to the locker room, Samaki was Father Joe, looking sternly at him. The sheep said, "you know better than that, Kory. It's only okay if you come see me." He made Kory lie down. "No, no," Kory moaned, shifting back and forth on his mat. The pool, the locker room, he could smell them, and he just had to get up.

Dazed, he opened his eyes, expecting to see the big sheep's horns. Instead he saw his ELO poster and felt his own mat under his damp fur. He got to his paws and knees and crawled into bed, where he pulled the covers around himself, shivering. His room was dark; his mother must have looked in on him and turned out the light. He closed his eyes, willing himself to get back to sleep, but as soon as he did he saw the locker room again. His eyes shot open. He tried tracing the patterns of the stars on his ceiling, but they brought him no rest.

Jenny had given him a small stuffed dragon to hold at night because they couldn't stay overnight together. He found it under the bed, where he'd kicked it weeks ago, but it gave him no comfort. Samaki's scent overwhelmed even the faint traces of Jenny's that Kory wasn't sure he wasn't imagining. Kory shoved the dragon away and pulled his pillow over his muzzle. It wasn't fair. He wasn't equal to this kind of temptation.

He didn't sleep. All night he stared at the ceiling, wondering if he would be fighting his body and its urges his whole life. If not, if he gave in. _would that be so bad?_ whispered a voice into his head, as the serpent must have whispered to Eve, he thought. He remembered reading stories about people who'd given in to temptation, how it was the first step on a slippery slope that led them to ruin. I like girls, he said firmly back. He thought about the great times he'd had with Jenny when his mom was away, rolling around on the bed, and the voice came back and whispered, _they weren't that great, were they really?_

They were, he told himself firmly, and besides, I was never attracted to other guys. I never wanted to sleep with Sal.

Oh no? the voice mocked him. What about that time at camp when you got him to go skinny-dipping?

That wasn't.

Or the time you slept over at his place and managed to work it so you were in the same bed?

I was nine!

Or the time.

Stop!

He pressed his paws to his eyes, feeling the dampness leak out through the pressure in his head. Was it.could it be? Could it be that he wasn't upset about Jenny dumping him, not because he didn't love her, but because he didn't like girls? That the signs had been there his whole life that there had been this thing inside him, and he'd never known? He wished he'd never met the fox, never gone to the municipal pool.

He would find out how to fight this. The dream was just a dream. As the pearly light of morning crept through his windows, he decided to go see Father Joe.

The church was very different on Saturday morning. Empty of the Sunday crowds, it felt larger and more imposing, yet at the same time more personal because he was the only one there. Father Joe wasn't anywhere about, so Kory took a moment to look around.

He'd never been in the church by himself. For years, it was just the place where he was dragged every Sunday. In the last two years, he'd begun to see what his mother saw in it, a repository of strength for the troubled, guidance for wanderers, love for all. He rarely acknowledged it, because none of his friends talked about church except to lament the loss of a Sunday morning or to cut short a Saturday night. Now, standing alone in the light of the stained glass and beatific muzzles, he felt their love focused on him. He looked up to the rafters far above and took a moment to fortify himself. They will help me, he thought. This is my trial.

Towards the front of the church, he found a sign that showed the way to Father Joe's offices. They were actually in a small building beside the church, he discovered when he followed the signs and found himself outside. He knocked on the door and heard the sheep's cheery, "Come in."

Father Joe smiled and motioned for him to sit down. Warily, Kory did, taking the small stool closest to the modest desk, reading Father Joe's name on the simple nameplate. The crucifix on the wall to his left depicted a Dall sheep Jesus, but the portrait opposite was a popular rendition of Jesus Lion, with the medieval-style halo and a tear visible on the tawny cheek ruff.

"How are you, Kory?" The priest moderated his booming voice to the small quarters of the office.

His idea that Father Joe might want to take advantage of him seemed ridiculous now, in this placid and proper setting. "I'm okay," he said automatically, and then said, "well, not really." Fatigue pulled his shoulders down; he slumped in the chair, confused about what to say next.

"Want to tell me about your dream?"

"No." He couldn't talk about that with anyone, not yet. He had to start somewhere, though. "I want your help. I want to fight it."

The sheep's large yellow horns bobbed sympathetically. "Why don't you tell me what's been going on?"

"I met this guy.this fox.I want to stay friends with him, but I keep thinking.see, he told me he's.you know." He hissed in frustration, one webbed paw squeezing the chair arm. "He's, you know, he doesn't like girls."

"He's gay," Father Joe said.

Kory met his eyes, seeing no judgment there, nothing but understanding. "Yeah. So anyway, he, uh, I really like talking with him, but not."

"Did he make a pass at you?"

"No. Well, sort of, the first day we met, but not like touching or anything."

"Are you worried that he will?"

"No." He looked at the sheep, begging him to figure it out so he wouldn't have to say the words.

Father Joe inclined his head slightly. "Are you worried he might `turn you gay'?"

Kory squirmed in the chair, looking away from Father Joe, but that turned him toward the crucifix, which was no better. "No. I mean, I keep thinking.but it's not his fault, I know people are just born that way."

"Do you think you might be gay?"

There it was. He looked in the other direction, at the Lion on the wall. "I still like girls," he said defiantly.

"Kory," Father Joe said gently. "This is a confusing time of life for you, and a confusing issue to be dealing with."

"I don't want to deal with it," he snapped. "I want to fight it. I know what the Church says."

The sheep's horns bobbed again. "I know what the Church's official position is. I also know how I want to minister to my flock." He reached into his desk and pushed a small card across the desk. "I happen to hold out hope that the Church will moderate its views. In the meantime, these people can help you out. It's a Catholic group. I know David." He tapped the card. "He used to be a priest. He felt he could better serve by leaving the Church, though it was a hard decision for him. He's a good wolf."

Kory stared at the card. He could read the words Dignity/USA on it, but nothing else from his position on the chair. He made no move to pick it up. "You're supposed to tell me I'm going to hell if I give in."

"Yes, I suppose, but if you knew that, you wouldn't have needed to come see me." The sheep looked shrewdly at him. "You came here to ask my help, and it may not be what you wanted to hear, but it's the best I can do. In this day and age, it's not a crime to be gay. The best thing you can do is find out whether the Lord made you that way. Popular culture gives us all sorts of ideas that might be right for us or they might not. It might just be that in meeting a gay person for the first time, you're curious about what it's like. Or it could be that for the first time, you're opening yourself to something that's been hidden in you all along. What's important is that you find out what God's plan for you is. Remember the Gospel of John?" He grinned when Kory shook his head. "Upon seeing a blind man, the disciples asked Jesus whether the man was blind because of his sins, or the sins of his parents, and Jesus told them it was neither, that he was blind `that the works of God may be made manifest in him.' Jesus was saying that his affliction was not a punishment but a part of God's plan."

"But doesn't that mean that it's something I should fight? I mean, don't blind people want to see?"

"They do, but sight may not be granted to them. In that case, of course, it was; Jesus healed the man and restored his sight. But I don't think homosexuality is an affliction." Kory winced at the word. "Yes, God does set trials for us. But I believe God loves us, and the trials he sets for us are designed to make us better people. I have seen the ordeals some people go through trying to fight their own nature. I do not believe that those trials are set by God."

"Then why would He do this to me?" Kory hated to hear himself whine, usually.

"It is not for us to know God's plan," Father Joe said. "It is for us to live the best we can. Please take the card, Kory. They can help you more than I will be able to."

Kory reached out and took the card in his fingers. It had a name and a web URL on it. He slipped it into a pocket and stood up. "Thanks, I guess," he said. He'd been hoping for more, something definite, something supportive, rather than just vague `we can't know what God wants for us.'

"One more thing, Kory. I just want you to hear again: God loves us. Maybe this is His way of showing you love."

Unable to think of a response other than to repeat his thanks, Kory did so, and walked out.

Sal had invited him out to celebrate the end of his grounding, but he put him off `til dinner. He wanted to be away from people he knew, and in the water. Samaki worked Saturday afternoons, so the municipal pool would be safe. Rather than swimming and racing through the lanes, he floated on his back with his paws behind his head and closed his eyes. Here, it was peaceful, and with his ears under the water, he couldn't hear the shrieking of the guppies running around. The water helped settle his thoughts, helped him organize and sort through them. He kicked lazily off of one wall, paddled gently to the other, turned around without using his arms, and kicked off again. For over an hour he drifted back and forth, tail waving lazily in the water below him.

He couldn't believe that Father Joe hadn't offered to help him fight. It was wrong, he knew it was wrong, and it was wrong of him to want it.

Wasn't it?

The black fox's image floated before his eyelids. He hadn't pressured Kory at all, except with his eyes, and his sleek black form, and that tempting patch of white fur.and that long, fluffy tail that begged to be stroked and held. It didn't feel wrong; it was the fact that he wanted it and knew it was forbidden.but why was it forbidden, exactly?

Samaki would, presumably, not mind. And Kory had finally admitted that he wanted to try. So what was he afraid of? God? Maybe, at first, but after talking to Father Joe, he wasn't so sure. His friends? They didn't have to know. Nick? Nick wouldn't care. His mother? Yeah, his mother would freak. If she knew. But since turning about eleven, had he let that stop him from doing anything?

He opened his eyes and stared up at the blue and white tiled ceiling, fifteen feet above his head. Could it be that simple? He could just try it once. He could try it, and then the dreams and the images would go away. And if they didn't.he would deal with it then.

The tiles of the ceiling seemed to come into sharp focus. Had he just decided to sleep with another guy? It had happened so smoothly and quickly that he hadn't even been aware of the decision; he'd just turned around from the other side to find himself looking back across the line. What surprised him, too, was how the tension had drained from his body, as though he were one with the water. He dropped his arms to his sides, felt the eddies ruffle his fur as his arms slid downward. Sleep with Samaki. Well, not necessarily that; at least let himself go a little further than just touching paws. He rolled the idea around in his mind, getting used to it, finding that the shivers of wrongness were fading. It didn't have to be anything sexual, even, come to that. Just hugging, maybe. He'd give the fox a hug.

_Yeah, right._ He snorted at himself. At least, he felt, it was important to draw the line between experimenting and actually being gay. He just wanted to experiment. Nothing wrong with that.

Having made the decision, though, he found that it was unexpectedly difficult to work out how to carry it out. Because of his clumsy protestation of heterosexuality, he felt embarrassed enough; on top of that, how was he to initiate anything in the first place? He tried to recall how things had started with Jenny, and was annoyed to find gaps in his memory. They'd gone to the movies, something they'd done many nights before, but that night, they'd kissed, and groped. After that it was natural that the next time his mom was away, Jenny would come over and they would go further.

What had happened at that dinner? Or just after? He couldn't remember. The time had just been right. Or maybe she'd made the first move. He tried to picture scenarios in his head, but each one seemed more awkward and bumbling than the last. When he realized that his thoughts were getting to the point where his swimsuit wasn't hiding them very well, he got out of the water and walked slowly home.

There was a message from Samaki, of course. It had arrived right after Kory'd left to see Father Joe, and he hadn't checked before heading to the pool. He smiled, reading it. The fox didn't ask if things were still okay in so many words; he talked about what a fun night he'd had and how his mom would be happy to have Kory over the following Friday night if he still wanted to come. That last part made Kory write back right away. _Of course I still want to come, silly,_ he said. _I'm pretty sure as long as I'm not grounded I can come._

The problem wasn't that he wouldn't be allowed to come over, the problem was that he wouldn't be allowed to stay over. It'd be easier if they had time, if they didn't have to separate by ten. Then he wouldn't be rushed into doing more than he wanted to. He thought about that while doing homework, and then chatted with Samaki for a couple hours after dinner about the second _Foundation_ book, the one in which the Mule shows up and messes up all of Seldon's predictions. Only once did the previous night's topic come up, when Kory assured Samaki that everything was cool, even though they wouldn't be double-dating anytime soon. He said it jokingly, but Samaki responded seriously that if they both had dates, he wouldn't mind going out with Kory and his date, and Kory said that of course that would be cool, he just meant they wouldn't both be dating females (or males). Then he felt flushed, because Samaki seemed a little hurt, and also because that wasn't precisely what Kory had meant, so he changed the subject.

Sunday he went to a movie with Sal, the Schwarzenotter one for real this time. It was nice to sit with his friend and watch the film and push his other concerns temporarily away. They walked out of the movie laughing about it. After the movie, while swimming at Sal's house, only twice did Kory glance at his friend and think, wow, nice body. How many times had he thought that without realizing what it meant? The thought made him uncomfortable, so he pushed it away.

They talked about school, and about Debbie, but when Sal asked about Samaki, Kory steered the conversation away. That didn't stop him thinking about the fox, though, especially when Samaki called him on his cell phone in the middle of the conversation. He took the call without thinking about it, then realized where he was and told the fox he'd call him back later. The next time the phone rang, he just turned the ringer off, a little annoyed that Samaki was calling again.

He arrived home to find his mother and a cold dinner in the kitchen. "Kory, are you aiming to get grounded again?"

"No!" He checked the time. "Sorry, I'm a little late, but."

"I tried to call and you didn't answer your phone." She had her arms folded, which was always a bad sign. If she had her paws on her hips, you were okay.

"I didn't hear it," he protested, and then remembered the call he'd shut off. Uh-oh.

"What did I tell you about the phone?"

He sighed. "Always make sure I can hear the ring. Always pick up if you call. I'm sorry, Mom. I really didn't hear it. We were in a loud place and I didn't think."

She put her paws on her hips. "All right, Kory. Cold dinner will be your punishment. Then get right to your room and finish up your homework."

It was already done, but he didn't tell her that. He'd just gotten an idea. "Hey, Mom," he said as he walked into the kitchen, "Samaki's mom invited me to dinner this Friday. May I go?"

She considered that while he sat down at the table. "I suppose so. I'll call her and find out when I should drop you off."

"Thanks, Mom." He took a bite of the cold mackerel and peas. "This is really good."

She sighed. "Oh, let me heat that up for you." She whisked his plate away and tossed it in the microwave. "Don't chew your claws," she said as he put a paw to his muzzle to cover his grin.

After dinner, Kory went to his room and called Samaki. He told him that he'd be coming to dinner and that their mothers would be talking, and they went on chatting for over an hour. Eventually, the fox had to go get his homework done; working most of the weekend didn't leave him much time. Kory stripped to his boxers, feeling glad and guilty that he didn't have to go to work. He swam a couple laps before surfacing in his brother's room.

"Hey, Nick."

Nick looked up from his television. Kory didn't want a TV in his room, but Nick had pestered their mother for nearly two years until she finally broke down and gave him one. He had on some extreme sports show where a snow leopard was racing down a hill on what looked like a toothpick. "Hey, Kory," he said, turning the sound down and raising his eyebrows in mild surprise. "What's up?"

Kory floated on his back in the water, looking up at Nick's posters. He had sports figures on his walls, and Kory knew that in one drawer of his dresser was the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated: Otters from a year ago. He turned his head to look at Nick. "Remember those pictures Sal gave me that I wouldn't let you see?"

"Yeah?" Cautiously more interested, Nick slid to the floor and lay on the towel that he'd spread out there, facing Kory. The towel was wrinkled and stained, and hadn't been washed in a while. Kory was always surprised his mother allowed that, and that Nick could stand it.

"How'd you like to see `em?"

"Yeah! I.what do you want me to do?"

"You got plans for this Friday night?"

"Uh-uh."

Kory spun lazily in the water. "I'll give you ten bucks to go see a movie and stay out past curfew."

"You're bribing me to be grounded?" Nick's tail curled up.

"Kind of."

"Make it twenty." Nick grinned as Kory stared at him. "I gotta buy popcorn. And a drink."

"Fifteen."

"Aw, Kory, that'll only buy a ticket and popcorn."

Kory sighed. "All right, all right. Twenty."

"Cool." Nick lifted himself up onto his elbows. "Why? What'cha got goin' on?"

"Oh, nothin'," Kory said. "I just want Mom to be worried about you and not me."

"Why? What are you gonna be doing?" Nick squinted. "Am I gonna get in more trouble after Mom finds out what you're doing?"

"No," Kory said. "I'm going over to a friend's for dinner and I.I don't want Mom to pick me up at eleven. I just wanna hang out longer. She won't leave if you're not home. You know how she worries."

"Yeah. Well.okay. Who you going to have dinner with?"

Kory hesitated. "Samaki."

"Oh, yeah. He seemed pretty cool. For a fox." Nick shrugged. "Okay, deal." He extended a paw, and Kory shook it. "You guys gonna play online or something?"

"Yeah." Kory let go and slid back into the water. _Or something._

Kory coasted through the week, talking to Samaki in the evenings and Sal during the week. His poem had finally come down from the hallway display, the ripples it caused fading from the kids' memories. Life was returning to normal, except that it was anything but.

Twenty dollars was more to Nick than it was to Kory, but it was still difficult to hand over the crisp bill he'd gotten out of the ATM. His plan had seemed perfect when it was all conceptual, but the execution filled him with doubts. He was no longer confident that everything would go as he predicted, nor that he would be able to do anything with the extra time he hoped to buy himself. The thoughts were as hard to get rid of as the twenty, but he managed both before Friday night swept him up.

Samaki greeted him at the door, thick black tail wagging. "C'mon in," he said. "You already know the family, right?" Kory stepped in ahead of his mother and saw three russet muzzles upturned and looking at him in a row.

"Of course." He turned to his mother. "You remember Mariatu, and that's.Ajani and Kasim." All three little red tails wagged. Mariatu moved from the shelter of Ajani to stand behind her bigger black-furred brother, closer to the two otters.

"Hello," Kory's mother waved, smiling. Kory noticed with some annoyance that her nose was wrinkled. The strong scent of fox didn't bother him at all. He turned away to smile at the cubs as his mother addressed Samaki. "Is your mother in the kitchen?"

He nodded, and she said, "I'll just have a couple words with her. Um."

"It's actually downstairs, Mrs. Hedley" he said. "Through the dining room there and down the stairs."

"Downstairs?" Her brow furrowed faintly, but she walked into the dining room. Kory heard her clump down the stairs a moment later.

"I'll have to give you the tour," Samaki said to Kory, smiling, just before a flood of noise broke over them.

"I wanna give him the tour!"

"Come see our room!"

Even Mariatu joined in, squeaking "Hi, Kory! Hi, Kory!" over and over.

"Hey," Samaki said, grinning, "settle down, everyone. I'm giving the tour, but you can all come along." He swept them into the living room and then beckoned Kory in. The cubs clambered all over the three well-worn sofas, Mariatu and Ajani bouncing on one while Kasim ran from one to the other.

"Look what I can do!" he said, and jumped from the arm of one almost all the way across the other one.

"Wow," Kory said. "That's great!" He couldn't keep down his smile at the boundless energy of all three cubs.

"Pff," Ajani said, tail twitching. "I can do that too, but I don't wanna right now." Kory suspected that he did want to, but was trying to mind his manners.

Samaki laughed. "Kasim's going to be a long jumper, he says."

"What do you want to be, Ajani?" Kory asked.

"An astronaut!" the cub said. "I'm gonna go into space and discover a new planet. Didja hear about the one they found around Gliese 876?"

"That was cool!" Kory said. "I used to be into astronomy too."

"He's got stars on the ceiling of his room," Samaki said, and Kory turned to look at the fox.

"I didn't know you'd noticed," he murmured.

"Let's go upstairs!" Kasim bounded from the couch to the floor, ran over to Kory, then to Samaki, and then out to the stairs. Ajani rolled his eyes and Samaki chuckled.

"Well, there's not much more to see." He waved towards the side table. "There's the computer."

It was an older desktop, not as nice as Kory's. The chair wasn't even comfortable; at least it didn't look it. He pictured Samaki sitting there, then looked around at the room. He met the fox's questioning glance. "Oh," he said, "just nice to know where you are when I'm typing online to you."

Ajani stood up and took Mariatu's paw, helping her down off the couch. "We going upstairs?"

"Yeah," Samaki said. As the cubs scampered out, he said to Kory, "I know what you mean. I can picture you in your room, now, too."

The otter swung his tail back and forth. "What's upstairs?"

"Just our rooms. C'mon."

Up the creaky staircase, where Kory followed Samaki's light step with a wincingly heavy (to him) tread, they came to a small hallway with three doors off it and a trap door in the ceiling. The worn hardwood floor felt smooth and cool under Kory's bare feet. On the walls, framed finger paintings showed off the talents of all five kits, apparently. He saw the one with the green signature "Samaki" on it and studied it.

"Oh, don't look at that," the fox said, trying to pull Kory away.

"No, it's cute. Is that the Six Million Dollar Fox?"

"Yeah." The fox rubbed his ears.

Kory looked at the violet eyes and grinned. "The Bionic Fox?"

"I wanted to be bionic too."

"I never even saw any of those."

"They were on channel 48 when I was growing up. I used to run home from school and watch them." His ears folded back over his shy smile. Kory felt a strange urge to hug him right there.

"Kory!" Kasim ran out into the hall clutching a pawful of cards. "Look! I got Renamon in all five phases."

"Digimon," Samaki murmured to the otter. His ears had flipped back upright.

Kory nodded. "Nick was into that for a little while. Cool." He took the brightly colored cards from Kasim and examined each one before handing them back. "Are those hard to get?"

"Yeah." The cub nodded. "I do chores so Dad will buy me the cards. Wait, you gotta see the Giga Claws, I just got them!" He raced back into the room excitedly. Kory and Samaki, smiling, followed.

After the strong scent of fox, the first thing Kory noticed about the room was how full it was. Little bigger than Kory's room, every inch was packed with beds and desks, hardly an inch of wall space left for decoration. To the right, Ajani was sitting on the top bunk of a pair of bunk beds, straightening up a stack of comics on the small board attached to the side of his bed that served as a night table. Kasim was rummaging through the bottom drawer of the tall, thin dresser wedged between the beds and the wall. Clothing lay scattered on the floor; Kory thought most or all belonged to the two younger cubs, from the size. Opposite the bunk beds was an unstable looking structure that Kory could only describe as bunk desks: one desk stacked on top of another, the top desk attached to the wall, and the chair hung from the ceiling. An old pillow had been strapped to the front of the chair, its purpose immediately evident: Ajani jumped casually from the bed to the chair, his momentum sending the chair into the desk where the pillow muffled the impact. He put two comics away in a drawer and held one down to Kory. "You ever read Red Lightning? He's in the League of Canids."

Kory shook his head, leafing through the comic. "I collected the X-Men for a while, but haven't been into comics lately."

"Oh, the League of Canids is cool. They used to be the League of Crimefighting Canids until a couple years ago, then they changed their name. There's this one episode where."

"Here's the Giga-Claws!" Kasim was thrusting a card up at him.

"Hey, hey," Samaki said. "He's my guest, okay? Settle down."

"I want to see the comics," Kory said, adding, "and the Giga-Claws," because Kasim's ears had fallen at Samaki's remark. He threaded his way through the clothes on the floor to the back of the room, where a wardrobe filled the space under a homemade but sturdy loft, leaving just enough room for the window. Another window opened high in the wall above, letting more light into the room than Kory would have expected. He looked from the sunset's crimson-orange brilliance to Samaki. "Pretty."

Red light gleamed in the black fur as the fox nodded. "I get the nice view," he said. "Come on up, it's big enough for two."

Kory froze for a moment, but Samaki was already on his way up the ladder. What did that mean? Kory thought frantically, then looked back at the cubs. Samaki wouldn't do anything with his brothers in the room. Kasim was rummaging through his dresser drawer again, and Ajani was reading a comic at his desk, kicking back and forth on the dangling chair. Kory chided himself for being twitchy as he followed the swinging black tail up the ladder.

The loft held more than just the bed. Around the futon mattress, the wood was padded with carpet remnants. Kory sat there, careful of the ceiling, while Samaki sat on his bed. A small alcove with a slanted roof, looking like it fit the eaves of the house, extended beyond the other side of the futon, piled with papers and a small alarm clock.

"Where does Mariatu sleep?" Kory had caught sight of the little vixen cub standing in the doorway, clutching a small stuffed rabbit and chewing on its head. He waved to her and she wagged her tail and waved back.

"In our parents' room. She used to sleep with them and Kasim slept on the cot there, until Kande left. Then Kasim moved in here."

"Kory!" He heard his mother downstairs.

"Oh, Mom's leaving." He clambered quickly down the ladder, with Samaki following. Kasim and Mariatu ran down the stairs with them, while Ajani kept reading his book.

His mother was looking at the pictures in the entry hallway. Happily, her nose wasn't wrinkling any more. She'd obviously enjoyed her talk with Mrs. Roden, or she wouldn't have stayed so long. Kory felt buoyed by that. "I'm going home. I'll be back at eleven sharp to pick you up, okay?"

He nodded. "Thanks, Mom. See you then."

She pecked him on the cheek and left, moments before a bell clanged somewhere in the house. "Oh, dinner," Samaki said. "You can sit down. I'm gonna run down and help Mom."

He showed Kory the dining room, with its large wooden table in the center. The table was beautiful oak, finely crafted and bare. Four of the chairs around it sported flowery carvings in the same grain as the table, but the other two were distinctive: a captain's chair with arms, made of a dark red wood whose grain was nearly invisible, and a small, light chair, higher than the others. Against the right wall, an oak sideboard with drawers held a vase of small white flowers and two silver candlesticks shaped like graceful foxes, a male and female nude with arms stretched overhead. The smells of cooking fish, some vegetables, and a spicy sauce wafted through the dining room from the far end, making Kory's stomach rumble.

Samaki pulled out the dark captain's chair. "This is Dad's, but he won't be home for dinner. You can sit there."

"I'll help too," Kory said.

"You don't have to," Samaki said.

"I want to." Kory felt a little flutter at the bright smile he got from the fox. That white-on-black crescent, the small upward curve of his lips, and the matching sparkle in his eyes that told Kory he was happy made Kory happy too.

Never got that with Sal, did you?

Oh, shut up, he told his inner voice. Just leave me alone for this evening, okay?

He followed Samaki down a curved set of stairs, toward the source of the mouth-watering smells. "Does your Dad make it home for many dinners?"

"Thursday nights, Saturday and Sunday," Samaki said. "Saturday is Family Night. I don't get to see him much. I work Saturdays, and Sunday mornings. He works two jobs Monday through Friday." He paused. "I wanted to work evenings too, but they wouldn't let me. Said I need to be able to get my homework done."

Kory pushed aside his recurring guilt over not having to work as he followed the black fox into the kitchen.

Heat and the aromas of food washed over him. On the island in the middle of the kitchen, two dishes full of vegetables and potatoes steamed, the spicy sauce aroma emanating from one of them. Mrs. Roden was just taking a large whitefish out of the oven, in between two large old refrigerators. A huge pantry as homemade as the loft in Samaki's room spanned the opposite wall. At the far end, another door stood slightly ajar, nothing but darkness visible beyond it. Mrs. Roden set the fish on the small kitchen island and looked up brightly at them.

"Samaki, get Ajani to help set the table. Kory, dear, just have a seat."

"No, I'll help Samaki," he said, and when Mrs. Roden turned around, he saw a little of where Samaki had gotten his smile from.

"You're a dear. Go on then," she said. "Then Samaki, come help me bring the food up."

Samaki and Kory set the table with silverware from the sideboard, and then Samaki asked Kory to get the cubs from upstairs while he helped bring the food up. The job was an easy one; alerted by the bell, Kasim and Mariatu were on their way down the stairs when Kory started up. He found Ajani still swinging from the ceiling chair in the bedroom.

"Dinner's ready, Ajani," he said.

"Kay." The cub tossed the comic book on his desk and slid off the chair, landing on the floor perfectly in a crouch. He grinned at Kory as he stood.

"Very nice!" Kory applauded, and let the cub scamper downstairs ahead of him, a satisfied smile on his muzzle and a proud arch to his tail.

Samaki and Mrs. Roden were putting the food out as they all drew up chairs around the table. "I don't know if you like halibut, Kory, but Samaki said you mostly eat fish."

"Anything's fine," he said. "Halibut's great. Everything smells terrific."

The mixed vegetables were cooked broccoli and green beans, with a light red pepper sauce. Kory wasn't used to spiced food, but he ate as much as he could, until his tongue felt like it was on fire even when he wasn't eating the veggies. "Is it too hot for you, Kory?" Mrs. Roden asked anxiously.

"No, no," he said, "it's fine." He found that if he interspersed bites of the vegetables with bites of the other food, that cut the heat down. The potatoes were wonderful, creamy and cheesy, and the fish was firm, well-seasoned, and just as delicious. The red pepper added a nice tang to the whole meal, and while it was a little strong, he was glad to have tried it.

That was nearly all he managed to say. The kids and their mother all talked at once, all over each other, and Kory didn't even try to get a word in edgewise, just listened to the raucous chaos with a smile. It wasn't until the meal was mostly over that he realized that they hadn't even said Grace, he was so busy listening and looking at the animated vulpines around the table. It was amusing to see Samaki's black fur in the middle of all the red foxes. Fox coats were odd things, he mused, but pretty. All the red foxes had black ears and paws with white underbellies; Samaki had only the black and white, as though the other foxes had had their ears and paws just dipped in ink, and he'd been dunked.

Mouth still tingling from the veggies, he thanked Mrs. Roden for the meal. She wouldn't let him help clean up, instead sending him and Samaki down to the rec room and recruiting Kasim and Ajani to help clear the table.

Samaki took Kory through the door on the opposite side of the kitchen, into a cool, musty, vulpine-scented darkness. He flicked on the light to reveal a worn couch and old gaming table, with an old console television set in one corner. "Feel like playing a game?" Samaki said. "We got checkers, Foxopoly, Careers, and Scrabble. I think it has all the tiles. Kande and I used to play Scrabble and Foxopoly all the time." He looked down at the boxes. "Foxopoly is missing some houses, but we could still play it. Or we could play checkers. Maybe you'd let me play red? The others never do."

Kory looked around. "Any video games?"

Samaki grinned, pulling out an old PS1 from beside the TV and spreading out a pad on the floor. "You wanna try Pounce Pounce Revolution?"

The game looked familiar, but the larger pad had more squares on it, with several strange symbols. "I'll watch you play first," he said. "It looks like fun."

"It is. You should see Kasim play it. He's better than I am." The fox fired up the PS1 and Kory watched an animated fox dressed in shiny purple clothes with gold trim appear on the screen and say, "Pounce Pounce Revolution!" While the instructions came up, Samaki took his shirt off and rubbed his paws together.

"Let's POUNCE!" the animated fox said. On screen, a mockup of the pad appeared as music started playing, a dance number with a driving beat. A small animated mouse danced out onto the pad on screen; Samaki leapt, coming down with both paws on the pad on the floor, and the mouse squeaked and vanished. Another one came out, then another and another, and soon the black fox was jumping all over the pad, spinning to change direction and pouncing on mouse after mouse. As he did so, the animated fox shouted out encouragement, like "Got `im!" and "Nice pouncin'!"

The song ended, and the animated fox came back out, dancing a little himself, and said, "Amaaaaaaazin'!" Kory clapped.

Samaki turned, panting a bit, and bowed, tail arching behind him. "That was an easy level," he said. "I'll put on a harder one."

The otter grinned and settled back into the couch, watching the fox tap some buttons. "I like this song," he said over his shoulder, and when it came on, Kory couldn't resist tapping his feet to the infectious beat. The mice were dancing and spinning this time, even leaping in imitation of Samaki himself, and were harder to pin down. The shouts of encouragement now came interspersed with disappointed interjections, like, "Don't let `em get away!" and "That mouse is playin' you!"

Samaki jumped and worked much harder at this level. Even when his thick fur was dry, Kory could see his muscles bunching and releasing. Reflexively, he shied away from thinking about them, then remembered his resolve and deliberately watched, enjoying Samaki's elegant grace and athleticism.

When the level ended, the animated fox didn't dance, just told Samaki to keep tryin'. Kory clapped again, but Samaki waved him off. "Nah, I'm no good. There's another level where you just hear them under the pad. That's insane. I can't react fast enough. Kasim can't even do the hard ones on that mode."

"Over the music, you mean?"

Samaki nodded. "Yeah, music's goin' and you hear scratchings under the buttons." He panted. "You wanna give it a try?"

"Is there a setting for `blind and deaf '?"

Samaki laughed. "I'll put it on training mode."

"Well...okay." Kory didn't want to look clumsy in front of Samaki, but he didn't want to reject the fox's offer, either. He walked up to the pad where the fox was selecting a training mode, and said, "I'm gonna suck at this." Should he take his shirt off? He wasn't in as good shape as Samaki. He hesitated, then left it on.

"Nah, don't worry about it," Samaki said. "Just have fun." He showed Kory the controls and padded back to the couch to collapse.

The animated fox showed Kory the basic moves and let Kory practice them, then gave him a choice of training songs. Kory picked one, and the fox clapped his paws and said, "Let's pounce!"

The first mouse danced out slowly, and as he got under one of the buttons, the fox said, "Now, POUNCE!" Kory got both paws on the pad, and the mouse squeaked and disappeared. Another came out, and he slipped, but caught it on the second pad. By the end of the song, he felt more confident, and when he was done, the animated fox on screen and black fox on the couch clapped together. Kory saw from the stats that he'd gotten 27 of 30 mice.

"Not bad for my first time," he said, delighted that he hadn't embarrassed himself.

"Pretty good," Samaki said. "Do another?"

"Nah. I'm gonna quit while I'm ahead." Kory chuckled. "It's fun, though."

"Yeah." The black fox eyed the screen. "Mind if I do one more?"

"Go ahead." Kory enjoyed watching Samaki jump around, tail flowing behind him, springing fluidly back and forth around the pad. His decision colored everything in a new light. It was okay to stare at Samaki's arms and wonder how the fluffy chest would feel. It felt dangerous in an exciting way, wrong only in that they would be in trouble if they got caught. His fur tingled as his gaze traveled downward to the fox's tail, the firm lines of his rear and legs underneath it. Maybe he wasn't quite ready for that yet. He kept his eyes up, on Samaki's back and arms, while the fox finished the song.

"Sorry," Samaki said as he slipped his shirt back on. "That's the only video game we have."

"It's okay," Kory said. "We don't have to play anything."

"Great." The black fox wagged his tail and grinned. "Let me put on some music. Some quieter music."

Kory sat on the couch, curling his tail around beside his leg. He was starting to get nervous again, because he knew Samaki would sit down in a minute and the kitchen was right there, the door still open to it. He didn't feel private enough to be comfortable, but he felt like he wanted to talk to Samaki, at least try to reverse some of the image he'd presented the previous weekend. That would be hard with his mother still cleaning up upstairs. She could probably hear them as well as he could hear her. Better, with her larger ears.

Samaki plopped down beside him as the room filled with quiet classical music. "One of my dad's," he said. "Just wanted something kinda quiet." His tail came to rest between the two of them, resting on top of the otter's tail. Kory twitched his tail against the soft fur, his heart beating a little faster.

"That's nice," he said. "I know nothing about classical."

"It's Bach." Samaki shrugged and grinned. "That's about all the more I know."

"It's nice," Kory repeated. "So do you usually come down here to talk on the phone?"

"Nah. Reception sucks. I sit in the bedroom, up on my loft."

"It's pretty up there. I like your house a lot." He laughed. "You know what I just realized?"

Samaki grinned. "What?"

"Your family reminds me of the Weasleys."

Samaki laughed. "Yeah, I've heard that before. Kasim likes to pretend he's Ron. Ajani likes Fred and George, but I won't play them with him."

Kory dropped his paw in what he hoped was a casual manner and let it rest on Samaki's tail just below the white tip. It twitched below him but didn't move otherwise. He sighed inwardly at the soft fur tickling up against his webbing. "How was that test you had yesterday?"

For a while, they talked school, and then the cubs came in and climbed all over the couch and Mariatu fell asleep in Samaki's lap. Kory removed his paw from Samaki's tail, then, and fortunately it wasn't much longer until Mrs. Roden came in to collect the cubs for bed.

Putting his paw on the fox's tail was easier the second time he did it, and again Samaki didn't make any indication that he'd noticed. The conversation stayed away from relationships, but they talked about movies, books, and school, and though Kory had been tensely thinking about his mother's impending call when Mrs. Roden came in to collect the cubs, he was so lost in the conversation that he was surprised when Mrs. Roden came back, her ears down but not flat, a phone in her paws.

"Kory? Your mother's on the phone. She says your brother isn't back yet and she can't come pick you up."

He got up and walked over, feeling tense again. "If you need to stay here," Mrs. Roden said, "we can work it out."

He nodded and said, "Thanks," picking up the phone. "Hi, Mom."

"Oh, Kory, Nicky's not answering his phone and he was supposed to be back. I'm sorry, I don't want to leave in case he's hurt."

"Mom, I'm sure he's okay." Guilt flushed his neck. "He's got a key."

"But why isn't he answering his phone? Nicky always answers his phone."

"Maybe he's not getting good reception. I'm sure he's okay."

"God willing, Kory," she said, "but I just don't feel comfortable leaving. Listen, Mrs. Roden said you can stay there overnight. Will that be all right, sweetie? I'm sorry."

That was what he'd wanted. His plan had worked to perfection, and now that it had, he hesitated about accepting it. With Samaki sharing his room, it would be hard for them to get any time alone, and the worry in his mother's tone gnawed at him. "I guess."

"If you don't want to, then I'll call you a cab and you can take that home. I don't want you taking a bus at this hour."

"No, no, that's okay. I'll stay here, and I'll see you in the morning?"

"Yes. I'll be there at nine. Can you put Cynthia back on? Mrs. Roden, I mean."

"Sure, Mom. And don't worry. I'm sure Nick's fine."

"God bless, Kory."

He handed the phone to the waiting vixen. "She wants to talk to you again."

"Okay." Mrs. Roden smiled encouragingly. "I'm sure he's okay, Kory. He probably just turned off the phone or something."

Kory nodded, and went back to the couch. "Samaki," Mrs. Roden called as she took the phone. "Can you figure out somewhere for Kory to sleep? He'll be staying with us tonight."

Samaki's ears were straight up as Kory sat beside him. "Sure," he said. As his mother went back into the kitchen, he grinned widely at the otter, violet eyes sparkling. "Change of plans?"

"My brother's late getting home and won't answer his phone." Kory sagged back against the couch, still feeling a little guilty. "Mom was really upset."

"I'm sure he's fine." Samaki's smile faded, but not completely. He put an arm around Kory's shoulder.

Kory leaned back automatically. "Do you have an extra bed somewhere? I don't wanna kick Kasim or Ajani out of bed."

"How about this?" Samaki gestured with his free arm to the couch. "I've fallen asleep down here a couple times. It's not bad."

"Yeah, that'd be fine," Kory said. "Too bad there's not another couch." His heart raced.

"Oh, I'll bring some blankets down and sleep on the floor. Actually, if you wanna help, I can drag the futon mattress down, but I don't need to." The fox grinned at him. "I wouldn't leave you down here by yourself."

"Cool." Kory finally realized that the paw on his shoulder was a response to his paw on the fox's tail, upping the ante. He started to get nervous again, which confused him because he hadn't been nervous when the fox put a paw on his shoulder, only when he started thinking about it.

Maybe you shouldn't do so much thinking.

Hey, he thought sharply. What did I say?

Sorry.

"Well," he said, getting up. "Let's go get that mattress."

They had no trouble getting the mattress down both flights of stairs, though maneuvering it through the kitchen was a little tricky. By the time they got it down, Mrs. Roden was bustling in with bedsheets for both the couch and futon. "Now don't stay up too late," she said.

"Just `til Dad gets home?" Samaki said. "I want Kory to meet him."

"Sure. I'll send him down." She kissed him on the cheek. "If I'm too sleepy to come down too, you both have a good night." She gave Kory a hug too.

He was surprised at first, but it was easy to hug back and smile. "Thanks, Mrs. Roden."

They made the beds, and then Samaki picked up something else from the pile his mother had brought. "Heh. She brought you a spare pair of my pajamas," the fox said. "If you want."

He didn't really want to sleep in his clothes. "Oh, I.sure." As soon as the words were out, he was worried about putting on something of Samaki's. Well, it was too late, he'd said it already.

"I'm gonna go upstairs to brush and put on my pajamas. Back in a bit."

Kory watched the fox's tail wag as he disappeared into the kitchen. He took his time changing, half-hoping that Samaki would come back and catch him half-undressed. But the fox, for whatever reason, was not back quickly enough, and Kory lost his nerve, pulling the pajama bottoms on and then stripping his shirt off. He remained shirtless, trying to fluff his fur up so his lack of muscles wouldn't be as noticeable. Besides, he wasn't sure Samaki's pajama top would fit him. The pants were snug, and long; he rolled up the hems so he wouldn't be stepping all over them.

Samaki came in with two cookies in his paws. "Shh," he said. "We're not supposed to take these, but Mom's upstairs." He gave Kory a sly grin and one of the cookies.

It was chocolate chip, and delicious. "Didn't you just brush your teeth?" Kory asked.

"Mmmyeah, but these were too good to pass up." Samaki's grin was speckled with chocolate.

"Mm. No kidding." He licked the cookie crumbs from his muzzle. Samaki lay back on his elbows, also shirtless and looking pretty comfortable.well, looking pretty, too, his jet-black fur framing the white patch on his chest, a curl of white poking up from the waistband of his pajamas. Kory felt himself stirring in response, and that made him confused again. How was he supposed to try anything without climbing down into the fox's bed? He wasn't ready for that, not yet.

So he stayed on the couch and talked, trying not to wonder whether the fox was wearing anything under his pajama bottoms. Around 11:30, they heard footsteps on the stairs, and a deep vulpine voice said, "Samaki?"

"Dad!" The fox jumped to his feet and padded to the doorway as a tall fox emerged from the kitchen. He wore blue overalls, a Dragons baseball hat, and a tired smile. Like most of the rest of his family, his fur was russet red, though Kory thought he saw darker fur on the back of Mr. Roden's neck when the fox turned to greet his son. The otter got to his feet too, now wishing he'd kept his shirt on, but Mr. Roden didn't seem to care.

He and Samaki hugged, and Samaki said, "This is Kory, my friend from across town."

"The one from the pool, right? Nice to meet you," Mr. Roden said, holding out a paw.

Kory shook his paw, trying to match the firmness of his grip. "Good to meet you, too."

Though he looked tired, Samaki's father stayed to talk for a few more minutes before saying good-night. He turned off the light, leaving them alone in the dark.

No room in the house is quite as dark as a dark basement. Kory felt the darkness surrounding him like a soft black fox, but with no white patches to lighten the inky gloom. After a few seconds, he looked over and saw the faintest gleam of white a few feet away from him. Samaki's chest.

The fox rustled under his covers. Kory closed his eyes, willing himself to have the courage to reach down. He got his paw partway there, then drew it back. The fox's scent was strong. He was just a few feet away, wearing only pajamas. The white patch he could see made him think of the other one he couldn't, and his body took that memory and ran with it, until he had to press his muzzle into the couch, and now there was no question of reaching out to the fox, because Samaki would be able to tell just from his trembling what he was thinking of.

And yet.it wasn't like the nights he'd lain awake at home. The presence of the fox made him confused, but also made him happy in a way he couldn't quite figure out. He only was aware of that when the thought came that if he'd told his mother the truth, he would be at home in his bed and not lying here staring into the darkness and thinking about the white patch at the center of it. His reaction to that thought was strong and somewhat surprising: he rejected it as soon as he thought of it. He hated the confusion, but not the situation. Like the red pepper on the vegetables, it was new, different, and a little painful, but he was not sorry to experience it.

After a time, he became aware of Samaki's soft, even breathing. The fox was asleep, and he'd missed his chance. That didn't make the tension in his body-in one specific part of his body-go away, but it did remove the confusion somewhat. He fell asleep on his stomach, tail draped over the side of the couch.

He woke slowly to a touch on his paw. Gradually, he realized that he was still on his stomach, lying on the edge of the sofa with his arm hanging down onto the floor, paw pads up. On top of his paw, another warm paw rested. He cracked an eye open.

The darkness was less absolute than it had been the previous night, the open door to the kitchen a ghostly grey. Samaki lay immobile at the edge of his futon, a well of darkness in the room, neither his chest patch nor his tail tip visible. A curl of black snaked its way towards the couch, ending with his paw resting on Kory's. Kory watched him, not believing that the fox was actually asleep, but he was breathing slowly and Kory could see no eyeshine.

The otter stayed where he was, watching the fox's shape, enjoying the contact. The moment stretched on in a bubble in time, insulated by the stillness and darkness of the early morning. Time outside might be moving normally, but in the rec room, the warmth between their paws held them apart from the rest of the world.

Samaki stirred. The paw touching Kory's moved minutely, and then he saw the gleam of an eye looking into his. Eventually, time began to move again. "Kory?" Samaki whispered.

"Yeah," he whispered back.

"Morning."

The otter smiled. "Good morning," he said.

"What time is it?"

"Don't know. My cell phone's down there."

The paw lifted from his. He saw the light of a phone reflected in the fox's eyes. "Seven-thirty."

Kory nodded, leaving his paw where it was. "My mom'll be here at nine," he said. "Maybe we should move your futon back upstairs."

Samaki put his paw back onto the otter's, left it motionless. "We have a little time," he said. "Mom'll probably start breakfast around eight." They continued whispering, their voices as soft as the touch between their paws.

"Okay." Kory was happy to let the moment go on. This was nice, this was safe, and he didn't mind when the fox's paw rubbed his gently.

"You sleep okay?"

"Yeah. I had a funny dream." He paused and then decided it was harmless, he might as well tell it. "I dreamed I was a fox, in a pool full of other foxes. I didn't see you anywhere. I was just swimming around, but when I got out of the water, my fur and tail were still dry. I ordered some kind of candy bar at the snack stand, but they were out. So I went with some other foxes to play checkers."

"Were you a black fox or red fox? Or white fox?"

"I don't remember. I was just a fox."

"You'd make a good fox, I think."

Kory wondered whether Samaki could see his smile. Probably. Foxes had terrific night vision. "I'm too heavy," he said.

"I mean, you have the right spirit."

"I certainly don't have the right fur," Kory said jokingly, but he was thrilled at the compliment, or what he thought was a compliment.

"Try taking care of it in the morning," Samaki said. "I'll have to brush it before your mom gets here. Does yours get all matted and going every which way?"

"Not really," Kory said. "Too short and thick."

The fox's fingers rubbed the back of his paw. "I like that, though. Easier to take care of."

Kory nodded, remaining quiet. He was aware of the minutes ticking by; now that the small contact he'd hoped for had been made, selfishly he didn't want it to end. We held paws before, he told himself, realizing that two friends rubbing paws was not exactly normal.

Though I did put my paw on his tail. And he put his arm around me. Kind of. But that was all casual. He noticed with some surprise that the rubbing of the fox's fingers was very nice indeed, making his tail twitch and provoking other responses in him that he didn't know could be elicited just from paws. Amazed at himself, he tried to hold his tail still, with little success. Jenny had never gotten this kind of reaction from him, just from brushing him like that.

"I guess we should get ready," Samaki said finally, his paw resting still on Kory's again. Kory gave it a squeeze, stronger than he'd meant to at first, and Samaki squeezed back tightly.

"All right," Kory said.

The light seemed much brighter and harsher than it had been the previous night. He blinked and shielded his eyes from it.

"Good," Samaki said, his grin just visible through Kory's protective fingers. "Don't look at me."

"You look fine." Kory squinted at the black figure, opening his eyes wider. He could see where some of the white fur was matted and disheveled. As he grew used to the light, he saw soft grey lines of irregular patterns in the black fur, too. "You look great," he said sincerely.

" _You_ ," Samaki said, "look fine. _I_ look like I just woke up."

"You did," Kory pointed out.

"I know," Samaki said. "But I don't like looking this way." He grinned and put his shirt back on, as Kory did the same. "Help me get the mattress up? It's harder than coming down."

"Sure," Kory said, and as they were hefting the mattress, he heard noise from the kitchen and realized that this might be their last private moment. "I had a really good time," he said. "We should do this again."

The fox's smile reached all the way up to his eyes. "Me too," he said. "And you're welcome anytime. Or.I'd love to have a swim in your pool."

Kory grinned. "Sure! I'll talk to my mom. Maybe we could go to a late movie and you could stay over. There are some neat small artsy theaters close to me."

"Cool. I'll check the listings." Samaki's tail wagged. "Now, ready? Heave!"

They dragged the mattress up the two flights of stairs, with only one minor incident when Samaki's grip on the mattress slipped and Kory had to skip down a step quickly. When they'd heaved the mattress up onto the loft, Samaki said, "Bathroom's free. I'm going to duck in and straighten up."

Ajani and Kasim were already in the living room watching cartoons, so Kory climbed up to Samaki's loft, watching the light spread over the city outside the window. It was a nice view, and a nice room, he thought, an ingenious use of little space to allow three boys to live here together. Compared to Sal, who lived in a huge two-story house with two rec rooms, five bedrooms, and a hot pool and water slide in addition to the main indoor pool, Kory had always thought of his family as poor, or at least not well-off. Samaki's family would be much better suited to Sal's house, and yet they had less than even Kory and his family did, and they thrived.

He glanced at the pile of Samaki's papers, and levered himself over to peer at the one on top. It was an article by Samaki about a gay teen support center in downtown Hilltown whose funding was being reviewed, written from the perspective of one of the teens it had helped.

"Hey," the fox called some minutes later. Kory hadn't even heard him come in. He put the paper down guiltily, but Samaki was smiling. He'd not only brushed his fur; he'd changed into new clothes, or at least a new shirt, and Kory noticed then that the wardrobe was open. He hadn't heard that, either.

"Sorry," he said. "It was right on top. And you did read my poem."

"It's cool," Samaki said. "The article about the Rainbow Center?"

"Yeah. That's really neat. You went there?"

The fox nodded. "I'll tell you the whole story sometime. Not enough time now."

"I'd like to hear more," Kory said as he clambered down. "Do you still go there?"

"In summer." Samaki walked downstairs with Kory. "Helping other kids, doing projects."

"You'll be good at it." He grinned at the noise from the living room. "Cartoons for a while?"

"Yeah. Breakfast first?"

"Oh, sure."

Down in the kitchen, the smell of eggs and sausage filled the air. Mrs. Roden bustled from stove to sink and fridge, and back, and greeted Samaki with a kiss and Kory with a hug. "I've got scrambled eggs, chicken sausage, some potatoes, and orange juice. Anything else you'd like, Kory?"

"No, that sounds amazing." Kory patted his rumbling stomach.

They helped themselves to heaping servings of fluffy eggs, crispy sausage patties, and browned potatoes with onions. After the black fox had sprinkled Tabasco sauce on his eggs and potatoes and Kory had declined it, they thanked Mrs. Roden and trotted back upstairs.

"We can eat in the living room," Samaki said with his muzzle full. "The good cartoons are about to start. I don't get the Digimon type ones."

Kasim cut him off. "This is Yu-Gi-Oh," he said, and he and Ajani exchanged superior looks.

"Whatever," Samaki plopped down next to his brother and ruffled between his ears. "I can't get into those. But they still run Looney Tunes at 8:30 and I make them watch before I head off to work."

"I love those," Kory said, and for half an hour the four of them watched Bugs Bunny and Friends together, the otter and black fox occasionally sneaking looks at each other and smiling. Kory tacked one more interest up on the list of things they shared, and that thought made his tail thump against the back of the couch. When Ajani, next to him, turned around, he covered by poking the cub in the side with his tail's tip, and this delighted the cubs so much that Kasim pushed over to get his share of pokes, and they ended up in a giggling heap in the middle of the couch when Samaki joined in and started tickling their paws.

At the end of the half hour show, Mrs. Roden walked in from the dining room. "Sammy, you should get going," she said. "We'll take care of Kory `til his mother gets here."

The clock in the hall read 8:59. "She'll be here in a minute," Kory said confidently. Indeed, just as Samaki opened the door, his mother's car was pulling up to the curb.

And just like that, the visit was over. He gave Samaki a handshake and a friendly wave as the fox walked off to work, while his mother introduced herself to Mr. Roden and gave Mrs. Roden some recipe she'd apparently promised to bring. Kory was glad to see that. He wanted his mom and Mrs. Roden to be friends, because that would make it easier for him to see Samaki. And then he was in the front seat of his mom's car, they were pulling away from the house, and he was back in his own world.

He told his mom that it had been no problem for him to stay there, told her about the house, and asked if he could invite Samaki over again. His mother, of course, agreed, since they had let him stay over. She said that she liked the Rodens, but "I'm sure you'll be glad to get in the shower."

That dampened his spirits. He didn't respond, and he did not head right for the shower when he got home. He walked to Nick's room.

Nick held the little CompactFlash card gingerly in his paw. "You want me to copy it and give it back?"

"Nah," Kory said, "you can keep it."

"Really?" Nick's blue eyes widened. A moment later, they narrowed, as he searched for the catch, and then relaxed as he tilted his head curiously. "Hey, Kory... uh..."

"Yeah?"

"You already make a copy?" That obviously hadn't been the first question he was going to ask.

Kory turned around and sat on Nick's bed. For a minute, he fought with himself about what to say. To talk to Nick would make it more real, harder to deny. That was a big leap. He thought about the high dive at Caspian, standing on the edge looking down, knowing it would be fine once he jumped. It would be a relief to talk to someone other than Father Joe, and Nick was probably the best one to talk to. "Go ahead and say what you were going to."

"Oh." Nick fidgeted. "You think you're...you know...I mean, do you not like girls any more?"

"Any more?" Kory forced a grin.

"I don't know. You went out with Jenny for like a year, but you weren't ever really happy." He held up the card. "And giving this away...man, I'll _never_ get rid of this. Then you wanted to stay overnight with Samaki."

He looked back at his brother's curious, astute eyes. "I don't know. Maybe."

Nick patted his arm. "Cause it's cool, you know. I mean, I won't tell Mom."

"She'd freak out."

Nick laughed shortly. "Yeah, no kidding."

"But you? I mean, if."

Nick considered only for a moment before nodding. "Sure. You're my brother, right? So, whatever."

"Thanks, Nick." He wrapped an arm around the younger otter's shoulder.

"It's no big deal, really. There's a kid in my class, he's, uh..." He looked quickly at Kory. "A couple kids give him a hard time sometimes, but they only do it if nobody's around `cause if other people see it they get mad."

"Like teachers, you mean?"

"Nah, just other kids. It's pretty stupid, picking on someone for that, don't you think? Jerry Tucker caught Stewy Marchand making a comment one time and told him to shut up or he'd paste him one. Robby's pretty cool. Everyone likes him, except Stewy and his buddy Frank."

Kory sat back on the bed. "He's thirteen and he knows?"

Nick shrugged. "I know I like girls." He kissed the CF card. "Don't worry about it. Except with, like, Mom and some of her church friends, nobody really cares."

"I think people care. I care."

"You know what I mean."

"I guess so. I'm not sure you're right." But Father Joe had said essentially the same.

Nick got up and put the card down over by his computer. "Well, I dunno. All I know is it doesn't matter to me. Samaki seems pretty cool. And you seem to like him a lot."

"Yeah." Kory had just been thinking the same thing. "I do."

He swam back to his room, doing extra laps under the water, reflecting how odd it was that his brother was so close and so far. They had a great bond, and he knew Nick would always be on his side, just as he would be on Nick's. Then there was the question of being gay, where somehow Nick had acquired an even perspective that Kory could only characterize as mature, more mature than even he had. Was it possible for four years to mark such a drastic shift in attitudes? Or had Kory kept himself insulated from the world around him, taking his cues only from their mother?

He sent an e-mail to Samaki, telling him again what a good time he'd had and including the next four weeks of Friday night movies at the theater near him. He hadn't expressed a preference for any one of the four, but the movie scheduled three weeks away fell on Memorial Day weekend and it was an old science fiction classic, _Forbidden Planet_ , one Kory had seen a long time ago, with his father. He felt sure that Samaki would zero in on that one, and sure enough, when the fox popped onto IM that evening, that was the movie he picked.

The month of May passed in a blur. He met Samaki every Sunday, once at the pool and twice just at Starbucks. Sal dragged Kory into helping with prom preparations, once Kory assured him that he wasn't upset to be missing it. He was somewhat amazed at the amount of money Sal was willing to spend on the prom, until he finally figured out that it was not to impress Debbie-who, after all, was already sleeping with him-but to impress his classmates.

Nick took his grounding well, so well that their mother was almost suspicious about the amount of time he was willing to spend in his room. Kory suspected that his digital camera, the one he'd loaned Nick that read CF cards, had a lot to do with it. He didn't need the camera; he no longer felt ashamed to call up his memories of the black fox as he lay in bed at night. That didn't mean he was gay. After all, he wasn't doing anything regular teenage boys didn't do, no matter what images he held in his mind when he did them.

Memorial Day fell at the onset of finals, two weeks before the prom. Normally, Kory would have spent every waking moment studying for exams, but even before he left to meet Samaki at the bus that night, he was too keyed up to focus on his books. His mother had made up an old air mattress with sheets and set it up on his floor, and every time Kory looked at it and thought of the fox lying there, he couldn't even sit still.

At quarter to seven, he threw on a short-sleeved shirt and waved to his mother, then ran out into the hot spring evening. He spent seven minutes at the bus stop pacing, until the bus pulled up and the black fox stepped down.

He was wearing a white t-shirt that was a little too tight for him, and shorts that showed off his thighs and bare calves. As he stepped to the pavement, he slung his old backpack over his shoulder and clasped Kory's paw. "Hot one tonight."

"Yeah," Kory agreed, and bounced excitedly on the balls of his feet. "The theater has A/C, though. And it'll be cooler when we get out."

"It's already cooler here," Samaki said, falling into step beside him. "It was 95 at my house when I left."

"Wow." Kory shook his head. "With that black fur, I don't know how you manage."

"I wear lots of white and I stay indoors." Samaki brushed ruefully at the long fur on his arm. "Actually, it's not so bad once it gets short, long as I keep my tail moving. That fur doesn't molt. Stays long all year round."

"So I see." Kory swung his own tail over to brush the fox's playfully as they walked. Samaki brushed back, and they played tail-tag all the way to the theater.

Samaki had never seen _Forbidden Planet_ , a fifties adventure in which a spaceship of adventuring wolves discover a planet where an old rabbit scientist and his daughter live, apparently alone. At night, the wolves are attacked by a huge monster crackling with energy, and they must discover its secret. Kory had seen it years ago, and was happy to find that Samaki loved it as much as he had.

Some parts of the movie were genuinely creepy, and as their arms were adjacent on the armrest, Kory found his paw entwined in Samaki's about halfway through the movie. That seemed comfortable enough, and they happily squeezed each other's paws during the creepy parts.

"Great movie," Samaki said, panting as they stepped back out into the barely-cool evening. "Wow."

"I'd forgotten a lot of it," Kory said. "Whew! Glad you liked it."

Samaki looked up at the marquee as if fixing the name in his mind. "I see why it's a classic, all right. When did you see it before?"

"Seven years ago. With my father."

"Oh." They walked on for a few steps, and then Samaki said, "How about Leslie Wolfson? A serious role, too."

"He was good, too!"

"No kidding." Samaki's tail brushed Kory's and Kory swung his tail back. They chatted all the way home about the movie, and when they got back, Kory's mom made them banana splits and they told her about the movie all over again.

"I'm going to bed," she said finally. "Samaki, I made up the air mattress in Kory's room. Do you need anything else?"

"No, thank you, Mrs. Hedley," Samaki said. "Oh, just a towel?"

"Kory knows where the spares are. You're going to swim?"

They both nodded. "Samaki wanted to try the pool," Kory said. "Just a short swim."

She glanced at the clock. "Wait another twenty minutes, all right? Good night, boys. God bless." She disappeared down the hallway.

"Your mom's really nice," Samaki said.

"I guess." Kory scratched his ears. "She didn't have to tell us to wait twenty minutes. I know that."

"She just cares about you."

" _Your_ mom is cool."

Samaki laughed. "You should have seen her when I broke the living room window. Oh, I thought my ears were gonna fall off."

"How did you break the living room window?"

The fox looked sheepish. "Just horsing around. Kande was outside and I wanted to get her attention. I poked the glass a little too hard."

Kory snorted. "You need to make that a better story. Like you were practicing karate too close to the window and put your fist through it."

The fox stroked his muzzle. "How about. I threw my little brother through it?"

"Now you're talking." Kory grinned. His paw found its way to rest on the fox's tail again, almost without his guiding it.

Twenty minutes later, they walked around to Kory's bedroom. Samaki changed in the bathroom while Kory changed into his swimsuit in the bedroom. He didn't usually wear his suit in the home pool, but with Samaki there he felt he should. He wasn't sure he was quite ready to swim around with the fox in just underwear, and definitely not anything less.

When Samaki came back in his swimsuit, his ears were half down and he wore a silly grin. "This feels funny. I never swam in someone's house before."

Kory felt funny, too, but it wasn't from being in his swimsuit. He took in the black fox's body, the slender runner's muscles, the fluffy tail, the white patch on the chest and the other one spilling out of his swimsuit. All familiar, but here in the privacy of his room rather than the public pool, his thoughts felt more intimate. "Let's, ah, go ahead," he said, and slid into the water.

Kory led Samaki outside first, where they bobbed side by side and looked out at the dark yard. "Cool," the fox breathed into the warm night. "Don't you worry about people getting in through this?"

Kory shook his head. "The yard's pretty secure, and that doorway there?" He waved down into the water behind them. "There's a gate that slides down. I'll close it before we go to sleep."

"Nice." Samaki looked up at the moon and the stars. "Pretty night."

"Yeah," Kory said.

"Somewhere up there is a Forbidden Planet," Samaki murmured.

"Hm?"

"You ever think that? Somewhere out there is everything we've dreamed about and invented."

"Yeah," Kory said. "In an infinite universe."

"Everything exists somewhere." He paused. "Like the search for the Second Foundation, that just led back to themselves."

"But there really was a Second Foundation out there," Kory said. Their eyes met for a moment, bridged by moonlight. Then Kory said, "Come on. I'll show you the basement. Take a deep breath."

They surfaced in a dark chamber. Kory turned on the light to reveal piles of sealed boxes and bags. He swallowed to pop his ears and saw the fox's flick as he did the same.

Samaki looked around. "There's no other way out?"

"Nope. Just through the water."

"How does it not flood?"

Kory waved a paw through the air. "Pressurized. We have it checked once a year."

"Wow. You have such a cool house. What do you use this room for?"

"Sal and I used to play secret base with it when we were X-Force. Those boxes were our fort, and we'd retreat here to plan our attacks on the enemy."

Samaki grinned. "Who was the enemy?"

"Jeff Barnes, across the street and down one." Kory chuckled. "Dunno what happened to him. He went off to some military academy or prep school or something."

"Nice." Samaki rested on the edge of the floor, his body still in the water, and looked around. "Kinda chilly down here," he said after a moment, and sank back into the water.

Kory nodded. "We don't heat it. Back to my room?"

"Sure." But when Kory swam back, the fox split off from him, headed for Nick's room, and Kory had to grab his foot to stop him. When they surfaced under the bridge leading to his mother's room, Samaki shook the water from his head and looked sheepish.

"Sorry," he said before Kory could say anything. "I was curious."

"That's my brother's room." Kory pointed. "That's my mom's room."

Samaki nodded. "I like these bridges, too. Perfect for hiding stuff under."

"Your house must be full of little hiding places." Kory remembered all the levels and stairs and angles.

"Oh, definitely. Got to be able to hide things from the others, and Mom and Dad." Samaki grinned.

Kory wanted to ask what kinds of things, but he knew what was in certain files on his computer, and hidden in a small file behind some boxes in his closet. He suspected he knew what sorts of things Samaki had, too, and grinned a conspiratorial grin. "So. ready to dry off yet?"

"Yeah." Samaki shook his head, spraying Kory with water.

"Oh, don't even think about trying that." But the fox had already plunged back under the water. Kory followed him, catching him easily and yanking on his tail, then spinning around as the fox tried to turn and intercept him, grabbing the fox's sides from behind, and whirling him around and around before letting him go. Samaki flailed in the water, and it occurred to Kory that, unused to the water, the fox might not be used to the kind of playing he and his brother did. He backed off and watched, but Samaki righted himself quickly and surfaced in Kory's room.

"Whew," he said with a grin and another shake. "Remind me never to fight with you underwater!"

"You okay?" Kory hung next to him in the water.

"Yeah, just a bit dizzy. Can you teach me that move? That was cool."

Kory laughed. "I dunno if it's a move or what. Just something me and my brother do when playing around in the water."

"I see." Samaki flicked his ears. "I guess I'll have to come over here to play more often, then."

Kory wasn't sure what to say to that, but his heart jumped when he heard it. "Uh.we don't really have dryers, but we have nice towels.I think you can get mostly dry."

Samaki laughed. "Should've known otters wouldn't have dryers. That's okay." He got out of the pool and stood there dripping, blue bathing suit clinging tightly to his body. Kory didn't remember it being so revealing. He wasn't as shy about looking as he'd been at the pool, but he still didn't want to stare. He did get a good look, though, and it was enough to keep him hanging in the water for a bit longer.

"Can I shake in the bathroom?" the fox asked.

"Sure." Kory grinned and pointed. "Out there and to the right. The towels are in the cupboard just outside the bathroom."

"Will I have any trouble finding it?" Samaki looked down at him.

Kory shifted in the water, not quite ready to get out. "Nah, it's right there."

"Okay." The fox padded out with his tail arched, giving Kory a nice view that he could appreciate, since the fox couldn't see him. Fluttery echoes of the worry he used to feel danced around, but he told himself there was nothing wrong with looking. The black-furred legs with the white patch right up where they met were as nice as any girl's he'd eyed.

He got out of the pool himself and lay on the drying mat, stomach down. He closed his eyes and felt the mat slowly leach the water from his fur. After a few minutes of thinking about the fox and trying to make himself relax, he turned his thoughts away and tried to just blank out his mind until he felt comfortable enough to turn over.

Samaki came back several minutes later, still in his swimsuit, fur sticking up every which way. He was trying to smooth it down with his paws, and when Kory grinned up at him, he said, "Don't laugh. I tried to use one of your brushes, but it kept catching in my fur and I couldn't get it to work."

"You didn't use my mom's brush, did you?"

"Heck no. I can tell yours by the scent. I tried to clean it out, but there's probably still some fox fur in there."

"No problem," Kory said. He looked up and watched the fox watching him, and liked imagining that Samaki was eying his swimsuit, and then imagining that made him feel tingly, and he got up abruptly. "So, want to, um, play on the computer a bit?"

"Nah, I'm okay." Samaki yawned. "Ready to lie down, actually."

"Okay." Kory turned down the sheets on the air mattress, then padded to the doorway as Samaki got into the bed. He turned out the lights and found his way to his own bed.

His fur was still damp. He listened to the fox breathing in the next bed, and all his tensions returned. Looking was all well and good, but now they were lying a few feet away again. He was more determined than ever to initiate some contact, but rather than giving him courage, his resolve just made him more nervous.

"Thanks for having me over," Samaki said, and Kory heard him yawn again.

"Oh, I'm glad to. I had fun. Hope you did too."

"Definitely. I like your mom and Nick. They're nice."

Kory smiled. "They seem to like you, too."

There was silence in the room. Kory stared up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.

"Kory?" Samaki said into the darkness.

"Yeah?" He wondered if the fox could hear his heart pounding.

"What happened to your dad?"

The otter exhaled. "Oh. He left."

Samaki sucked in a breath. "I'm sorry. You talk to him at all?"

"Nah. He lives out on the west coast." That was already as much as Sal knew, and more than he told most people.

"How old were you?"

"Nine."

The room was quiet for several minutes. "When was the last time you talked with him? I'm sorry, I don't mean to be asking all these questions."

"It's okay. I don't mind." And he didn't; the usual sharp corners of those thoughts now padded by gentle black fur. "I talked to him when I was fourteen. Tracked him down and called him. I'd just gotten my cell phone."

More silence, then the fox, softly. "Didn't go well?"

Kory shrugged. "It was okay. Awkward, you know? I wanted to tell him all about the stuff I'd been doing, and he...didn't really care, I know now. I tried calling him back later and he never picked up. So I stopped trying." He'd never told Sal, or Nick, or anyone else about that.

"I'm sorry, Kory," Samaki said again, and Kory felt fingertips brush his shoulder. He reached his paw down and the fox grasped it gently.

Kory remembered the dark street they'd walked down, the warmth of Samaki's paw then. It was just as warm and comforting now. He sighed. "It's okay. I'm over it, I really am."

"Still." The fox seemed to be groping for words. "It just sucks."

"Thanks," Kory said.

"Your mom seems okay."

"Yeah, the church really helped her." There was a time when he would have felt teenaged scorn, saying that. Now he understood it, and not only meant it, but felt an odd sympathy.

"Glad you guys are okay." The fox gave his paw a squeeze. "You take care of Nick?"

"He pretty much takes care of himself," Kory said. "But I used to, early on." He remembered painful conversations when he'd been too young to understand how and why to cushion the truth for his little brother, nights when Nicky had fallen asleep crying in Kory's bed, sullen evenings that stretched into weeks.

"Glad he had someone to look after him." For a long time, Samaki's paw remained wrapped around Kory's, the touch enough communication in the silence. Then Samaki spoke again, and Kory was surprised to hear anger in his voice. "Your dad is a jerk."

Kory didn't move. The fox went on. "Look what he's missing, what a great son he has and he doesn't even care. He's..." He went quiet, his breathing harsh.

Go, you idiot.

Kory slid easily down to the floor, crawled up next to the fox, and pulled the fox's arm around him, then gently pulled his paw free and placed it right in the center of the white patch of fur on Samaki's chest. The fur was still damp. He smoothed it down, letting his claws trail through it. "Thanks," he said.

Samaki's arm tightened around him, and his head lifted slightly. His eyes shone in the dark. As the otter's paw dug through his white fur, rubbing and letting his claws scritch the underlying skin, he said softly, "I thought you were interested in boobs."

Kory grinned, and then the perfect line came to him at the perfect time, and if that wasn't a sign that he was doing the right thing, he didn't know what else could be. "I am," he said. "You boob."

Samaki laughed, happy and spontaneous, breaking the tension. Still smiling, he leaned his head forward until his nose was about an inch from Kory's, searching the otter's eyes. "Really?"

Kory closed the rest of the distance, touching his broad nose to the fox's narrow one. "Yeah. I...yeah."

Samaki rubbed his nose gently across Kory's and then nuzzled across to rest his muzzle on the otter's shoulder, pulling him into a closer hug. "I don't want to pressure you into anything."

"No," Kory breathed, "I'm just figuring things out."

The fox's paw stroked his side. "I'm happy to help."

Kory buried his nose in the soft, damp black fur. "You are," he mumbled. "You have." The scent was strange, all vulpine, musky and unmistakably male, not at all what he was used to pressing his nose into. He breathed in and let the smell fill him giddily, and it wasn't hard to put his arm all the way around Samaki and hug him back. No, not hard at all.

And it wasn't the fact that the fox was gorgeous, or hugging him back, or male, that made it easy, Kory realized in a flash. It was the fact that this was Samaki, his friend, someone who cared about him, whom he cared about in return. That had always been missing from his relationship with Jenny. He'd listened to her crises, told her about his, but she'd never said anything like what Samaki had just said about Kory's father. He'd never said anything like that to her, either. The connection just hadn't been there. It was here, in force, crackling between them, pulsing like a living thing. He felt thrilled, terrified, and happier than he'd been in a long, long time.

He pressed his paw through the thick black fur, mimicking the trails the fox's claws were leaving in his fur. Samaki rubbed down to the small of his back, further and further, but always stopping short of his tail. Kory let his paw wander more boldly, pressing into the curve between the fox's back and his tail, feeling the bare fur and the reflexive push back against his paw. Then onward to the fluffy mass of tail, his paw sinking into it as the fox followed suit, his soft pads wandering over Kory's thick tail. Twice, Kory tried to roll the lighter fox on top of him, but couldn't balance properly on the air mattress. Finally, Kory murmured, "I think my bed is a bit bigger."

Samaki gave him a bright white smile. "Probably softer, too."

"Uh-huh." He started to pull away from the fox, and Samaki grabbed his paw.

"Kory."

He turned, and got a soft kiss right on his nose. Samaki's eyes were reflecting the glow of his stars. He hesitated only for a heartbeat before kissing the fox back, his lips warming the cool nose. Then their lips touched, and he didn't want to do anything else. His paws found the fox's slender form again, pulled Samaki to him as he sat up and leaned with his back to the bed. The fox slid into his lap easily, strong arms sliding behind his shoulders to hold him in return, and the kiss seemed to go on and on and on.

"Wow," he said, when Samaki finally sat back and looked at him.

The fox smiled, one paw tracing the curves of Kory's chest. "Wow?"

"So _that's_ what that's supposed to be like."

Samaki laughed. "I liked it too. A lot."

Kory was aware not only of exactly how much the fox had liked it, but also of the fact that the fox could definitely tell how much _he_ had enjoyed it. He shifted, found that the rubbing was pretty nice, and did it again intentionally. "So.up on the bed?"

Samaki nodded, and got up. "Let me, um, do something first." As Kory watched, the fox hooked his paws into the waistband of his swimsuit and slowly pulled it down. He watched Kory watching him, and said, "This was getting kind of uncomfortable."

Kory's breathing sped up. Slowly, Samaki's white fur came into view, as did its centerpiece, long and dark and very erect. The otter stared up at it, then up at the fox's muzzle, smiling down at him. He struggled to his feet.

"Yeah, uh." It was hard to talk. "Mine too." He pulled his swimsuit down, trying to emulate the grace Samaki had shown. As he kicked it aside, Samaki reached out and brushed claws through his stomach's fur, one paw on either side of the otter's stomach. Kory slipped his arms up inside Samaki's and did the same, pressing his webbed fingers through the damp black fur, letting them stray down towards the white patch. As the fox's paws roamed across the outside of his hips, Kory let his fingers tease the edges of the white fur, venturing ever closer to the center.

Samaki seemed to be waiting for him. As Kory's paw circled ever closer, the fox's lazy caresses grew more intense, and his breathing quickened. Kory hardly knew what he was doing, but he couldn't keep his paws away for long. He looked up into the shining eyes and brushed the back of his paw against the fox's maleness.

Samaki leaned forward and kissed him, and Kory could see the white tip of his tail swinging back and forth behind him. Emboldened, he turned his paw around and brushed the pads up the fox's erection, feeling the curves and the slightly different shape. He smiled, and then smiled wider as he felt the fox's fingers brush him, sending tingles down his legs. Together, they explored each other's shapes, shivering at the feelings, until they ended up pressed close and hugging again, arousals buried in each other's fur. Samaki pushed Kory backwards gently until the otter sat down, then lay down on the bed.

The fox straddled him and then slowly lay down on top of him. Kory hugged the fox to him and they kissed again, while the fox's tail swept back and forth over them both.

"Mmm. What now?" Kory murmured, when they'd broken the kiss and were nuzzling.

"Whatever you want," Samaki said back softly.

"Well, you're the one with the experience."

Samaki laughed softly. "I just know what I want. I didn't say I had any experience."

"You don't?"

The fox paused. His breath ruffled Kory's whiskers. "Let's just say that I know enough to know we should do what comes naturally. We can keep it simple this first time."

"Okay. That sounds good."

"I mean," Samaki said with a grin, his tongue lolling to one side, "if we just keep doing what we were doing a minute ago, I think that will work just fine."

By way of answer, Kory brought his paw up between them, and did just that. Samaki panted over top of him, then squeezed himself off to lie on his side next to Kory so that he could return the favor, their paws working in unison as their breath came hot into each other's fur. Kory tried to keep quiet, a little self-conscious about his panting and grunts, but he felt less so as Samaki squirmed against him, making all kinds of little yips and squeaks. He kicked the wall once, and froze until Kory said, giggling, "That's just the hallway."

It was strange, having another paw pleasuring him while going through the motions on someone else. It was wonderful, too, to feel the effect his paw was having on Samaki, and to feel Samaki's paw and press against him to show how much he enjoyed it. Kory couldn't remember anything so intimate, so personal, in his past anywhere. He felt his breath coming faster and harder, but it was Samaki who jerked against him first. Warmth coated his paw and the musky smell reached his nostrils.

"Oh," Samaki was moaning, "Kory."

He kept working on the otter while he moaned and climaxed, paw moving nice and quick, and Kory was so wound up that it was less than a minute before he was burying his muzzle in the fox's fur and moaning, "Samaki." It was an awkward name to moan, so he moaned again, "Foxy." and that felt much better, a nice thing to moan as the fox brought him off.

For a short span of time, they both just lay there. Samaki was the first to talk.

"I think," he said, "that was more than just fine."

"Oh, yes." Kory pulled the fox on top of him, ignoring the stickiness in their fur. They hugged tightly and nuzzled again and again, paws stroking each other's fur.

"So can I ask you something?" Samaki said, and when Kory nodded, went on, "What made you decide to try?"

"That's easy," Kory said. "You did."

"I hoped you might be gay, but didn't want to pressure you."

"You didn't. And I'm not sure I am gay."

Samaki tilted his head. "You know.I dunno how it is in Westmont, but back in the city, what we just did here is pretty gay."

"Well, I know." Kory's whole body felt like it was grinning. "I just meant, I didn't decide to sleep with you because you're unbelievably gorgeous and I'm attracted to guys. I wanted to sleep with you because you're.because you're you."

The fox smiled and stroked his cheek. "You're unbelievably sweet, you know that?" He kissed Kory's nose. "You want to know a secret?"

Kory nodded. "Mm-hmm. If it's about you."

Samaki's ears folded slightly back. "Um, that night we went to the movie.I took you through the dark street on purpose so I could hold your paw."

Kory giggled. "I bribed my brother to stay out late so my mom wouldn't pick me up and I could stay over."

"Really?" Samaki laughed. "That's cute."

"Then I didn't do anything." Kory sighed.

Samaki nodded. "We had a nice night anyway. And you weren't ready then. I'm glad you are now."

"Me too."

After another kiss, Samaki said, "I should tell you one more thing."

Kory nodded. The fox looked up at the ceiling stars, and Kory felt his tension. Before the otter could ask about it, the fox recited slowly, " _Scarlet the passion, the color of my heart._ "

The otter stared at him. " _Coral a sunset, God's work of art._ " Samaki went on, and looked down into Kory's eyes.

"Oh, no," Kory moaned, a different tone from his moans of a few minutes ago. "Where did you read that?"

"The paper." Samaki pulled back the pillow Kory was trying to cover his face with. "Oh, come on. It's really good."

"How long ago did you read it?" The hot flush of embarrassment was fading, very slowly.

"When it came out. What's the matter? It really was good." The fox's paw brushed his cheek tenderly.

Kory sighed. "My English teacher posted it in the hallway of our school. I got teased for it for weeks, and my.the girl I was dating said why didn't I ever write anything like that for her, and, well, that was Jenny, you remember."

"Oh." Samaki rested a paw on his shoulder. "Well.I'm not that upset about you not having a girlfriend."

"I guess that worked out okay," Kory admitted.

"And.to tell you the truth.that's why I was at the pool that day." Kory felt the motion as the fox's ears flicked.

"Huh?"

"I read about you in the paper and the poem really touched me. I wanted to meet the otter my age who could write like that. I kinda had a crush on you, I guess, without even meeting you."

The warm embarrassment was returning. "Me?"

"Heck, yeah. I cut the poem out and put it up on my wall." He licked Kory on the nose. "But I hid it before you came over."

"So you were hoping to meet me at the municipal pool?"

"Nah." Samaki laughed, and Kory felt the vibrations in his own stomach, and couldn't help giggling along. "I was just trying to practice so I could be a good enough swimmer that when I went over to Caspian, I wouldn't embarrass myself. I'm glad I didn't know you have an indoor pool, or I probably wouldn't have even tried that."

"Wow. Well.I'm glad you did," Kory said. "Really glad."

Samaki paused for a moment, and then said, "Want to hear something kinda silly?"

Kory smiled. "Only if it's from you."

The fox nuzzled him. "When I read the poem, there was a note of.of something behind it, of longing, or searching.and I thought, uh."

Kory poked him in the hip, tickling gently. "Go on."

Samaki squirmed and giggled. "I thought, he's looking for me. I felt like you sent that poem out into the world to find me, and I had to find my way to you."

Something was making it hard for Kory to talk, all of a sudden. "Maybe.maybe I did," he said, swallowing. He stroked his paw down the curve of the fox's back, over the swell of his rear, and pulled his tail up to bury his fingers in. "I didn't know I was doing it."

"That's okay," the fox whispered. "I did."

"I fell for you back at the pool, you know," Kory said. "When you laughed at my joke, and then walked out of the dryers, so pretty, so handsome.I just didn't realize it for a while."

Samaki smiled and kissed him. "It's not easy. But I'm glad you did."

"Oh, me too." They kissed, more warmly, and Kory felt the stirrings of interest awaken again. The fur between them was all matted and sticky, so when they parted, panting, he said, "Maybe we should clean up a bit?"

They scampered to the bathroom, naked, Kory looking around to make sure his mother and Nick weren't making a mid-night visit. In the shower, they cleaned up with soap, and in the process of cleaning, found that the soap was quite nice between paws and the parts they were trying to clean, and ended up kissing, and then presently they managed to get themselves sticky again, so they had to clean up all over, panting and leaning on each other and giggling giddily.

Back in Kory's bed, they snuggled up close, exhausted and happy. Kory found that his muzzle fit nicely into the curve between the taller fox's neck and shoulder, and Samaki seemed to like curling his tail around Kory's. They whispered goodnights to each other, nuzzled and yawned, and Kory drifted off to sleep with the feeling that he was floating, insulated from the world and borne up by something much more buoyant than mere water.

In Between

Following "Waterways" was a challenge. But I had written this story about a football-playing tiger and a gay activist fox, inspired by a single scene that I thought up while in the shower (the final scene in this story). I wanted to know how they'd gotten to that doorway, how they'd said those words to each other. And so Dev and Lee were born.

"In Between" was released in advance of the novel "Out of Position," in which it is the first of five parts. In 2008, it won the Ursa Major award for Best Short Fiction as a standalone story. I still quite like its visceral tone, which is hard to sustain and did not translate to the whole novel. Dev and Lee have rivaled Kory and Samaki for popularity, and I have found their relationship a nearly endless source of inspiration. I am a sports fan, not only of the competition itself, but of the semi-fantastical world it creates for the players. Throw in a gay relationship, and you can see how I've written two books and have two more planned as of this writing (2011).

I have also included the second part of "Out of Position" following this story, where I will talk more about the novel. But for now, meet Devlin Miski and Wiley Farrel.

[return to TOC]

### April 2006

I spot her just after midnight.

I'm hanging out with the guys down at the Fang, drinking, laughing, joking, eyeing the cuties. Everyone knows the team goes there to drink every Friday night, so the ladies set themselves up down at the end of the bar. We look, we pick, we take what we want. Forester U. isn't a big football school, but there are always a few girls ready and willing for any jock that comes along.

I don't know how long she's been at the bar, but she's not giggling with the tigress who's been trying to catch my eye for an hour, and she didn't come back from the ladies' room with the sweet-looking bitch who just left with my bud Randy. She's in between the girls and boys, sitting in her own little world, and the thing of it is, the thing that gets me about her, is that she doesn't seem to mind. She inhabits her world, fills it, and doesn't need the rest of us.

The squirrel beside her keeps shooting looks from under her painted eyelids from one group to the other, jealous of the pretty girls, desperate for a date. But the little vixen is different. She ignores everyone as she sips something colorless from a tall, thin glass, tipping it expertly into her narrow russet muzzle. Chocolate ears swallow the dim light, but occasionally I can see the white insides as they flick back and forth. I know she's listening to both groups, and now that I'm watching more closely, I can see the small curve of her smile.

"Hey. Hey! Dev?"

I snap back to Mike, the cougar who plays opposite me in the secondary. "Huh?"

"I said, are you gonna go with that one or not?" He jerks a thumb towards the tigress, with all the subtlety of a fawn-colored brick.

I look again at the vixen. She's wearing a plain white blouse, offset with a gold bracelet on one arm. Maroon skirt. Long, flowing, russet tail. "No."

"All right, I'm gonna go for it." He grabs my extended paw and shook it. "Seeya tomorrow."

"Yeah." I'm left with Jason and Eck, a wolf and coyote who back up our positions and the wideouts. They're looking at the fox, too, and then at me.

I was never much for foxes, to be honest. Little things, and they're always trying to outsmart you. Most of them think they're so fucking clever if they get you to say something stupid. Yeah, they're pretty, and they know it, but they're more trouble than they're worth.

The tigress takes another look at me, but my disinterest must be obvious, because she takes off with Mike.

Eck clears his throat. "Hey, uh, I was thinking about going for that fox."

"That's nice," I say, getting up. "You keep thinking about that."

Their mutters die down behind me as I walk up to the bar. The squirrel perks up for one hopeful moment, until I park myself on the other side of the vixen, then she slumps down again. I could give a shit.

Up close, the vixen is still striking, not one hair out of place. She pretends not to notice me at first, but I've timed it pretty well; she's just finishing her drink. "Buy you another?" I rumble.

She turns to me now, and her eyes are bright and blue. Contacts, I think, but god, they're gorgeous. So is the curve of her smile. "Actually," she says, in a low, husky voice that reminds me of Lauren Bacollie, "I'm about finished here. I was just going to head home."

"Oh." I can't tell whether this is a brush-off or not. Any other girl, I'd come right back with, "How about I join you?" but for some reason I'm hesitating here.

She looks straight ahead, so I can only see one eye. "This is the part where you offer to walk me home."

That voice is turning me on something fierce. "So, can I walk you home?"

She shrugs. "I know my own way, and I'm not drunk."

Damn foxes. Goddamn them. I'm about to walk away in disgust when I see that there's a sparkle in her eyes, a challenge, and maybe, just maybe, this time it'll be worth the trouble. "Yeah," I say, "But it's late, and dark. All kinds of unsavory people hanging around. I wouldn't want you to get assaulted."

"You don't think I can take care of myself?" Her chocolate-brown paw plays with the matchbook on the counter, nimbly threading it between her fingers. I imagine those fingers engaged in other activities and feel myself getting hard.

"I'm sure you can," I say, "but wouldn't it be more pleasant to let me take care of you?" I work in a subtle double meaning there.

She hesitates. I decide to play a little of her own game with her, since she's obviously interested by now. "But, if you'd rather fly solo tonight." I pretend to get up.

She lets me get to my feet, even lets me get partway to the door. I hear her behind me as I'm passing the big jukebox at the front that's only there for show. "Well," she says, "if you're going to be leaving anyway."

I turn and see her leaning on the jukebox, small red purse over one arm, that satisfied grin on her muzzle. I offer my left arm, and she takes it, touching me for the first time.

Her arm is light but strong, and it feels good in mine. She barely comes up to my chest, but as we walk out of the place, I have the odd feeling that I am just an orange-and-black striped accessory, like the purse she has shifted to her other arm.

She lives in a run-down row house off campus, without a number or a mailbox, the kind where there are six rooms and twelve students and two bathrooms. She unlocks the door and flicks her tail, waiting for me to make the next move.

"Well...you're home." I look at the paint flaking off the door frame.

She gives me one of those smiles. "Are you going to ask me for a thank you for the escort?"

If I do, she'll drag me into one of those games again. So I don't ask.

Her muzzle is soft and sweet, and she doesn't resist my tongue. I reach down to hold her shoulders, and she wraps her arms around my waist. I respond to the soft brush of her tail against my legs by wrapping mine around hers, keeping her in my embrace.

"So you were only drinking water," I say when we part, panting.

She just smiles again and slides one of those delicate, able paws down my stomach, and doesn't stop when she reaches the throbbing hard-on below it. "I think you'd better come inside."

I can't say anything. I just follow her.

She leads me up two flights of stairs, that bushy tail bobbing enticingly in front of me. I want to take the stairs two at a time, three at a time, but she's walking slowly, her paws padding up the stairs. And it's here, in the close, empty space of the hallway, that I first notice something odd about her scent. She's tried to make it masculine, adding some kind of musk to her natural feminine musk and resulting in something in between.

That doesn't bother me. I've always liked the girls who can throw a ball and read a book, and a lot of them use touches of masculine scent to distinguish them from the bubbleheads who are mostly good for fucking and looking pretty. I already know she isn't one of those types.

Her apartment is clean and tidy, a big studio with a partly separate kitchen. I barely have time to register the posters of the swimsuit-clad male fox and the Beatles before she shuts the door and sets her purse on the small stand next to it.

"Now," she says, "I believe I was saying 'thank you.'"

We kiss again, a deep kiss, an amazing kiss. Her tongue winds around mine, her stomach rubs up and down against my hard-on until I whimper against her. I can't help myself.

She breaks the kiss and smiles at me, almost purring. "Poor kitty," she says. "Let me give you a paw."

Some noise escapes my throat, but I'm not sure what. She's got my pants open and down, and my boxers follow soon after. I can feel the stickiness on the inside as she takes them down. I'm leaking like a dorm radiator.

She applies both paws to it, trailing soft fingerpads down my whole length, claws teasing through the fur that covers my balls, tickling behind my sac and then around my thighs. She seems to have more than ten fingers. I can't separate out the sensations. When I force out another moan, she takes hold of my cock and tugs. "Let's go to bed," she says in that husky voice, and at that moment she could tell me to jump out the window and I'd be halfway to the ground before I realized anything was wrong.

Her bed is a couch that unfolds to a sleeper. She sits me on the edge and kneels between my legs, stroking me with both paws, but not firmly enough to move me along, just enough to arouse and tease. My tail thrashes against the sofa in search of something to wrap around. My paws grab her shoulders. And I see that slender muzzle move forward, the small pink tongue meeting my huge pink shaft, and the thrill is electric as she laps up the drips from my tip. Lots of girls don't like that; they'll jerk you off or let you screw 'em, but they don't want to do any licking, or oh god she takes me all the way into her mouth and I'm shuddering on the bed, it's so good.

She licks around with that soft tongue, sliding up and down and adding some suction, and my legs start to stamp the floor. I can't take much more of this, but I want to be inside her, want her against me. But I can't make her stop.

Finally, with an effort, I push her shoulders away. Her eyes meet mine, and I feel like she knows what I'm going to do even before I reach down and lift her onto the bed, straddling me. I scoot back so she can get her knees down around me and try to press her down onto my cock, but she resists for the first time.

I can't take my eyes from hers. There's a light in them and a smile on her muzzle. She must still have panties on. I slide a paw under the skirt and take my time, tracing claws up her thighs and legs, and then the outside of her hips.

She's not wearing panties.

I bring my paws in to her sex, heart beating, dick as anxious as the rest of me. And my fingers, expecting a slit, touch a furry pouch.

I stare at her. She's grinning now, one of those fox grins. I move my paw up and find a sheath and a very hard cock.

"Christ!" I swear and try to scoot back on the bed, but she—he—follows me and leans both paws on my shoulders.

"Come on, gorgeous," he says, his nose an inch from mine. "We're having such a nice time. I'll still let you fuck me."

His eyes hold me. I'm lying in bed with my paw on some other guy's cock, frozen. And then he leans down and kisses me, and it's every bit as good as before, and my mind is screaming, Get the fuck out of there! but my dick is saying Get the fuck in there!

There's no contest, really. Not at this stage, not when his tongue is melting my mouth and short-circuiting my brain. And when he pulls back and kisses my nose and says, "Nobody ever has to know," I just nod mutely.

He grabs a tube of something and smears it behind him, under his tail. I can smell it faintly, something arousing. I'm still holding his cock and he's wriggling in my paw. Then he takes mine in his paw, his delicate, strong paws, and seats me under his tail, and I slide into him, and fireworks go off in front of my eyes.

I'm barely aware of thrusting back and forth into him. His lithe body squirms back and forth over mine, humping into my paw as he leans forward to kiss me again. I bring my legs up so I can get all the way into him, and for the first time he makes a noise of passion too, a squeaky moan into my mouth, his paws wrapping around me as we buck together in passion. All I can think about is pumping my hips into that tight, warm, slick space, and holding the fox as I yowl in climax, breaking free of our kiss as I spurt long and hard into him, my whole body tight and shuddering, an orgasm like I can't remember having ever.

I think I pass out for a minute. I am sprawled on the bed, still locked tight inside him, and my paw is still wrapped around his shaft, wet and sticky. Neither of us is moving. I open my eyes and see bright blue looking back. "You all right, gorgeous?" He's got that amused smile on him.

"Rrrrrryeah." I swallow, try to push away the connection between what my paw is holding and the beautiful muzzle in front of me as he leans forward to kiss me again, tenderly. The passion is still there, the awareness of our unbroken intimate contact, but it's restrained, exhausted.

"So you just made love to another guy," the fox says to me. "Sounded like you liked it, too."

I'm too mellow right now to be provoked. "Whatever," I murmur.

"You done this before?"

I shake my head, and that seems to satisfy him. He kisses my nose. "Well, you were damn good. I'm gonna go clean up for a few minutes. If you're not here when I get back...that's okay. Just want you to remember this."

Remember?! I tense again and can't repress a moan as he slides off me, his rear squeezing my sensitive cock exquisitely and finally releasing me. My tail sweeps the bed contentedly.

He's gone for a while, during which I trace the patterns of the water damage on his ceiling and drift off into a pleasant haze. I consider leaving, but the post-orgasmic bliss is too nice to ruin it with activity.

When he comes back, he's wearing boxers and nothing else. I peer at him curiously. How could I have mistaken him for female? He's walking differently, acting differently now that the secret is out. Tail still arched, but it's not swinging as much; his hips don't sway. It's almost like he's a different fox, like I was just fucking his sister. But his eyes are the same bright blue, and his smile is the same when he sees me on the bed, and this time it's a genuine sweet smile, or else maybe my addled brain isn't capable of seeing smugness. "Want to get that shirt off?" he says softly, and I nod. He helps me with that, wipes off my stomach and cock with a soft cloth, and put my boxers back on, and then says, "I don't have anywhere else to sleep."

I wave a paw, not caring. He slides into the bed and spoons back against me, that fluffy tail between us, my sheath pressed up against his rump. I let my arm flop across him because there doesn't seem to be anywhere better for it to be. And then I'm asleep.

Five in the morning. I wake up from a dream that I just fucked another guy and find him next to me, his tail tickling my arm. Cold panic grabs me. I get out of bed without waking him up, find my clothes folded neatly next to the bed, and take off. I dress in the hallway and go down the stairs as lightly as I can.

Nobody else has to know, he said. My thoughts are in a whirl as I walk down three streets without seeing them, finally finding a landmark in the dim pre-dawn light and heading for my dorm.

Damn right nobody else has to know. If he tries coming around the team, blackmailing me...he better not mess with me. Or what if he comes around wanting more? Shit! I clutch my head in my paws. I'll deal with that when it happens. I'll tell him he's got the wrong tiger. I'll pretend not to recognize him. I'll help my teammates beat the crap out of him. Well, no. A couple guys got kicked off the team last year for beating up some queer. Okay, so we'd make sure not to get caught, that's all.

What the hell did he think he was doing, anyway? Didn't he know I'd be furious? What if I'd taken a swing at him? I could've ripped his balls off right there. I could've broken his jaw. Little fucking fox, trying to put one over on the big stupid tiger. Well, just let him try again. Let him fucking try.

I stalk into the dorm, tail a-twitch, paws balled into fists. Five-twenty a.m. The 'roo at the desk recognizes me, doesn't ask for ID. Good thing. I'd probably explode at him. I get back to the room I share with Randy and thank god he's still asleep. I can smell the thick scent of his come in the room and I guess he got a nice handjob, because I can smell the bitch, too. I throw myself down on my bed and try not to let the scent remind me of the fox.

To avoid Randy's inevitable question about the fox, I pretend to be asleep when he gets up and gets dressed. But we have practice that day, and no matter how much I try to stay to the other side of the field, he catches up to me finally.

"Hey, how was that vixen?" he says, as we take a breather in between plays. "Hope you got better than what I got. She was all okay to jerk me off, but I couldn't get her to open up. Frigid bitch."

I jerk, my body coursing with a brief memory of last night's pleasure again. Aftershock: third one since leaving the fox's place this morning. New sensation for me. "Nah, she was just a tease. How did you know?"

"Eck." He jerks his muzzle to the coyote, who's watching us with the combination of hunger and envy that characterizes a good backup. He's only a frosh; he'll be starting when I graduate for sure. Jason seems to like being on the bench. Probably he'll stay there.

"Yeah, she was just...I walked her to her place...got a kiss..." I trail off. And another kiss, and another... "Uh, that was it."

Randy laughs. "De-nied!" he says, and thank god coach grabs us to run a play because I wouldn't be able to laugh with him.

As it is, I get pancaked twice in practice. Once when I get hit with another aftershock, and once when I look up at the sky and see the bright blue of a passionate stare. The second time, coach tells me to hit the pine and taps Eck, not Jason, to take my place.

I'm paranoid in the shower that I'll get a hard-on looking at the other guys, but I don't. Same as it ever was. None of them turn me on one bit. I flutter back to anger at the fox. Somehow he tricked me into getting aroused by him, when I'm clearly not gay.

To prove it, I call up the memory of a sweet cheerleader I screwed last week and jerk off in the shower that night in the dorm, panting and leaning against the wall. I clean up my spunk, kicking it down the drain, and feel satisfied that I didn't think about the fox once. That's about the last moment of satisfaction I get for a while.

The following week is an absolute nightmare. I wake up in bed hard Monday morning and I think I smell him in the room, but it's only the residue of a dream I don't remember. That I was dreaming about him and waking up hard worries me a bit, but I can't stop thinking about him. I try to get angry again, but I can't see the smugness any more. I just see that sweet smile, feel that tightness around my cock, that soft muzzle of his, the way he pressed into me while we

(made love)

fucked. I sit in class and try to express my memories in abstract doodles, covering a page with them and only realizing when the students around me get up that I have no idea what was covered.

Tuesday I fail a test.

Wednesday Randy asks me if I'm in love. I punch him in the stomach. We get into it and I feel better for about an hour. Afterwards, we go out for beers and I'm lost again.

Thursday I give up on classes and track down that cheerleader. I figure maybe some good old-fashioned normal sex will get the damn fox out of my mind. She's a perky raccoon, with a great rack and a great attitude, and she's a fucking lousy lay. I set a land speed record getting out the door after it's over.

Friday I give up and go back to the bar with the guys.

We're sitting in our group and the girls are in theirs and the squirrel's at the bar, alone. I can't follow the conversation, and eventually the guys stop trying to include me. I wander over to the squirrel and stand beside her, one paw on the stool the vixen—the fox was sitting on a week ago.

She looks around to see if there's anyone else there, then gives me the wide eyes again. "Buy a gal a drink?"

"Yeah." I signal the bartender. "Shot of Wild Turkey and one of whatever she's having." I lay down the money.

Interested now, the squirrel straightens up. I try not to gag on her perfume. "You went off with that fox, right? Back for something with less bite?" Her prominent incisors show as she laughs.

I wince. Even the conversation the boys were having about which superhero movie is the best was better than that, and that one consisted mostly of quoting their favorite bits with gunshot noises. "Do you know her? The fox who was in here last week?"

The bartender sets down my shot, and some light beer in front of the squirrel. I down my shot before he has a chance to walk away. The squirrel sneers. "No, I didn't know the stuck-up priss."

"Fine. Enjoy the beer." I stand up and walk out, ignoring her muttered "asshole" and Randy's "hey, Dev." For a minute, outside in the night, I worry that he'll follow me, but maybe he remembers Wednesday and doesn't want to get into it again. He'd rather be in the arms of one of the two big-breasted bitches at the other end of the bar. I wish that was all I wanted.

I try to find the row house again, but there are no numbers on the street and they all look alike. I don't even know why I'm looking. I want to yell at the fox. I want to hold him. I want to grab him by the throat and tell him to get the fuck out of my head. I want to kiss him again. A ferret asks me if I'm lost as I wander from one front porch to another, and I say, "Pal, you don't know the half of it." He leaves me alone.

I find what I'm sure is the right house three times. Each time I stand there for fifteen minutes trying to figure out if the pattern of the peeling paint is familiar or not. I peer at the names on the mailboxes when I can see them, but I don't even know the little fucker's name, and they don't put "little faggot fox" on the listings. Plenty of people come home while I'm looking around the porches, but only one fox, and she is definitely a vixen. For real.

At 12:30 in the morning I find a cross street that looks exactly the same as the street I've been wandering up and down for two hours. I look at all the row houses on that street and find the right house two more times.

At 1:30 in the morning I go back to the bar and snag the first girl I see who isn't attached and isn't the painted squirrel. I take her back to my room and we go at it, and it's fine. It's not great. It's not fireworks. I kick her out at 3, get back to bed and lie there staring at the ceiling. I get the crazy idea that if I bring a pair of binoculars and look through the upper story windows, I could find the ceiling that has the specific pattern of water damage I remember and then I'd know where he lives. I go so far as to check online to see where I can get a pair of binoculars close by, and I realize that I have gone completely around the bend. I'm sitting at my desk at four in the fucking morning shopping for binoculars so I can look for the ceiling of the apartment where I had the only gay experience of my life. Not to mention how crazy I would look walking up and down the street looking through third floor windows. Lion Christ.

I need to find that fox. I want him out of my head, and one way or another, I'm gonna get what I want.

Saturday practice is another disaster. I'm running on two hours sleep and coach bumps me down to the second team for the last drills of the day, where I get paired with a frosh backup wideout who is a red fox. He's not my fox, though; he's about six feet tall and only has to tilt his head a bit to look me in the eye. Plus he's got a deep voice. But he has the same slender muzzle, and twice I get caught imagining it sliding over my cock and lose my focus.

I wait to take my shower until the rest of the team is gone.

I don't know what else to do. I retrace my steps from the bar the next day, this time borrowing Randy's car and finding the right street, absolutely for sure this time. I park at seven o'clock and sit in the car watching the whole street, everyone who comes and goes.

Eight-thirty. A policewolf comes over and asks if I need any help. I say I'm waiting for a friend from the football team. He checks my ID and leaves me alone. Thank god there are some fans in this town.

Nine-twenty. Two male foxes show up, laughing and talking. They walk right past my car and go into the building three doors down. Neither one is him. I'm pretty sure. I make a note of the building anyway.

Ten-forty-three. I sit up in my seat. It's him. There's no question. He's dressed in a trim blue button-down shirt and khaki pants, carrying a worn backpack over one shoulder. No pretense of being a woman now. My claws extend, punching holes in Randy's seat. I can't see his expression, but I know he's got that cocky smile on him.

It isn't until he's halfway to my car that I register that he's not alone. He's walking with some tall mustelid, ferret or weasel or something, and damn if the first thing I feel isn't what the fuck is he doing with that guy? Of course, what I mean by that, I rationalize, is if they go into a building together, it might be the weasel's place.

They don't. They pause at the front of one of the houses. The fox climbs the first stair so he can look his weasel friend in the eye. They talk for a few minutes and then the weasel moves on.

And that's the right house, I remember now. That door frame, that old piece of tape on the window. My heart beats faster.

The fox goes inside. The weasel clears the street and turns the corner, out of sight. I get out of the car.

I walk to the house just like I live there. Big problem: the door's locked. I stare through the door. There are names on the mailboxes, but the apartment numbers just go 1, 2, 3. I can't figure out whether he's R. Michaelson or W. Farrel. And I can't get in. No problem. I'll just go through the fire escape.

It occurs to me yet again, as I find the hallway window ajar and squirm my way through it, that I am pretty far gone. Fortunately, I'm also far past caring.

I might not have recognized the building, but when I get to the third floor, I know which door is his. It might have a tiger magnet in it, with the force it's pulling me to it. I knock before I know what I'm doing, before I've figured out what I'm going to say. I can't wait a minute longer, and besides, I could stand here for another four hours and not figure out what I'm going to say.

His scent hits me a moment before he opens the door. I get a moment of surprise in his baby blues before he sizes up the situation and relaxes into a smile. "Well. Devlin Miski. How did you get in?"

I'm thrown off guard by him knowing my name. "Uh. Fire escape."

There's a twinkle of humor looking back at me now. "I see. Back for more, or back to beat up the faggot?"

I can't give voice to the maelstrom of emotions in my chest. "What the fuck are you playing at?" I yell, louder than I mean to.

His eyes flick to the opposite door, and he shrugs. "The jocks at this school crack me up. You're Division II football, for the love of God. You're not even in sniffing distance of playing professionally, but you strut around like you own this town. Despite our enlightened culture, you still go around making faggot jokes and beating up queers."

He's talking about that incident last year that everyone's forgotten about. "I had nothing to do with that! And Coach kicked the guys off the team."

"Yeah, well." He shrugs again. "Getting kicked off the football team. Whoop de doo. I got a kick out of the idea that I'd get one of you in bed, so I could tell my friends about it, maybe give you something to think about."

"Just one?"

Again, the slight hesitation, and now I'm quick enough to see him surprised before he recovers. "Look, whatever you want, let's get it over with, okay?"

"I don't know what I want!" I howl. My claws are out and in, out and in, and my tail is lashing.

He looks at me and gives me the throaty Lauren Bacollie again. "Well, handsome, come back and see me when you do."

He starts to close the door. I can't let him walk away and I can't follow him. I can't sleep with women and I can't sleep with guys. I'm caught in between worlds and it's tearing me to pieces.

I wedge my foot into the door. He backs away a couple steps. I scream at him, "You've ruined me for women!"

We stand and look at each other for an eternity. Slowly, he gets that cocky smile on his muzzle, but there's a sad sweetness behind it too. "Oh, honey," he says, and reaches out with those gentle fingers to tickle my chin. "You were never for women."

He puts just the slightest stress on the last word. I stare at him. I want to wipe that smile off his muzzle. I want to slap his face, knock him down, make him take it back. I hate his smugness. I hate his scent. I hate the gulf between us, the fact that he's standing so perfectly in his world, where he belongs, and that I no longer know where I belong.

I hate the fact that he's right.

I step into his apartment and grab him. He squirms in the half-second before I press my muzzle to his, then he melts into the kiss.

I'd forgotten.

It's like a drink of water after a full practice. It's stepping into air conditioning on a hot summer day. It's a steaming cup of hot chocolate with frost on the windows. It's all that combined, times a hundred. It's passion. It's fireworks. It's so good I forget everything, even where I am, until I hear the slam of the door behind me and feel the fox's leg withdrawing from kicking it shut.

I look down into his sparkling blue eyes and he's grinning that smug, cocky grin again. So I pick him up and carry him over to the bed to do exactly what I know he wants me to do.

Goddamn foxes.

Secrets

Of all the stories I've written, "Secrets" is among my favorites. I think the jumping around in time confused some people, but I love the device of presenting to the reader the situation before and after one pivotal event, with the event saved for the climax. I think I actually get it to work, here.

"Secrets" became the second part of "Out of Position," and it was clear when it was finished that there was a great deal more to write. I explored some events from Lee's point of view and then returned to Dev's. The arc that I envisioned for "Out of Position" ended up stretching over two books, then three. This worried me somewhat, because a large part of the story takes place in the world of football, the most mainstream of sports, and I was going to be trying to sell it to a fantasy fandom. SF fans are notoriously scornful of sports and other mainstreamish ("mundane") activities.

And yet, with some help from the lovely artwork supplied for the book by my friend(s) Blotch, the book became staggeringly popular. It won the Ursa Major for Best Novel; it won a Rainbow Award for Best Gay Novel—competing in a juried selection against some 500 other non-furry books—and it is my first and Sofawolf's first novel to sell over a thousand copies in its first year. The sequel, "Isolation Play," was released in January 2011, and much to my relief, appears to be no letdown from the first. So here you have part two of "Out of Position." Enjoy Dev's secrets.

[return to TOC]

### Mid-November 2006

I've got a secret.

I've had it for a couple months now. My teammates knew I had a secret back in early October. So did coach. They still don't know what it is, and they've stopped asking. The school paper started asking me around then, and hasn't stopped. I haven't told any of them what it is.

We had our first snowfall yesterday. The snow's still on the ground as we take the field against Hilltown State. They've got this hot wideout, a cheetah named Rex Millen, he's on pace to score twenty touchdowns this year, in eleven games. Monster year.

It's cat against cat as we line up. I see him look at me and I know what he's thinking: too big, maybe he's fast but he ain't my kinda fast, juke past him and blow him away down the field, he's just lucky, that's why he's getting the numbers, but his luck runs out today. I know he's thinkin' that last part 'cause he says it, just as cool as the snow on the ground. "Your luck runs out today."

I grin back at him. "That's the only thing gonna be runnin' today," I tell him, and I glance up at the stands just like I do before every play.

Halfway up the student section, same seat every time, there's a fox. She's wearing a white blouse, maroon skirt, and if I'm lined up on the right side of the field, I can see the intensity of her bright blue eyes. If I look up while I'm on the bench, she's talking to the ringtail and weasel next to her, or sometimes she's looking back at me, but it's more relaxed, more casual, and I might get a smile then. Not when we're starting a play. She's watching me, and I look to make sure she's watching me, and then I line up.

I hear them hike the ball, but it's a distant sound. What I'm lookin' for is the motion ahead of me. He fidgets, this one, can't keep still, except when the play's about to start. I can see the focus in his eyes, and his tail stops moving. One second, almost exactly. Then I know where he's going and I beat him there.

I'm allowed to hit him within five yards. I take two steps and bump him, throw off his pattern, then I go where I guess he's going. If the quarterback's good, he sees the play is busted and he doesn't make the throw.

They've got a new QB, a big black wolf. He's good. But he's a freshman. He sees the busted play in the middle of his release, panics, tries to change direction, loses the ball. Fumble. Geoff, one of the two bulls on our defensive line, drops on it.

Eck is a coyote, my counterpart on the other side of the field. "He's gonna have to watch that play a couple hundred times," he says, and we laugh the laugh of guys who've been strapped down in front of game film themselves. We sit down on the bench, I look up into the stands, and get a smile.

I don't make any picks that game. There's one I coulda had, but it's late in the game and my paws are tired and it goes off my fingertips. I hold Rex to two catches, twelve yards total, before they give up on throwing it to him. He keeps up the trash talk all game, but by the fourth quarter he's on the bench and coach is giving some frosh a chance. Coach puts Eck on the rook and me on the other side, but the game's over at that point anyway.

We're 7-1 midway through November. That's pretty good, case you don't know.

The guys razz me a bit. "Hey, Dev, no picks today, what'sa matter?"

"I felt bad for the kid," I tell 'em, grinning.

Randy, a big wolf who's my roommate and our middle linebacker, elbows me. "Maybe you should start comin' to the Fang with us again on Fridays."

They all wonder if that's my secret, that I don't go to the meat market on Fridays anymore. Randy thinks he knows, but he hasn't told anyone, unless you count hints like that one. Hard to keep a secret from your roommate. Not so hard with Randy as with some others, maybe, but still hard.

So I give him little hints here and there. Not deliberately, just enough that he can fit together the puzzle in not quite the right way. I hate to admit it, but I'm starting to have fun doin' it.

Course, when it comes to bein' sneaky, I've got the best teacher.

### August 2006

I've been sitting in Randy's car for almost an hour. The 32-oz Powerade is all gone; even with the windows down, I'm panting in the heat.

I know the name of the street I'm on, even though I didn't when I first arrived here last spring. And I know that the house I'm staring at and have been staring at for the last 56 minutes, according to the car's little LED clock, is the right one. I know a lot more than I did last spring, when I was sitting in this same car on this same street.

What I still don't know is what the fuck to do.

Two long months at home, on vacation from school, football, and this house. The first week was bad, but it slowly got better, and yesterday when I got back to school, I thought, I don't need to go back.

But all day yesterday, through orientation, lunch, warm-ups, I kept thinking that it wouldn't hurt to drive by. Most of the students probably aren't even back yet. Just to see if the house is still there.

All day yesterday and all day today, I fought it, and then, because we have the afternoon off, I asked Randy if I could borrow his car. I drove by the house fifty-seven minutes ago, stopped, and I haven't moved since. Twice I opened my door, once even put a paw out onto the street, then both times settled back into the seat and closed the door. I want to go up to the door, want it with a physical hunger. I want to drive away, to excise this complication from my life. I want, most of all, to be told what I want.

Two minutes later, just under the hour mark, the door of the house opens. The fox in a sleek peach-colored sundress stands in the doorway and smiles down at me. I get shivers all down my spine that make my tail curl, and there's no longer any doubt. Not with that smile and those blue eyes. My body, for a moment, is no more than a living memory shaped by those chocolate-brown paws.

I'm out of the car, up the front stairs, and standing at the door in no time, looking down into those eyes, and there's a sparkle in them that sets me tingling all over.

"That's a new dress, Lee," I murmur.

"I bought it for you," says the low, husky voice I've heard only in my dreams for two months. I take her slender shoulders in my paws and lean down for a kiss.

I have to close my eyes. The scent, the tongue, the paws sliding around me, the slight shiver in the body as my paws hold tight...

Good for me? Fuck, no.

Just good.

### Mid-November 2006

I get rid of Randy pretty easily. He's got things to do, and so do I. I know I'm not exactly inconspicuous as I walk down the street, but I'm relaxed, more confident, and I act like I belong there, just as I've been taught to. No school gear, no football jacket, just a six-foot-tall tiger strolling down the street.

I still look around to see if anyone's watching before I hurdle the steps to the house. In the shade of the porch, I ring the bell, and even though the fox lives on the third floor, I don't even have to wait for a minute before I'm following that bushy red tail up two flights of stairs. With each step, I get more and more excited, and by the time we get to the top, I'm bouncing on my heels and I get a smile and a husky, "Patience," as chocolate paws open the door and usher me inside.

We kiss again inside, and those paws trace my midriff, lifting my shirt, diving down my pants without hesitation. I moan as they caress me through my briefs, a throaty growl of a moan that brings a soft chuckle in reply. I keep my paws busy tracing that slim, taut rump, lifting the tail and unfastening the skirt in back.

It falls to the floor with barely a sound. My paws slide over the bare fur under the tail, around the hips, and to the front. Beneath the silky white blouse, the plush white fur comes to a peak at a shapely ridge of white. Below it, a white-furred sac, and above, a hard pink shaft mirroring mine.

I pull him close so I can feel him all against me. He rubs his erection into my leg while his paws trace the length of mine.

That's a big secret. But it's not my biggest secret.

### August 2006

This is the moment where I hesitate. It's been two months, and feeling another cock against me is back to feeling as weird as it did in April. No, maybe not quite that weird, but strange enough to make me hesitate.

He leans his head back and the smile curving back to the corners of his muzzle is as familiar as his scent and the touch of his paws. "What's the matter?" he taunts me, lightly. "Been picturing me as a vixen for two months?"

"No," I snap back. "I just..."

Before I know what he's doing, he's taken my paw in his and put it right on his shaft. "There you go," he says, "in case you'd forgotten what it feels like."

How could I? I just look down at him, without moving my paw. My pads tingle where they touch the warm flesh. And the strangeness is fading as my memory comes back, takes over, pulls me to him again.

"That's better," he murmurs, and nuzzles my chest as I start to slide my paw up and down, remembering the feel of him and discovering it anew. It's nice to get that expression on his muzzle too, the closed eyes and soft, blissful smile. There's only one expression I like seeing more, and I have a feeling I'll be seeing it again before too long.

Eventually, he opens his eyes and touches my nipple with his cold nose, then his warm tongue. I shiver, and he nips, tugging the small button and then releasing it as he drops to his knees. The small paw holds me while his warm tongue laps slowly up my length.

This is the part where I have to brace myself against the wall.

He takes me all the way into his muzzle, warmth and bliss pounding in waves against me, but whatever rocky resistance I had to him has long since been worn to sand anyway. At some point, I start making a throaty growl of pleasure. I don't remember consciously doing it, but I can hear it, and I can tell from the flick of his ears that he can, too.

I'm breathing hard and my tail is lashing all over the place.

He stands up, steps back from where the peach dress is lying on the floor, and lets me look him up and down. I do, hungrily, drinking in the five-feet-and-change body, slender, probably half my weight. All white down the front, his chest puffed out with fur, not muscle. A stomach I could circle with both paws. Russet fur from a distance, but up close it's three different shades of orange, some as dark as brown, some almost yellow. Reminds me of the leaves in fall.

I never knew another guy could be that gorgeous. Or turn me into a fucking poet.

He reaches out one brown paw and wraps it around my slick shaft and tugs, not too gently pulling me to the bed. I growl a bit and play at resisting before following. His smile says "who are you kidding" without having to let the words pass his lips.

At the bed, he pushes on my chest with one gentle paw. I've had two hundred and fifty pounds of wolf push against me and not given up ground. I go down on the bed and lie on my back like a lap dog.

He climbs on top of me, straddling my stomach and wagging that soft, long, fluffy tail over my shaft. I put my paws on his hips.

### Mid November 2006

His long pink member bobs in front of my nose. Just like diving off the high dive, I make up my mind and move forward before my better judgment can stop me, tongue out, eyes closed. I can smell his musk just fine, and when the tip of my tongue brushes his underside, I can hear the shift in his breathing.

It's not nearly as bad as I've told myself it would be. It's sort of like licking myself, but smaller, and stronger smelling. I lick again, keeping my momentum now that I've gotten started, and I can feel the slightest tremble in his hips as I push my tongue up, letting his shaft drop back against it before I lick up again.

Damn. This is kinda fun.

I feel the whole length, starting at the base and getting a good noseful of his scent in the process. My tongue is big enough to cup his shaft in it, and I do so, rubbing up and down and holding his legs in place 'cause he's starting to squirm. I give it to him for a bit longer and then open my eyes to look up at him.

His tongue is hanging out of the side of his muzzle and he grins down at me when I stop. "There you go," he said. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

I grin back. "You tell me."

"Not bad." He touches my nose with a fingertip. "It's all about practice."

"Yeah, yeah." I know he's just teasing. So I squeeze him around the hips and purr, "Speaking of practice, isn't it about time you practice stretching that tight little hole of yours?"

"If I saw you more than once a week, it wouldn't be so tight," he purrs back. For a fox, he purrs like a pro.

"If I saw you more than once a week," I gasp as he sits back, wiggling his tight little rump a lot more than is really needed to get my aching member into him, "I wouldn't have enough energy left to play football."

Warmth surrounds me. The movement of his slinky body on top of me and the tightness gripping my cock, all of it sends shivers through me, making my fur ultra-sensitive to every touch. His tail brushing my legs is a lover's caress. His paws on my stomach and chest are bliss. And when he whispers something like "I'll have to test that theory sometime," and leans over to kiss me, all the words I know are driven out of my head. All I can do is hold his sides, hold him against me, and drive my hips up again and again into that amazing warmth.

Somewhere in there my paw gets wrapped around his shaft, and I'm milking it eagerly. The motion feeds back into my sensations, and I can feel the roar working in my throat as everything just gets better and better. I hold on, wanting it to last, but it slips away, upward and outward, and I roar into his muzzle, feeling his body shake with my passion and his own.

Until last April, I used to say that picking off a pass and returning it for a score was better than sex.

I don't say that any more.

### August 2006

"Why don't you wear panties?" I ask. We're lying in bed naked, still panting and messy, but uncoupled. His apartment doesn't have any air conditioning, and even with the windows open, the heat is stifling. I've been tracing my paws along the lines of his fur and he's been painting my stripes with his brown fingers. For the moment, my confusion is gone.

"Do you want me to?" he parries, his fingers lightly teasing, his blue eyes fixed on mine.

"I don't know," I say. "I was just asking."

He studies me for a moment longer, and then grins. "I don't get off on it," he said. "It's just so I can see you in public."

"You bought a new dress." My paw is resting on his spent and sticky sheath as I say it. I'm dimly aware that in another life, another me would cut his paw off rather than put it on another guy's cock. I hope that other me doesn't remember this moment, if he comes back.

"Do you know how heavy that skirt is? It's ninety degrees out. I'd die."

"So you bought a dress just to be able to kiss me at the door?"

"Well," he says, "would you be rubbing my sheath if I'd answered the door in my t-shirt and Dockers?"

I give him another purposeful rub. "Sure."

"Sure," he echoes, and then slides away from me, towards the bathroom. "Want to hop in the shower?"

I watch him stand up and all those thoughts about leaves come back as he smooths his fur. But the shower...we've never showered together. He's never asked.

"No, it's okay," I say.

He tilts his muzzle. "You'll fit," he says. "You've showered here before."

"I know. I just don't want to." And because I don't want to tell him the real reason, I say, "Just leave it."

Out comes the dreaded arched eyebrow. "So you'll fuck a guy up the ass, but won't clean up with him afterwards? Don't you shower with your football buddies all the time?"

I had forgotten the way he seems to know exactly what I'm thinking and cuts right to it. He should be pre-med, I've told him, the way he makes incisions. "Yeah, Doc, and maybe I don't want to be thinking about this shower in that shower. Okay?"

"Okay, stud," he says. 'Stud' is his name for me when he's mad at me because I'm being a dumb jock. 'Doc' is my name for him when he's over-analyzing me. The use of the old names from last spring is reassuring and familiar, even though we're just fuck-buddies.

He shrugs, and walks into the bathroom, swaying his tail behind him and swinging that cute butt back and forth. At the door, he stops and poses and says, in that Lauren Bacollie voice, "If you change your mind, just come on in."

I'm halfway to the bathroom before I remind myself why I shouldn't go in. I'm at the door before I actually make myself stop.

Two weeks later, late summer breezes that rattle the leaves outside rustle past his blinds and cool the apartment. My fingers mirror their movement inside, through the softness of his fur. He's lying on his stomach, muzzle turned towards me, paws under the pillow, letting me stroke him. I have the impression that it was a little painful for him this time, but he hasn't said anything and I haven't asked.

"I saw you at the game," I say after a couple minutes.

The corners of his muzzle wrinkle. "There's a reason I wore that outfit and sat in the front row. It still took you two whole quarters to notice."

It was true; I hadn't seen him 'til we were running in at halftime. "It was our first game. I was excited."

"You certainly weren't concentrating on defense."

That one stings. "I had a good game."

"You know," he says, one blue eye piercing me, "I've seen these muscles up close and personal. I know what you can do and when you're just going through the motions."

"Going through the motions?"

"Mm-hmm." His tail sways slowly from side to side. "First play of the second quarter. You let that puma get past you. You could've stopped him easy. You were lucky he dropped the ball."

I open my muzzle to say something, but then I remember the play, and I close it again. He goes on. "You're not in any danger of losing your job. Your partner, though, what's his name, Mike? If he doesn't shape up, that coyote will be starting before October."

Coach had yelled that at Mike, the other defensive back, but he'd yelled it in the locker room and I haven't mentioned it. I trace the curve of his spine with a claw, and he shivers. "What else?"

He yawns. "You're sloppy lining up. Looks like you're joking with that wolf and you just kind of get close to your spot."

"So?" I'm starting to freak out a little bit. It's like I was just fucking my coach.

"So they put you in a spot for a reason. You line up a foot to one side, it throws off your moves."

"What about the rest of the team?" I've got a paw on his butt and I move it back up to his back, not wanting to remember the sex while we're talking about football.

He blinks, slowly. "I was only watching you. I didn't know I was supposed to report on the whole team."

"You know a lot about football."

Now there's a definite smile to his muzzle. "I've watched guys prance around in tight pants since I was eleven. It's pretty, but it gets boring if you don't think about it some."

"Don't you like me better out of the tight pants?" He just grins at me. I relax a little. "What does it matter, anyway? Why not just have fun? Weren't you the one who said we're all Division II jocks with no sniff of playing professionally?"

His blue eyes meet mine and his ears flick back, then forward. "Well," he says softly, "I guess I'm not always right."

"That's a relief," I say, and he snaps back with something about a higher batting average and I ask him what sport he thinks I play, anyway.

And I begin to glimpse my secret, dimly.

### October 2006

The phone rings. We got caller ID last month, so I say, "Hi, Mom," as I pick it up.

"Hi, sweetie," Mom says. "How are you? Are you nervous?"

"No. It's just another game."

"Because we all think it's just wonderful what you're doing, but if you don't play well today, it's okay."

I wish our new phone had a cord I could wrap around my paw as I start to pace around the room. "What do you mean, if I don't play well?"

"Oh, I'm sure you will, sweetie," she says unconvincingly. "I just don't want you to feel bad if you don't."

"How's Gregory?" I ask, because I'd rather hear her babble for five minutes about my brother in law school than listen to any more of the excruciating conversation about how I'm going to fail eventually. I get my wish. Then I get to talk to my dad.

"Nice play last couple games," he says.

"Thanks."

"Been working out more?"

I'm certainly not telling my parents my secret. I give them the line I give the paper. "Things just started to click."

"Hm." There's a moment's pause, and then he says, "If you'd played like that in high school, you'd be at North State now."

"Come on, Dad," I say, trying to make a joke out of it. "My grades weren't bad enough for North State."

He just grunts and says, "Coulda played wherever you want."

I'm tired of this conversation, too. "How's the garage?"

I get a couple clipped comments, another few lines with Mom, and then I tell them I need to run off to morning practice. Which I do, but not for another half hour. I sink back into bed and sigh. Aren't parents supposed to make you feel good?

The phone rings again.

It's my turn to soap now. When I'm done rubbing the shampoo into Lee's backfur, I lift up his tail. I like the way he shivers when I rub under there, just a tiny twitch. Probably he thinks I don't notice, or maybe he wants me to think that he thinks I don't notice. Anyway, it's cute, so I do it a lot. Three times during this shower alone.

"We're working really hard on this play," he says unexpectedly.

"Which one?"

"Square Room," he says. "It's a dram-mmmmmmmmma." I chose that moment to soap up under his tail, and I leave my paw there as he leans back into it. If we hadn't just spent ourselves half an hour ago, I'd leave it there longer. As it is, I feel a little stirring, and when I reach around to soap between his legs, he's not fully relaxed either. But it's been a long day, and we're both tired.

"It's about a family of foxes. The father uncovers something in the mother's past and they have to work through it." He talks as we rinse off. "It's a pretty talky piece. Probably not really your speed."

"Probably not," I say agreeably, helping brush the soap from his fur. I feel way too mellow to rise to his bait.

He switches gears as we rub down with towels. "Is Tuesday the day you don't have practice?"

"Yeah."

He grins up at me. "Where do you eat lunch?"

"Why?" I know why, I'm just stalling.

He knows that, and snorts. "So I can tell the West Hillman coach where to poison your food before next week's game. What do you think?"

"I don't know," I say slowly.

"It's not a math problem," he says.

"I know. Then I could just look up the answer."

He huffs. "Think about it. I'm going to bed."

I join him in bed, knowing that whatever he wants, I'll end up giving him.

He sits down across from me in the Maple Hall cafeteria, 12:02 pm on Tuesday. If it weren't for the blue eyes and the confidence with which he sits down, I might not recognize him: he's wearing, not a blouse, but a collared shirt that lets only a small puff of his white chest fur show, and his butt, instead of being a suggestive curve under a skirt, is tightly defined by his jeans, leaving very little to my already-exploding imagination.

I've never looked at a guy that way in public before. I wonder if people can tell.

"Nice day," he says, glancing outside where the leaves are just starting to turn, spots of yellow in the green, and the blue sky behind them.

"Yeah," I say, taking another bite of turkey tetrazini.

"Oh, stop worrying." He pitches his voice low. "Nobody cares that we're eating together."

"What if someone saw me going to your place," I say, very low, "and then sees me here. And puts it together?"

He wrinkles his nose at the first bite he lifts to his muzzle, pops it in with a faintly disgusted look. "I think you give the students here far too much credit," he says while chewing. "The brainiacs in my building still think I'm rooming with my sister."

"Really?"

He nods. "One of them said to me the other day, 'hey, you know your sister has a big boyfriend who comes over when you're out.'"

I feel cold worry clamp my stomach. "They saw me?"

"You're not exactly invisible. Anyway, I told him, 'she's my sister, not my girlfriend. She's a big girl.' And that was the end of that." He shrugs and takes another bite. "So chill."

"Easy for you to say, doc," I grumble. "You're not risking anything."

"I'm risking having a studly boyfriend on the football team." He tosses off a smile which I don't register immediately because I can't fucking believe he just said that out loud, even if he did whisper it.

"Shhh!" I hiss, panicked.

The smile shifts to one of his cocky grins. "Chill," he says. "Nobody's close enough to hear. I know. I have excellent hearing myself."

"Well, listen to this," I snarl, aware that fear is giving my voice an edge I don't necessarily want it to have. "This was a stupid idea and I don't want to do it again."

I watch his ears fold back, but he only gives me that shrug and says, "Fine."

We eat in silence for a bit, and then are interrupted by two young coyote girls who want to know if I'm really on the football team and if I'm really Devlin Miski, who returned an interception for the winning score against St. Francis two weeks ago. Lee mutters something about my four interceptions last week, but they don't appear to be able to see or hear him, so I nod and smile, and thank them for watching. They ask if I can introduce them to Eck, and I tell them to come on down to the Fang on Friday night if they want to meet him.

"See?" he says as they walk away. "I'm invisible."

I can't tell whether he's pleased about that or not. When he wants to be neutral, he's very hard to read. "To them," I say, but for whatever reason, the fear and panic has subsided. "But they're just girls, after all."

I know he has a little misanthropic streak, and sure enough, he grins in response. "Looking for a daddy. They saw what they wanted and put the blinders on."

I hate to say it, but the rest of the lunch is really pretty pleasant. We talk about our classes and stuff we never talk about in bed, and by the time he gets up to run to his World Civilizations seminar, I don't even blink when he says, "Next week?" I just nod.

I watch him leave, and as I'm putting my tray on the conveyor belt and thinking about our lunch, I remember the smile he gave me, the one when he called me his boyfriend. I would've thought he would be wearing his possessive smile, or his I'm-saying-something-to-shock-you smile, or his cocky, cleverer-than-you smile, but it was none of those. It was, as far as I could tell, a genuine, full-on, I'm-happy smile, and as I stroll out into the crisp fall air, I wonder if my little fox has some secrets of his own.

I want to go to the play by myself, but Randy is all curious about why I want to see something called "The Square Room," and I can't stop him from coming along. He looks dubious when we get there and see the hand-painted signs and the hand-painted bunny handing out flyers. She, on the other paw, doesn't blink an eye, just smiles with both teeth and hands us the playbill, a folded-over photocopy.

Randy looks even more dubious when mine doesn't follow his into the trash can just inside the doors. I don't notice his look until I've found the name "Wiley Farrel" on the cast list. Then I see him looking at me out of the corner of his eye, and I shove the paper casually into my pocket.

My fox is not the lead in the play, but he's the main supporting character, and he's good. I wish I knew more about theater so I could tell him that, the way he knows about football. All I know is if I hadn't read his name in the program, I wouldn't know it was him. Even in the dress.

Randy sits quietly through the first act, in which the main characters fight and the wife retreats to her bedroom. My fox plays the teenaged daughter, and I think I understand why he is playing a girl: the parents are both foxes. There must be a shortage of vixens in the troupe, and the wife is the larger part. She's not bad, but my fox is great.

In the second act, Randy gets restless and starts fidgeting, then whispering things to me like, "Why did she only brush part of her tail?" and "Is that supposed to be a lemon pie?" and "Why does he put up with her? If it was me, I'd break the door down!" I try to ignore him, but I find myself agreeing with him. When my fox isn't on stage, my attention wanders, and I can't honestly say I understand the bleak ending. But we clap along with the rest of the crowd when it's over and ignore the whispers of the people around us who were offended by our talking during the movie. Hey, if the play were better, they'd be able to tune us out.

We go down to Smokey's afterwards, a bar for drinking, not a meat market. Randy slurps his Coors and I get a Miller, and he grins at me. "So that's it, huh?"

"What?" It looks like he thinks he's figured out something.

"That vixen, huh? You're seeing her on the side, right? That's who the phone calls are from?"

I get a cold shiver. It takes me a couple seconds to remember that there were two vixens in the play, because I can only think of my faux-vixen. "Which one?" I ask cagily.

"Hey," he says, "It's okay with me if you wanna get serious outside your species. No worries about cubs or anything, right?" Good old Randy, always getting right to the heart of the matter.

The good thing is, he just wanted to know. And now that he does, or thinks he does, he's happy. He knows something the rest of the team doesn't. I figure I'll take him to a couple more plays, keep him happy, hope he doesn't ask too many questions. Let him think he knows my secret. He's closest of anyone, and still not close enough that I'm worried.

Until two weeks later, when I return to the room to find him sitting on his bed, talking to my fox in blouse and skirt.

I stop dead in the doorway, muzzle hanging partway open. Randy's tail is wagging, making thumping sounds against the bed. "Hey," he says, grinning so wide I expect to see canary feathers sticking out of his muzzle. "I ran into Lee outside the theater and invited her back to the room. You should bring her round more often."

"Yes, dear," he says, and I can see from the glint in his blue eyes that he's enjoying this. "You have such a charming roommate."

I look around. "I'm sorry," I say, stalling while I think of how to get him out of here without Randy getting suspicious. "Did you mean the wolf there who once tried to fart Beethoven's Fifth?"

"Oh!" Lee feigns interest. At least, I hope he's feigning. "He has a taste for the classics."

"The taste of Old Hilltown." I cross to my bed and sit down.

Randy hadn't been quite sure how to take my remark, but he'd grinned throughout. The mention of beer restored his confidence. Now he gestures to the little fridge we have. "I've got a couple left, if you want..."

"That's okay," Lee says. "I'm sure it's better in my imagination." He turns to me and gives me a smile. "No kiss?"

Oh, god. He wants to kiss in front of Randy. I look back at him and watch his smile curve up a little bit more. It seems impossible that Randy won't notice the things I can't help seeing: the slightly broader, male muzzle; the way the hips don't quite flare enough; the roughness around the base of the claws. But I can't think of a good excuse not to go over, and Randy's still grinning that I-found-you-out grin, and so I walk over and lean down, intending to give him a soft peck on the muzzle.

I get a muzzle full of fox tongue and an instant hard-on. We don't hold the kiss as long as we normally do, but it's plenty. I pull back and sit down hard on my bed, only dimly hearing Randy's "Wooooo!"

Lee's licking his lips and smiling. I can't believe there's no bulge under his skirt like there is in my jeans. Randy rubs his paws together. "I see what you see in her, Dev. Woof! I wish I could find a nice bitch to kiss me like that."

"Oh, I bet there's more than just bitches would kiss you like that," the fox says nonchalantly. My claws sink into the bed. Why is he doing this?

"Sure," Randy says, so calmly I can't believe it. "But I don't really like goin' outside my species. Just me personally," he says hurriedly. "Dev here, he likes sleepin' around. That's cool with me."

"Oh, does he?" Lee says, and turns to me.

I still can't believe Randy didn't pick up on what he meant by the last comment. Fortunately, Randy is more worried about what he's said.

"Oh, I mean, he used to. But not this year. He doesn't come to Fang no more. That's why I thought he was seeing someone seriously. I dunno why he didn't introduce us before."

"Yes, Dev, why on Earth didn't you?" The fox smiles.

"Because I wanted to keep you all to myself," I say through gritted teeth.

Randy slaps his knee and grins. "He's always like that," he says. "Won't let me copy off him in History class either."

The fox's ears flick, and I see the beginnings of trouble in his eyes. "I didn't think you had trouble passing classes anyway," he says. "Doesn't your coach take care of that?"

"Sure," Randy says, to demonstrate his one big talent besides football: saying exactly the wrong thing. Then he actually follows that up with something half-reasonable: "But we're all jealous of guys like Dev who don't need any help."

"Hey," I say, heading off the next biting comment from the fox, "how about we go grab something to drink? Or eat?" We decide on the local pizza place, which in retrospect turns out to be probably the worst idea I've had in a long time.

Lee just gets a soda. Diet, of course. Randy and I get our favorite: two slices with everything. We're chowing down, and the conversation is at least not as pointed as it had been getting in the room, when another plate flops onto the table next to me and three hundred pounds of bear slams down into the plastic chairs, which are much sturdier than they look. "Hey, Dev, hey, Randy."

"Hey, Jack." Jack is the anchor of our defensive line. And if he's here, then the other three are not far behind. I watch Lee's eyes as the other bear, the elephant, and the stallion pull chairs up to our table. They all want to meet Lee, and I introduce her as my World Cultures tutor, with a warning glance at Randy. He gives me a broad wink that only a mole—or four football players gorging on pizza—could miss.

The fox, meanwhile, is keeping his cool, but after a few minutes I notice that he's sitting a little too straight, his ears keep flicking ever so slightly around, and his tail is bushier than normal. I keep half an ear to the conversation while I try to remember where I've seen that before. And it comes to me as I finish the last of my pizza.

The rapid ear-flicks and the bushy tail, at least, I remember from the time I barged into his building, wild-eyed, a week after our first night together, when he'd tricked me into bed. He didn't know whether I was going to kiss him or beat him up, and though he had a brave face on, as he does now, it was clear that he was a little scared. Once I realize it, it's as obvious to me as all the signs that he's male.

"Hey, Lee," I say, and his muzzle snaps over to me. "Didn't you say you have an early class tomorrow? Come on, I'll walk you home."

He looks like he wants to argue, especially when Jack says, "Ah, just sleep through it," but I reach out and take his paw, and he gets up.

"Awfully nice to meet you all," he says, the brush of his tail going down and his ears settling as well. "Hope we can do this again sometime."

Outside, he walks stiffly beside me, the chill of the wintry air nothing to what he's giving off. "So how did you—" I finally start, trying to make conversation, and he interrupts.

"Rescued the poor, helpless fairy from the big, mean, football players," he said. "That what you're thinking?" He's not using his vixen's voice, which is a little disconcerting.

"Huh?"

"Didn't I tell you that I could take care of myself?"

"What, tonight?" I'm thoroughly confused. I thought I was doing something nice by helping him out of a scary situation. I can't figure out what I did wrong.

"I certainly don't need your help to protect myself from a bunch of primitive jocks like that."

"Hey," I say. "They're not all that bright, but they're not bad guys."

"Sure," he says, "if you need a pickle jar opened or a faggot beaten up."

"Is that what this is about? I told you, those guys aren't on the team any more. We don't hang out with them."

"Oh, like it makes a difference which specific guys it was. They're all the same."

I stop, paws on my hips, and for a moment I think he's not going to stop. Then he does, a few steps further, turns and looks at me. "Well?"

"What about me?"

Blue eyes narrow in the yellow light of the street lamp. A raccoon walks past us and we endure his nervous glances as he walks between us, not wanting to get in the middle of our quarrel. Whether he heard the vixen talking with a tod's voice, we can't tell, but he disappears around the corner and then Lee talks, more quietly, but no less passionately.

"Well, I've been a good influence on you, haven't I?"

"You? You?" Now I'm the one raising my voice, and he walks away. "Hey! Don't...Listen, I..." I'm incoherent, sputtering, trying to form the thoughts into words, and I don't want to run after him because I know that's what he wants me to do, and I curse my paws as they take me down the street and around the corner he's just turned.

"Listen, Doc," I say, "I am who I am, and...and don't take credit for everything just because you think you're so clever. It's not because of you that you didn't get beat up that night when I came back. It's because of me."

"Oh," he says in his smug voice, the one that sets my fur on end, "I think it had something to do with me."

"Christ!" I explode. "You can be such a fucking bitch sometimes!"

A white fox on the opposite side of the street turns at my words and looks at us for a moment, clearly wondering if he should intervene and hoping he won't have to. I wave him on, growling, "Sorry. It's okay," and a moment later he wraps his leather jacket around himself and moves on.

"And you, stud," Lee hisses, "can be a tremendous idiot."

He walks on. I clench my fists, willing myself to just turn around and go home. Don't follow him, I tell myself.

"Look," I say, striding alongside him. He lifts his nose just a bit and doesn't look at me. "I got you out of there because it looked like a bad situation. I was just trying to help!"

"I've told you, I don't need your help," he says.

"I know," I say. "You keep repeating yourself."

"Apparently it takes a few tries to get you to understand some things," he says tartly.

"You know," I say, "You go on about how football players like to beat up faggots and how we're just primitive jocks and yet you seem happy to sit there at a table with a bunch of them, just begging for trouble. Why would you do that, huh? Why not just leave them alone?"

"Leave them alone," he snaps. "Easy for you to say. Why don't they just leave us alone?"

For a moment, I think he means me and him, not the collective non-football-playing gay population. Things come into focus, slowly. "Why can't you let that go?"

"Just let it go. Don't think about it. How appropriate for a football player." He turns away.

I run after him, grab his shoulder. He wrenches it free and takes another couple steps. I glare at him. "That's not fair."

I can see his breath as he pants. "Neither was what happened to Brian."

"Brian's not here," I point out. "I am."

His ears go back, but not in an angry way. I see retorts flash across his eyes, but he bites them back and just turns away again.

I don't have to run to catch him, and this time, he doesn't pull away when I grab his shoulder and turn him towards me. Light mist hangs in the air between us, the fog of our breath combined with the chill of the night. His scent is strong in my nose; I can smell his anger matching mine, and all the other emotions below it. I feel like slapping him or screaming at him.

"Don't just walk away from me, dammit!" I say, louder than is necessary.

"Oh, now I'm not supposed to just let it go? Didn't you just want me to leave all those football players alone?" His eyes are piercing, challenging me, and I want to shake him, he's being so frustrating. I grab his other shoulder and he puts his paws on my stomach, bracing himself to push away from me, and we stay frozen there.

I can feel his heat, the pounding of his heart matching the quick lashing of my tail. My paws are tight on his shoulders, my blood is hot, and I'm thinking I should've just walked away. Let us both cool off, that'd be the sensible thing to do. But I don't want to be cool. Part of my anger is knowing that he's right, and I'm sure I see in his eyes that he knows that I'm right too. But there's more in his eyes, too; the anger isn't uppermost anymore, though it lingers in his scent. What I see there mirrors what's battling with anger inside me, and I see the change in my expression reflected in his eyes.

In a heartbeat, in the silence with his question hanging in the air, the tension between us changes, and we both feel it. We're both all worked up, and it doesn't matter that it was an argument that did it. We're breathing hot and heavy, warming the night, and anger and bitterness are subsumed into something else as I look back into his blue eyes and say, "No... don't let go." Then I'm crushing him to me and we're together and kissing in the middle of the street, and the chill of the night is gone. All I can feel is his heat against mine. Our clothes might as well not even be there. I've got one paw down on his tail and he's cupping my butt in his and I thank god he's in his blouse and skirt, because I didn't even stop to think about what passersby might see.

"How many blocks to your house?" I pant raggedly when we wrench ourselves apart.

"Six," he says, tongue lolling slightly out.

"We'll get there faster if I carry you," I say, and for once, he doesn't spurn my help.

### September 2006

And there's still my one big secret left to tell.

It's the morning of our first real game. Randy's ritual to kick off the season is to be hung over Saturday morning, so when the phone rings, he howls and clutches his head. "Shut it off!!"

I grin and grab the phone. "Probably coach making sure we're up," I say, clicking the phone on. "Hello?"

"Hi," his voice says in my ear, low and husky. I freeze.

After a moment of silence, I get, "Hello?" His normal voice.

"Hi," I say, finally.

He chuckles. "Surprised?"

"Yeah."

"I'll make this quick. I just wanted to remind you what you can do. I'm looking forward to being impressed today."

"You're coming?"

"Of course. I wouldn't miss it. I'll wear your favorite outfit."

I smile. The last few preseason games, he's shown up in his regular clothes, with friends. "Coming alone?"

"No, actually."

"Okay." I don't ask him to explain why his friends won't care if he dresses like a woman in public. If anyone can explain, Lee can. "I'll see you there, then."

"Make me proud." For that, he goes back to the husky feminine voice, and I'm shivering just a bit as I hang up.

I'm all ready to explain to Randy that it was a friend of mine from out of town, but he's still holding his head and moaning, and doesn't seem to care.

Game time is crazy, the stadium's packed and fans going nuts, but I spot Lee in the stands almost immediately. He's halfway up the student section, in blouse and skirt, talking with friends. We don't acknowledge each other, but I know he sees me see him. With that done, I turn my full attention to the game.

I've been getting better through the preseason, but this game is something else. I can't even say for sure what's different, not until later. All I know is I'm remembering everything and I'm hungry for the ball. I understand for the first time what they mean when they say that the game comes to you. It's an amazing feeling.

I pick off three passes before they stop throwing to my side, and bust more plays than I can count. I even save a touchdown when I force a fumble from their running back. Mike gets torched twice for scores, but we win by a field goal anyway.

After the game, coach gives me the game ball—my first one ever. I take it with me that night even though it's stupid, I could be recognized, but I don't care. I want him to see it.

Of course, when I get to the apartment, there are a couple other balls that demand my attention. Our clothes don't last long, and pretty soon we're on the bed and playing and talking a bit like we do. He makes some remarks about me getting lucky, and finally I say, "I'm not lucky, I'm good."

His foxy, cocky grin stretches from ear to ear. "I told you you were," he says.

"So, what," I ask, still capable of speech because although we are naked and rubbing pretty heavily against each other, he hasn't yet reached over for the lube to finish off our little play. I'm so jazzed inside I almost don't need it. "You got some Bull Durham thing goin' on here?"

He laughs. "I'm not that old. Do I look it?" His paw reaches to the side table.

There goes my speech center. I just shake my head. Something cool slides along my cock. Anticipation and arousal have me twitching and squirming, so I take it out on his erection, since he's takin' his sweet time. He squirms a bit, then leans in and says, "Do I feel that old?" as he sits back on me and oh dear god everything just melts away for those glorious few minutes.

When I finish my shower, he's lying under the covers, and I grab my football before joining him. He raises an eyebrow. "I'm not that loose," he says.

I flip it to him and he bobbles it, catches it against his chest. "Game ball?"

"Yeah." I scoot under the covers and grin. No, more than a grin; I can't stop my teeth from showing.

He looks shrewdly up at me. "Your timing was off for most of the third quarter. When you thought they weren't going to throw to you, you got lazy."

"They weren't throwing to my side," I point out.

"Doesn't mean you can take plays off."

My ears go back, just a little. "It was hot out there."

He turns the ball over in his paws. "Hot on both sides of the field."

I slump back against the pillows. "Jesus, nobody's perfect."

"Doesn't mean you can't try to be." He brings the ball to his nose and inhales.

"I thought I was pretty good," I grouse.

"You were good," he says. "But you can be better. You have to be better at the next level."

I turn my head. His blue eyes are even with mine. "The pros?"

"Sure," he says, and places the ball carefully on the floor. "This is a good start. You going to get eleven more?"

Eleven more? "Can't I just be proud of this one?"

"You should be," he says, and yawns hugely. "I am."

He says it simply, without emphasis, as though it's the most natural thing in the world. When I don't say anything in reply, he leans up for a soft kiss, and then turns away to back up against me. I put my arm around him and pull him tight against me, trapping his bushy and still-damp tail against my chest, wiggling my sheath between his cheeks, resting my muzzle between his ears. He goes to sleep almost immediately. I lie awake.

How can two simple words keep me staring at his wall, holding my breath for fear I'll wake up and have dreamed them? How can this little fox make the best day of my life even better? I wish there were better words to say how I'm feeling. The best I can do is to say it feels like I'm stuck under his tail and living that moment of release over and over again, only the point of release is not inside my groin. It's inside my chest, and I've never felt anything like it before.

I brush the fur on his chest, not wanting to go to sleep, not wanting this moment to end, ever. I bury my nose in his fur and close my eyes and inhale. I can feel myself drifting off, and I think, I want to feel like this again. I will feel like this again. I'll make him proud of me.

And I know that I'm not just doing it for him, but also for me. I don't mind doing it for him, though; he's the one who gives me that little push that I needed, gives me something to play for. He's my Gipper, my Rudy, my dying-kid-in-the-hospital-wing.

Eleven more game balls? No sweat.

Now, I got a secret.

Don't Blink

I've always loved superheros, so I'm not sure why it took me so many years to write a superhero story. The intersection of powers and relationships is fascinating to me, because even extraordinary people are still people, and the fact that you can lift a car over your head or teleport doesn't mean you understand relationships any better.

I had already introduced a comic-book League of Crimefighting Canids, and their speedster, Red Lightning, in "Waterways," so I just wrote some of their stories down. Red did eventually get his own story ("Stop the World"), but the first one I wrote was about a power that was always my first or second choice in our "what superpower would you have" games through college (shape-changing was the other, and Blink Coyote is already in a very pleasing shape, so there was no need to write that one). "Don't Blink" first appeared in issue #4 of Sofawolf Press's Heat, and was the first of many stories of the League of Canids (I removed the 'Crimefighting' to make the name flow better and to bring it from the sixties into the eighties, at least). It won the Ursa Major award for Best Short Fiction in 2007.

[return to TOC]

Jake knew that training was necessary to become a top-flight superhero, so he endured it patiently. When Marcia took his training into her own paws, however, he usually attended those sessions with enthusiasm. So it felt odd, on this late spring night, to be hesitating in the doorway of her bedroom as she slipped out of her jacket and blouse.

"Well?" she said. Her long ears twitched, satellite dishes

The coyote unbuttoned one button on his shirt, reached for the next. "Sorry, I just..."

"No, no." She placed a finger on the third button as the coyote was about to unbutton it. "Undress your way."

She stepped back from him, lowered her skirt to the floor and then tossed it into the hamper in the corner. Her short, fluffy tail rested against the vanity as she leaned back, folded her arms under her bra, and watched him.

He eyed the cleavage her pose created, and grinned. "You got it." He concentrated, extending his arms forward for dramatic effect. He hesitated only for a moment—toward her or away?—and then figured out how he could use the mirror behind her. He closed his eyes and pictured himself in front of her, and when he flexed his power, he contracted the 'field' as much as he could.

In the mirror, over her shoulder, he watched his clothes hang in the air where he'd been one second ago and then fall to the floor. That never got old.

Her paws reached out for his sides, fingers sinking into his tawny pelt, her thumbs rubbing at the border where the tawny dissolved into ivory. He returned his attention to her, fitting his paws neatly around the curve of her dark brown shoulders.

"You've gotten really good at that." She reached down to his sheath, full and heavy with his swollen member, and used it to pull him forward. "C'mere, now."

"Come in handy if I ever need to strip for a supervillain," he said. "Maybe like some evil woman I need to distract." He moved his large paws down to her small rear, shoving his fingers under her pink panties and pulling her hips against his.

Their muzzles met. Her long ears folded over to touch the tips of his. He pushed her panties further down and broke the kiss, licking up her pink nose and the gentle slope of her muzzle.

"Jake," she said in mild reproach, turning her head to the side.

His ears flicked back. She didn't let his sheath go, though, so he didn't stop pushing her panties down, crouching to finish the job. She stepped out of them and shook her head. "You canids with your tongues. Come on, onto the bed."

He licked at her exposed privates, but she stepped away from him, unhooked her bra and dropped it in the hamper. He watched her bare white rear sashay to the bed and plop down on it, bouncing with the springs. Her lithe form turned around, showing off the curves as she sat back and beckoned him with a finger. He wagged his tail and jumped up to the bed in a moment, burying his muzzle in her stomach fur.

She squealed and batted at his head, leaning back on her elbows. "Jake!"

"What?" He grinned up, and applied his tongue to the pink nipples now poking through her white chest fur, trying not to get distracted by remembering what she'd told him she liked: some pulling with his teeth, licking up and down, some attention to the breast itself. Marcia wasn't the first girl he'd slept with, but she was the first he'd taken instruction from.

She stopped complaining, then, slid her fingers along his erection, and trailed them up slowly. He was already dripping like a leaky faucet; at her touch he moaned and pushed her down onto the bed, washing his tongue up her chest and across each nipple in turn, taking them in his teeth and teasing them gently.

She shuddered, slipping her paws around to his rear to pull him down against her. He gasped in excitement and worked his hips to rub his hardness against her sex. He felt her moan building in her chest before he heard it, and wrapped his arms around her body while his hips worked back further until he felt the tip of his erection press down into her warm passage. "Don't forget to concentrate," she whispered.

"I know." For a moment he held there, making her wait, annoyed that she'd broken the mood, and then he pressed in slowly, all the way. She squirmed as he held her, bucking up against him, pulling his muzzle from her chest up to her mouth so her tongue could slide between his lips in a hot, wild kiss.

They kissed, while he thrust into her and back out, shivering, and that lasted a grand total of two minutes by her bedside clock until he felt the hugeness of his knot lock him to her, heard her high squeals and felt her body shake as the familiar surge of imminent release built in him—

—and suddenly he was in his own bedroom on all fours, moaning and shaking the rickety frame of his double bed as he spurted onto his sheets even though the warmth of the rabbit was gone. He panted, remaining on all fours, dripping onto his sheets, and then sighed, his ears flat. "Shit," he said to the empty room.

He blinked back to her bedroom, ears flat. She was getting under the covers, and if she saw him appear, she gave no sign.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Marcia shook her head. "You weren't concentrating." She lay back on the pillows and looked at the ceiling.

"I tried," he said. "But if you weren't so damn hot..."

Now she looked at him. "Don't try that, Jake, it's not going to work. A real superhero has to think fast and keep his power completely under his control. You had to have felt the power building up, and you should have been able to stop it. Do we have to look at the monitor record again to look at how long you had?"

He glanced at the machine in the corner, and tucked his tail between his legs. "No."

She sighed. "You know this is all for your career, right, Jake?" He nodded. "Well, look. There are worse things than having to practice that some more."

When he looked up, she was smiling. "I just feel like I screwed up this whole night. I really have been practicing."

"By yourself?" She arched an eyebrow and looked down at his dripping member, only now starting to retreat into its sheath.

"Well...yeah." He looked away and flicked his ears.

"That's cute. Do you think of me?"

"Oh yeah!"

"Nice to know you think of me at least then." She turned onto her side.

Jake started to collect his clothes. "Sorry," he mumbled. He pulled the briefs on, then stood there awkwardly.

"You can stay if you want to." She sounded tired.

"I was going to do my rounds."

"All right." She turned out the light. Just before he blinked to the rooftop, he heard her say, "Be safe."

Marcia's condo building was not tall, but there were few tall buildings between it and downtown Dunstown, so it gave him a nice view of the suburbs and the gaslamp district, and the cracks in between where dirty things happened. He lay on the edge, eyes closed, listening to the city below. The wind ruffled the dark streak of fur down his back and tugged his tail back and forth, slowly carrying away the glow and warmth of sex.

No noise reached his ears this night, and after ten minutes, he was feeling a little chilly even through his fur. Even his shaft, covered by his tail and no longer straining against the fabric of his briefs, was cooling down. He took one last look around this area and blinked back to his apartment, on the other side of town.

Back in his bedroom, Jake dropped his clothes and put on his costume, a tight black jumpsuit with a yellow eye logo in the center. He'd wanted it smaller and over the left breast, but Marcia had overruled him. "It has to be big. We want people to remember it so the brand takes hold. You won't be doing much hand-to-hand fighting or sneaking around. Pop in, pop out. We'll put a kevlar sheet behind this so if people aim at it, you can survive being shot. That's what I'm most worried about. Someone taking a shot at you that you don't see."

So Jake had kevlar on the front and back, a hood he could pull over his head to avoid exposing his identity if he needed to, and black gloves that had a well-textured grip, because early on he had a tendency to blink into someplace off balance and put his hands out to break his fall. He was much better now, but he still kept the gloves because he didn't know what he would be appearing next to.

His portable police scanner fit into the pocket on his right hip. He seated the earbud that was connected to it in his right ear before blinking to the roof of his building, his safe spot numero uno. From there he could see and hear several blocks into the Swamp, his low-rent, low-class neighborhood where he'd started breaking up small crimes when he first got his powers. As his confidence had grown, so had his beat, but he always began and ended in the Swamp.

It was quiet tonight, so he blinked over to spot numero dos, in the financial district, Dunstown's euphemistic name for the three buildings that housed the city's largest bank and four financial services companies. There he heard some activity, and turned up the volume until he caught the code: 211-S. Robbery in progress, silent alarm. 221 Redwood, cross street 3rd--that was only six blocks away, a small office complex. Someone after the computers, no doubt. That happened a few times a month. He blinked to the closest roof he could see, and then the next, until he was looking down at the intersection.

Jake knew that the four-story plain brown building with schoolhouse-regular windows was older than he was, but the collection of antennas on the roof and the black wire at each window showed him that the inside had been brought up to modern standards. He tapped his paw impatiently, itching to blink inside and find out what was going on. He hated having to wait for the police.

They pulled up ten minutes later, lights and sirens off. Two officers got out, and Jake sighed when he saw the six-foot-tall frame and huge rack of antlers. The presence of Officer Rosen meant he'd most likely be wasting his time, but he had to try. He put his hood up and blinked down to the street, in full view of both the large elk and his new partner, a young fox.

The fox clapped a paw to his gun in alarm, but Rosen barely twitched. "Blinky," he said. "Wondered when we'd see you."

"Just offering my services, Officer," Jake said, keeping his ears up and smiling, not reacting to the elk's condescension.

"We don't need the League butting in," Rosen said. "We've got this under control." He looked over his shoulder. "Collins, you have the building entry code?"

"I'm not here representing the League," Jake said. "When I am, I have to wear this red and blue armband, and I can only do that anyway if there are supervillains involved or if there are research laboratory thefts—"

Rosen cut him off with a wave as the fox tapped a code into the security panel. "I'm not interested in your accessorizing tips. We've got this under control. Isn't there a liquor store somewhere you should be staking out?"

"Sergeant," the fox said, "It would be helpful if he could pop in and..."

"Collins, just get that door open." Rosen didn't even turn, just kept Jake fixed with his eyes as though he could prevent him from blinking away. Jake glanced over at the fox, and saw a logo that looked like a circuit design and the word Intagrated on the wall at the far end of the lobby.

The fox's ears went down. "Yes, sir."

Jake shrugged, trying not to betray his disappointment. "Just call on the radio if you need me."

"Don't hold your—"

He was on the roof before the elk finished speaking. Keeping his hood up, he sat next to the ledge at the edge of the roof and rested his elbow on it, looking over as the two policemen entered the building. If there was gunfire, or if they called, he could get inside pretty quickly.

A breeze wafted past his nose, carrying a familiar avian scent. She was quiet and his hood muffled surrounding sounds, so he hadn't heard her, but she was good about approaching him from downwind. "Hi, Moxy," he said in a low voice.

"Rosen run you off again?" A tall, stately raven settled herself a few feet in front of him, leaning her arm on the ledge in a mirror image of his pose. Her beak clacked lightly as she talked. Like most avians, she wore no clothes, as all but the lightest garments made it difficult to fly. She had fingers on the ends of her wings and clawed talons at the ends of her skinny black legs, but when she had her arms spread out, she looked like a person in a bird suit.

"Yeah." Jake looked over at her bright black eyes. "I thought things would get better once I got in the League, but it's just gotten worse."

The raven clacked her beak and grinned at him. "They were threatened by a superhero horning in on their turf, and you thought that joining with a bunch of other superheroes would make that better?"

Jake shrugged. "I just thought, y'know, they'd see that I'm legit, that I'm not just some cocky kid out there who doesn't know what I'm doing."

"Cops have long memories. Why d'you think the cop beat at the paper turns over every year?"

"I thought it was cause most reporters are lightweights and once they see their first murder, they ask to be transferred to the society pages."

"Ha ha." She clacked at him again. "For your information, that was a promotion. I'm still on good terms with some of the cops."

"But not all of them."

"Do you want to trade or not?"

He grinned. "What'cha got?"

"Some info the cops aren't talking about on their scanner."

That perked his ears up. "Really? Why not?"

"Why do you think?" She fluffed her wings. "They don't want you and the League hearing about it and getting involved."

Jake couldn't stop his tail from wagging. "A supervillain? Here in Dunstown?"

"Maybe. But no, just a couple thefts from research labs specializing in supernormals."

"Which labs?"

"Tell me about your girlfriend," she countered.

He jumped. "How did you know..." Then he stopped, because her beak was open in a laugh. "Dammit, Moxy..."

"So you do have a girlfriend. That's sweet. How long you been going out? Does she know your secret identity?"

"One question," he said. "Since you already got a bit of info. She's gonna kill me anyway."

"Does she know your secret identity?"

He nodded. "Yeah." He hadn't really been able to hide it, when he'd blinked out during sex on their fourth date.

"So you trust her. Wedding bells in the future?"

"Which labs?" He was determined to hold her to one question. Moxy often dug up good information for him, and if he didn't parcel out the things she wanted to know about him, he wouldn't get far with her. She'd already asked about his family and once about the League in the four months since she'd first met him on a rooftop in the gaslamp district.

"Ling Scientific and the Mount Cedar government facility. The cops are really worried about the Mount Cedar one because it had state of the art locks. They think it might be a new gadgethead."

"Cripes, not another one. You know the League has a list of about a hundred of them?"

"I've heard." She cocked her head as he took out his handheld phone and started jotting notes. "You're just going to send that unsecured?"

"Oh, CryptoFox does all kinds of security on it," he said, tapping a quick message.

"Yeah, but if I pick that up, or knock you out and take it, I could just read it from there."

He grinned and tossed it to her. "Go for it."

It clattered to the roof as she swiped and missed, unprepared. She picked it up and stared at him, then down at the handheld. Her black eyes blinked, and she looked back up. "It won't turn on."

"Thumbprint reader on the side, keyed to me. I have to be holding it for it to be on."

"What if I sever your thumb?"

He shuddered. "Come on, Moxy."

She tossed the device back to him. "Hey, you have to think like a supervillain."

"Well, it has to stay warm. And I think it checks for a pulse too." He applied his thumb to the pad and watched the screen light up.

"Okay," she said. "So I just have to tie your paw to it and keep you in restraints."

He grinned. "You seen a restraint that could hold me?"

"If I'm a gadgethead, that's the first thing I try to build. Mount Cedar had a lab devoted to power negation."

"What?"

"You think the government likes the idea of you guys running around?"

"The League has a government contract..."

"Wake up, Blink," she said, now sounding cross. "The government defaults on contracts every day. You expect them to rely on the innate honor of anyone else? They expect in others what they would expect from themselves. They just want a way to control you guys in case...in case they need to."

"But why here? Why not in New York, or L.A.?"

"In the big two's backyards? Nah. Dunstown was a good, medium-sized town without a superhero, until a couple years ago." She laughed again, a breathy ah-ah-ah sound. "The radiation burst you got your powers from was a malfunction in a machine headed for Mount Cedar, remember? Hella ironic, eh?"

"I guess. I don't really go for irony."

"To each his own." She grinned. "This'll make for a good couple articles. 'Ms. Blink,' I think we'll call her. Probably a coyote, right? No, wait, cubs would be a big liability for you. So probably not a coyote." She tapped the ledge. "Probably not a canid. Oh well. I'll make up a few likely candidates and profile them. Should get me through the month. Hey, look. Your cops missed the guy."

Sure enough, Rosen and Collins were coming out of the entrance of the building alone. They got in the car, and Jake turned up his scanner in time to hear Rosen's gruff voice saying, "...no suspects found at the scene. Security company rep arrived and reset the alarm."

He turned the scanner down. "Did you see a truck from the security company pull up?"

"Yeah." Moxy pointed down to where the police car was driving away. "It's around the corner from here. There goes the guy." A bear in a dark uniform was tapping a code at the security panel and then walked off and out of view.

Jake watched him go, and looked back up at the building. No lights flickered behind any of the windows, no flashlight appeared now that the police and security were gone. Still...

"Don't go in," Moxy said, watching him.

Jake didn't take his eyes from the windows. "It just doesn't feel right."

"Alarms go off sometimes," she said. "But look, you go in there now and the best thing that can happen is you don't find anything, nobody sees you, and you come back here to this spot. So let's just pretend you've already done that, and move on?"

"What about truth and justice?" he said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

"What about 'em?" She rustled her feathers. "Sorry, kiddo. You get caught snooping around in there, you're breaking the law. You catch a thief after the cops have already been here, you're making things worse. Just move on. Keep an ear to the scanner, and don't worry. You're a good kid and you'll get a break eventually."

Jake sighed and forced himself to look away from the building, working his paws against the frustration building up inside him. A few mistakes he'd made in the past couple years as an overzealous kid, and suddenly the cops wouldn't let him help with anything. And the League gave him nothing but petty assignments and food duty. "I sure hope so," he said sourly.

"I'll see to it," Moxy said, standing and stretching her wings. "After all, someone's got to be your Lois Lane, right?"

"You're first in line." He waved as she leaped from the roof, spreading her wings and soaring down over the street.

Sometimes he wished he could fly, more for the experience than anything else. He liked being able to hop from place to place in no time, though; he wouldn't trade gifts with Moxy. Besides, any avian or bat could fly around. Only he, so far as he knew, could teleport.

He watched the papers for the next few days, but saw no mention of a break-in at Intagrated. Moxy'd been right, as he was finding she often was. She'd reported on the police for a year with the Dunstown Herald, and before that she was covering the wires, so she knew her stuff.

Jake caught a car thief two nights later, blinking onto the hood of the car long enough to startle the driver and get a look at the interior, and then he'd blinked into the passenger seat and grabbed the horse's gun, blinked with it to the back seat, and held it on the suddenly terrified driver until he slammed on the brake and stopped the car. The police had grudgingly given him credit for that one, but of course nobody at the League meeting had noticed it except for Red Lightning.

"Nice work on that car thief," the whip-thin fox said, sauntering over to Jake during a break.

"Oh, you noticed?" Jake played with the League pen, doodling on the memo pad.

Red squeezed his shoulder. "I was the youngest once, too. Just be patient, 'kay?"

Jake glanced up at the narrow russet muzzle, encouraged by the smile. "You were? When?"

"'Til you joined."

Jake barked a laugh. "Really? How old are you?"

"I graduated from Whitford two years ago."

"You're kidding. You've only been a superhero for two years?"

The fox leaned against the table, looking down at Jake. "Now, who says I wasn't doing a bit on the side in college? I just went pro after graduation."

"But I read your bio! You collared the Dastardly Dingos, and brought down F.R.I.G.H.T. almost single-pawed, and—"

The fox waved him silent. "Ah, you know, the Dastardly Dingos weren't that dastardly. It was just the alliteration they liked."

"I thought I'd never get into the League. There's no criminal genius masterminds or organizations in Dunstown. I won't even get to investigate the Mount Cedar thing."

Red put a paw on his shoulder again and grinned down. "You'll get there. Just wait 'til the other guys get to know you a little better. The barbecue will be good. Bringin' anyone?" Red grinned. "I saw that article."

"Oh, that." Jake shook his head. "The papers, you know. They make up shit..." He flicked his ears. "Nah, not bringing anyone."

Red nodded, and rubbed his chin with a paw. "You'll meet my wife there. Those things are always kind of awkward, though. Tell ya what. Why don't you come by the house for Sunday brunch? We can sit down and just talk."

"Sure!" Jake wagged his tail. "Love to!"

"I do love my Sarah's biscuits an' gravy, and I bet dollars to donuts you will too."

"Doesn't show." Jake grinned, pointedly eyeing the fox's waistline.

Red laughed. He leaned closer. "I'm not 'llowed to talk about it around Vicious Vixen, but I just can't keep weight on. Anything I eat vanishes quicker'n a chicken leg at my mom's Sunday dinner."

"I'm kinda the same," Jake said.

"You could just blink off the extra weight, couldn't you?" Red cocked his head.

"Eww." Jake shook off the vision of a pile of fat lying on the ground. "I dunno, never tried."

"Crypto reckons you could. He's pretty excited about seein' the range of your powers."

"Really?" Jake looked across the table at the scruffy fox, lost in his laptop computer. "He hasn't given me anything to do. I wonder if he ever will."

Red rubbed his chin again. "Hold on just a tick." He patted the coyote on the shoulder and then navigated through the chairs and heroes to Crypto's side. The smaller fox jumped when Red tapped his shoulder, then perked his ears, looked over at Jake as Red talked, and finally nodded. Red looked up and gave Jake a thumbs-up.

"I swapped with you," he said a moment later, strolling back to Jake's side. "P.K.'s investigating the Mount Cedar research item you brought in, and Crypto'd assigned me as backup, but I convinced him to switch with you. I'll do that cleanup over in Millenport for ya."

"P.K.?"

"Psycho Coyote. Sorry, Power Coyote."

Jake stifled a giggle, looking over at the tall coyote engaged in conversation with Vicious Vixen, three pens twirling lazily in the air above his paws. "Psycho?"

"Psycho-Kinetic. But also, yeah, that." Red grinned. "Wait 'til the barbecue. Watch him try to pick out a fork. The tines all have to be exactly the same length. He's an okay guy, though. Just be flexible with your schedule."

Jake found out what he meant after the meeting, when P.K. came over to work out the schedule. The floating pens in front of the jarring red on black patterned uniform distracted Jake, so he had a little trouble following the conversation.

"I'm sorry, we can't meet there at noon?"

The pens twirled more quickly. Jake had to look away. "I have to eat lunch at 12:45 p.m.," P.K. said. "And I have to eat dinner at seven. So we'll have to leave the labs at five."

"I could just blink you home."

One of the pens nearly fell. "Oh, no no no. I can't do that. No, my private jet will be fine. We just need to be done by five so I can get home."

Jake caught the eye of Red Lightning, who was grinning at him over MultiWolf's shoulder. "Okay. If we meet at three, will that work?"

The pens froze in the air for a moment. P.K.'s eyes seemed to unfocus. "Three is bad," he said. "It has a bad resonance on that day." He focused on Jake again, as the pens started moving. "Three-thirty?"

"Two-thirty would give us more time." Jake watched the pens' reaction to that. They kept twirling calmly.

"All right." P.K. nodded. "Two-thirty it is. Meet out in front of the labs? I'll have Jumal call someone there to set up an appointment. The idea is to pick up reference points for us to come back that night and investigate further if need be."

"Got it." Jake grinned.

P.K. peered behind him. "I hope you don't wag your tail that much all the time," he said. "It's quite distracting."

"Sorry." Jake stilled it, but when P.K. turned away, he gave Red a thumbs-up and a huge grin.

His first real assignment had Jake excited enough that when he blinked into Marcia's place that night and saw her holding the Herald society page, he had completely forgotten about Moxy's article. "Guess what?" he said, bouncing from foot to foot. "I've got an assignment, a real one, with P.K. next week! I can't tell you what it is 'til it's over, official League business, but it's—what?"

Marcia held up the paper, open to a page 2 article titled "Local Hero Has Romantic Side." Beneath one of the stock photos of him, Moxy had drawn a generically canid silhouette with a large chest and a white question mark inside it. "Oh," Jake said. "That."

"Let's see," Marcia said. "I could be Genevieve Hightower, the kangaroo heiress to the Hightower fortune—classy, her internet sex video must be losing steam—or I could be Janice Margolies, high-powered criminal attorney—met her once or twice, she needs that long neck for looking down on people, plus she has no fashion sense—or I could be Adrienne Bazure, that slut of a lioness over at Macy's—and why do they have you linked to all these exotic women anyway? Oh, and listen to this: 'Rumors linking Blink Coyote to the Herald's own Moxy Nightwing are almost certainly untrue.' Almost certainly." She snorted. "Considering she just made them up, I'm sure they are. Aren't they?"

It took Jake a second to realize she was talking to him. "Oh. Oh, yes, of course! I mean, I couldn't tell her anything about you, but she tricked me into telling her that I have a girlfriend."

"I know." Marcia sighed. "It's just frustrating, doing all this work and being such a part of your career and not being able to take any credit for it. You know, yesterday all the girls at work were talking about that carjacking."

"They were?" Jake's ears perked up. "What did they say?"

"Oh, the usual." Marcia splayed her long ears and clasped her paws under her chin. "'He's so brave, I bet he's really handsome under that hood, and so mysterious!'"

"Was that that cute, um, what's her name, Crystal?" Marcia's eyes narrowed, and Jake flattened his ears, dropping the look of interest. "Sorry, sorry. So, uh, where are we going tonight?"

"Bertolucci's. My treat."

Jake wagged his tail as Marcia dropped the newspaper. "Is this my birthday dinner?"

"No, no." She smiled. "You get your birthday dinner next week on your birthday. I've got something special planned. No, this is just a dinner. Then I thought maybe we'd come back here and work on your concentration."

"Oh, if we have to." His tail wagged even faster.

She grinned. "Like I have to ask. Come on, stud. I'll drive."

That was their standing joke; Jake had a car, for appearances, but it barely ran. He preferred to walk or blink anywhere he went. He could get to places he could see, or get back to places he'd been, and having grown up in Dunstown meant he could get almost anywhere in the city within five minutes at most.

They were walking down to the car when his handheld went off. He flicked it on and skimmed the messages while Marcia sighed audibly. "Oh, for..." He tapped a message back. "Hang on. I can't believe these guys have never heard of Justin Timberwolf...I can't believe they don't know who sings 'Howl of My Heart.' Crypto really needs to go home and not be at the office all night. Okay, there." He flipped the device off and grinned at her. "Dinner?"

They had just gotten their drinks when the handheld buzzed again. Marcia glared at it. "What now?"

Jake's claw moved over the screen, writing in quick shorthand as he talked absently. "Another check up. They're worried about Dr. Malevola escaping from his cell, and they want me to pop in at random intervals."

"Can't they wait until after dinner?"

"Crypto says that might constitute a predictable pattern." He looked up, putting the device down on the table. "I'll be right back. Sorry."

"Jake, listen, don't—"

He didn't hear the end of her sentence. When he blinked back, she was sipping her beer. The lines of annoyance above her eyes smoothed out as she saw him. That was one thing Jake was learning to appreciate about his ability: the chance to see people candidly in the moment before they registered his presence. He made a note to be nicer to Marcia for the rest of the night.

"Dr. Malevola all safe and sound?"

"Yeah, he was, uh, well, kinda embarrassed to see me." Jake grinned. "I think someone's been sneaking him dirty magazines."

The rabbit shook her head. "You shouldn't do that, darling. The waiter could've come over."

Jake shrugged. "No biggie. I'd sign an autograph or two and we'd get the meal comped." He slid the handheld into the pocket of the yellow dress shirt he wore.

The rabbit arched an eyebrow. "That's never happened."

Jake looked off towards the bar. "I got a free salad once after I stopped a guy from robbing the Sizzler."

"But you did that in costume."

"Marcia, I'm fine, really." The handheld in his pocket buzzed again, and he took it out and started tapping on it.

The rabbit looked over the table. "Another follow-up?"

"Nah, P.K.'s asking me if I can take care of the potato salad for the barbecue this weekend. He was supposed to, but I'm the new kid, so they're dumping all the stuff they don't want to do on me. Red Lightning already asked if I could get the chips for him. I'm like, how long will it take you to run to the store? A minute?" He grinned and waved his paw.

"Oh." Marcia leaned back in the booth. "I didn't know we were going to a barbecue this weekend."

Jake's ears went back. He looked up at her and then back at the handheld. "Oh, I, uh, didn't think you'd want to go..."

Marcia folded her arms across her dark blue jacket. "What made you think that? All the times I asked if I could meet some of the other League members? The strings I pulled to get you an interview to get into the League in the first place? The huge poster of WonderWolf I used to have in my college dorm?"

"I never saw your college dorm."

"First the publicist position, now this."

"It's just a boring function. I don't know if anyone else is bringing their, uh, SOs..."

"Of course they are," she snapped back at him, and then softened her voice, giving him a smile. "But most of them aren't single. You just have to be more assertive."

"I just feel like I have a long way to go," Jake said after a moment. "I've only been doing this for two years. They've all got these great stories they swap. And my name..."

"What's wrong with your name?" Marcia narrowed her eyes.

"Blink Coyote? It sounds like I have some kind of neurological condition."

"We picked that name out together." Marcia's tone was growing frostier.

"You picked it. Anyway, I don't even have a nemesis yet."

"Oh, not this again." Marcia rolled her eyes. "Forgive my prosaic spirit, but I'm glad you don't have one of those."

"But I should! I'm the only big hero in Dunstown. The only one in the League, anyway. WonderWolf has at least three." Jake tapped the table. "I wonder if he'd give me one, if I asked."

The waiter returned then with their pizza. Jake took one of the pepperoni and sausage slices and ripped a huge bite out of it, while Marcia nibbled on the green pepper and onion side.

"You've got a lot to be proud of," she said after a bit. "I mean, crime in Dunstown is down thirty percent since you started working the streets."

"I know," he said, "but it's all purse-snatchers and liquor store holdups. Nothing really big. You hear that Night Wolf captured three terrorists and half a pound of weapons-grade plutonium last week?"

Marcia blinked. "No."

"I guess Stormy was going to release the news tomorrow. Yeah, he just got back from Kurdistan and he was in D.C. with the CIA all day yesterday and today."

"Stormy? Is that Coyote Rain?"

Jake finished his slice of pizza. "Nah, Stormy's the...uh..." He grabbed another slice and chewed on it, his ears back..

Marcia put down her pizza. "Oh. So that's his name."

"Her name."

"Cute. Sounds like she really fits in. Is she a wolf? Coyote?"

He chewed on the pizza, searching for an answer that wouldn't prolong the conversation. "Um. Wolf, I think."

"You _think_?"

"I only met her the one time, WonderWolf was introducing her and it was real quick, but yeah, she's a wolf."

"Of course she is. The League of Crimefighting Canids couldn't hire a rabbit publicist. Did you see the press release I did last week got picked up by two of the major networks?"

Jake started to shake his head, then caught himself. "Oh, yeah!"

"If I'm not fighting crime, I don't have to be a canid, right?"

"Yeah, but everyone else is."

"That's discrimination."

Jake sighed. "I did try to tell them...but I'm just a kid, you know, and I'm new..."

The rabbit picked up her pizza. "It's all right. I'm probably not qualified. It would have been nice to have been asked, is all." She paused, then visibly put it aside and chirped cheerfully, "I'm glad to hear things are going well there."

Jake took another slice of pizza and munched it slowly. Her dismissal of their disagreements made him vaguely uneasy, each one feeling like a cloud in their sky, a storm postponed until later.

They walked along the tree-lined streets back to her condo, a second-floor unit in an upscale complex just a few blocks from the Dunstown gaslamp district. The conversation along the way back was bland and neutral, friends of theirs going on trips, people in Marcia's office getting promoted, government initiatives. Nothing to add to the storm; nothing to dispel it.

Jake felt the tension, or at least thought he did. Best to cut his losses tonight and start fresh tomorrow, or even wait 'til his birthday, he thought. They'd reached her building, and she was waiting expectantly, so he said, "I'm kind of tired."

She tugged on his jacket. "You need to keep practicing."

He sighed. "Mmm. I really am kind of tired..."

She nuzzled up at the base of his ears and then a bit inside. His ears flicked. He was getting excited, and he could smell that she was too. She angled her hip into his arousal and sighed against him. "Why don't you stay the night and tuck me in?"

He gave in, of course; he was young and male. What else could he do? At least he would do his best to enjoy it. And while this time he managed to hold on until his climax, he still blinked out in mid-convulsion, returning contritely to Marcia's remonstrations. At home in his own bed, Jake thought he would rest for just a little while before making his rounds, but when he yawned and cracked his eyes open, the sun greeted him through the bedroom window.

Guilt over missing his rounds drove him to check the Internet and the paper for any crimes he might have prevented, and finding none helped only a little. He worked assiduously the next few nights, meeting Moxy once but getting no new information from her.

Marcia was unaccountably busy the entire weekend, leaving him messages with instructions to come to her place on Tuesday night at 6 pm. Making his birthday present, he presumed, with some relief, as it freed him from having to explain that he was going to meet Red Lightning for Sunday brunch without her.

Red's wife was a charming vixen, a little older than Red, and she told him they'd been married out of high school, since before the lab accident that had given Red his powers. He told Jake about that over beers (Red drank only one, saying "I'm a lightweight" with a grin), and Jake told him the story of discovering his power, the radiation burst from the machine he was unloading from a truck at his summer job. Jake envied the rapport he seemed to have with his wife, how they each knew each other's stories and kept taking small moments to look at each other or touch each other. They were so likable, however, and laughed so genuinely at his stories, that he couldn't let envy grow into anything else.

Their real names were Mike and Sarah, and as they were shaking hands, Mike said, "Well, now you've been here, I guess you can get back anytime, eh?"

"Just to the front porch." Jake grinned. "I never blink in uninvited."

Sarah smiled hesitantly. "Could I...see?"

Mike grinned at Jake. He pointed to a tree in the front yard. "Race you to the tree and back?"

"Oh, I don't know," Jake said. "I don't usually..."

"Come on. Don't worry about beating me."

"No, it's just..." They were both looking at him. "Okay."

"Give us a start, hon," Mike said.

Sarah held up her black paw. "Ready...steady...go!"

Jake appeared next to the tree and touched it just as a red blur slapped a black paw to the bark. He got his bearings and reappeared inside next to Sarah, a fraction of a second after Mike had skidded to a halt.

"I think Mike won," Sarah said. "But you did a very nice job."

"Of course you would say that." Jake grinned as he said it.

"Home court advantage!" Mike crowed, raising both paws in the air.

"Now let's try it with the door closed," Jake said, and they all laughed. "All right, I gotta get going. Thanks again for the great brunch, Sarah."

"Lovely to meet you," Sarah said, extending her paw.

"Likewise," he said, taking it gently. "You're a lucky guy, Mike."

"Oh, I dunno," he said. "I heard you're dating Jenny Hightower." He winked as Jake's ears flicked back in a blush.

"Stop it, Mike," Sarah said.

"Yeah, don't worry, you won't see me on the Internet anytime soon." Jake grinned. "So long, guys."

He blinked back to his apartment and spent the rest of the day doing mundane tasks: laundry, some housecleaning, grocery shopping. His mom called just before sunset to wish him a happy birthday in advance, and after an hour talking to both parents, the city was growing dark and he could go out on his rounds.

On Tuesday, he was woken up at quarter past seven by a phone call from his sister in Europe wishing him a happy birthday. He talked to her while he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, went in to work, and found himself growing more and more excited as the clock inched towards six.

At 5:57 pm, unable to wait any longer, he blinked to Marcia's apartment. "Birthday boy's here!" he announced, dropping to the living room carpet.

Soft music played from the bedroom. Otherwise, the apartment was silent. Jake straightened his shirt with a grin. "Oh, some concentration lessons? Well, I'm all for that." He pushed open the door to the bedroom.

Marcia sat on the bed. It took him a moment to see that her arms were tied behind her back and her mouth bound securely with tape. Her eyes widened when she saw him, and she motioned him back with her head, straining to talk through the tape.

He heard a small noise to his right and felt a prick in his side. In an instant, he was back in his bedroom, landing unsteadily on the bed and falling to the floor. Dizzy, he got up and braced himself. He'd been shot with...something. And Marcia was caught.

The yellow eye logo stared at him from the open closet. Had to get his suit on and go back and rescue her, he thought. He fumbled for a moment with the buttons on his shirt, wondering why his fingers seemed thicker. "Hell," he said, and blinked out of his clothes, appearing naked in front of the closet and already reaching for the outfit.

He got both legs in it and then his arms, fastening the snaps up the side and pulling the hood over his ears. The room was spinning slowly. He pulled the gloves on. Had to save Marcia. Had to...

He blinked to her bedroom, intending to pop in, assess the situation, and pop out, like he'd done with the car thief. But he materialized a good two feet above the edge of her bed, landed awkwardly, and fell to the floor after getting only a glimpse of a white-robed figure striding toward him. Hands circled his neck as he struggled to keep his balance in the room, which was now not only spinning, but crazily tilted. He tried unsuccessfully to blink out twice before blackness rose up and swallowed him.

Awareness came back to him in a reddish haze on the inside of his eyelids. His mouth felt gummy and tasted horrible. He ran his tongue around his dry lips and tried to open his eyes, but they felt gummy as well. He couldn't bring his paws up; they were bound behind him somehow. His ankle hurt, too. The room he was in smelled sterile and antiseptic, but there was a person in it with him. Male, some kind of scientist or doctor, he thought. He could smell laboratory chemicals and the person's scent under it, a light musk, like raccoon, but different.

He forced his eyes open, letting in a bright white light that made him close them immediately. After several blinks, tears dripping down his muzzle, he was able to see the blurry outlines of what was in the room with him.

Directly in front of him was some kind of lab bench, with two metal stools in front of it and a shiny metal contraption, probably a faucet. He could see a yellowish rectangular object to his right, approximately filing-cabinet-shaped, and beside it a long flat thing that looked as though another filing cabinet had exploded on top of it, showering papers and folders everywhere.

His vision cleared somewhat as he looked over to his left, and saw the figure in white.

It stood just a bit shorter than him, and not only was its lab coat white, but most of the fur he could see was white. Only a grayish patch between the two small pinkish ears marred the otherwise ivory fur. Behind him, a thick and furless pink tail curled up from the ground, and Jake could see his feet, covered in shoes. The dark brown eyes behind a pair of round glasses held his when he met them, and the long pointed muzzle below them curved into a smile, showing a mouth full of small, pointed teeth. A possum. Jake had never met a possum before.

First time for everything, he thought, trying to clear his head. He'd find out what the story was, blink out of his bonds and subdue this guy, and then go rescue Marcia.

"Welcome to my laboratory, Blink Coyote. Or may I call you Jake?" The possum had a deceptively pleasant voice, with a bit of a quaver to it. Jake cursed inwardly. His secret identity was out, less than two years into his career! It had taken WonderWolf thirteen to be found out.

"Jake, then," the possum went on. "I'm sure you're wondering what you're doing here. I've been working on some projects involving you and your fellow supernormals, and I reached a point in my work where it became necessary to prove a hypothesis before I could proceed any further. I required the presence of an actual supernormal in order to conduct a series of controlled tests, with myself as the control subject, to follow proper scientific method..." He blinked, looked around, and cleared his throat. "That is to say, I have been indulging in some extra research of my own, that my employer is not aware of. For my own benefit. With your power at my disposal, I will build a weapon that will make governments tremble!"

Jake ignored the odd discontinuity of this exposition. "Who are you?" he croaked, and then immediately thought of a thousand better things to say. Why not, 'you have the advantage of me, sir'? Or 'you seem to know me, but I'm afraid I'm not familiar with you'? Or even the classic, 'you're mad!'? But no, he had to come up with the most trite line ever, and deliver it badly on top of that.

"You will be the first to know me as Doctor..." He hesitated. "Doctor Defiance."

Jake frowned. "What are you defying?"

The possum blinked at him. "Um, authority. Governments! You know."

"It's not a very good name. I suggest you keep trying." That was better.

"Listen...you're not in a position to discuss this!" Doctor Defiance was clearly as uncomfortable with his name as Jake was with his, if not more. "We'll have plenty of time to compare names."

"Where's Marcia?" Jake demanded.

"Oh, she's down the hall. After she saw me, I had to bring her along. She'll be extra insurance to make sure you behave."

Fleetingly, Jake wondered how the possum had gotten them both to this lab. Must have henchmen, of course, so there'll be someone guarding Marcia. I'll be ready for them. He flexed his fists. "This has all been very interesting, but I think it's time for me to go." He closed his eyes and blinked...

...and opened them again to see the possum's sneer. "Go on, then," Doctor Defiance said.

Jake felt a sinking feeling in his chest that passed a rising panic on the way down, a feeling he remembered last from looking up two years ago and seeing the red glow even through the wood of the crate as he balanced it on his shoulder. He tried again, and again went nowhere.

"Not so easy, is it?" The possum clapped his paws. "It looks like my first hypothesis is proven correct! The collar works!"

"Collar?" Jake could feel it now, constricting the fur around his neck. If he swiveled his ears downward, he could hear a very faint, high-pitched electronic whine.

"Yes, my hypothesis about the mechanism of your powers was accurate. Once I had figured that out, it was child's play to create a blocker."

This was not heading in a direction Jake was happy with. "How did you..."

The possum waved a paw. "Oh, it's a simple matter of working out the displacement factor and the transference energy. After that, there's enough supernormal research to narrow it down. But perhaps I'm being too modest. It did take me six months, after all." He hid a small laugh behind his paw.

Jake felt his tail droop. Six months? This guy had come up with a way to negate his powers in six months? His career was over anyway. It didn't really matter if some idiot with a stupid name was going to keep him captive to do experiments on. If it wasn't this jerk, it'd be some other one.

No! He was a member of the League of Crimefighting Canids, after all!

Even if, he now realized, he had completely neglected to call the League and notify them of a dangerous situation. So none of them knew where he was, to come to his rescue, or even that he was in trouble. They might not figure it out until late in the week, when he didn't show up for the League meeting.

He still had his wits, though. Maybe he could trick the possum into taking the collar off. If he pretended to be choking, or something. Not right away, but...later, when his guard was down. His tail drooped further. Lame dialogue, lame escape plans. What kind of superhero was he?

"Let's start with a blood sample. I've been dying for that. Fortunately, you won't have to. Ha ha ha."

The laughter sounded forced, but Jake couldn't see how that would help him. He studied the possum for any sign of weakness, but without powers and with his hands and feet bound, he wasn't sure what he could do.

The possum tapped his muzzle with one claw, staring up and down Jake's uniform. "Now, how does this thing come off?" he wondered, and Jake kept quiet.

For all his supposed intelligence, it took Doctor Defiance a full minute to find the snaps down the right side of the chest of Jake's outfit. His delicate pink fingers pulled apart the first one, then another and another. He exposed Jake's shoulder and upper chest, and seemed to be staring for several moments to decide where to stick the syringe he held in his left paw.

The possum cleared his throat. "Okay. Now, this might hurt a bit." His dark eyes drifted up from Jake's chest to meet the coyote's eyes, and he blinked. "Not that I care!" He pulled loose several more snaps from the uniform and pushed the sleeve down Jake's arm, exposing his elbow and his stomach down to the top of his hip. Once again, the possum paused and stared.

"You go commando, huh?" he said finally.

Jake was very aware of the cool lab air on his privates. He said, "I was kind of in a hurry when I put the uniform on tonight."

"Right, of course." Doctor Defiance put one of his delicate pink paws on Jake's chest. "You work out?"

"Not really." This looked like maybe a sign of weakness. Or something. Jake wasn't quite sure what was going on.

"You should. It's important to stay healthy."

"That's your job, now," Jake said bitterly.

The possum looked genuinely startled. "What?"

"To keep me healthy. As your prisoner?"

"Oh. Of course! Yes, I'll do all that." His paw was curling in Jake's chest fur, his muzzle close to the coyote's. Jake searched his eyes for any sign of trickery, but saw only reflected curiosity.

Then Doctor Defiance leaned in and kissed him on the mouth.

It lasted only for a couple seconds. The possum stepped back, holding a paw to his muzzle as if horrified. The syringe clattered to the floor.

Jake blinked, trying to figure out what was going on. "How long have you been a villain?" he said. "Because I think you need some more practice." Hey, he thought. That was pretty good.

"Oh my God," the possum moaned, "this isn't going well at all."

Damn, Jake thought. Maybe he's got a secret crush on me. Maybe that's the weakness I can use. I can take another kiss if it'll set me free. Actually, even if it won't... "Maybe you should've asked me first," he said.

"Asked you?" The possum straightened. "Doctor Destiny does not ask!"

"Doctor what?"

"Defiance." The possum's shoulders sagged. "What did I say?"

"Destiny." Jake couldn't help but grin. If this guy didn't have him prisoner, he'd be kind of cute, actually.

"Well, uh, would you mind if I kissed you again?"

Jake knew he was going to say 'no,' but what surprised him when he did say it was the swelling in his sheath. And when the possum stepped timidly up and touched his lips again, Jake felt himself getting very hard, very fast. Good job, body, he told himself unconvincingly. Way to, uh, pretend that I'm aroused...interested...and then he stopped telling himself anything, because his long tongue was being rubbed by a shorter, thicker one and his uniform's snaps were coming undone one by one under a set of gentle fingers.

He felt those same fingers brush down his stomach and along his fully hard erection, only moaning as they curled around it and squeezed its hardness. "Mmm," Doctor Defiance said, pulling back from the kiss. "God, you're gorgeous."

Jake swallowed. "It's not really fair," he said, "I can't undress you."

"Oh, right." Smiling nervously, the possum stepped back and shrugged off his lab coat, then pulled off his shirt and slid his pants down.

Jake stared. "Oh, my God. Are you okay?"

Doctor Defiance reached down and brushed a finger along his half-erect member, purplish-blue and split into two forks, each with its own glans and slit. "Yeah, all possums are like this. You never saw one before?" Jake shook his head. "I got teased a lot in gym class."

"I bet."

The possum came back up close to him, sliding his fingers under Jake's sac and then holding his shaft again. "You sure you're okay with this?"

"Yeah." In a way he couldn't explain, it felt better than with the self-assured rabbit, where every sexual encounter provided her with a chance to teach him something or show him the right way to do things. He appreciated her expertise, but there was something about the shy, hesitant possum that made Jake feel like they were doing things together ( _together?? he's got you tied up and powerless!_ his rational mind shrieked) rather than him being led through every experience.

The possum leaned up to kiss him again, and he kissed back, and both of them nearly got the tips of their tongues bitten off a moment later when a shrill female voice echoed through the room.

"What the _hell_ is going on?"

Jake snapped his head around as the possum flinched, then dove for his lab coat. Marcia walked towards the possum, a gun held loosely in her right paw. "Charles?" Her tone carried that sharp warning that Jake knew meant trouble. Usually it was enough to send him blinking home.

"How did you get free?" Jake asked, trying to distract her, but she held up a stubby paw to him.

"Charles, maybe you didn't understand your role in all of this. You were supposed to be Doctor Defiance, budding supervillain. You have captured Blink Coyote and are beginning to perform experiments on him." She eyed the lab coat he was hastily buttoning shut. "Of a _medical_ nature."

"Marcia..." Jake started, and this time succeeded in distracting her.

"And you!" She whirled, pointing the gun at him. "I set up this whole scenario, and it was not cheap, let me tell you, all to give you a nemesis and an adventure for your birthday, and I walk in to rescue you and find you kissing your nemesis?

"Rescue me?" Jake said, just as the possum said, "Nemesis?"

"And," she said, pointedly looking down to where his shaft still hung hard and full over the flaps of his suit, "you're _into_ it. Does your little feathered friend know about that secret romantic side?"

While Jake sputtered to reply, she turned on the possum again. "What were you thinking?"

"That you don't know how lucky you are. My God! He's gorgeous! Look at that body!"

They both turned to look at Jake, who squirmed under the scrutiny. "Hey, uh..."

Marcia ignored him. "If I'd known you cruised that side of the street, I never would have hired you."

"I, uh, don't really go out of my way to keep it secret," Doctor Defiance—Charles—said. "I mean, did you see the poster of WonderWolf on the wall of my office?"

"What does that prove?" Marcia waved the gun dismissively. "I've got that same poster. So does everyone."

Jake didn't want to draw attention to himself again, but he was talking before he knew it. "The one of him looking over his shoulder from behind, where he's naked?"

" _He's_ not naked," Marcia said pointedly, looking down at Jake's crotch, which appeared to be enjoying the attention and begging for more. "He's got a speedo on."

"It's a butt shot," Charles said. "The speedo doesn't cover anything."

"That's what I say!" Jake said.

"Great butt," Charles said, and inclined his head as though he were trying to see Jake's. "Yours is too."

"All right," Marcia snapped, "enough. Come on, Jake." She reached up to his neck and unbuckled the collar. "Go on home. I'll be there soon. Though I don't really feel like celebrating any more."

She'd left his uniform unbuttoned. The possum noticed, and reached out quickly to pull the flap up. "Hey!" the rabbit said as he pressed one of the snaps together, restoring some modesty to the bound coyote. "Paws off!"

He looked at the gun and then looked at her over his glasses. "It's not loaded."

"I don't care! Get away from him!" Her voice echoed shrilly through the lab.

The possum raised his paws and stepped back. "Okay, okay."

"And you're wrong," she snapped. "I know exactly how lucky I am. Come on, Jake. Let's go."

He was almost afraid to try blinking, because the feeling when it hadn't worked had been so terrifying. He looked at the space just behind Marcia and just like that, he was out of the restraints and standing behind her. Before she could register his presence, he grabbed the collar out of her paw.

It was a black leather strap with small electronics embedded all around it. One light was on, burning green. Jake held it to his ear so he could hear the hum of the electronics, though it was hard to hear over Marcia's insisting that he give it back.

He dropped his paw to his side. "So," he said, "let me get this straight, because I know I'm not as smart as you. For my birthday, you paid some guy to create a device that takes away my power and then kidnap me?"

Marcia had dropped the gun to the floor, and now folded her arms. "I was doing it for us," she said. "I thought it could help with your...problem."

Jake couldn't find any words to make light of that. He could only look down at the strap lying across his paw, and back up to the rabbit's brown and white face, now bearing a more placating expression. The change felt wrong, felt too fast to be sincere, and then he realized with a shock what he should have seen all along. She wasn't just good at pushing away her hurt and guilt all those times they argued. She wasn't hurt at all, because she didn't care what he thought about her. She just wanted to keep him close and control him.

"It was supposed to be an adventure," she said. "Remember, sweetie? You wanted a nemesis, more excitement..."

"Go home," he said, interrupting her.

Her blue eyes narrowed. "I'm not leaving without you."

He closed his paw over the collar. "I said, go home, Marcia."

"Come with me."

Not only did he not want to go with her, he wasn't sure he wanted to see her again. The moment he let himself think that, he felt a huge wash of relief. To be able to live without being scrutinized, without being corrected, without being hemmed in, without having all his failings analyzed... "No. I don't think I want to see you again."

"You listen to me, Jake Kellin. You are not going to throw away everything we've worked for. All right, this evening didn't go quite the way I'd planned it, but that's no reason to...to..." He could see her trying to work up tears, but the build up was so obvious that when she squeezed one out of the corner of one eye, he was unmoved. "Please, Jake. I love you."

Jake shook his head. "No, you don't."

She wiped the tear away, and there were no more. Her eyes flashed now. "Fine. I won't beg any more. I'll be home, and if you're not there by midnight, then we are over." When the coyote didn't respond, she held out her paw. "Give me the collar."

"Oh ho ho," Jake said. "Not a chance."

"I paid for it!"

"You should take better care of your things," he said.

She lunged for it, and he tried to blink back without success. Damn thing, he thought as she grabbed the collar. He wrested it back from her without much trouble and pushed her back a foot. She glared at him.

"You do not want me as an enemy," she said.

"I don't want you at all," he said, which was a bit of a lie, but not much.

She glared for another few seconds, then turned on her heel and marched out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her.

Jake let the reverberation from the slamming door die down before he exhaled and looked at the possum.

Charles stammered. "I...I was just doing what she paid me..."

Jake smiled. "It's okay. I know." He held up the collar. "Mind if I break this?"

The possum hesitated, then shook his head. "She paid for it. It's not mine."

Jake walked over to the metal stools and dropped the collar to the floor, where he stood and stared down at it. "What's the point, though? You really built this in six months?" The possum nodded. "No offense, but I assume you're not the most brilliant scientist in the world. So there's got to be someone else who could do this if they wanted to. So what's the point?"

Charles cleared his throat. "Well, actually, I was sort of exaggerating. You know, I was trying to be in character. I did it in six months because your, uh, friend kept monitoring devices in her apartment and fed me months of data on your ability. Anyone without access to that much data would have a much harder time replicating my results. So, uh, if you destroy that, then probably I'm the only one who could build another one. And you can have my notebooks if you want."

"Thanks." Jake brought the stool down on the collar over and over, until the delicate electronics were shattered. He picked up the leather strap and held it to his neck, then blinked across the room without any problem. "That's that," he said, and looked at the collar. "It's a nice leather," he said. "Maybe I'll wear it just to remind me."

"Of what?" The possum looked confused.

"Who to trust."

"Oh." Charles looked down and fidgeted. Jake waited until he looked up again, and saw the surprise come into his eyes. "You're still here."

"What's your name?"

"Charles," the possum said. "Goldstein. Dr. Charles Goldstein."

"So you really are a doctor."

"Oh, yes. Ph.D., electrical engineering. This isn't really my lab. Marcia, uh, thought it was more 'evil villain' than my office." He adjusted his glasses.

"Well, you know my secret identity now." Jake sighed.

Charles blinked. "Oh, I swore I wouldn't reveal it. I mean, I swear I won't...you don't have to worry about that."

Jake smiled. "You know the weird thing? I trust you."

"Thanks." Charles looked away again.

Jake studied him. The possum's tail was curled around his legs, and he was fidgeting from side to side. He tried to work out how he felt, himself. Even though his body was still warm from their kiss, it seemed like a long time ago. It would be easy to push it away and forget about it.

If he wanted to.

"So," Jake said after a moment, "since you're done working for Marcia, I guess you might have some time on your paws?"

"I do have a job at Mount Cedar," Charles said, then hurriedly added, "but yes, yes, I should. Um, why?"

"You'd be a pretty good gadgethead," Jake said. "I'd sure rather have you working with me than against me."

Now Charles let his muzzle slip into a small grin. "Is that a job offer?"

"I can't pay you," Jake said. "Marcia had all the money."

"Oh, I'd do it for free," Charles said.

Jake smiled. "I was kind of thinking of making you part of the team, eventually."

"Like, your partner?" Charles squeaked, and then clapped a paw to his muzzle. "I mean, um, sidekick."

Jake laughed softly at the possum's stricken expression. "Let's say sidekick to start. But you know...I can't believe this, but...I'd be willing to talk about terms, say, over dinner?"

Charles gaped at him. "After..."

"You couldn't tell I was enjoying it? Hell, it surprised me, too. I want to take it slow, but I'm interested enough to give it a shot. Even if it meant I would be the only guy in the League with a boyfriend."

"You wouldn't be the only gay one." Charles grinned when he saw Jake's eyes widen. "You didn't know about WonderWolf?"

"Really?"

"Well, he can't keep a steady boyfriend, but why do you think he does all those butt posters? It's advertising."

Jake giggled, and then his stomach rumbled. "How about that dinner? You might want to put some clothes on, though." He started to button up his uniform, then stopped. "And I should get out of this uniform."

Charles picked up his clothes. "I'll be here and dressed in five minutes."

"I'll be back." Jake paused. "You know, I'd much rather have a friend than a nemesis as a birthday present."

Charles glanced at the door. "I think you might have gotten both."

Jake's ears perked up. "Hey, yeah! You know, she was a lousy girlfriend, but I bet she'd be a great villain."

"Hopefully not too good."

"With you on my side, I'm not worried." Jake grinned, and impulsively blinked to right in front of Charles and kissed him on the nose. He answered the wide smile on the possum's face with one of his own, flicked his ears jauntily, and blinked.

Jacks To Open

One of my favorite authors is Tim Powers. He blends the supernatural and the contemporary with frightening, seamless ease. His book "Last Call" is set in Las Vegas and features card games played for souls, living embodiments of tarot cards, and any number of other phenomena (which, granted, seem less out of place in Las Vegas than they might elsewhere). He evokes a strong sense of place, and in later books took that sense to L.A. and the San Francisco Bay Area, both of which I am familiar with.

"Jacks" was my poor attempt to imitate him, because I have also loved cards from an early age, and I do love the idea that there are patterns and presences in the universe who speak to us through mysterious venues like playing cards (despite the scientist in me, who dryly tells me that it is my evolutionarily developed sense of pattern recognition attempting to fit patterns to everything even when they don't exist, which is why the scientist in me does not get invited to parties). My regret with this story is that I felt the need to include the sex scene at the end; now it feels somewhat out of sync with the tone of the story to me, and if I were to write the story again today, I probably would more gracefully fade to black. Still, "Jacks" won the Ursa Major award for Best Short Fiction in 2006, and I still get demands for a sequel, which I plan to write...when the cards are right.

[return to TOC]

When you think of Las Vegas, you think of the flash, the glitter, the sparkle, the neon, the light. But there's another Las Vegas, too, if you go behind the Strip, behind the standalone casinos scattered through the town at Suncoast, Boulder Station, Palace Station, and down a shopping arcade called Easy Street. You might notice that the parking garage is always full from the basement to the roof, even though its eight levels seem extravagant for the two blocks of small stores below. But if you turn right at the end of Easy Street onto Siegel Avenue, you'll see a series of small clubs in large buildings, and these are the casinos that do not need to advertise their presence.

They are the old breed of casino, a place for gamblers to wander from blackjack to craps, where you still pull the handle on the one-armed bandits, where the dealers deal from their paws and not from a shoe, keeping up a line of patter all the while. There are no celebrity chefs, no hotel rooms, no gift shops, only a bar, the slapping of cards, the ringing of slots, and, in some casinos, the thick haze of smoke overhead.

There was no haze of smoke in the Persian, even by the bar where Sean was sitting. As far as he could see and smell, the patrons of the Persian were entirely canid: wolves, coyotes, foxes, dingos, and dholes. No other red wolves, but that was okay. He was used to being mistaken for a coyote, and used to being the only red wolf in the room.

It was illegal, of course, to restrict entry based on species, and the Persian did no such thing. But it was one of the few casinos in town that did restrict smoking in deference to the sensitive noses of their canine patrons. Because the casino depended more on word of muzzle than advertising, its canid regulars tended to tell their friends, and a haze of canine scent was as off-putting for some other species as smoke was to canids. There are no shortage of casinos in Las Vegas, and if one doesn't exactly suit, then it's easy enough to go elsewhere and leave the Persian to the canids.

Even apart from the lack of smoke, the Persian was the perfect place for Sean. His nondescript tan shirt, collar unbuttoned, and pair of ordinary brown slacks served to mute rather than highlight the red accents in his fur. On any evening, he spoke rarely; in the Persian, there was no shortage of things to listen to and watch, a constant barking over the jingling of paying slots. Tonight, Sean's attention was focused on one particular thing.

The fat wolf sitting next to him was a perfect companion, because he appeared to have some kind of affliction that made it hard for him to stop talking. The guy was like a caricature of a 1950s businessman, wearing a blue suit with a yellow striped tie and a white shirt with gold cufflinks, chomping on a cigar--unlit, of course, just for the taste of it. He wore three rings and had a pocketwatch with a gold chain. But his tie was stained and the cufflinks tarnished, and at this distance, Sean could smell that the wolf was using some cheap cologne that stung his nose.

Sean knew his type and knew why he was here rather than over on the Strip where he belonged. He was here because he thought the Persian was a nice exclusive place, and he was the sort who wanted to be in exclusive places, even ones where he didn't belong. And when he started to realize that he didn't belong here, well, sometimes he called someone like Sean. And Sean's job was to make him feel better.

"Anyway," the wolf said as he drained his gin and tonic, "the table's over there. I'll see you there in a bit."

Sean took another sip from his half-filled club soda. He didn't gamble well while drunk. "When there's an opening."

The wolf nodded, pushed his bulk off the chair, and set off for the table. Sean watched him go with some distaste. His tail flopped back and forth over the seat of his pants like a rag, and one of his shirttails had come untucked as he sat at the bar. Really, you'd think someone with all that money would take better care of himself.

Sean sipped his drink and sighed. Still he had to play nice, impress the guy. He wasn't worried about his skill at the cards. He was more worried that he would say something about the smell. But he was very good at lying to people. He had to be.

The wolf shouldered his way onto the blackjack table they'd been watching. Sean leaned against the bar and studied the dealer yet again.

The casino's ancient Persia theme was mostly executed in the names of the drinks at the bar and the pictures on the slot machines. None of the employees wore particularly Persian costumes, and the blackjack dealers were no exception. The dealer Sean was watching was a slender silver fox, his fur jet black with creamy white under the muzzle and down the chest. Sean only knew he was wearing a plain black vest because he also wore a name tag and a shiny pin on one shoulder, and although the vest was invisible against his fur, he wouldn't have fastened the pin in his fur.

It wasn't out of the question that he would be shirtless, though, because he was a flirty little thing, smiling at each of the players at his table and curling his tail up so the white tip was just visible over the edge of the table. His paws moved around the cards like hummingbirds, a blur of motion and then stillness as he waited for the players to make their decisions.

At the Persian, each of the dealers was a personality. Next to the black fox, a coyote in a parti-colored shirt tossed her deck from paw to paw and let the cards flutter theatrically to the table. At the table closest to Sean, a vixen bounced on her heels, highlighting the twin attractions that most of the males at her table were ogling. He could hear the patter of the coyote one more table down, telling jokes as he dealt the cards. Each of the dealers was well known, with regulars who just played to be at the table and would-be regulars who just wanted to be seen at the table.

Sean took out the worn deck of cards he carried in his pocket and shuffled them. The feel of the smooth card backs soothed his paws. He shuffled them a couple more times than was strictly necessary, watching the simple double circle pattern on the back. When he felt relaxed, he dealt out his standard layout on the bar: three cards. He got the Jack of Clubs, Three of Hearts, and Ace of Clubs. Then he looked again and saw that the Three of Hearts was actually the Three of Clubs.

The wolf frowned. He hadn't drunk enough to be seeing things. It wasn't unheard of to get flickers of uncertainty in the cards like that, especially in a casino where there was so much luck and magic swirling around, but his readings were so simple that he rarely saw the phenomenon. He scooped the cards up in his paw before someone could come over and ask what he was doing. The Jack of Clubs meant a reliable friend, but he would hardly count the fat wolf as reliable, and he was more of a King signifier, anyway. The other cards were clearer: the Three meant money or help coming from a partner, and the Ace signified new endeavors. He often saw that combination at the beginning of a job that was going to turn out well. Of course the Three of Hearts meant caution, being careful what you say. He rubbed his whiskers and thought over that combination, and the flicker he'd seen.

It wouldn't do him much good to deal out another spread. Unless you asked a completely different question, the cards tended to muddle things in their attempt to clarify, focusing in on details and projecting other possibilities. The first reading would have to be sufficient for him to get a sense of what was going on.

He hadn't quite finished his soda when a dhole at the silver fox's table finally got fed up. Sean left a tip for the bartender and sauntered over to the table, giving the fox a big smile as he sat down and pretending not to know the fat wolf three seats to his left.

"Well, hello, Slim," the fox said. "Welcome to the table." His lapel pin was a Club, and his name tag read "Jack."

Sean indicated it with his muzzle, and grinned. "Thanks, Jack." Of course his name was Jack. What else could it be? He pushed three hundred over the table, two fifties and a bunch of twenties, and then took one more crumpled twenty from his pocket and added it to the stack. "Hope this is enough to let me play for a while."

Jack scooped it up and riffled the stack of bills casually. "Three twenty," he said, dropping it into his till and sliding a stack of chips back over to Sean. "Good luck, Slim."

Sean experienced an odd and powerful urge to breach casino protocol and touch the fox's fingers before he withdrew them from the chips, but he held back until the chips sat alone on the table, and only then did he pull them all back. He made a show of looking at the minimum for the table--twenty-five dollars--and then slid out a single $25 chip in front of him.

"Everybody in? Cheer up, Angel, your luck is about to turn. I feel it." The fox shuffled the cards in his paws, and almost effortlessly dealt. Sean's cards seemed to appear in front of him: Three of Clubs followed by the Eight of Diamonds. An interesting combination, he thought, reading them automatically. The Three of Clubs again: a wealthy partner, but in conjunction with the Eight, it meant that the money would arrive through practicing an art or skill, jointly between both partners.

Of more practical import, of course, was the fact that he'd been dealt an eleven. He glanced at the fat wolf and saw an Eight of Spades and the Ace of Hearts. Nineteen--not bad. The other players had less promising hands: two that added to seven, and the busty female wolf just to his left had drawn a Nine and Six for fifteen. He saw her frown and saw Jack's apologetic smile in response; apparently she was "Angel."

The dealer had the King of Diamonds showing. That would have been a good significator for the fat wolf, Sean thought. Rich, influential person. Influential in this case, because it promised a good hand for the dealer, especially given the lack of face cards on the table. Dealer's twenty was a hard hand to beat.

Apparently reading the odds the same way he had, the fat wolf used the flexibility of his Ace to hit again, and got a Six for fifteen. He scowled, hit again and busted. The next two players both hit and ended with seventeen and twenty, and Angel looked much happier with her twenty than she had with fifteen.

Sean slid another chip out beside his first. "Double down," he said.

Jack grinned at him. "Good to listen to the cards," he said as he flipped the Jack of Clubs to Sean's hand. "Well, look at that. Twenty-one, and with my namesake at that."

Sean leaned back, one paw just resting on the edge of the table. "That Eight wouldn't lie to me," he said, almost to himself.

Jack paused in the act of turning to the coyote seated to Sean's right, then completed the motion, but as he dealt out a Five and then an Eight to the coyote, leaving him with twenty, Sean noticed that his eyes flicked over once or twice to meet Sean's own. With the coyote's deal done, the fox returned his full attention to his own hand.

"Oh, my," Jack said, "I've got a twenty-one and a couple twenties on the table. And dealer has..." He turned over the Queen of Clubs. "Twenty. So sorry, ladies and gents, a bad round for the table. I promise the next one will make up for it." He raked in everyone's chips, sent two of them to Sean, and followed them with a look that made Sean's ears flick back in surprise. It wasn't one of the casually flirty looks he obviously had in his extensive repertoire. It was a look of honest curiosity, and even though it lasted only a second, Sean sat up straighter and perked his ears.

"So, Slim," Jack said as he dealt the cards, not looking at Sean now, "haven't seen you around before, I don't think."

"I don't gamble much." He took his winnings and left a single chip out as ante again.

"You know the cards, though." That remark was delivered with the same tone as the look: curious, not flirty, though he threw in an empty smile.

"I play lots of Gin Rummy with my mother," Sean said. He reminded himself that he especially should not be flirting now, not with the fat wolf sitting right down at the other end of the table glowering at him.

It was hard not to, though, especially when Jack stopped in front of him, vest hanging open to reveal his smooth chest and tight, flat stomach. Sean kept having to shake the image of his paws sliding behind that vest to hold the fox against him, and it didn't help that he couldn't remember the last time he'd been on an honest-to-goodness date with someone he'd chosen to spend the night with. It also didn't help that Jack seemed to pause longer in front of his seat than any of the others.

"Is your name really Jack?" Sean said during one pause while a new player took Angel's place. The female wolf had finally cashed in her last few chips, taking Jack's apology that the "cards just weren't falling tonight" with a smile and a bounce of her chest. Sean had no doubt that she'd find someone to make her and her painted-on dress feel better.

"Sure as the skies are blue," the fox said.

Sean chuckled. "It's nighttime out now," he pointed out, just to keep the conversation going.

Jack riffled the edge of the deck with his thumb and grinned back. "Nothing but blue skies do I see," he said.

The red wolf, whose eyes were blue, smiled. "Irving Berlin," he murmured as Jack dealt the cards out.

"Him and ol' Blue Eyes," Jack said, pointing to the ceiling, where Sean could now hear the strains of "Strangers In The Night," and he wondered if Jack had waited to point out the music until that song came on, or if the casino just played a lot of songs that encouraged people to hook up.

"Not a bad choice," Sean murmured, and then caught a glare from the fat wolf, who had to be down four hundred already, and looked at his cards.

He lost that hand, but won the next two, and was actually up a hundred fifty after half an hour. He usually bet conservatively enough not to lose, but the cards were falling well for him tonight. Along with Jack's flirting, it gave him a sense of well-being that was not unlike being buzzed.

The wolf finally stood and walked away, and that was Sean's signal to do the same. He had been hoping the wolf would stay because he was enjoying himself so much, but on the next hand he was dealt the Four of Hearts, a change or journey card, and he tapped it when Jack came back around. "I'm being called away," he said casually, as if the card had nothing to do with it.

Jack looked at the card and smiled. "Sorry to lose you, though my bosses won't be," he said, nodding at Sean's pile of chips. "Hope it's not for a couple more hands, though. I hate to see those blue skies go."

Sean couldn't see the fat wolf any more, but he could make excuses for remaining at the table. He pushed ten chips out and grinned. "Deal me in, tall, dark, and handsome."

The eyebrow the fox raised was black with silver edging. He smiled and dealt out the next hand, and though he made a point to flirt with the other players and not with Sean, the Jack of Clubs he dealt Sean said more than any words could. The Jack of Clubs, in addition to signifying a dark-furred youth, also signified a reliable friend, and Jack had as much as announced in that first hand that it was his card. The next card Sean got was the Seven of Diamonds, which meant a surprise or a reward from consistent effort. Again Jack delivered the card without a word, after telling the dhole to Sean's left how his eighteen was a good hand. He went on to deal an eleven to the coyote to Sean's right, who eyed Sean's stake and then prepared to double down.

Seventeen, Sean thought as Jack went back to the beginning of the table. He should stay on seventeen, but that card combination was tempting him. A surprise or a reward from a reliable friend. Was Jack telling him to hit? He tapped his fingers on the table. That was the feeling he was getting, and if he had learned nothing else in his line of work, it was to trust his feelings.

"You'll stand on seventeen?" Jack had come quickly around to him, but was hesitating.

"Hit," Sean said.

The coyote next to him said, "Hang on!" to Jack, and then laid a paw on Sean's arm. "Son," he said, "you got seventeen. You always stay on seventeen."

"I know," Sean said. "I just have a feeling." The coyote tilted his muzzle and put his ears to the side, so Sean made something up. "That girl who took the wolf's place, she's a red fox, and whenever a new red fox joins the table, if I get a red card, I have to hit on it."

The coyote grinned, and slapped a paw on the table. "Here I took you for a tenderfoot. You go on ahead and hit. Don't let me mess with your mojo."

Sean was watching Jack's muzzle, while everyone else was watching the cards, and he could swear that Jack's grin started before he even flipped the card over. "Four of Diamonds," Jack said. "Looks like your finances are definitely improving."

That was the meaning of the Four. Sean tapped his fingers on the cards, not even bothering to hide his grin as the coyote next to him whooped. Jack knew the cards, and it sure felt like he was dealing out whatever cards he wanted. Sean would never be able to follow those nimble paws with just his eyes, though he kept imagining them on his tail, his rear, his thighs. He collected his winnings and cleared his head of those thoughts, but even though he watched the next deal closely, he couldn't follow the movement of the black fingers. If he was cheating, Jack was good.

He was good anyway, of course, and that was the problem. The next hand the red wolf got was the Seven of Hearts and the Seven of Diamonds, and that had to be intentional. Apart they were good cards, the Heart somewhat less than the Diamond, but together they meant love and pleasure.

Jack grinned down at him. "Quite a pair," he said. "Want to split those up?"

Sean gave him a wide, answering smile. "No, I'd like to keep these together. Don't think I need anything else."

The coyote scratched his ears. "Son, I can't argue with your winnin's, but you got some mighty peculiar superstitions there."

"Whatever keeps him happy," Jack said, and Sean noticed the tip of the fox's tail twitching back and forth.

"Winnin's what keeps me happy," the coyote said. "And another one o'them sevens would just about do the trick right now."

Jack skipped a card towards the coyote's thirteen, and the three of them watched as the Seven of Clubs came to rest. "Usually I don't take orders," Jack said. "But for the gentleman, this once..."

The coyote shook his head at Sean. "You'd have hit twenty-one, son. Maybe you should re-think."

"Oh, I don't know," Sean said, his eyes on Jack. "I have a winning feeling."

Jack winked, unmistakably, but just as the coyote was saying something like, "Hey," Jack revealed the dealer's eighteen, and the coyote's objection vanished as Jack swept Sean's chips over to his.

"And I think that'll do it for me," Sean said. He pushed four of his chips forward and smiled at Jack. "For you," he said.

"Sorry, sir," Jack said, and pushed the chips back. "I don't take tips at the table."

Sean's ears stayed up through an effort of will. Of course they were allowed to accept tips at the table; he knew that. But if Jack didn't want his money, there was nothing he could do about it. He took the chips back and then tilted his muzzle to one side. "Is there anywhere you can accept tips?"

The fox's tail jumped, but Jack didn't react otherwise. "It's very kind of you to ask," he said. "But you seem so familiar with the cards that I can't help but think you already know the answer." He gave Sean a wink, and started the deal again.

As Sean got up from the table, confused, the coyote turned and laid a paw on his arm. "Y'aint the first to try to get into Black Jack's pants, and you won't be the last," he said in a low voice. "But shoot, you got closer than anyone I seen in a while. I thought for a minute you two was old friends."

"No," Sean said. "Just met." He smiled and nodded. "Good luck."

At the newer casinos, it was all done with electronic tickets, but at the Persian, they still had chips and cashiers. Sean leaned on the cashier's window ledge looking at Jack as she counted out his money. He felt obscurely disappointed, not in Jack, but in the cards. Had Jack been manipulating them to get Sean to stay longer? Had the whole flirting just been an act? Sean was pretty good at reading people, and he'd thought there was some genuine attraction there, but maybe he'd been fooling himself. Jack was a professional just like he was.

The cashier had to say "Hey" twice to get his attention.

He turned. The plain wolf behind the grille was holding up a white chip. "This isn't one of ours."

Sean blinked, and saw writing on the chip that said, "Full House Café." An image of Jack's paws sliding his tip back to him flashed through his head. "Oh, sorry," he said, and took the chip back. A gold-embossed '1' was all that was on the other side. "Don't know how that got in there."

She slid his money over to him, and he pocketed it and walked quickly to the sports book area. The fat wolf was there at the bar, pretending to watch some game. His tail was twitching; it was definitely not wagging. One paw was tapping the bar, and Sean could feel the intensity of the wolf's attention in how studiously he was not looking around.

The red wolf slid a rumpled ten into the video poker machine next to his client. "Took long enough," the wolf growled under his breath.

"Just doing my job," Sean said.

"Looked like you were enjoying yourself a little too much," the wolf replied, and then shut up as the bartender came over to take Sean's order. When he'd delivered the club soda, the wolf started up again. "I'm not paying you to flirt."

Sean sipped his drink and tapped the video poker buttons almost at random. "You're paying me to do a job," he said, "not for the privilege of telling me how to do it."

The wolf didn't respond to this, just kept tapping his paw on the bar. "Look at that," he said to the screen. "Goddamn Holy Cross can't buy a bucket." The bartender moved away again, and the wolf lowered his voice. "So, did you spot anything?"

You're terrible at being sneaky, Sean wanted to tell him. Instead, he said, "No. If he's cheating you, he's good enough that I can't spot him and he's even fooling the casino cameras."

The wolf made a growling noise, a frustrated snarl that drew some looks. He gestured at the screen again. "They're terrible!" he said loudly, and the other patrons turned back to their own business. "So what next?"

Sean could feel the weight of the white chip in the pocket of his shirt. "I might be able to get a little closer," he said. "All that flirting wasn't for nothing, you know."

"How's that going to help? He doesn't cheat unless he's at the table."

"No, but he might keep something elsewhere that would help us."

"Like what?"

"If I knew that, I wouldn't have to go look."

The wolf took a drink of his beer and was silent. Finally, he said, "I'm not paying for you to go screw the guy who's screwing me."

Sean restrained his initial reaction. "You want me to keep investigating or not?"

Another long drink, and the beer was gone. "Tomorrow, same time. I'll expect a full report."

"I have your number. I'll call you if anything develops before then."

The wolf pushed himself gracelessly off the chair and left without a word. Sean shook his head and played the video poker machine until his money was gone, then headed out to the dark Las Vegas night. His work day was just beginning.

The Full House Cafe, like any other place in Vegas where someone might stop for more than twenty seconds, featured automated gambling machines. Sean was amused to see that in addition to the table-top video poker, the cafe had a video slot in the corner on which a cartoony rendition of an old yak in white robes with a long beard was dancing on a pile of gold coins. Above the old yak was written the name of the game: "Philosopher's Stone," and beneath that, in smaller letters, "turn wisdom into gold!!"

At the counter where he ordered his coffee, black, he saw a pile of white chips similar to the one in his shirt pocket, and realized that they were a clever type of business card. "Take one," the rabbit behind the counter said when she saw Sean looking. "They're lucky."

"Got one." He patted his shirt pocket.

"All right, then. Good luck," she said, which seemed to have replaced "good-bye" as a parting expression in some parts of Vegas.

The "Philosopher's Stone" machine featured Nietzsche, Hegel, Locke, Descartes, and Rousseau, as well as various symbols, and if you got four in a row of one of the philosophers, you got to debate him for extra credits. The game looked too silly for Sean to pass up.

Being a slot machine, of course, it was long on promise and short on delivery, but he finally lined up four Nietzsches. The machine display sprang to life with a picture of the old wolf and three phrases that were apparently attributed to him. Sean chose "Error has made man of animals," and got 40 credits and moved on to another set of three phrases. The actual "debate" was somewhat of a letdown, but he made most of his starting ten dollars back.

"I like a fellow who can take on Neitzsche," said a voice behind him.

He turned to see Jack, still wearing his vest with the club pin but without the name badge, his scent lost amidst the strong coffee smell of the shop. Sean grinned, feeling his tail wag. "You did show up."

"Of course," Jack said. "The cards said I would."

"I have a feeling they had a little help," Sean said as they cashed out and returned to the table. The initial feeling of delight was fading and now he was a little wary. The flirting at the table was nice, but here they were in a different element, on equal footing. Jack sipped some sort of latte while Sean lapped at his now-lukewarm coffee.

Ignoring his comment about the cards, Jack asked immediately whether Sean was a tourist, and Sean admitted he wasn't, that he just didn't get to Siegel much. Jack conversed as smoothly as he dealt, and Sean found it impossible to work any more questions about his dealing into the conversation. He did find out that the fox had been born and raised in Las Vegas and had been dealing blackjack for various casinos since he was seventeen. He blamed his career on his name. "What else is a black fox named Jack going to do in Vegas?" he said.

Jack's laugh, sincere and light, put Sean at ease. By the time his coffee was gone, so was his nervousness. He was comfortable telling the fox about his childhood in New Orleans, mimicking the Cajun accent of his youth, and telling him that he lived over near downtown, though he didn't mention where.

"Well," Jack said. "I live a block away, you seem like a nice guy, and I'm tired of this coffee shop. Want to come over?"

Sean grinned. "You always move this fast?"

"I don't have time to move slow." The fox got up from the table and inclined his head. "Coming?"

The red wolf hesitated. His only worry was that Jack was onto him and that this was some kind of trap, but his whiskers weren't tingling. "Hang on a second," he said, and reached into his pocket for the cards. "Just want to check with my friends."

Jack grinned at him and watched him deal out a three-card layout. For a moment, Sean studied them, then swept them back to the deck and stood. "All right," he said. "Let's go."

"You put a lot of faith in them," Jack said as they walked out into the night. To the south, Sean could see the glow of the Strip and the single beam of the Luxor shooting up to the sky. "Wish I had friends that are that reliable."

"This was my mother's deck," Sean said. "She gave 'em to me when I left home."

The fox gave him a sidewise look. "So you asked your mother if you could come back to my place?"

Sean laughed. "Not my mother. Just a family friend."

"What would you have done if they'd said no?"

The red wolf examined Jack. He saw no reason to dissemble. "I'd have politely—and regretfully—declined."

Jack shook his head. "You're an odd one, all right."

He'd said it almost affectionately, so Sean wasn't offended. "Isn't everyone in this town?"

The fox grinned as they stopped at an apartment building. "Touché." He tapped a code to open the gate and held it for Sean, who had been studying the resident list trying to figure out which one was Jack. "I'm not on there," Jack said, grinning. "Like to keep a low profile."

"Okay," Sean said, embarrassed at having been caught. He walked into the lobby.

The building was plain, but clean and relatively new. Tile floors and wood paneling made Sean think it had been built as part of the boom of the late 90s, when a lot of people searching for a cheap alternative to L.A. had driven up demand for homes in the Vegas area. Jack stepped past him to the stairs and led him down a second floor hall that smelled of carpet cleaner, to an apartment with "206" on the door, and inside.

The fox slid out of his vest easily, but it was the coming-home action of shedding a coat, not an invitation to Sean. He walked across the small living room they'd entered to a cabinet, and opened it. "Something stronger than coffee?" he asked, looking back.

Sean was looking at his slender chest with its white throat ruff and the thick black fur down his shoulders and back. "Only if it's tall and black," he said with a grin.

"All right then." Jack grinned. "I keep that in here." He beckoned Sean into the next room.

There was nothing in the living room to help Sean's investigation, and he wasn't sure what he was looking for anyway. A book on "how to cheat at card dealing?" A membership card to the International Federation of Underhanded Blackjack Dealers? He had a phone bug in his pocket; illegal, but usable in his case because they weren't looking to bring criminal charges anyway. What he really hoped was that exposing the cards to this place would give him a good read on how his case was going to turn out. For that, he'd have to stick around here for a while.

The final swish of the fox's black tail as he disappeared into the other room suggested a pleasant way to pass that time. Sean unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and walked into the bedroom after Jack.

The fox caught him by surprise, paws around his waist and warm breath in his ear, murmuring, "Now, let's see what kind of hand we've been dealt." He brushed his muzzle within an inch of Sean's, giving Sean time and chance to inhale his scent in return.

Sean made a practice of learning people's scents from a distance, but preferred to smell someone up close. Jack's strong vulpine scent masked a myriad of details, which shifted through his nose like the nuances in a fine wine. He wouldn't have been able to put a name to many of them, but he compared them to other people he knew: here the same excitement as his friend Michael, here the same touch of passion as an ex-lover or two, here the same caution he knew in himself.

He always savored that moment of introduction, especially in this context where he expected the encounter to progress to something more intimate quickly. This getting to know his partner, being let into their private space, was special to him on a personal level, but also excited the part of him that liked finding out about people, liked getting more information about them. He kept his eyes open, too, and looked around the small bedroom.

Jack kept a pair of dressers, a vanity, a bed, and a bookcase that was full of not only books, but also DVDs, CDs, and various trinkets. The DVDs included "Ocean's Eleven," obligatory viewing for any Vegas resident, as well as "Rounders," "The Sting," "The Cincinnati Kid," and "The Hustler," and those were just the ones that leapt out at Sean before the fox's paws slid inside his shirt and around his midriff. Funny; he hadn't even felt his shirt's buttons being undone.

The touch made him shiver. Jack's paws were as sure as they were quick, claws tracing just close enough to his skin to be felt without exerting any pressure. He placed his paws on the fox's slender form in return, brushing down the sleek black fur to come to rest on his hips. They rubbed their long muzzles together, teasing each other's whiskers while their paws pulled their bodies close. Sean realized that somehow, all of his shirt's buttons had been undone, and the shirt itself was hanging off his shoulders. He pulled back a little bit and looked into a grin as Jack's paws moved up his chest and over his shoulders, slowly forcing the shirt off.

He had to take his paws off the fox to let it fall, and that brought a brief flash of self-consciousness, because Jack was thin and sleek, and Sean, though he worked out, did not do so regularly enough to get rid of a little extra weight around his waist. But Jack didn't look anything but pleased at what he saw, and his paws wandered happily down the ivory fur on the red wolf's chest and stomach. Sean put his paws back on Jack's hips and slid his fingers under the waistband of the fox's pants, exploring the thick black fur and slender hips, and then worked around to feel the base of the long, fluffy, black tail.

Jack pulled the wolf against him with surprising force, and Sean found that, mysteriously, his pants had been unfastened as well. They slid down his hips, guided by a confident pair of paws that let them hang around his knees before moving back up the outside of his legs to cup his rump. His tail started to wag of its own accord, and then he put more energy into it as he felt Jack's tail match his enthusiasm.

It had definitely been a while, he thought. There was no reason he shouldn't be undoing Jack's pants the same way the fox had undone his, except that the fastening was pressed up against his boxers, pressing, in fact, right into his hardening sheath, and not only did he not want to relieve that pressure, he didn't want to change Jack's paws, which felt so good on his rear, under his wagging tail. Jack had somehow managed to open his pants, and Sean was sure that if he were more used to this type of encounter, that he would know how and when to reciprocate. As it was, all he could do was slide his paws further inside the still-fastened pants.

He thought at first that he'd accidentally slid inside the fox's underpants as well, and congratulated himself on his luck in moving forward, but as he explored the slender hips and ventured around to the fox's tight rear, he realized that Jack wasn't actually wearing underwear. He felt a little embarrassed at his white cotton boxers, until Jack's paws slipped inside them, brushing under his tail and driving any embarrassment out of Sean's mind. He whimpered softly, answered by a low "mmmm" from Jack.

Sean mirrored Jack's caresses, trailing his fingers under the fox's tail and between his furry cheeks, getting a nice press and rub against his sheath in return. Jack rubbed his nose against the wolf's and pulled his hips back, sliding his paws around to the front and cupping Sean's erection. "Feels like someone's ready to move to the bed," he murmured.

"Yeah," Sean said, and took the opportunity to reach around the front and fumble with Jack's pants until he got them open. "I guess we both are," he said as he got his fingers around the fox's shaft, similarly hard. It was slenderer than his, smooth and warm to his pads, and just a little bit sticky right at the tip. Their progress to the bed was delayed while Sean slid his fingers up and down the fox's hardness and Jack's paw closed around the wolf's, starting to pump up and down.

Sean felt wetness at his tip, spread by the fox's fingers. His body was shivering, twitching, fur prickling with arousal. He licked the fox's muzzle, rubbing the tip of his shaft, and grinned. "Didn't you say something about a bed?"

"Right behind you, Slim," Jack said, and gave Sean's shaft a squeeze. "Maybe you need a new nickname, hm?"

The red wolf rubbed his muzzle against the fox's, flicking his ears at the remark, and licked up the edge of one of Jack's long, triangular ears, following it as it flicked around. Jack squirmed, the first sign that his arousal was overwhelming his composure, and Sean pressed the advantage, licking further into the ear as Jack buried his slender muzzle into the red wolf's shoulder ruff.

"Bed. Right," Sean whispered into the fox's ear. He turned Jack around, keeping his muzzle in the fox's ear and working his shaft up under the big fluffy tail. The lithe black form pressed back, tight and hard. "Lead the way," Sean murmured.

"Walk this way," Jack said, settling his paws back on Sean's hips and walking forward. The red wolf matched him step for step until they got to the bed, where the fox let go, jumping up on all fours. He rummaged in a drawer of the nightstand and tossed a small tube back to Sean, remaining on all fours with his tail up. "Let's see if we have a good pair here."

"It looks like the high hand to me." Sean squirted some lube into his paw and slickened up his eager erection, then applied his paw under Jack's tail, searching for the opening there and taking perhaps a little more time than necessary to explore and lubricate it. Both he and the fox were panting hard by the time he was through. He scrambled up behind Jack and wrapped himself around the fox's lithe frame, grasping the dangling shaft with his slick paw as he positioned himself and thrust forward.

They gasped in unison, Sean closing his eyes at the tight warmth around him. He couldn't help himself; he leaned over and grabbed the fox's ruff in his muzzle, holding the smaller canid and thrusting into him, his knot already tight and hard. Jack didn't seem to mind, pushing his rear back into each thrust and whining through his teeth as the red wolf pushed into him. Sean hadn't been thinking that he would tie with the fox, but the more he drove into him, the more his knot wanted the pressure around it, and finally he couldn't resist any longer. Holding Jack's body firmly, he pushed with his hips, getting help from the fox, who seemed to want it as much as he did.

When he slid inside, he overbalanced, taking them both flat to the bed, his paw trapped around Jack's shaft. Gasping, moaning, he thrust his hips forward and back as much as the knot allowed, jerking his paw back and forth around the hot stiffness until he felt the arousal in him come to a peak. He pulled up on the fox's ruff, panting hard through his nose and moaning into the black fur as his hips drove the smaller canid into the bed and filled him with his release. Dimly, he was aware of the fox squirming below him, but it wasn't until he collapsed atop Jack that he realized that his paw was hot and sticky as well.

"Uhhh," he moaned, and Jack echoed his moan with a contented exhalation. Sean nuzzled the tall black ear again, making the fox squirm and turn his head away from the tickling whiskers. "Definitely...a winning hand..." Sean panted.

He felt the fox squeeze his shaft, tight tail clenching around him until he giggled and squirmed himself, and Jack said, "No argument here...I think you take the pot."

Sean slowly extricated his sticky paw and said, "Let's share it."

"Mmm. Deal." Jack wriggled. "What's your tie time?"

"Ten minutes, usually."

"Not bad. You like to talk or just cuddle?"

"Whatever. I'm easy."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that." Jack brought one of his slender paws to Sean's and held it against his chest. "You weren't difficult, but you weren't easy, either. I had to drop a bunch of hints."

"The cards?" Sean kept his demeanor casual, but turned on his detective mind.

"Words, and the chip," Jack said. "I always let the cards guide me, not the other way round."

"Oh."

"Disappointed?" Jack curled his tail around under Sean's, laying across the red wolf's rump. "You thought I was picking those cards?"

Sean thought for a moment before answering, and then decided, to hell with it, and told the truth. "I thought it would be extraordinary if you hadn't. But the cards know. It's just been a long time since..."

Jack squeezed his shrinking knot. "Since?"

The red wolf wriggled and grinned. "Since I met someone so in tune."

"Don't get the wrong idea here," Jack said. "I'm not looking for an attachment."

"Me neither," said Sean, and after a moment's silence, he said what he thought they were both thinking. "But what if the cards..."

Jack shrugged, but Sean could see the corners of his grin. "I didn't say I wasn't open to one."

The water pressure in Jack's shower wasn't great, but Sean didn't mind. It almost took him longer to choose which scented soap to use than to get his fur clean. He had scanned the bathroom for anything that might be a clue, as if to convince himself that he really was here for work and not just following his cock. Really, he was relieved to have nothing to report to the fat wolf, though he told himself sternly that if Jack had admitted to cheating, he would have done his duty to his employer. His cock tingled in mild reproach as he soaped it, recalling the tight warmth of the fox and the way he'd abandoned himself to it, but it had been expected of him, he reasoned. Jack would've been suspicious if he hadn't gone to bed with him.

That didn't sound very convincing, but it was the best he could do. He got out of the shower and dried as much of his fur as he could with the large towel he found folded neatly on the toilet seat. For a moment, he debated whether to wrap it around himself before walking back out, but he'd feel silly if Jack were still naked, as he suspected the black fox would be.

He was right. Jack swung his legs off the bed as Sean walked out of the bathroom."You clean up nice."

"Your turn." Sean watched the fox swing his rump and tail back and forth as he walked into the bathroom; a moment later the water began running.

The red wolf stretched and pulled on his boxers and pants, and then thought, might as well do a little detective work. He walked around the bedroom, looking sharply at the neatly arranged bookshelves and making note of the titles. A few science fiction novels, a few spiritual books, a little of everything, in fact. Just the sort of book collection he would have if he didn't want anyone to be able to learn anything from it. No books on the cards, though he wasn't surprised; he didn't keep his in plain view either. They were full of his notations and he wouldn't want anyone seeing some of the titles anyway.

In the living room, the same things he'd noticed before. Nothing new presented itself, but something nagged at him. He looked around at the coffee table, the low black sofa, the television, and couldn't see what it was. The kitchen, though full of interesting smells, was similarly unhelpful. He returned to the living room and, cocking an ear to the shower to make sure it was still running, lifted the fox's vest carefully from the coat rack. He slipped his fingers into the pockets and found the business card holder that held the casino ID and, behind it, a driver's license.

Jack Filcher. Not an auspicious name. But the IDs were all in order. He memorized the driver's license number and replaced the small card holder, and that's when he realized what was nagging at him.

He took the wallet out of his pants and opened it. Bringing it to his nose, he caught the very faint scent of fox.

Jack had been in his wallet while he was in the shower. He closed it again and then laughed silently. Turnabout was fair play, after all. His detective license was in there, but at this point it didn't really matter whether Jack knew he was a detective. Replacing his wallet, he went into the other pocket and took out his cards.

He sat on the couch as he shuffled, inhaling the scent of the apartment and focusing on his question: was Jack cheating the fat wolf? The noise of the shower stopped suddenly, and Sean found his mind occupied with images of the sleek black naked fox, wondering what he would look like all wet, the water running through his fur in trails. He shook his head and laid down the third card, and stared. All three were the Jack of Clubs.

He rubbed his eyes and looked again, and now only the first was the Jack of Clubs; the other two were blank.

Slowly, Sean picked up one of the blank cards and turned it over. The back was the same deck he had known since he was a cub, the double circles soothing in their regularity. He turned the card back over and saw a Three of Hearts. When he set it down on the table again, the design vanished.

The third card, when he picked it up, revealed four clubs, and he shivered. The Three of Hearts was a warning: careful what you say. He'd seen it at the beginning of the job, too. The Four of Clubs was worse: lies and betrayal. Alone, it would have meant bad things for Jack. Together with the previously negative card, though, it seemed to be intimating that Jack would be betrayed if he weren't careful. Or if Sean weren't careful. He picked up all three cards and shuffled them back into the deck, paws moving automatically while his mind worked.

Jack ruffled through clothes in the other room. Sean slid the cards back into his pocket. Whether Jack was causing the odd effect or just happened to be drawn to it, he could investigate later, on his own time. He had only encountered this effect once before, the day he'd left New Orleans. In any event, the unreliability of the cards was hardly enough for him to follow up. If Jack were cheating, he wasn't doing it by any detectable means that would satisfy the fat wolf.

"Want something to drink before you go?" The fox came out into the living room wearing a silk robe with an Oriental pattern.

Sean got up and shook his head. "No, thanks. I should get back home." He walked over to Jack and extended a paw. "Thanks for a nice night."

The fox grinned an open grin, tongue hanging slightly out. He stepped into Sean and slid his arms around him. "Anyone who just stuck the pot gets a hug before he goes."

"Mmm. Okay." Sean couldn't detect any hint that Jack was annoyed at the information he'd found in Sean's wallet. He hugged back and let himself enjoy the feel of the fox's slender body against him.

"There's no evidence that he's cheating you purposefully," he told the fat wolf the next evening. They'd met at the bar in the Persian again, and Sean had braced himself for the wolf's anger with a scotch and a written copy of the contract he'd signed.

"That's fine," the wolf said. He was on his second beer. "Glad to hear it. Here's your money."

He slid an envelope across the bar to Sean, apparently not caring whether anyone saw it. Sean picked it up and stared at him. "So that's it?"

"Yeah. If he ain't doing it intentionally, then..." The fat wolf shrugged. "I'll play some other table." He appeared to turn his attention to whatever game was on the TV for real this night, but Sean looked closer, at the twitching of the tip of his tail and the curl of a smile at the corners of his muzzle. He felt a shiver then, all down his own tail, and without even looking at the check he grabbed it and shoved it into his jacket.

"Nice doing business with you," he said, and slid off the stool, the scotch overwhelmed by the bad taste in his muzzle.

He searched the casino floor, but Jack was nowhere in sight. Not working, or just on break? The cards in his pocket were tingling. His fur stood on end. The sense of urgency made his ears and tail twitch. He had to do a layout, or did he? He knew something was wrong, involving the fat wolf and Jack. He should find out what it was before asking the cards for direction.

The big-bosomed vixen at the next blackjack table told him Jack had called in sick that night. She looked oddly at him when he asked if Jack had called himself. "Who else would have called?" she said, and that he didn't know.

The Full House Cafe was another dead end. No black foxes stood by the Philosopher's Stone machines. He hurried out, down the street, to Jack's apartment building, even though he hadn't watched Jack enter the code, and he had no way of getting in.

Luck, decidedly, was on his side. The gate was ajar. He checked up and down the street and then slipped inside.

There, the insistent tingling of his cards grew stronger, raising his fur. He padded quickly to Jack's apartment and listened at the door. No sound came from inside. He bent to sniff the door handle, and caught Jack's scent, strong, and wolf, not him. Standing again, he considered the door. Knock, or just barge in? He lowered a paw to the door handle, and felt a brush against his tail. The tingling of the cards vanished.

Sean turned and clapped a paw to his pocket. As soon as he turned, he saw Jack in the hallway, holding his deck of cards gingerly and looking grim.

"I wouldn't go in," he said softly. "Your friends are mighty annoyed they haven't been able to catch me."

"They're not my friends," Sean hissed.

Jack arched an eyebrow. "They know a lot of things only you know." He inclined his head toward the apartment door.

"I didn't tell them. They must have followed me."

"Very convenient. Plausible, even. I congratulate you." His fingers riffled through the deck. "Good detective work."

"Jack..."

"I think these will be adequate payment for the inconvenience of moving again," the fox said, to himself. "I haven't seen a deck as sensitive as these in a long time."

"They were my mother's," Sean said.

Jack's paws stopped and squared the deck. He looked up at Sean. "Fair trade, then."

"Listen, I didn't mean to...I came back to warn you!"

"Did you now?"

"I believe you're not really cheating him, but he thinks you are!"

Their ears caught the noise at the same time. Jack flipped himself over the banister of the staircase in a moment. Sean held up a paw to his ear, a well-conditioned reaction to surprise.

The door opened, allowing a large grey wolf muzzle to poke out into the hall. The nose twitched, smelling the air. "Hang on a second," Sean said to nobody, and turned his attention to the wolf. "Sorry. My girlfriend was supposed to be home but she's still playing the slots over at Caesar's. With my money." Without waiting for a reaction, he turned his attention back to the imaginary earpiece. "I know I gave it to you, honey, but it is my money. Yes, it is. Look, I'm coming over there. Don't move." He waved to the wolf and looked up from his imaginary conversation. "Sorry if I bothered you. You know how it is."

The wolf narrowed his eyes. "You seen a black fox?"

"What, ever?"

"In the building. Why you here in the building?"

"Buddy of mine lives up on four." Sean pointed up the stairs. "I was hoping to have a few beers with him, but now I gotta go to Caesar's before all my goddamn beer money is gone. That okay with you?"

The wolf studied him for a moment. Faintly, from below, Sean heard the flick of cards, and thought he felt a sympathetic twitch to his fur. He itched to run down there, but he waited, and finally the wolf just grumbled and stepped back into the room. He saw, for a moment, the door to Jack's bedroom, and another part of him twitched. As soon as the door was closed, he spun and ran down the stairs to the next landing.

"Jack?" he whispered.

No response. The stair was empty.

He hurried downstairs, skipping steps. Beyond the empty lobby, the gate stood closed. He was about to run outside when he spotted a card stuck into the row of mailboxes: the Jack of Clubs.

On the back, he saw when he took it down, was his double circle pattern. The mailbox swung open easily. He reached inside, and pulled out his deck of cards.

The tingling was gone from them, the crisis apparently passed. He sighed and sat with his back to the wall of the lobby, and then set the Jack of Clubs down on the floor. Slowly, he dealt out the top two cards, keeping his mind blank. Jack had been the last to shuffle this deck, and his imprint would remain on it for a little while. Sean was as sure of that as he was that Jack had not had to search the deck to find his significator. It would have risen to his fingers, drawn by the pull of the black fox.

He dealt the Five of Spades and the Seven of Diamonds, and his muzzle curved into a grin. A change of opinion, victory achieved at cost; and the reward from consistent effort, a card he seemed to see a lot. He looked at the tableau one more time and then scooped the cards up.

So Sean's little performance had changed Jack's mind, at least enough to leave Sean his cards. And he knew they had power, so he knew that he did, too. Sean was interested in Jack for that, but he was also intrigued by the fox. What did he do with all that power? Just deal tables? As he walked out of the building, even though it was night, he whistled a tune to himself, singing the lyrics in his head. _I was blue, just as blue as I could be / Ev'ry day was a cloudy day for me / Then good luck came a-knocking at my door / Skies were gray but they're not gray anymore._

It appeared that he had himself a case.

Race to the Moon

In 2007, Sofawolf Press began a literary journal called "New Fables," intended to raise the bar of furry writing. It took me a couple years to get up an idea for a story, but I submitted "Race to the Moon" in 2009, and it was accepted for that year's issue.

I have always loved fables, and it was merely a matter of me figuring out how to make a romance work in fable form. I used a coyote and raven as the protagonists after a couple who are good friends of me and my husband, and that led to the tricksterish story you will find herein.

Much to my surprise, "Race to the Moon" was nominated for a Washington Science Fiction Association (WSFA) Small Press Short Fiction award, which is a mouthful to say and a high honor. It did not win, but I was delighted that it was that highly regarded.

[return to TOC]

Far back when the world was new, or at least more new than it is now, back when the trees talked boldly in the daytime instead of whispering at night, when Coyote might appear one night at your fire and exchange stories with you until sunrise, one of Coyote's children fell in love.

His fur was black as pitch, so he went by the name Noc, which in the old tongue meant "night." Noc didn't know he had fallen in love, when it happened. He only knew that he kept coming back to the same clearing in the same woods, that even the top of the tallest mountain and the bottom of the deepest lake held less attraction than this peaceful dell in the trees of Ac-Ta-Mok.

Now, in those days, the forest of Ac-Ta-Mok extended from the base of Old Opa, with his snow-covered crown, all the way to the shimmering blue expanse of Lady Asha. Ac-Ta-Mok, in the old tongue, means "he who covers all." All the children lived with the trees in those days, and if the children of Coyote loved the clearings and dells, why, then, so much more room for the children of Fox among the tree roots, and Bear in the thick darkness at the heart of the forest, and Squirrel in the branches that reached to Father Hawaa and tickled his white beards of clouds.

Of all the children of Coyote, Noc had traveled further and faster than any other. He had talked to Old Opa and Lady Asha, had played with the children of Water Rat and Sand Rat alike, and he knew every path through Ac-Ta-Mok. The clearing in which he found himself night after night held nothing special: a burbling brook nearby (but every clearing had one of those), bushes with sweet berries (he knew a hundred others like them), and a soft bed of leaves on which to curl up and sleep (throw a rock and try _not_ to hit leaves). In fact, its only distinguishing feature was singularly annoying: a family of Raven's children.

Noc had no grievance against Raven's children. But this particular family annoyed him for a particular reason: they talked every night about their travels to the nearby pond and marvelous journeys to the red-fruit tree. Most of them had never been further than a day's flight from their nest. The exception was a young raveness whose name, he gathered, was Omber, which means "Shadow" in the old tongue. And Omber was the one who annoyed Noc most of all.

As he lay beneath their tree curled up, Omber would tell her parents of the marvelous lake at the edge of the forest. They would exclaim at how large the world was, and the trees chimed in to praise Omber for her daring. Or she would tell them about flying to the top of the tallest tree, how Ac-Ta-Mok looked like a verdant carpet below her and Father Hawaa an azure blanket above. Noc listened to her stories and laughed to himself. She has barely tottered from her den, he said to himself. My sister's daughter's cubs have traveled farther. But his laughter had a jealous bite, and he could not say why every night, he came back to listen.

One night, Omber was deep into the tale of flying thrice around the top of the tallest pine tree. "The moon looked so close," she said, "I felt I could reach out and touch it with a wingtip."

"Were you not cold?" the old maple in which her nest rested asked. "The tops of my branches grow so cold when the wind blows that I can no longer feel them."

"Did you not get dizzy?" Her father, an old bird with one black glossy eye and one white cloudy eye, clacked his beak with worry. "When I fly higher than Father Maple here, my world seems to spin below me and I fear I might fall to the ground."

"Our Omber is a brave, strong bird," her mother said, feathers fluffed out with pride. "Surely nobody has climbed as high as she, nor seen the things she has seen, none but the gods themselves."

At this, Noc had to uncurl himself from his hiding place and call up into the tree. "Then call me a god," he said, "for my travels have taken me to places you can only dream of."

Omber's father and mother cawed in alarm, and Father Maple's branches rustled threateningly, but Omber folded her wings and dropped to a branch just above Noc, cocking her head to watch him with one shiny eye. "Hello, night traveler," she said. "I wondered when you might favor us with words. No doubt the wonder of my stories rendered you mute."

Noc threw his head back and laughed. "I would not tell your stories to my cubs unless I wanted them to fall asleep," he said.

Omber clicked her beak. "Do you have cubs to tell?"

Noc sat back on his haunches. "If I did, they would already have traveled further than you have."

Omber's parents fluttered down to land on either side of her. "You shan't talk to our daughter in that arrogant fashion," her mother said. "There's nobody so brave or strong as our Omber."

"No four-foot could understand what it is to fly," her father said.

"I've flown higher than Shu-Sha, the tallest pine in Ac-Ta-Mok," Noc boasted. "I've been to lands from which Ac-Ta-Mok is no more than a whisper of a legend of a story."

Omber turned her head slightly, looking up at the moon with her other eye. "So you've been to the moon, of course," she said.

Noc waved a paw dismissively. "The moon," he said. "More times than you have feathers." He had not, in fact, been to the moon, nor known anyone who had, so he was certain that Omber had not been either. The moon was sometimes called Coyote's Grin, and sometimes called Thunderbird's Eye, but it was not a living place as far as Noc knew, and anyway it was all the way up in the sky where one might easily fall.

"I've never been," Omber said. "But I have always wanted to go."

Noc grinned a Coyote grin. His tail thumped the ground. "I'll race you," he said. "To the moon and back." In his mind, he thought she would never agree to such a bet. She would back down, even in front of all these silly creatures who admired her.

"That hardly seems fair," Omber said, "seeing as you know the way and I do not."

"The way is easy." Noc lifted his nose to the heavens. "You run to the edge of the world—or fly to the edge of the world—and then climb up the bowl of the sky until you reach the moon. Nothing could be simpler."

"Very well," Omber said. "Since it is so simple, I accept." She spread her wings, momentarily blocking the moon from Noc's sight, and began her ascent.

"What? Wait!" Noc jumped to his feet and began circling the ground, looking up.

The raven settled on a higher branch and gazed down while her parents cawed laughter. "Yes?" she asked calmly.

Noc's ears flattened at the laughter. "Nothing," he said, willing his fur to smooth down. "I only meant to wish you good luck. I'll see you next on the moon."

"If you're fast," Omber said, spreading her wings again and soaring up the side of Father Maple, who parted his branches to allow her passage.

Noc looked from Omber's mother to her father. "Well," he said. "It's been a pleasure to meet you both, but I think I have given your daughter enough of a head start." He affected a yawn and padded off into the forest until he was sure they could no longer hear him. Then he broke into a run.

Noc had several times climbed Shu-Sha and curled up in the topmost branches. He thought that perhaps he could leap to the moon from there. So he ran to the old tree, faster than you can say lickety-split, and called out to her, "Ancient One, may I visit your uppermost branches?" For it is terribly bad manners to climb a tree without asking, and the tree may throw you down if you do.

Shu-Sha shook her branches to show she was agreeable, so Noc sprang upon them without further delay. In a trice, he was at the top, gazing at the fat white moon hanging from the bowl of the sky. He stretched out his neck, and then he stretched out his paw, and then he stretched out his fingers, but he could not reach the moon.

"Ho, night traveler," said a familiar voice. "I thought you were headed to the edge of the world."

Turning, he spied Omber the raven, circling him, her beak curved in a smile. He brought his paw back to his eyes as if shading them from the moon's light. "I was merely looking to make sure my course was clear," he said. "For once I set out, I don't wish to stop for any obstacle."

"You four-foots make traveling so complicated," Omber said breezily. "Would you not just go and worry about your obstacles as you encounter them?"

Noc strove to rest casually against the Shu-Sha's whisker-thin topmost branch. "The power of flight has made you lazy," he said. "But by all means, continue on your way and I will meet you at the moon, if you don't encounter any obstacles."

Omber laughed. "If I do, I will give them your regards and your apologies for missing them," she said, and with that, glided down across the treetops toward the edge of the forest.

The moon lay directly in her path, just over the peak of Old Opa. Noc began to worry that she would actually reach it before he did. Faster than you can say jackrabbit, the black coyote was down the tree and off to the old mountain.

Old Opa is the oldest of the old, and all the other mountains are his children. Noc knew them all, but only once had he climbed Old Opa himself. "Old Opa, Old Opa," he shouted from the base, "may I climb your sides to stand on your peak and admire the world you made?" He knew, as no doubt you do too, that it is necessary to shout, because the mountain is so tall, and he knew that Old Opa was so old that he had seen the rest of the world around him come into existence, and now believed he had made it all.

Old Opa sent a wind down his flanks to tell Noc that he was welcome, and faster than a howl on a clear moonlit night, Noc had run up against the wind to stand on the crown of the mountain, his feet deep in snow, his fur fluffed against the chill. The moon dangled before him, but when he stretched out his neck, he found it just beyond his reach. He strained until his whiskers shivered, but he could not reach its glossy surface.

"Is this a shortcut?" he heard next to his ear. Only his excellent reflexes saved him from tumbling down Old Opa's sides. He composed himself and saw, to his annoyance, the laughing beak of Omber circling his head, her wings angled to allow her to glide.

"I did not see you on the path," he said, carelessly sitting back on his haunches to lick the cold from first one paw, then the other. "I feared you might have run astray, so I came up here to look for you."

Omber landed lightly on the snow, sinking only a claw's breadth into it. "I am quite well, as you can see," she said. "So you may proceed on your way. Is this the edge of the world?"

Noc made a show of laughing, his tongue hanging out and his eyes closed in mirth. "Why, no," he said. "You can just barely see the edge of the world from here." He pointed away, down the opposite slope of Old Opa, across the plains where Ac-Ta-Mok the forest had never taken root, across the great depths of Lady Asha. "Can you see, out where Lady Asha reaches up to touch Father Hawaa, blue to blue?"

"Yes," Omber said.

"There where their hands are joined, you will be able to move from one to the other, and walk across Father Hawaa's body to the bowl of the sky, and from there to the moon," he said.

"I see," Omber said, taking flight with the grace and ease of all her kind. "Shall we go, then?"

"You may carry on," Noc said. "Old Opa enjoys my company and I so rarely have the chance to visit with him. Fear not, I will catch up to you."

"Farewell, then, four-foot," Omber said.

Noc watched her soar down the mountain, until she was nothing but a speck on a dot on a mote in the distance. "There," he said. "Now, to the moon." For Noc had conceived of an idea. Though the moon was beyond his reach, the stars were not. He believed the lowest was close enough to jump to. "Father Hawaa," he called with respect, "may I climb the bowl of your sky to admire your greatness?"

The nearest stars twinkled in invitation. Noc bowed respectfully to Old Opa, bid him farewell, gathered himself, and leapt.

The first time, he saw the star slip through his paws. He fell back to Old Opa with a puff of snow. The second time, he caught his claws in the fabric of the sky; when he twisted himself free, he fell back again. The third time, he landed perfectly, starlight shining through his black paws all crowded together, balancing on its tiny surface (of course, you know that stars are no bigger than a coyote themselves, for all the brightly they shine). He stood on the star and gazed down at the land below, and then the moon above. There was a short ladder of stars he could use to reach it, he saw, and smiled to himself as he crouched to leap again.

On the third star, he was resting when he heard Omber's voice for a third time. "The edge of the world isn't so far," she said. "I brought a flower back from it. Is this only as far as you've been in that time?"

She dropped a pearl-white flower onto his tail and alit on a nearby star. Noc flipped his tail, carrying the flower to his paw. Breathing in, he caught the exotic fragrance of sea, the chill clear scent of clouds, and the smell of Omber herself. He tossed his head. "Jumping stars is a difficult skill," he said loftily.

"Must be." Omber smiled, then looked up at the moon. "Well, I think I can see the way from here. I hope you can keep up." She beat her wings, laboring upward along the bowl of the sky.

Noc tucked the flower into the brush of his tail and leapt after her, from star to star, but he saw quickly that he would not reach the moon first. No, no, he told himself, not after all that. He cast about for some trick, praying to his Father Coyote to help salvage his pride, and caught his paw in the fabric of the sky .

Anger filled him as he tugged it free. He watched the small black shape of Omber pass star after star, drawing closer to the moon. When he lifted his head to pray to Father Coyote again for help, he brushed the fabric of the sky and caught his tooth on it.

He cursed and shook his head. This time, as he pulled free, he noticed that the fabric came with him, and he realized that Father Coyote had been answering his prayers after all. He reached out and tugged at the fabric of the sky, and the moon shook in response. Laughing, he pulled with all his strength, turning the bowl of the sky around his star until the moon traveled away from Omber, arcing across the sky toward him.

When it was within reach, he leapt for it, shimmering black fur in a graceful leap across the dome of Father Hawaa. His paws settled onto the soft white of the moon with nary a sound but the crow of his laugh as he watched Omber approach. He held onto the fabric of the sky with one paw, leaning casually against it as she approached.

"So," he said, "you are not so fast after all, with all your winged flight."

She settled onto the moon beside him. "So it would appear. But you are truly clever. Who would have dreamed I would meet you here, on the moon." Her talons poked at the soft surface as she walked around him.

Noc's ears followed her progress. "What do you mean by that?"

"Oh," Omber said, "I have seen your travels from afar, and always I wondered who this handsome traveler was, as black as I, as restless as I, as bold or bolder, going to faraway places. I thought I might meet you on the shores of Lady Asha, or in the firepits of Gil-Gara, or perhaps among the flowering trees of Vini-Tala. I thought it odd to espy you beneath my home tree, but I never thought to meet you here in the celestial spheres."

Noc gaped. "You've been to the firepits of Gil-Gara? But your stories...all about the edge of the forest, the tall trees..."

Omber clacked her beak in amusement. "Imagine how my parents would worry if I told them about the divine heat on my wings, or the many days I traveled on the breath of Father Hawaa. The forest is all they know, and they think me very bold for my explorations. I need not tell them how much wider the world is." She peered down. "Look how small Ac-Ta-Mok looks from here."

Noc stared at her. "Well," he said, recovering some of his composure. "Still. I won our race." He lifted his muzzle proudly.

"You are certainly fast, for a four-foot," Omber agreed. "But you are forgetting one thing."

Noc grinned. "What is that?"

Omber raised herself to be eye to eye with him. "The race was to the moon...and back." And with that, she folded a wing behind his head and brought her beak to his muzzle in a deep kiss.

Noc lost his grip on the fabric of the sky, so taken aback was he. Her kiss, warm and sweet, seemed to numb his fingers and toes. Vaguely, he saw the moon slipping out from under him. Then Omber pulled back and beat her wings, hovering beside him. She laughed. "I shall see you back at my tree," she said, and dove downward.

The black coyote hung by his paw from the sky, the moon sliding further and further, no stars nearby for him to land on. He swung hopefully back and forth, but the crown of Old Opa was impossibly distant, the topmost branches of Shu-Sha below him but far, far below. He tried to climb down the bowl of the sky, but he had to crawl like one of Spider's children without any of her grace. No other birds flew this high to help him down. There was, he realized, only one way for him to reach Ac-Ta-Mok before Omber. He closed his eyes and let go.

He felt Father Hawaa's breath around him as he plummeted from the sky. His fur ruffled in waves as the ground approached. For a little while, he watched, and then he closed his eyes. He'd fallen from the third-tallest tree in Ac-Ta-Mok as a young pup, the memory of his broken leg throbbing now as he fell. Surely this would only be a little worse.

Even though he couldn't see the ground, he could hear it. Father Hawaa's breath grew louder and stronger. Noc squeezed his eyes shut harder. He waited for the brush of leaves that would come seconds before Ac-Ta-Mok's arms would break his fall. With Father Coyote's grace, they would slow him just enough to spare him from serious injury, but not so much that he lost the race.

The impact came as gently as twilight. Ac-Ta-Mok's leaves brushed softly against his fur, his arms strong and surprisingly warm. And they smelled like feathers and pine. Noc opened his eyes to see Omber's grinning beak, and behind her the leafy tapestry of the forest, slowly rising past them as the raven lowered them to the ground.

He blinked. "Silly coyote," Omber said. "Falling like that can be very dangerous for a four-foot. Did you really think I would let you..."

Her feet touched the ground. She touched her beak to his nose and whispered, "win?"

At that, he struggled free and stood on the ground staring at her. "You didn't...you couldn't..."

She pointed to the moon, then to her feet. "There and back."

Noc looked at the reflection of the moon in Omber's glossy eyes. It continued to slide across the sky, more slowly now, but perceptible. It occurred to him what a brave and foolish thing he—and she—had just done. They had run to Coyote's Grin together and come back unharmed. He had roamed from the great waterfall Xakha to the scorching dry sands of Lo-Piet by himself, had ventured deep into the caves of Muk to talk to the blind children of Salamander, but in all his travels, he had never encountered another whose journeys had matched his. The scent of the flower from the edge of the world, still miraculously lodged behind his ear, filled his nostrils. His heart felt as wide as Ac-Ta-Mok itself. "Congratulations," he said, and he bestowed a coyote kiss on her raven's beak.

Omber put her wings around him, he put his arms around her. When he lifted his head, he grinned a grin as wide as the one that floated overhead. "Where shall we race to next?"

The raven met the coyote's eyes and tilted her head, matching his grin. "Anywhere you like," she said, and spread her wings.

Drifting

I listen to Dan Savage's sex/relationship advice podcast, and story ideas sometimes seep from there into here. One of the topics he returns to again and again is relationships in which partners have differing sex drives. I had by 2009 grown tired of the "perfect relationship" stories and was trying to explore how people might overcome conflicts to save relationships. "Drifting" grew very organically out of that thought (and you will notice a small shout-out to Dan Savage in the text).

I've been in relationships where we just couldn't bring ourselves to talk about problems, and I don't just mean problems like "don't leave cabinet doors open," I mean huge elephant-sized problems that we both knew were there and just for whatever reason decided to live with rather than talk about. I know how hard it is to bring up painful issues with your partner—and how important it is to do so. And hopefully, in another half-hour or so, you will too.

I was pleased to hear the responses from fans upon reading this story. Many people related to one or both of the characters, and I hope they saw in the story a path to a better relationship, or at least the impetus to make an effort. "Drifting" won the Ursa Major award for Best Short Fiction in 2009.

[return to TOC]

It had been four long years since Tobias had looked forward to a bedtime. He and Dylan had shared a bed for eight, and the first four had been delightful, everything he could've hoped for. Well, okay. The first three had been delightful—two and a half, technically, if you counted the ski trip as the last really delightful time. It had been good for a year or so after that, or at least for eight months, but it had taken almost six months for Tobias to say something about it, which he remembered because it was right after they'd come back from their fourth and last ski trip, standing in the living room with the ski gear still resting against the couch and his tentative words hanging unanswered in the air. Dylan had just mumbled something and gone into the bathroom, leaving Tobias with nothing to do but unpack and remember the cold of the weekend.

So now, because Dylan always stayed up late on the computer, Tobias retired early to their empty bed, made sure his alarm was set, and pressed his face into the pillow, trying not to think about the giant empty space in the bed. It was better than lying next to the inert black panther, thinking about touching him and playing the loop over and over in his mind: his paw reaching out, the shiver of muscle at his touch—because Dylan still slept naked—and then the panther relaxing again, trying to pretend Tobias hadn't touched him. Maybe this time it'd be different, sang a tiny, irrepressible voice in his head, but it had been so long since that voice had been right about anything that it, too, felt like a stuck tape loop, as perky as Tobias's assistant at the office and with as little sense.

Tobias now slept in boxers, his long ringed tail flat between his legs. He usually managed to fall asleep before Dylan came to bed, and his alarm never woke up the panther. Or if it did, Dylan never actually got up while Tobias slid himself out of bed, threw on sweats, and went to the gym.

Gymnasiums in Tobias's home country were very public affairs, some with showers literally open to the changing room. He'd been puzzled when he saw the walled-off areas here, wondering why people who were working so hard to get in shape would be shy about their naked bodies, but now it was specifically because the Steel Body Fitness gym had private shower stalls that Tobias had started going back there. Dylan had a membership too, one of those things they were going to do together, but as far as Tobias knew, Dylan hadn't been to a gym—or done any sort of exercise—in quite a while.

He wasn't particularly fond of exercise either, but he didn't want to show up at work at seven in the morning, and spending two hours in a coffee shop would only take care of part of his morning needs. And yet, he couldn't just show up at the gym and shower, so he'd reluctantly started a limited workout routine, half an hour on the treadmills. And then, looking around at the pine marten huffing away at twice Tobias's speed, at the red wolf straining at the bicep curl, he'd felt ashamed of his indolence and had started setting goals for himself: faster speed, more time. He'd paid for three sessions with Marty, a fox who was one of the trainers, and Marty had given him a set of arm and leg exercises. Tobias still suspected he wasn't working as hard as he could, but he felt better, and when he cut back his lattes to one a day from three at Marty's suggestion, he'd started to lose weight.

Not that Dylan would ever notice, he thought, his paws thumping in time on the speeding treadmill, tail kept carefully up out of the way (once you've stepped on your tail during a run, you always remember to keep it up). Actually, for all Tobias knew, Dylan could've gained twenty pounds. Or lost it. The panther favored loose shirts and baggy jeans, so it was impossible to tell. And he seemed to be eating the same as he always had, to judge from what he got when they went out to dinner (which they still did three or four times a week).

But Tobias had had to buy some new pants. He'd dragged Dylan shopping, and Dylan had helped him pick out the new wardrobe without once commenting on why he needed it. "These'd look good on you," he'd said, as if he were picking out a color of house paint. Which, in its own way, had a nice comforting domesticity to it, and Tobias wouldn't have minded it at all if it'd been accompanied by a wink, or even just by the knowledge that that night, or the next, or maybe the next, Dylan might be watching him take those pants off with lustful eyes. Tobias would've settled for affectionate eyes, even.

There was no use dwelling on it. It was what it was. Tobias had moved to Riviera knowing only Dylan, and when things were going well, he hadn't bothered to make friends of his own. When things went bad, he'd made a few attempts to connect with co-workers, or friends of Dylan he got along well with, but inevitably he found himself wanting to complain about his relationship, and he didn't like himself when he was complaining. Besides, it felt disloyal to Dylan, as if he were giving up. So he remained cordial with his co-workers, saw Dylan's friends with Dylan, and ignored the few times people approached him at the gym.

And when he had finished his workout, his body pleasantly warm and sweaty, he stripped down in the changing room and took his shampoo into the private shower stall. There, finally, he let himself long for the Dylan he'd fallen in love with, his own black paw becoming the panther's as he lovingly soaped up his member, which now started to get hard just from the sight of the shower stall. He drew his paw along its length, up and down, keeping his eyes closed. Today, the slickness was just shampoo, not a muzzle or another slickness. They'd played in the shower before. Shampoo was enough.

He closed his eyes, familiar sensations flooding through him as the water soaked into his fur, coursing down his body. He thrust his head back, letting the water run over his muzzle as his legs twitched, and then he had to brace himself with his free paw against the stall of the shower wall. _Oh, God, Dylan, yes_. His paw pumped faster. The rush of water in his ears drowned out everything else, the smell of the shampoo strong and soothing.

His body shuddered and tensed, and his paw slowed just a bit, prolonging it. Not too long, he told himself, but he couldn't help holding back, while his body cried out for release. Just one more stroke along his tingling shaft, and another, and another...

He gasped, getting water in his mouth. His body insisted, and finally he could deny it no longer. Stroke, and stroke, and stroke, stroke, strokestrokestrokestroke and...

"Mmmf!" He kept his muzzle clenched, feeling the warmth of his seed briefly on his paw before the water washed it away. His body convulsed again and again, emptying his longing and pain in thick white spurts onto his paw, and the water carried it away down the drain.

Then it was time for a long, thorough scrub, long enough that his erection had time to subside. Long enough for him to reflect on how pathetic he was, jerking off at the local gym because he didn't want his boyfriend to smell his come in their shower at home. Too shy, too afraid to break out of his rut. He made sure all the thick white mass was cleaned off the tile floor, rubbing around with a bit of shampoo to be sure, and then rinsed himself off. He turned the faucet to shut off the water and composed himself, shedding all the self-loathing despair, leaving only the nagging little knowledge that he would be right back here in twenty-four hours.

Five minutes in the full-body dryer left his beige fur fluffy. He turned around to give his tail a few extra minutes, while he brushed the rest of his body fur out, thinking of nothing in particular. And he dressed for work, as he did every day, and walked out of the locker room.

Only today, as he was walking out, he noticed an older coyote glaring at him. And Marty, in his "Steel Body Staff" tank top, started walking purposefully toward Tobias as the lemur crossed the main floor of the gym.

Tobias felt his stomach sink. Keep calm, it's probably not what you think. He just wants to ask you about doing more sessions. But although Marty did occasionally approach him to ask about that, the fox's dark muzzle was serious now, his eyes not sparkling.

"Hey, Tobias," Marty said. Before Tobias could respond, he said, "Mind stepping over into the office for a second?"

Marty always called him "Tobe." Tobias fought the pressure in his throat and nodded, following the fox across the floor. He looked morosely at the big glass windows. Maybe a car would careen out of control into one of them. Or maybe a political riot would break out, though admittedly even in his home country that only happened every twenty years or so, and here in Riviera they were going on fifty years since the last one.

The gym remained intact as Marty gestured him to one of the stiff office-supply chairs and seated himself on the other side of the desk. The fox's ears were back, and he didn't look at Tobias as he took a breath. "So, look, do you know what this is about?"

Tobias shook his head without even thinking about it. That was another strange thing about this country: if Marty'd just clapped him on the shoulder and said, "Hey, quit jerking off in the shower, okay?" it would have been a lot easier. But the fox's sympathetic shame on Tobias's part just made Tobias feel it more acutely.

Marty took another breath. His paw rested on a binder on the desk, and his eyes kept flicking to the computer screen. The spine on the binder was angled so Tobias could just barely read the title: "Steel Body Fitness Member Conduct Rules." He spent a moment thinking about why a public gym needed an inch-thick stack of paper telling people how to behave in public before realizing with a guilty start that it was because of people like him.

"There's some stuff that you can't do in the showers," the fox said, without looking at him. "Listen, I get the whole gym thing, y'know. But please just wait 'til you get home." And that wasn't so bad, not by itself, until he went on. "A couple of the other members have complained."

Tobias opened his mouth to reply, but his mind jumped ahead to the fact that not only Marty, but other people—the older coyote who'd given him the stink-eye on his way out today, probably—knew about his jerking off. And that meant that they probably knew how unfulfilling his relationship was and therefore how much of a failure he himself was. None of this registered consciously, but overwhelmed him in a hot rush. "S-sorry," he choked out, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing a paw to his face.

"Hey...hey." Marty's voice had lost the clinical detachment and regained its warmth. He was kneeling beside Tobias's chair a moment later, the warmth of his body and his smell at once reassuring and a reminder of humiliation.

"I'm okay," Tobias said in a small voice.

Marty rested a paw on his knee. "It's no big deal," he said. "Look, we catch guys every other week. I just have to give you a warning not to do it again. It's no big deal," he repeated.

"I know," Tobias said, struggling to get himself under control. "Sorry. I w-won't do it again."

Marty lifted his paw. "Anything you want to talk about?"

"No! I'm fine." Tobias rubbed the fur around his eyes. "I'll be fine."

Any more sympathy from Marty might be too much. Fortunately, the fox stood up and leaned against the desk. When Tobias raised his head, he was looking into a calm smile. The sparkle had returned, at least a little, to the fox's dark eyes. "Hey, do you work nearby? You said something about Crick Co.?"

Tobias nodded. "Down on High, just off 890."

Marty walked back around the desk. "That Victorino's Pizza is around there, isn't it? I like their thin-crust. I might head over there for lunch once I get out of here. Around one."

"I won't do it again, Marty," Tobias said. "I promise." He stood with one more long sniff and waited to see if the fox would say anything else, but Marty just waved. Tobias hurried out of the office.

All the way to work, he regretted moving to Riviera. Back home, things were simpler. People just talked, and the things you didn't talk about, you didn't talk about. You didn't allude to them with your ears down as if they were a piece of garbage. And back home, he had family and friends—well, not so many since he'd moved to the New World.

At least here, if he didn't have friends other than Dylan, he had a comfortable routine. When the questions got to be too loud, he could just lower his head and lose himself in his life. Such as it was. He nodded to his co-workers and settled himself into his cubicle, but when he called up the article he was supposed to review, he just stared without seeing the words. The morning's humiliation, on top of what he'd come to view as the wreck of his life, gnawed at him. How would the raccoon in the next cube react if Tobias asked him for relationship advice over morning coffee? For that matter, what kind of relationship was the raccoon even in? Tobias didn't know whether he was married or dating, gay or straight.

The bat-eared fox who worked on the other side of him, she was married. He heard her talking to her husband on the phone, and she had to leave to pick up kids about once a week. But he couldn't talk to her. He shook his head and tried to read through the article again, but he kept having to remind himself that he couldn't talk to anyone, didn't want to talk to anyone.

He'd only gotten through half the article when he realized he was starving. Guiltily, he looked up and saw that it was one o'clock already. He'd have to do better this afternoon, but he needed food now.

So he wandered down to the street, and stopped outside Victorino's Pizza. He needed someone to talk to more than he needed food, but could he bring himself to talk to Marty? He stared in the door at the slices of pizza, and then at the sandwich shop next door. It'd be easy to go have a sandwich, keep an eye on the street, and if Marty showed up, he could make a decision then. It'd be easier to keep his head down.

Or he could just make the decision now. He was tired of not talking. He'd been not talking for months, years. And he didn't have to talk to Marty, not if he didn't feel like it. But as he inhaled the aroma of cooking dough and tomato sauce, letting the door swing shut behind him, he rather thought he would.

"So how long have you been in Riviera?"

Marty'd strolled in at quarter past and sat down at Tobias's table just as naturally as if he'd made an appointment, two slices of Hawaiian pizza on his plate. And his first question hadn't been what Tobias was expecting.

The lemur found it easier to answer because it was so impersonal, unrelated to everything else that had happened. "Eight years last March."

Marty nodded, munching his pizza. "Did you move here for someone?"

"No." He said it automatically and then felt ashamed. He took the scrap of crust he had left and chewed on it.

"I did." Tobias looked up at the cross fox's wry smile. Marty nodded once. "Grew up in the south on a farm. Went to the big city every month. Clubbing, drinking, having fun. Met a lion there." He leaned back and took a breath, gesturing with the paw that held the slice of pizza. "He was exotic, he was beautiful, and he was into me. Told me if I came to Riviera with him, he'd take care of me."

He took another bite. Tobias leaned forward. "I guess he didn't?"

Marty chewed, taking his time. "He did, for a while," he said, once he'd swallowed. "Then I got boring."

"I'm sorry," Tobias said.

Marty waved him off. "It was a few years ago. I decided to stick around, joined the gym, started training there last year. You were one of my first trainees, did you know that?"

Tobias grinned, spontaneously. The fox was wearing a tight t-shirt that mashed down his fur in muscular contours. It was hard to imagine that he hadn't been always a trainer at the gym. "You never told me."

"You remember what you said when I asked you why you joined the gym?"

Tobias nodded. "I just wanted to get in shape." But the question recalled to him that Dylan had joined with him, making his smile falter.

Marty pointed a finger at him. "Exactly. Done a good job of that, too. You want to hear a secret, though?" He took another bite of pizza and chewed as Tobias nodded. "That's not the real answer. Everyone comes to the gym to get in shape. What we don't ask people is why they want to get in shape."

"Oh." Tobias's ears drooped. He waited for the question to come, but Marty just finished off the first slice of pizza. He didn't say anything else until he'd taken a drink, and then he smiled.

"So what do you do at Crick?"

"Quality assurance," Tobias said. "I review the scientific reports before they go out."

"Wow, you're a scientist?"

"Not really." Tobias smiled, Dylan receding from his mind. "I had some science training but I never finished my degree. I mostly proof them to make sure all the tables match the numbers and the names are all spelled right, stuff like that."

"What happens if you mess up?"

"Nothing, really. Nobody reads them. We just release them to make sure people remember our name. Kinda pathetic." The fox's dark muzzle was welcoming, smiling. Tobias ventured a question. "Do you do the training full-time?"

Marty shook his head. "Part time, and I do odd jobs for a carpenter when he needs me. But it pays the rent."

By the time Tobias had to go back to work, to his astonishment, the subject of him being caught at the gym hadn't even come up. But as they got up, Marty eyed the menu. "There's a lot of good-looking pizzas here," he said. "Might come back here for lunch. I train Monday-Wednesday-Friday."

Tobias smiled and clasped the fox's offered paw. "Maybe I'll see you," he said.

He found himself smiling as he walked back up to work.

When he got home, Dylan was at the game console playing Streets of War 3. "Hey," he said as Tobias closed the door. "How was your day?"

Tobias said, "Pretty good" before remembering that he'd been warned at the gym for masturbating in the shower.

"Cool. Want to grab some Chinese when I finish this level?"

"Sure," he said, heading into the bedroom to drop his stuff off. He looked down at the bed and then out at Dylan, and walked slowly back out. "Dylan?"

"Just a sec." The panther kept shooting down terrorists, peeking out of windows and hiding behind barricades.

"What's going on?" Tobias's good mood was gone. He could barely remember what it had been like talking to Marty, making a friend.

"Uh...I'm trying to clear Manchester of terrorists."

"No, I mean..." He glanced back at the bed again. "Is everything okay?"

Dylan killed two terrorist weasels and paused the game. "Fine," he said, but after eight years Tobias knew the guarded look, the half-back ears, and the twitch in the panther's tail that he could never quite disguise, that meant he was tense about something. And he didn't want to talk about it.

Because it doesn't feel fine to me, Tobias wanted to say, but Dylan's expression discouraged him. "All right," he said. "I'll call ahead for the Chinese."

The Chinese food was good, but once it was gone, Dylan went back to his computer. Tobias took over the video game console, and then went to bed, pressing his face into the pillow and wondering if anything would ever change.

In the morning, he almost did opt to sit for two hours in a coffee shop. But then he thought, if I stop going to the gym now, I'll never go back. That prospect filled him with a strange hollowness. So he walked in again, ran on the treadmill, and when he was done, stepped into the shower and did nothing but wash.

Walking out, to the older coyote's narrowed eyes, Tobias gave an innocent smile, bouncing his ringed tail behind him. The smile persisted most of the way to work, and when he went to lunch, even though he didn't go to Victorino's, he got a warm feeling when he walked by it.

And on Friday, when he did go to Victorino's, Marty was already there, relaxing in a corner booth. Tobias picked up two slices of plain cheese and went to sit with him.

"How's work?" Marty started, and they talked about people at the gym and scientific reports, until it was time for Tobias to go. Marty clasped his paw when they stood and said, "Have a nice weekend."

And the first thing he asked on Monday was, "How was the weekend?"

"We went to dinner and saw a movie. I played some video games," Tobias said. "How about you?"

"Did some carpentry work. Helped build a table. Went out to a club, got laid."

He said it casually, the slice of alfredo pizza halfway to his muzzle, but his eyes watched Tobias keenly. Tobias forced himself to be casual as well, chewing the rest of his pepperoni and swallowing before saying, "Oh yeah?"

Marty dipped his muzzle in a nod, ears flicking. "You ever go to clubs?"

"Not really my scene." Tobias shook his head, staring down at his pizza.

"Well, I admit the guy wasn't all that hot stuff, but it's a good way to blow a load once in a while." When Tobias looked up, Marty'd put the pizza down. "I mean, works for me."

"I dunno. My boyfriend's not really into that."

"What do you guys do together?"

"Oh, we play video games sometimes. We used to, anyway. Now we mostly watch movies and TV. Sometimes at the same time."

"What video games?"

And they talked about video games, and left the subject of Dylan for that day.

It was sausage and mushroom pizza on Wednesday, and only a couple bites into his slice, Tobias took a breath and looked across the plastic table at the fox. "It's been a while since things were really good with me and Dylan," he said, and then stopped.

Marty just nodded his long muzzle, ears perking slightly. "What changed?"

Tobias put the pizza down. "I don't know," he said. "It must be something I did, but..."

When he didn't go on, Marty raised an eyebrow. "You haven't talked about it?"

"I try." Tobias rested a paw on the table and looked at his fingers tapping the plastic. "But he just...doesn't talk."

"At all?"

Tobias sighed. "When my father threw me out, y'know, he said, 'If you won't carry on the family, you are no longer part of it.' And that was it. There was nothing to talk about."

"Tobe, that's not really a model you want your boyfriends to follow. Don't go Oedipal."

"Edible?"

Marty grinned. "Don't look for your father in your boyfriend."

Tobias sighed. "We like the same games, movies...relationships are so hard."

Marty shoved the remaining slice of pizza into his muzzle. "Mmm. 'S'why I don't bother with 'em. You got friends to do all that stuff with, and you can always find people to do the..."

Tobias looked curiously at Marty, who paused and then went on. "The everything else." He waved a paw. "I get on by myself pretty good. Not saying that's what you should do, just saying that works for me. So how about you come out to a club Friday night?"

"I, uh, what?" Tobias flicked his ears up, wondering if he'd missed a linking sentence somewhere.

"You know, dancing, drinking, bright lights, lots of hot guys?"

"Oh, it's not really my thing." Tobias nibbled on his crust.

"Ah, you've tried it already."

He put the crust down and took a drink. Marty waited. "Well. No."

"Look, I'm not saying you have to hook up or anything. It's a great way to burn calories. More fun than the treadmill."

"I'd have to ask."

Marty brushed crumbs from his whiskers, his smile broader. "So ask."

Of course, it wasn't that easy. Thursday night, Tobias realized he wasn't going to have much more chance to ask Dylan if he wanted to go Friday, so as he was getting ready for bed, he rehearsed what he was going to say in his mind. For all that helped; it still came out awkward as he said it.

"Hey, I met this guy at the gym, and he wants to take me to a club tomorrow night. If that's okay."

Dylan looked up from the computer. "What club?"

"I...don't know. I mean, he didn't specify."

Dylan tilted his head, ears flicking. "You don't have to ask me. If you want to go, go."

Impulsively, Tobias said, "You want to come?"

The panther shook his head slowly. "I got stuff to do here. Not really into the loud music and stuff, you know."

"Okay." Tobias paused. "I might...I might be out pretty late."

"Okay. You want me to wait up?"

"Oh, no. Well, I mean, if you want..." He trailed off. He wanted to say, "what for?" but that seemed rude, and Dylan was just being pleasant.

The panther shrugged. "If I'm up, I guess." He turned back to his computer, and Tobias thought that was it, but a couple minutes later, Dylan said, "I didn't know you were into dancing."

"Oh, yeah." Tobias looked up from his game. "Used to do it back home."

"You had clubs in Terrian?"

Dylan still wasn't looking at him, but Tobias shook his head anyway. "No, just with the family, you know? All of us together."

"Mm." Dylan's tail twitched. Tobias waited for him to say something, and finally he did. "Let me know how it is."

Tobias sighed. "Yeah," he said. "I will."

There wasn't an easy way to bring up the possibility of doing more than dancing, so Tobias just told himself that he wasn't intending to "hook up," though it was hard to stop his daydreams all through Friday. And when he met Marty outside Splitz, the music loud enough that it was hard to talk even in the street, he couldn't take his eyes from the dark-shouldered fox's light white vest, open to show off his fluffy chest ruff, and the tight black shorts, cut high enough that Tobias could see the bottom of a little triangle of white fur on the inner thigh.

"You wear more clothes than that to the gym," he couldn't help saying as they stood in line.

Marty grinned. "If you want to come back, I'll have to take you shopping."

Tobias fingered his t-shirt, looked down at the jeans. "Is this bad?"

"Nah, if you're not looking to hook up. You'll get pretty warm, so just remember to drink a lot of water. But you should be doing that anyway."

The bouncer, a six-and-a-half foot tall tiger, watched the gum-chewing vixen at the entrance take their money and smear something invisible on their wrist fur. Marty was already bouncing on the balls of his feet, his tail switching in time to the music as they walked in. Tobias's long tail, too, undulated in time with the music, creating waves along it that distracted Marty as he turned to ask Tobias something.

"That's cool," he said, snaking his arms to try to imitate the motion.

Tobias stopped. He looked around, but didn't see anyone else in the club who had as long a tail. All the other dancers just seemed to be hopping and bouncing, with short, fluffy tails. Marty's was longer than anyone else's—no, wait, there was a cougar, but he was facing Tobias, his tail hidden from view.

"Hey," Marty said, now hopping from one foot to the other and clapping his paws together. "First rule of the club is don't worry what other people think of you. Unless you're trying to hook up, but you're not, so what do you care? Just let yourself go. Come on, I'll help."

Still bouncing, he dragged Tobias over to the bar, bathed in purple light, where a white ferret's glowing fur showed Tobias that the light was probably a UV. "Two Steamboats," Marty said to the ferret, holding up two fingers.

The ferret gave him a thumbs-up and continued serving the pair of bears standing beside them. Marty closed his eyes briefly, swinging his hips and still clapping his paws. "What's a Steamboat?" Tobias asked.

"Come on, feel the beat," Marty said. "You'll like the Steamboat. It's fruity."

Tobias took a breath. Back home, growing up, they used to dance a lot, but the dances people were doing here were different. They were more jerky, except for a few who were dancing fluidly with glowing wristbands. He started tapping his foot to the throbbing beat, and let his body sway ever so gently from side to side.

If he just focused on the beat, he could almost imagine his father pounding on the porch, his brother and the families next door dancing off the Sunday pot luck. He hadn't thought of home in years, mostly because of the way he'd left it, and remembering the feeling of dancing brought back a startling liberty with it. He curled his tail around the bar rail, and then uncurled it, letting it sway back and forth. Both feet got into it, and just then, the glowing white ferret plunked down two glasses on the bar.

"I got this one," Marty said, "you get the next."

"Deal." Tobias clinked his glass against Marty's and brought it to his nose while the fox drank. He caught the flavor of banana, strongly, over the familiar smell of rum. Orange and cherry followed them when he took a gulp, and then the rum overwhelmed them all. "Wow," he said, looking down.

Marty'd already finished his. "No hurry," he said, "but finish up so we can go dance."

Tobias looked again at the drink and then at the fox. He gave him a quick grin and brought the glass to his mouth.

The dance floor was a wild mass of chaos, a hundred different kinds of musk and flashing lights of every color. Marty let go of Tobias's paw at what seemed like a random spot on the floor and started swinging his hips again, more aggressively than he had at the bar. Tobias looked around and saw as many different dance styles as people, and almost as many different kinds of dress. Next to them were two female pine martens, spandex tops stretched tightly across their ample chests, with matching hip-huggers shimmering under the rainbow lights. They slapped paws while dancing, as if their matching outfits weren't enough to show they were together. To his other side, a white tiger, almost a photo-negative of Dylan, was dancing so jerkily that Tobias thought at first he must be completely drunk, until he pulled out a phone and tapped out a text message with more coordination than any drunk person could manage. The phone wasn't the only conspicuous bulge in his shorts when he slid it back in place.

"Hey." Marty punched him on the shoulder. "You can look, just don't stare." He had to yell over the music. "Have fun dancing."

"Right." Tobias felt a warmth in his cheeks and a different warmth in his stomach, where the drink was sitting very comfortably. The former faded while the other spread to his legs and arms, and since nobody seemed to notice he was staring or even care what he was doing, he started to dance. "Hey," he called to Marty, and waved at his nose. "Don't the smells bother you?"

Marty's smile widened. He just curled his tongue around his lips and lifted his muzzle, inhaling visibly. Tobias laughed. It didn't bother him, but he wondered what the fox and his sensitive nose made of it. He must like it, because he looked very much in his element.

Once it was clear Tobias was having fun, he expected Marty to move away and circulate, but the fox seemed happy staying where he was. Other dancers flowed around them, but Tobias didn't stare overtly, except at the striking arctic fox, moving with serpentine grace, whose only concession to propriety was a small gold pouch that strained to enclose his sheath. Tobias couldn't help staring at his abs and legs, rippling under short shaved fur, but it didn't seem to matter, because the fox was traveling in a small cloud of staring dancers, male and female both. Tobias turned back to Marty and saw the fox grinning. "Don't worry," Marty shouted over the music. "Nobody else can look like that."

"Too flashy for me," Tobias responded, but that wasn't true for everyone. In the short time he was near them, Tobias saw a black panther and a large tigress both dance their way up to the white fox, gain his attention for a few seconds, and then get left behind as he danced on. He shook his head and grinned, clapping his paws together to the beat and hopping more vigorously, more carefree in the certainty that nobody within twenty feet of the arctic fox was looking at anyone else.

"You look fine," Marty said. Tobias gave the dark-maned fox a thumbs-up to show that he appreciated the reassurance. Marty himself looked pretty good. He too shaved close on his arms and stomach (though not as close as the arctic fox), but left his shoulders and the mane on the back of his neck long and fluffy. Tobias wondered why he hadn't noticed the fox's rear before, or the way his hips moved invitingly, or why he hadn't appreciated the power in those paws when Marty'd helped him with his exercises months ago.

Somewhere in between his second and third Steamboat, Tobias realized that he was going to go home with Marty and have sex. The realization was as liberating as the passage of the arctic fox had been to his dancing—with the outcome of the night settled, he didn't have to worry about it. He could just let himself go. The memories of home faded, the dance floor and club becoming its own experience, allowing Tobias to get lost in the music. After his fourth drink, his body felt tingly, aching for a touch, so he rubbed his paws along his sides. And that felt good, so he rubbed them down his thighs, too. Marty was echoing his dancing, and perhaps the music had slowed, or Tobias's perceptions had speeded up, because the fox seemed to be swaying rather than swinging, stepping rather than hopping.

"Another one?" Tobias yelled, pointing at the bar.

Marty shook his head and pointed at the exit. Tobias's tail shivered, his heart skipping a beat. The warmth of four drinks all poured into his groin. He nodded.

They made their way through the crowd of dancers, out into the dark street. Marty was panting heavily, and Tobias could feel the stickiness of sweat all through his fur. "You're lucky," Marty gasped. "God, can't close my mouth." His tongue was dripping.

"Good," Tobias said, and before he could change his mind, he stepped up to Marty and kissed him.

He'd grabbed the fox's muzzle and planted his mouth across the open lips, and Marty responded immediately. He tasted like orange and cherry, and rum, and fox. Different from Dylan, warmer and more exotic. And when he pulled the fox to him, he felt the hardness of his arousal, something else he hadn't felt for years. Marty's paws slid down and cupped Tobias's rear, tongue flicking against the lemur's. Tobias's heart raced. His tail swung around to brush the back of Marty's legs.

Then the fox pulled away and took a step back, resting a paw on Tobias's shoulder. He smacked his lips. "Hey," he said, his voice muffled by the residue of the club music in Tobias's ears. "Let's get you something to drink."

That wasn't quite the response Tobias had expected. He paused and then nodded, curling his tail down by his legs. He wasn't staggering, he noticed, so he wasn't _that_ drunk. Sure, he was drunk, but the world wasn't spinning, and all in all, it just felt very pleasant and free. Marty's rejection, though, had started to let nagging worries creep in. He started to apologize, but Marty was smiling and walking along with a springy step, so there didn't seem to be a need for it.

Marty led him to a gas station, where he grabbed a couple huge bottles of Powerade and handed one to Tobias. "Tastes like crap, but it's good for you," he said. "Hangover's worse if you've been dancing." He downed a good quarter of his bottle in one long drink, and when he set it down, he wasn't panting so hard. "Hate it when my mouth's all sweaty."

Tobias took a drink, and it really did feel good, even though the night air was cooling him down considerably. His cock still felt hot. "It wasn't so bad," he said boldly.

Marty's ears flicked. "You have a good time tonight?"

"Yeah." Tobias took another drink.

"Good." Marty clapped him on the shoulder. "Come on, I'll walk you to the bus."

"No, I drove." Tobias slapped his pocket for the car keys.

Marty shook his head. "You ain't driving like that."

"I'm fine," Tobias insisted.

"Do I have to take your keys?"

"Okay." Tobias leaned closer. "How close is your place?"

Marty laughed. "You clear this with your boyfriend?"

"It's none of his business," Tobias said. "If he wanted me, he could touch me once in a while."

He was surprised at how easily the words came out. Marty's eyes softened. "Come on, there's a diner not too far. Let's get some coffee."

Okay, so maybe he wasn't going to have sex with Marty tonight. But this might actually be better. "Hell yes," Tobias said.

The diner was called "Grant's," and it smelled like all 24-hour diners smelled, of eggs and toast with an undertone of deli meat. They sat away from the few other patrons, shared a plate of fries with coffee, and Tobias told Marty about Dylan. How things had been so good when he'd moved from the tropical country of Terrian; how Dylan had been there for him, filling the void left by his family; how they'd slowly settled into a rut and slowly just stopped having sex.

"How long?"

"Oh..." Tobias counted backwards in his head. "Three years? There was one night when we tried, but he wasn't really into it." God, he'd almost forgotten about that night. It had been so awkward, and afterwards he'd felt so ashamed of pressuring Dylan into the blow job that he'd lain awake the rest of the night. Now, with the buzz of alcohol in his mind, it seemed as though it had happened to someone else.

"Years?" Marty's ears went flat. "Oh, Tobe. That's not right."

"That's why I was going to the gym," Tobias said, emboldened by the four Steamboats.

"'Coming' in the gym was the problem."

It took Tobias a second to realize that Marty was making a joke. The humor broke through the absurdity of it, making him grin, which made Marty smile in return. "I know, it was stupid, I just..."

"Nah, to be honest, I figured. I mean, there must be something going on at home if you had to jerk off in the showers there. Either that or you're just so turned on by muscles that you couldn't hold it in, but you don't really seem like that type."

"I like some muscles." Tobias ignored the stare from the jaguar two tables over and looked pointedly at Marty's shoulder.

"Is your boyfriend in shape?"

He waved a paw. "He stopped going to the gym years ago." But the mention of Dylan brought back some tension, killing the relaxation the alcohol had brought. Or maybe that was the coffee. He wanted another drink from the bar, but all he had was the coffee, so he took another drink.

Marty lifted his coffee cup as well. "Why don't you just DTMFA?"

"Sorry?"

"Dump the motherfucker already."

Tobias inhaled the smell of his coffee. It was weak and crappy, but right now it was just perfect. "Because...well, where would I go?"

Marty shrugged. "Anywhere's better, right?"

"Well..." Tobias looked out the window at the street. It was one in the morning, and still people were walking by: a bear couple, a porcupine. "It's not that bad. I mean, he was cool with me going out tonight. We both like video games and stuff. If we could just get the sex thing sorted out."

Marty rubbed his muzzle. "You think he'd be okay with you messing around with other people?"

"What, like cheating on him?"

The fox's dark shoulders shrugged. "If you ask him first, is it cheating?"

"I don't know..."

"Well, if you're not getting what you want from him, he can't expect you to just go without, can he?"

Of course, that was exactly what Dylan had been doing. Or had he? "He's not like that." Tobias looked into Marty's eyes. "I mean, he was willing to try, but it was just so...ugh."

"He doesn't have to say it out loud," Marty said. "He can make it uncomfortable for you. And it sounds like he is."

"Yeah, but he doesn't mean it...I don't think." Under Marty's gaze, Tobias rubbed the black mask over his eyes and sighed.

"I'm not coming on to you," Marty said. "I told you, I'm not into the whole relationship thing. But I hate to see a friend unhappy. Haven't any of your other friends told you that?"

"Most of my other friends are Dylan's friends," Tobias said. "I can't really talk to them about him."

Marty exhaled and leaned across the table. "At least," he said, "you should talk to him. Don't let him shut you down. He owes you that."

Between the coffee and the Powerade, and the time elapsed, Tobias wasn't even buzzed any more when he walked in the door of their apartment at quarter to three in the morning. He realized as he saw the blue glow of Dylan's computer screen that he had no idea when Dylan regularly went to bed any more. Had the panther just stayed up for him or not? He wasn't anywhere to be seen.

Tobias locked the door behind him and stood looking at the empty living room. Maybe Dylan was out, had taken advantage of Tobias's absence to go to a friend's house for a movie night. Or maybe he'd run out for a quick fast food fix, which was more likely since he'd left his computer on.

The toilet flushed. Or, Tobias thought, maybe he was just using the bathroom. He waited in the living room as Dylan came down the hall, ears and muzzle up. "Thought I heard the door," he said. "How was it?"

"Pretty good." Tobias stifled a yawn. "I'm gonna head to bed. You?"

Dylan's eyes slid away from his. He gestured at the computer. "I'm kinda in the middle of something."

Tobias sighed. "Okay." He walked slowly toward the hallway, then stopped and turned around. "How about if I stay up for a bit?"

Dylan was already seated at his desk. He shrugged. "Sure."

"I mean," Tobias said, "can we talk for a bit?"

He saw the panther's shoulders slump. Dylan spun his chair around and settled his paws in his lap, his tail curled around the base of his chair. "What's up?"

Tobias flopped down in the small loveseat, draping his tail along the cushions and his arm over the armrest. "Are you bored with me?"

Dylan dropped his head. "No," he said.

Tobias waited for more, but the panther stayed silent. "Because, I mean, you haven't touched me in like, ages."

"I know."

The silence between them took an effort to break, like getting up out of a warm, comfortable bed. "So what happened?"

"I'm sorry," Dylan said, slumped over in his chair.

I should never have started this, Tobias thought. I should've just told Marty I'd already talked it over. Wouldn't everyone be happier that way? I could be lying in bed with him right now, spent, his come all over my paws, maybe in my mouth, and mine on him. Or I could be walking home with the memory of him. Why am I dragging poor Dylan through all this? He started to turn away, and then remembered Marty's injunction. One last try, Tobias thought. "I just want to know if it's something I did," he said.

That didn't come out quite as he'd intended, but it did at least provoke a response. Dylan shook his head. "It's not you. It's me."

Tobias had seen enough TV to be wary of that one. "What do you mean, it's you?"

"It's just me, okay? It's my problem."

"Are you breaking up with me?"

Now Dylan lifted his head. "No! Wh—do you want to break up?"

He was staring, close to tears now. Tobias felt answering tears in his throat. "No. I mean, not if you don't want to."

Dylan shook his head, lowering it again. "You seemed so understanding about it... I thought you'd have said something. I could tell you weren't doing anything on your own."

Not here, at least. Tobias looked away from Dylan, to the curtains drawn over the window. He thought about Marty again, about the fox's tongue dancing with his own, the warm heat of his erection. He shifted his weight on the cushion. "If I were doing something...somewhere else? Would you want to know?"

This silence wasn't a comfortable chair. This was the mother of all awkward silences. Dylan cleared his throat and started to talk, then stopped again. "I don't know," he said.

"Would you care?"

"Sure." He replied quickly that time, making Tobias perk his ears up. Dylan looked at him. "I mean, I want you to be happy."

Tobias leaned back into the loveseat, exhaling. He let the silence wash over them, and then stood. "Okay," he said. "Look, if you want to come to bed, we don't have to do anything. Maybe just curl up together?"

Dylan nodded. "Let me just shut this down."

In bed, the panther comfortably next to him, Tobias relaxed and looked up at the ceiling. His tail rested over Dylan's stomach, their paws just touching. And he didn't have to worry about what Dylan wanted, and he didn't have to worry about when and where he was going to get off. His cock was full of warm arousal, but it wasn't Dylan's unavailable paw he needed.

He saw Dylan's nose twitch. The panther took a breath. "If you're doing...something...somewhere else."

Tobias waited. Dylan's tail brushed his. "God," Dylan said, "this is so stupid. I wish..." He stopped again.

There was nothing Tobias could say that would help. He stayed quiet, letting Dylan work it out in his head. "If you're happy," he said, "with me..."

Tobias held his breath. Dylan exhaled. "If you're gonna stay here...with me...then I don't wanna know what else you have to do to be happy."

Staring at the ceiling, Tobias breathed out slowly. He nodded, and squeezed his boyfriend's paw, and then he closed his eyes.

How to Get Through the Day

"Bridges" started as a conversation about three-ways. It made me wonder what kind of person would get into a three-way, and then imagine someone who made it a habit. It led to a five-part story that was published in 2010 as part of a new imprint I developed with a couple friends, and it won the Ursa Major award for Best Short Fiction.

I had made a promise to fans, that if we sold enough upon its release so that the publisher had to re-order before the next convention, that I would write a follow-up story, and I let the fans vote on what pairing they wanted to see more of. Overwhelmingly, they wanted to see more of the first couple shown in the story, Fin and Amir, who were set up on a date by the main character of the story, Hayward. So here is the extra story from Bridges, which was included in the electronic edition when it was released in 2011.

[return to TOC]

How to get through the day:

Pills.

Set goals.

Keep your mind busy with something you enjoy.

When people ask how you are, say "Good" rather than "Okay." Even if you don't feel it.

Do not talk about how you really feel.

Resist the urge to isolate yourself.

Do something good for someone else.

Exercise.

Commend yourself for something you did well today.

Tomorrow will be a good day.

9. Commend yourself for something you did well today.

Fin hung up his vest and touched the sticker on the inside of his closet, reading the words as he did every night. _Something you did well today._ The swift fox unbuttoned his shirt. It hadn't been a bad day, but it hadn't been a particularly good one. Work was work, a dreary monotony of forms and reports and meetings. There'd been no theater rehearsal. He'd resisted the tempting chocolate chip cookies at lunch. There was that.

He tossed his shirt into the hamper and slid a paw down his side. He could afford a few more cookies, to be honest. The memory of his 220-pound self might be persistent, but it was only a memory. Still, indulgence led to habit, as his counselor used to tell him.

There was the call with Amir, setting up another Hay date for tomorrow. That was an indulgence, but it hadn't yet become a habit. He let his mind linger on the memory of the last one, leaning back in the corner of his couch getting sucked off while watching Amir's muzzle contort as he fucked the slender red fox. Hayward was good with his tongue, and it was fun watching the little fennec top him, too. Fin had made sure to lay down towels on the couch this time, so he didn't have to throw the cushion cover in the laundry after.

When Amir'd gone to clean up, Hayward had asked how much Fin had seen of the fennec, and had chided him gently when Fin said 'a couple times for coffee.' Really, though Fin appreciated the Hay dates, of course, what business was it of his? But the post-orgasmic warmth kept Fin from voicing those thoughts; he merely said things were moving at their own pace, and that he didn't see Hayward complaining about having a regular setup.

Fin slid his pants off and threw them into the hamper as well. He brushed a finger along the outline of his sheath, through his boxers. Neither the memory of last week's Hay date nor the anticipation of tomorrow was stirring it much.

He walked over to his bed. _Something you did well today._ He wasn't allowed to lie down until he'd come up with something. No cheating.

He'd made a good breakfast. He remembered that now. He'd bought fresh onions yesterday on the way home, had grated fresh cheese, and the omelette had been pretty good. Better than good; he hadn't burned it or made much of a mess. He'd thought that if he didn't do anything else well today, he could count that. In retrospect, it seemed like the most tangible success. _Good breakfast_ , he told himself, and lay down.

10. Tomorrow will be a good day.

Maybe he would try cooking dinner tomorrow, he thought. Hay always wanted to go out to dinner, but Fin could probably talk him and Amir into a home-cooked meal. He could pick up some more fresh vegetables on the way home, maybe a roasted chicken, and he could make a casserole. He hadn't made one of those in a while, just because it was hard to make one small enough for one, and he never finished leftovers.

That sounded good. They'd been out enough times that it would be nice to have a quiet evening at home instead of going out. And he could pick up a pie on the way home. Apple maybe. He didn't know what Hay liked. Although he remembered Amir liked cherries. Cherry pie, then. Hay probably wouldn't stay for dessert anyway. Fin imagined Hay saying, _it depends on what you call 'dessert,' honey_. He chuckled and closed his eyes.

1. Pills.

Two small blue pills, a glass of juice. A bowl of cold cereal. Fin was out of eggs, but that was okay. He didn't have to make an omelet every morning. He sat down at the dining room table, feeling darkly unsettled as he always did until the pills kicked in. It wasn't a physical sensation, rather a sort of desperation, as though every action he took was a struggle against an enormous pressure to lie down on the floor. He always took the pills first, finding a symbolic comfort in them even before the weight lifted, which usually happened before he finished eating.

The action of dropping the pills on his tongue and picking up his orange juice had taken on the familiarity of a ritual. He swallowed, facing the window. The reflection of his collared shirt and brown vest showed ghostlike over the creeping progress of the sun above the roofs of the buildings across the street. The chill tang of the orange juice faded slowly from his tongue. He picked up his spoon and dipped it into the cereal.

When he was done eating, he sat back in his chair. His tail twitched, then began to swish back and forth.

2. Set goals.

Today he was going to go to the market and get the ingredients for the casserole, but first he was going to have to call Hay and talk the fox into eating a home-cooked meal for once. He had two reports to look over at work, too, but those were routine. Cooking a casserole would be challenging. Talking Hayward into a change in his routine would be, probably, impossible. But then again, you never knew, with Hay. He flitted from one engagement to another with mercurial abandon. If Fin could be persuasive, and not just obdurate, then Hay would be more likely to listen. Fin could do it. He _would_ do it.

3. Keep your mind busy with something you enjoy.

Fin's job as a compliance consultant (more precisely, as a junior member of the four-person compliance consulting company) was not exactly what he would call 'fun.' When he'd started, he had worked with a lot of financial organizations, reading balance sheets and profit/loss statements and forms with identifiers like international phone numbers. Now he was working with hospitals and HMOs, matching their records and procedures against the laws passed in the last year and identifying problem areas.

At least he didn't have to talk to the customers, usually. He was happy enough to stand in the background at presentations and let his boss, a compact arctic fox, handle the client relations. Her name was Chantara, and she was really good at it.

They worked in an open office. The conference room was the only room with a door, and they only met in there when clients visited the office. This morning, when Fin walked in, Chantara lifted her head and shook it so that the four hoops in her ear jingled together.

"Morning, sunshine," she said, and laughed. "How we coming on the Sacred Heart 1421-790Ks?"

"Should have the eval done today." Fin was the new guy, the one Chantara and Jake had brought on two years ago when the workload had gotten big enough to warrant it. They appreciated Fin's reliability and didn't mind that he was quiet; Fin liked he could work without constant distractions without having to be alone in an office. Sometimes they all went out to lunch, and sometimes they all worked through lunch, and sometimes he and the other junior consultant Eileen went out, and sometimes he went by himself. They never forced him to be social, and as a result he was social more often.

He settled in to his desk to review the 1421-790K, the hospital's form for a doctor to request an exception to the usual process. They had to provide a reason, which could be anything from a patient allergy, to a shortage of the usual drug, to mysterious "singular circumstances." The compliance officer at Sacred Heart had explained wearily that this last bucket had expanded in the last two years to appear on nearly all of the forms filed, and that many doctors kept stacks of the exception form already filled out with "the doctor feels that singular circumstances require a variance to the usual procedure" as the explanation, to save time. This was causing the hospital a good deal of trouble with the insurance companies, and their client had requested specific attention to this form.

It was not fun, but it was engaging. Today, though, Fin kept finding his thoughts straying from the rows of text to the little laugh Amir gave when Fin joked about something. He wondered if Amir had read _Picnic_ , as he'd said he would. Fin had downloaded an e-book on city planning, which was Amir's graduate program. The swift fox had found himself enjoying the history of it and was looking forward to talking to Amir and getting more detail on what he wanted to do with his degree.

4. When people ask how you are, say "Good" rather than "Okay." Even if you don't feel it.

He was deep into his analysis when Eileen walked in, humming. "How you doing, Fin?" she asked as she sat down at her desk.

"Good, good," he said. "You?"

"Dandy." She sat at her desk, started the computer, and then immediately got up for tea. Fin bent back to his work and never saw her come back.

It took him only a couple hours to finish the part of his work that required him to concentrate, and after that he was just typing up bland descriptions while his mind wandered. Whenever he found idiocies in a company's protocols, he always looked forward to sharing them with his theater buddies. Today, though, he found himself wondering if Amir would enjoy hearing some of them as well.

Sheesh, why was he thinking about the little fennec so much? He knew Hay wanted the two of them to hook up, and Amir doubtless knew it too. But Amir didn't seem to be in any more of a hurry than Fin was. He had his graduate courses to worry about, and Fin had his theater. They'd had coffee a couple times, and the conversation had come haltingly at first, but more easily the longer they talked. Now they had a standing once-a-week coffee break, on Thursdays when Amir's classes got out early.

But before Thursday of this week, there was the Hay date tonight. Fin waited until noon, when Hay would be on his lunch break, and excused himself to the conference room to make the call.

5. Do not talk about how you really feel.

"Darling," Hay said when Fin called him. "I was hoping you'd call."

"Oh?" Fin shifted the phone, looking out the window at the park. Snow covered the skeletons of the trees, covered the grass except along the paths where people hurried back and forth.

"Yes, I have sadly had something else come up. I hate to leave you at the last minute, but—"

Fin felt a stir of irritation. "Something else or someone else?"

"Fin." Hay's voice held a note of reproach. "If you want details, you know you have only to ask."

"All right. I'll call Amir."

"Already done, sweetie. He's meeting you tonight at The Gilded Leaf. Seven-thirty, don't be late."

Fin sighed and didn't say anything. He knew Hay was doing this on purpose to get him and Amir together. He stared at the park, where a lynx was struggling through the snow to get to her car. Hay said, "You're not mad at me, are you?"

"No." Fin closed his eyes. "It's fine. I'll call Amir."

"I told you, he's going to meet you."

"I know, I just want to confirm."

"You're not going to cancel." Hay's voice was firm.

"No," Fin said again. He opened his eyes. The lynx was brushing snow off her car, leaning desperately across the windshield. "I just want to confirm it's okay."

"All right. I'll catch up with you some other night, okay? Don't be mad at me, Fin dear."

"I'm not." The lynx slipped and fell into a snowdrift. She got up, struggling, and brushed snow from her coat. "I'll see you, Hay."

Fin put down the phone as the lynx finally got into her car. He waited to see if it would start. When the taillights blinked on, he dialed Amir.

"Hi," the fennec's high voice said. "Hay just called me. If you don't want to do The Gilded Leaf, that's okay."

Two wolves were hopping through the park now. The lynx's car drove away. Fin watched the wolves, a young couple who kept wagging their tails and playing in the snow. "I was actually thinking," he said. "You want to just wait 'til Hay's free?"

Amir didn't answer right away. Fin thought that perhaps he was trying not to be too relieved that Fin had suggested postponing. "No," Amir said. "I don't."

"You don't?"

"Let me put it this way." The fennec sounded more resolute, more serious than Fin had ever heard him. "If you don't want to get together tonight...just with me...then let's just cancel dinners."

6. Resist the urge to isolate yourself.

Cancel? Fin didn't have to think about it to know how he felt. But how would he say it? Could he bring himself to just blurt it out? How would he do it without sounding stupid?

"Fin?"

"Dinner, you mean? Just this dinner?" Fin said, scrabbling for something to say.

Amir's voice was a little quieter. "What do you think? Still want to get together?"

He could feel the fennec slipping away. If he thought of himself as a character in one of his plays, it was easier for him to say emotional things. "Yes," the character Fin blurted out. "I do. But..."

"But what?" Amir said, after a moment.

"Would you want to come over and have me cook you dinner?"

When Amir replied, his voice was light again. "I'd like that. I'd like that a lot."

Fin looked out into the park again. His tail was wagging. "Okay. Seven-thirty?"

"Perfect."

That single word echoed in Fin's head, warming him after the phone was hung up. He sat in the chair, tail wagging, and watched people walk through the park and play in the snow.

"You done in here?" Chantara said, knocking as she opened the door. "I need to call Sacred Heart. You can listen if you want. I'm just setting up our meeting for Friday."

"No, I'm done." Fin stood, taking one last look out at the park. A few more people were hurrying through the snow. He put his phone in his pocket and walked to the door as Chantara sat down at the table and dialed on the speakerphone. He closed the door behind him and sat down at his desk.

"You okay?" Eileen called over to him.

Fin shook his head and perked his ears up, realizing he'd been staring at his computer without touching anything. "I'm good," he said. He called up the next set of documents from Sacred Heart and started looking through them.

The doe kept looking at him. "I'm going to grab lunch from the deli. You want something?"

"No," Fin said, and then, "Actually, sure. Tuna salad?" He fished in his pocket for a ten.

"I thought you liked their barbecue chicken." Eileen got up and took the bill from him.

"I did, just sometimes it gives me indigestion."

She raised an eyebrow, looking down. "Maybe this time it won't."

He looked away from her, back at his screen. "Just the tuna salad."

"Whatever you want." She pulled her coat on and walked out.

Amir's 'Perfect' stayed with Fin as he ate his sandwich, as he finished up his report, and as he started on his next project. When Chantara looked at his report and said, "This looks great," he heard Amir's 'Perfect' echoing behind it. The sensation was a little confusing, like the feeling of his tail wagging for no apparent reason, like the occasional moment when he would snap back to his reports and realize he hadn't been doing anything on them for the last five minutes.

Silly, stupid, and completely unlike him. If he sat and thought about it, he could hear the whispers that it wouldn't last, the trembling of the foundations beneath him. Sure, now that he and Amir hadn't talked for a while, Amir was happy to hang out with him, even looking forward to it. But after they'd had their date, after the conversation had gone on longer than their coffee talks and stalled or become awkward, after they'd attempted to have sex without the comfortable intermediary of Hayward, then what? Hayward had always left early, and Amir had never stayed the night, and even though the pills gave Fin the ability to tell himself that Amir still liked him, years of habit made it difficult for him to believe deep down inside.

7. Do something good for someone else.

Between the crowded, slushy parking lot and the long lines, it took forty-five minutes for Fin to do the shopping for the casserole and pick up cherry pie at the bakery down the street from his house. The casserole took an hour to bake, so he wanted it to go in around seven. Amir would arrive at seven-thirty, and they'd eat at eight.

Only it took him longer to pull all the meat off the chicken than he'd anticipated, and by the time he'd chopped all the celery, it was already seven. Hurriedly, he scooped the pieces into the casserole dish with the chicken and measured out the noodles and water, but it was still ten after seven before he got it in the oven.

That left him twenty minutes to stress over the fact that dinner would be a little later than he'd planned, until 7:31, when he snapped at himself to stop being an idiot. That freed him up to worry about why Amir was late, but fortunately, he only had to worry about that for five more minutes.

"Sorry I'm late," Amir said when Fin opened the door. They smiled at each other, hesitating on the edge of hugging, and then Fin leaned down to brush his muzzle to Amir's.

"Let me get that," he said as Amir shrugged out of his coat, but the fennec held on.

"I'll get it," he said, smiling. Beneath the coat he was wearing a short-sleeved silk shirt with red and gold patterns that hung loose over a pair of black jeans.

So Fin went to get wine while Amir was hanging up his coat in the closet. When Fin came out holding two glasses of wine, Amir was standing next to the couch. He looked deliberately down at the center cushion as Fin handed him the wine. There was a small grin on his muzzle. "No towel?"

Fin's ears flicked. "Well, Hay isn't here," he said.

Amir's ears lowered. The grin faded, and he looked uncertain. "Yeah..."

Fin cleared his throat. "Thanks for coming anyway. I wanted to try this casserole recipe. I haven't cooked in a while."

"It smells great." Amir sipped the wine. "This is nice. As usual." He sat down in what was becoming his customary corner of the couch.

"If nothing else, my folks gave me good taste in wine." Fin took a seat in the opposite corner.

Amir cocked his head. "You drank wine with your parents?"

"Yeah." Fin's tail swished slowly. He looked down into his glass. "I was drinking wine with dinner from the time I was ten."

"I didn't have a drink until I was twenty-two." Amir smiled. "I would go to bars and order a Coke in a small glass, so people thought I had rum in it."

"Didn't your friends take you out on your twenty-first?"

The fennec shook his head. "I didn't have the kind of friends you drink with. Or, really, many friends." He laughed shortly. "I didn't say that to sound pathetic. I just don't make friends easily."

"I know how that is." Fin sipped at his drink.

The silence after that remark stretched on. "So," Amir said. "How's the play going?"

And Fin told him about the rehearsals, about the continuing struggle to coax a passable performance out of Charisse, about his own excitement over his role. "It's just a supporting part, but I'm getting into it. I'm the rich guy that the older girl is going to marry. Where everyone else is making rash decisions about dating and running off together, I'm more logical. The lead character is an old college friend of mine who rushes into things without thinking. I have a song with him called 'Look Before You Sleep.'"

Amir laughed again. Fin smiled and sang, "Look before you sleep / with the first girl on the dance floor / There's no hurry; keep / on looking 'til you're real sure ..."

"That's nice." Amir leaned toward Fin, his ears straight up. "I don't think you ever sang for me before. You have a really nice voice."

"It's just a normal baritone." But Fin's tail wagged against the couch at the compliment.

"I can't really sing," Amir said. "I used to play violin in high school. Just got bored of it."

"You know, if you're not in love with music, it becomes more of a chore..." Fin looked down at his wine. "There are a lot of things I gave up after high school."

"Like what?"

Fin flicked his ears. "Girls."

He'd said it secretly hoping to hear Amir's laugh again, and the fennec did not disappoint him. "Oh, I gave those up after middle school. I mean, I had a lot of good friends who were girls. We went shopping together."

"You keep in touch with any of them?"

"Some." Amir finished his wine. "They don't travel all that much. We chat online every now and then. But it's not the same as having someone to hang out with, you know."

Fin nodded. He inhaled the sharp aroma of the wine, letting the sting of the alcohol fade so he could smell the fruit undertones. He lapped again and let the flavors roll over his tongue. "No, it's not," he said.

Before the ensuing silence could turn awkward, the oven timer beeped. Fin got up and set his wine glass down. "I'll just..."

Amir had looked up at the beeping, and now was looking back down at his glass. His ears had lowered somewhat. He was clearly still thinking about his last remark. Fin stayed standing where he was until Amir's muzzle lifted and the fennec smiled at him. "Going to get that?"

The beeping did not get any softer, but it faded in his perception. "I'm glad you're here," the character Fin said with a returning smile.

Amir's ears came up. His smile broadened. "I'm glad too," he said. "Do you need help with dinner?"

8. Exercise.

"At least let me help with the cleanup." Amir licked his lips. "You did all the cooking and it was really good."

"You don't need to keep saying that." Fin wagged his tail. "There's not much to clean up. I just throw stuff in the dishwasher."

He did so with a little more haste than usual, while Amir continued their dinner conversation, telling Fin about the land use class he was taking. Fin put on some water to boil for tea, interrupting Amir to ask if chai was okay.

"Sure." Amir's tail swung back and forth. He watched Fin take out two mugs, two tea pouches, and a container of chai tea.

"This'll take a little while." Fin gestured for Amir to return to the living room, and followed the fennec back to the couch. When Fin sat in his corner, though, Amir sat closer, in the middle. That was hopeful. Fin hadn't been sure Amir would want to do anything intimate without Hayward. Even though they'd seen each other naked three times now, even though they'd seen each other climax, they hadn't actually touched each other. Not unless you counted them being inside the same fox at the same time, which Fin didn't.

So it was a little awkward without a red fox between them. They didn't put on any movies, which Hayward would have insisted on. Fin played an old musical soundtrack for background, and just tried to be interesting enough that Amir wouldn't want to leave. Whether it was through his efforts or not, the fennec seemed perfectly happy to talk about his land use class, and the city planning book Fin had started reading. Then Amir was happy to listen to a story about one of Fin's customers from last year, and that led to a lively discussion about the bookstores in Gateway and whether the selection of books was more important than whether the bookstore catered to canids and their sensitive noses.

In the course of that discussion, Amir leaned forward, gesturing to make a point. Fin was just responding when the fennec seemed to slip, falling forward and just catching himself with a paw on Fin's leg, his muzzle inches from the swift fox's.

Fin's words died away. He looked into Amir's eyes, saw the hesitant smile, and returned it. Slowly, he set his wine glass down on the coffee table. Amir's paw firmed its grip on Fin's thigh. "Is this okay?" the fennec said softly.

"Yeah." Fin wanted to say how glad he was that the fennec had made the first move, but that seemed silly. He reached up and brushed a paw down Amir's arm, from the elbow to the wrist, his blunt claws parting the soft desert fur. For the first time, it occurred to him how odd it was that the fennec had worn short sleeves, even with his thick winter coat. Then he understood why Amir had done it, that he had made the first move before even stepping into the apartment, and Fin had been too dense to notice it.

"It's just weird without Hayward here." Amir's tail flicked at Fin's touch. "I mean, I'm glad...but we haven't really..."

"No." Fin leaned forward to touch his nose to the fennec's. "It is a little weird. I mean, we've seen each other..."

"Yeah." Amir's ears flattened, though he was smiling. He kissed Fin's nose lightly. "And you're...uh. Pretty hot."

I don't really get into physical looks, Fin wanted to tell him. I don't care whether someone's hot or not. But he couldn't make those words sound like anything other than a polite way of saying, I'm willing to sleep with you even though you're not that hot. So he just said, "You're pretty great to look at, too," which felt truthful and an acceptable compromise. Then he added, "That's a great shirt."

Amir leaned a little closer. "I kinda...want to see you again. If you're okay with it." He teased a claw beneath Fin's vest, pushing it further open. "Without the shirt."

Fin almost laughed, that Amir was just as worried as he was. "I'm okay," he said.

"Because you didn't put a towel down." Amir rubbed the sofa cushion. "I wondered."

"Well." Fin reached up to the fennec's side. It wasn't so hard to do this, not so hard as he'd thought it would be. Partly it was that Amir had made the first move, twice. Partly it was him telling himself that he wanted this, pushing aside the doubts and worries that always dragged him down. But partly, too, it was that the doubts and worries were faded, weaker. Amir had stayed through dinner, Amir was leaning in close to him, the cute, sexy fennec wanted to make love. Fin could smell that as clearly as the residual smell of the chicken casserole. He curled his paw around Amir's ribs and pulled the smaller fox down against him. "It seemed forward."

Amir came toward him eagerly, his chest against Fin's, his muzzle brushing the swift fox's. "Without Hayward."

Fin nodded. The fennec's weight felt good against him, comfortable and safe. He put himself into the character of Fin again, determined to make up for missing the clue of the silk shirt. "Also," he said, "I thought you might like to see the bedroom."

Amir wriggled out of his clothes like a snake while Fin was still unbuttoning his shirt. The fennec lay on the bed, tail thwapping the sheets, already halfway out of his sheath and getting more erect as he watched Fin undress. "You're fast," Fin said. He'd seen Amir before, but always over Hayward's shoulder, over Hayward's back. Never alone, never just for him.

"At some things." Amir smiled. "It's kinda cool watching you like this. Without Hayward, I mean."

Fin dropped his clothes in the hamper and wriggled slowly, starting out being the character Fin undressing for his lover. He pushed his boxers over his own growing erection and dropped them atop his slacks in the hamper, then turned to the bed.

The moment dragged on. Amir's tail thumped the bed a couple times and then stopped. His eyes met Fin's, a little bit of uncertainty in them. Fin felt it too; his own tail twitched. He tried to banish the specter of the red fox between them. After all, he told himself, Hayward only brought them on dates to bring them to this moment. He had confidence that they would be good together.

It wasn't Hay that was important, though. It was Amir. Fin knew, just knew, that the fennec was hesitating because he felt he'd already pushed to have this date, that he was waiting for Fin. And Fin did want him, with his mind and his heart as well as the heat between his legs. He'd already made the decision, so all he had to do was act on it. He took a step forward and saw Amir's eyes light up. From there, it was easy for him to get up on the bed, kneeling facing the fennec.

The fennec looked up at him and then rolled up to his knees, his smile wide. "Hi there, hotness," he said softly. He brought a paw up between Fin's legs, cupping his sac, and kept it there as he lowered his muzzle. His small tongue lapped at the swift fox's erect shaft, sliding gently up the length and along the tip, making Fin inhale and close his eyes.

"Hay really should have left us alone before," Fin said, reaching a paw down to cup Amir's cheekruff.

"He did." Amir pressed his nose into Fin's hip and inhaled, then breathed out slowly. "Just we were all worn out by then."

"Uh-huh." Fin lifted his muzzle as Amir's tongue washed up his shaft again, curling around the tip. "You don't seem worn out now."

"Uh-uh." Amir moved his paw around to Fin's rear, cupping it and holding it as he licked. "I'm...full of energy."

Fin arched his back, lowering his muzzle and opening his eyes. Amir's dusty-furred muzzle was moving up and down in warm, tingling waves, and the fennec's eyes were half-closed. His tail swung back and forth. Fin didn't feel the urge to say anything more, not then, not when Amir tugged his shaft forward, not when Amir's muzzle slid down over Fin's length, not even when the fennec's warm tongue and lips made Fin's shaft tremble, made his toes and tail curl, made him gasp out loud.

It wasn't until Amir had lifted his muzzle off that Fin spoke. His fingers were pressed into the fennec's cheek fur still, but as Amir leaned back, Fin loosened his fingers and rubbed through the thick, soft fur. "You're good at that," he said. "Better than Hay."

Amir giggled, and gave Fin's shaft another lick. "You're just saying that. I can't believe it."

"Hay's pretty good," Fin admitted. "But you feel different."

"I'd hope so." Amir's large ears flicked backwards. "You taste good."

Fin dropped to a crouch, touched his nose to Amir's, and pushed the fennec backwards onto the bed. What would the character Fin say? Ah. "Let's see how you taste."

The words came easily, and brought another smile from Amir as he lay back, letting his erection flop onto his ivory white belly fur. Fin took the base of it and tilted it upwards, lowering his muzzle at the same time. He breathed in Amir's thick musk, and lowered his tongue.

Hay was big, but Fin had never had the red fox in his muzzle. Amir felt almost as big, certainly bigger than anyone else Fin had ever put his lips around. He didn't have a lot of experience, but he knew he'd never worried about getting a sore jaw with any of the others. He didn't remember any of the others wriggling and moaning breathily quite so delightedly, either. Amir's whole body twitched, his paws clenching around the sheets, and when Fin rubbed his tongue hard along Amir's tip, the fennec actually squealed.

Fin was smiling when he looked up Amir's fluffy chest, letting the fennec's large shaft drop gently to his stomach. The fennec was staring up at the ceiling, but tilted his head downward. "You're pretty good, too," he gasped.

"Nah." Fin shook his head. "I, uh, need more practice."

He winced. That wasn't something the character Fin would say. It was goofy and kind of self-deprecating and kind of forward. But Amir curled his tail around so it brushed Fin's chest, and said, softly, "You can practice on me whenever you want."

That was goofy and forward too, and it made Fin smile, brought a warmth to his chest that matched the one between his legs. He rested a paw on Amir's stomach, feeling the warmth underneath. His claws ruffled the fur. "So," he said. "Um. You looked pretty good last time."

Amir flicked his ears. "I think anyone would look good behind Hayward."

"Yeah, well." Fin rubbed, pushing his paw up and back down. "If you want to, um. I don't need to top."

"Oh. Okay." Amir brought his paw to Fin's wrist. "I'd...like that, yeah."

Impulsively, Fin dropped to Amir's side and pulled the fennec against him. "Mmm," he said. "Well, okay then."

Amir draped an arm over Fin and ruffled the fur down his spine, around the base of his tail. He smoothed fur over the curve of Fin's rear. "We don't have to do that all the time."

"Let's worry about next time when it happens." Fin's tail thumped the bed.

Amir's claws teased down under his tail, brushing his tailhole there. "Sounds okay with me."

They held each other a little while longer, paws teasing between each other's legs, until Fin couldn't wait any longer. He kissed Amir's nose, said, "Be right back," and ran to the bathroom.

He brought a condom and a towel back with the lube, the little bottle already open as he got back to the bed. He rubbed the slick jelly under his wagging tail while Amir unrolled the condom down over his shaft. "Can I have a little of that?" Amir asked, his latex-covered shaft bobbing ready between his legs.

"Of course." Fin squirted more into his paw, but instead of moving to Amir's held-out paw, he wrapped his paw around Amir's shaft and slid it up and down, gripping the small swell of Amir's growing knot at the base. The fennec squirmed, spreading his legs and closing his eyes. When he started shuddering, Fin slid his paw free. "Okay, I think you're slick enough now."

Amir cracked one eye open. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure." Fin eyed Amir's knot, wondering how much bigger it would get. But he wanted it, he knew that, so he lay back on the towel, spreading his own legs and curling his tail to one side.

The fennec rubbed a paw along Fin's stomach, down the ivory fur and over into the brown fur of his hips. "I've, uh..." He let his fingers glide over Fin's erection and slight knot, down to his sheath and sac. "I mean, I've only ever done it from the back."

Fin turned toward Amir. "We can do it that way, too. If you want."

"I've seen pictures, just never, y'know." His paw closed around Fin's shaft. "But I'm up for trying."

Fin reached out to stroke Amir's hardness with his slick paw. "Clearly." He smiled. "Just kneel between my legs, like this..." He guided Amir to the right position and lifted his hips, tightening his stomach and resting his feet on Amir's thighs. "And I think you can figure it out from here?"

Amir arched his eyebrows and nodded, leaning forward. The tip of his erection pressed under Fin's tail. The fennec looked down, panting, and stopped. "You okay?"

"Yeah." Fin wrapped his legs around Amir's waist and pulled the fennec in closer. He forced his muscles to relax as Amir, taking the hint, pressed his hips forward. The pressure of the fennec's shaft increased until it slid inside Fin with a warm, familiar intimacy.

It had been a while. The only sex he'd had lately had been with Hayward, and Hay never let anyone else bottom. The mild soreness went away almost immediately, replaced with a warm glow rippling through his rear. Fin arched his back and held Amir's wrist with his dry paw, while the slicker one rested on his shaft. "Still okay?" Amir asked.

"Yes." Fin squeezed with his legs, tugging Amir closer, and the fennec took the hint. Fin relaxed as the wide shaft drove further in, all the way up to the swell of the knot, and then pressing that inside, until the fennec's muzzle was just over Fin's chest. Amir was biting his lip and his body was trembling again. Fin squeezed his wrist until the brown eyes met his, and he smiled. "Feels good," he said.

"Uh-huh." Amir gasped. He pulled out and then thrust back in, good and quick, and Fin started stroking himself so Amir could just focus on fucking him. Because the dusty-yellow muzzle had lifted, the brown eyes now unfocused, and he was thrusting harder. His whole body felt taut and quivering against Fin.

The swift fox was getting pretty close himself, but not quite that close. He slid his paw along his shaft faster, trying to catch up. He angled his hips up, with a little more tightening of his stomach, and that helped; the back-and-forth of Amir's shaft became more electric, the press of his growing knot a spike of pleasure each time it pushed its way in past Fin's muscles.

The fennec was gasping, thrusting, his paws gripping Fin's chest fur. Fin closed his eyes to focus, but he still didn't beat Amir to the climax. With a high-pitched moan, Amir thrust all the way into Fin, his knot full and tight, his hips jerking, and the clutch of his fingers was almost painful. Fin kept his legs wrapped around the slender waist, his own arousal surging with each shudder of the small fennec above him and inside him. He watched the muzzle hanging open, perked his ears to the yelps, so familiar and yet different this time. He could not only hear them, but he could feel them in the warmth of Amir's paws, in the sliding thrusts inside him.

Amir's paws slid down around Fin's chest; his body sagged against the swift fox's taut stomach, moving with the rising and falling of Fin's panting. Fin's own hips squirmed, his knot tight and hard below his strokes. He clenched around Amir's shaft and knot, feeling every inch of it and eliciting another squeak from the fennec, his climax approaching, building. It crested slowly, as his paw moved faster, until his back was arching up all the way into Amir's stomach. The warmth spread outward from his groin, making his fingers and toes and tail tingle, and then he let out his own moan as the pleasure exploded through him, spattering his stomach with each jerk of his paw. He gasped, stroking until the pleasure subsided, and then collapsed on the bed.

The fennec fell on top of him, still pressed securely inside. Fin wrapped his free arm around Amir's back, keeping the other tight around his still-pulsing erection. Amir's arms dug into the bed under Fin's shoulders, pulling him close.

They lay together, panting, tails brushing past each other. Amir's weight felt nice on Fin's stomach, and though his shaft was getting a bit uncomfortable inside Fin's rear now, pulling that big knot out would've been worse. He just relaxed and focused on the smell of Amir, the sound of his panting, the wiry body in his arms. And the discomfort faded away, like his worries and doubts. His body felt pleasantly tired, and Amir's presence around him was soothing.

9. Commend yourself for something you did well today.

"Can I stay here?" Amir murmured next to Fin's ear.

"Sure." Fin squeezed him. "You can stay as long as you want."

"I have to go to class," Amir said. "At ten. But until then."

"I leave for work at eight."

"Mm-kay." Amir nuzzled Fin's cheek. "That was really good. Really good."

"Yeah." Fin rubbed his muzzle back, his tail wagging. "You feel so good."

"Who needs Hayward, huh?"

Fin laughed, bouncing Amir on his chest. "Aw, don't be mean. He did introduce us."

"I'm not being mean. I just mean...I don't think we need him to go on dates any more. I'd like to start seeing you. Just you."

A different kind of warmth spread through Fin, from Amir's warm fur down to the black tip of Fin's tail. It felt like going on his first Hay date and having a good time, like moving to Gateway by himself and getting a good apartment and job, like picking exactly the right gift for his boyfriend in college, like all of that rolled into one and then multiplied. He closed his eyes and pressed his nose into Amir's fur, between the large ears. "Mmm. Me too."

10. Tomorrow will be a good day.

The Prisoner's Release

Here you have my first published story (Heat #1 and #2). It was later released as part of a collection, "The Prisoner's Release and Other Stories," which was nominated for an Ursa Major award in 2007, but at the time of its initial publication it got little notice.

It is significant, though, because it has spawned three novels (and counting). I have written more words about Volle than about any other character (though Lee and Dev will catch him sometime in the next year). The novels "Volle," "Pendant of Fortune," and "Shadow of the Father" (about Volle's son) have all won Ursa Major awards for Best Novel, and when "Volle" won in 2005, I was truly shocked. I did not think a novel with explicit sexual activity (and there is probably more in "Volle" than the plot warrants) could win an Ursa. But when I started writing, I set out to prove that you could include explicit sex in a book and still have a meaningful plot and story. So I guess I've made that point.

"Volle" takes place before this story, though it does not specifically tell how Volle ended up in prison, and reading this story will not ruin that one. "Pendant of Fortune" takes place after, and "Shadow of the Father" (which is very light on the sex and heavy on adventure and stabbing) takes place some sixteen years after that. The world is called Argaea, and it is one that I doubt I will ever leave. In the following pages, you will see its birth.

[return to TOC]

### Part 1

Volle raised his head at the creak of the door. Something was different, and in prison, something different could be very good, or very bad.

The grizzled skunk guard he'd called "Limp Stripes" after the kink in his tail had been the only creature he'd seen for the past month, ever since the rat (whose name he knew: Dereath Talison, junior Minister of Defense) had given up interrogating him. Dereath's interrogations, though sometimes very painful, had provided something for him to brace his will against. The last of the physical injuries had healed; Volle wondered whether Dereath was just waiting for that to begin another round, or if boredom was his new tactic. The regular appearances of the mute skunk had been his only diversion.

Today, the guard who stepped into the windowless cell wasn't Limp Stripes. He was a young white wolf, white all over except for a little streak of black down his left hip that Volle could see clearly because he wasn't wearing a shirt.

He wasn't wearing a shirt.

And he was gorgeous.

Volle stared at the clean lines of his abdomen, nice and tight under his short white fur, up the well-defined chest, and over to the arms that showed muscle even when hanging relaxed at his side. He looked at the streak of black fur, where it disappeared into the olive-drab guard pants, and at the strong legs that filled out those pants nicely.

This can't be real, he told himself. This is a fantasy I'm having. I'm delirious. Next thing this creature will say is that he's here to rescue me.

A glance at the shapely muzzle did nothing to dispel that fantasy. The wolf's expression was carefully neutral. He'd done nothing since closing the cell door behind him except stare back at Volle. Now he slowly lowered his paws to his pants, and started to unfasten them.

Oh, Fox, thank you for this wonderful dream.

The wolf's snarl finally dispelled Volle's fantasy. "That's right, you fox filth. You should've talked under the lash. Now you get to be my plaything."

So that was how it was. Volle watched the pants slide to the ground and stared at the thick white sheath. He could smell the wolf's arousal now, and he thought he could even see a red tip emerging from the top of the sheath. Below the sheath, a full white sac swung around gently as the wolf worked his pants off. His legs were just as perfect as the rest of him: well-muscled and trim. He didn't have more than a couple ounces of fat anywhere on him.

Watching Volle, the wolf moved a paw to his sheath and started to stroke it. "Yeah, stare at it, fox. I'm gonna ...stick this in every hole you have, and when I get tired of those, maybe I'll make some new ones." The words rang hollow; more like a speech he'd memorized than a genuine threat. He was obviously working himself up to it, Volle noted, trying not to get too involved in watching the wolf masturbate. If he'd been here on his own to rape a prisoner, he'd have been fully erect and bursting out of his trousers.

That image made Volle's own sheath stir. He wouldn't have thought it possible, but apparently there were some forces powerful enough to overcome the oppressive cold, dark, and filth of the cell. He shifted to conceal it and watched the wolf's member extend and harden. This is a move by Dereath, he told himself. Counter it. But he couldn't distance himself completely, and even as he thought, he found himself getting hard. Well...maybe that would be useful.

The wolf hadn't noticed. He was staring at Volle's muzzle and licking his lips—an obviously forced gesture that almost made the fox chuckle. His eyes were distanced enough that Volle was sure he was fantasizing about someone else. Probably a young bitch he knew. Certainly not a filthy, emaciated fox in shackles, even if he were into bondage.

Finally, the wolf dropped his paw. He let Volle have a look between his legs, then stepped forward with a menacing grin. "Ready or not, here I come."

Volle let his muzzle hang open. "Oh, put that in here, big boy." His voice was rusty from disuse, but he thought that added a certain something.

The wolf stopped. He looked uncertainly at Volle, registering for the first time that the fox was aroused too.

"Come on, please. I bet I can fit it all in. It's pretty big, but I like that."

"You don't understand, fox. I'm going to put this wherever I want. I'm raping you."

Volle hid a grin. "Oh, okay." His paws were shackled to a single chain that was fixed into the wall, so without much difficulty, he turned over and got onto his paws and knees. His muscles protested, but he forced them through the motions. He lifted his tail as far as he could, which was just enough to give the idea. "I like it there, too."

The wolf didn't say anything, but Volle could hear him breathing. He heard two more steps, and then felt a strong paw on his tail, lifting it up. He was sure his bare, soiled rear was not a very appealing sight or smell. Turning his head, he gave the wolf an encouraging smile. "Go ahead," he said. "It's your duty, after all."

He was pleased to see that the wolf's erection had slid back significantly into his sheath. The wolf looked at him and held his tail for another moment, then threw it down with a curse and stalked back to the door.

Volle turned back over and watched him pull his pants on, admiring the nicely shaped rear and the white fluffy tail. The wolf kept his back to him and left the cell without a backwards glance. Volle heard the familiar click of the key in the lock, and then all was quiet.

He sagged back against the wall. Was this a one-time ploy or a first salvo? It was a good shot, whichever it was. Dereath, obviously, was behind it, but Volle didn't want to give the rat too much power in his mind, so he imagined a cadre of faceless tormentors who knew just what he was attracted to, and exploited it expertly. Unbidden, visions of the perfect white body with the one distinguishing black streak came back to him, standing in front of him aroused. His sheath, which had lost its arousal, swelled again and he felt his member pushing to get out. He tried to keep it down—the bastards had shackled his arms and legs so he couldn't give himself release—but he couldn't get the image out of his head. In his mind, the wolf was smiling, walking towards him with a sway in his step so that his lovely long shaft swung from side to side enticingly. Volle could see the soft white sac, the sheath above it stretched to its limit, and the red slick length protruding from it, as though they were all inches from his muzzle. His tongue flicked out; he panted, moaned, and realized he was uncomfortably hard.

The vision in his mind smiled, standing astride him, and lowered that rump onto his erection. He could feel the warmth, the tight embrace, but it did no more than increase his frustration. With a cry, he rolled over and pressed into the cold stone floor, rubbing back and forth. It eased some of his tension, but it also hurt, and he realized quickly that he would never come to climax that way. Panting, he lay there, listening to the trickle of water running through his cell, and then forced himself to turn back over and look around.

From the far left hand corner of the cell, he could see another set of shackles on the right hand side, empty and rusted. His movement was extremely limited, but he could reach the narrow channel running down the middle of the cell where his drinking water flowed; further down, that was also his toilet. In the center of the ceiling was a small black hole from which he fancied he could feel a breeze sometimes (when the door was open), and beneath that, suspended from a chain, was a small torch whose smoke disappeared up into the blackness. In the center of the far wall, the only door to the cell stood, closed and locked.

Apart from him and the shackles, the only other thing in the room was the plate they'd put his food on. It was formless glop that always tasted like stale bread mixed with dirty water, and he had to lick it off the plate because they wouldn't give him any utensils. Not after the incident with his first guard, a careless rat whom Volle had named Slacker.

He'd only had the two guards; he was not a normal prisoner and Dereath undoubtedly wanted to limit association with him. In fact, the lack of any other contact made Volle wonder whether anyone but Dereath knew he was in here. He hoped he'd see the wolf again. Besides being attractive, he was young and easier to manipulate than Limp Stripes, who did his job with mechanical precision, or Slacker, who just didn't care. Streak, that would be a good name for the wolf, with his undressing and that cute black streak down his hip. His sheath throbbed with the thought of the wolf, and he sighed. The best thing he could do was to go to sleep, and hope that a dream would bring him the release he couldn't give himself.

It didn't, of course. His sleep was black and dreamless, as it had been for the several months or so he'd been in prison. And in the morning, Limp Stripes was back with his early meal, taking the empty plate and setting down the full one without a word. He replaced the torch, as he did every morning (Volle didn't know if it was really morning outside; morning was when he got a new torch), and then left.

Volle ate the small portion of food, which tasted faintly of bean paste today—a treat—and tested the shackles with a series of arm and leg exercises. He had tried to do them every day, though his strength was definitely declining; the last time he'd been out of the shackles had been the last time Dereath had tried to question him. This day, for variety, he practiced turning over on all fours, in case the wolf did come back.

When he was too tired to keep moving, with the shackles still holding fast, he thought about his companions. At some point, he must have realized that they'd given up on him, but he couldn't remember when he'd made that transition. Not when he'd missed the first meeting after his capture, but when he'd missed the second, they must have known that something was amiss. He missed them all: Tella the fiery weasel, as bold a fighter as there was; Sherr the porcupine, their master tactician; Reese the hare, Volle's friend and former roommate, now under cover as a merchant in Divalia; and Seir the mouse, Volle's favorite, who took care of all of them. Seir could become almost invisible when she wanted to, sneaking around markets or an enemy camp, but even if she could become truly invisible, she couldn't help Volle now.

Rescue was no longer a realistic hope, if it ever had been. These prisons dated from the days of King Bucher, and Volle always cringed to think that Bucher had been a fox like himself. Hundreds of workers had died excavating the prisons, and hundreds of Bucher's enemies had died inside the completed prisons afterwards. They were not exactly escape-proof, but they were daunting enough that a prisoner couldn't hope for any help from outside. Even if that help were—but Volle stopped himself from even thinking the name. His contact within the palace would have helped him by now if he'd been able. He had tried to wipe the name from his mind, so that even under torture he wouldn't be tempted to cry it out.

He'd sworn he would take the name to his grave, and now he wondered how far he was from that end. The ploy with Streak smacked of desperation, and if they'd realized that nothing would work, they had nothing to gain by keeping him alive. Well, then, he would die an unsung hero. Or at least an unsung patriot—he wouldn't be a hero unless he got the information he had back to his people.

Dispirited but resolute, he looked around the cell again and sniffed the air. The cells were not cleaned out—ever—leaving the scents of each prisoner's unfortunate predecessors to demoralize him. Volle had been in this cell for two months now, and could no longer smell the bear and stag that had been the most recent occupants. There was nothing but his own rank scent to his nostrils, and he wondered how long it would linger when he was gone.

Limp Stripes was back again with the evening meal, and Volle saw nobody else for the next day. But after the evening meal that day, as he was holding his tail trying to brush the matted fur with his claws, the door opened again, and Streak walked in.

He was scowling, and wasted no time on preliminaries. He stripped his pants off, but before Volle could open his muzzle, he shook a finger at him. "Not a word, fox, or I'll...smash your muzzle into the wall." The threat came with some hesitation, and nowhere near the force it needed to be effective. Volle noted that, like last time, Streak wasn't fully erect, but he strode toward the fox anyway. With a rough push, he flipped Volle onto his stomach.

The shackles clattered as Volle nearly fell, but retained his balance. He felt a paw yank his tail upward, and he pushed his rump in the air. Streak hesitated, and Volle took a chance. "Please," he moaned. "It's been so long."

"Shut up, I said." But the wolf didn't move.

"It's been months since I got laid, and you're so sexy," Volle went on. "Come on, stud. Do me." He thrust his rump backwards and panted.

The paw tightened around his tail, and for a moment he felt the wolf's fur brush his rump. The touch was somewhat arousing, but he managed to keep from thrusting back any more. No need to overdo it.

"Dammit!" the wolf yelled, letting go and standing up.

Volle heard Streak pace back towards the door. He turned over cautiously, watching the wolf get into his pants. This time, Streak turned and met his eye as he pulled his pants up over his rump, and Volle thought he saw confusion there. But it was dark, and he could have been mistaken.

Streak's scent, though, lingered in the cell, and Volle inhaled it greedily: young and earnest, with, yes, a bit of predator, but also confusion and innocence. It reminded Volle of his own scent as a younger fox, and it reminded him of another young soldier he'd known, years ago, who had died for his beliefs. He held it to himself as he drifted into another night, a reminder that he was not alone.

The next time Streak visited him, he opened the door, closed it, and then sat with his back against it, facing Volle. He wore a loose shirt this time, the same color as his pants, and made no move to unbutton it or the pants. He stared at the fox until Volle broke the silence.

"Don't I get a show today?"

Streak shook his head slowly.

"Pity. Aren't I a good audience?"

The wolf's scowl deepened.

"Well, why are you here, then?"

Streak looked away from him, idly glancing around the cell.

"Can I offer you a drink?" Volle gestured at the trickle of water coming down the wall beside him. "I don't want to be a bad host."

This time he was sure he caught the flicker of a smile at the corner of the white wolf's muzzle.

"Oh, come on," he said. "You told your boss that the rape went well, that I was demoralized, that you could get some information out of me. So they keep sending you back for more. Well, you'll never get information if you don't talk to me."

Streak was staring at him. "H-how did you know..."

"I'm not stupid. You obviously weren't all fired up to do it, and now you're just killing time so it looks like you're in here abusing me. You wouldn't have come back if you were doing this on your own. So your boss must have sent you back in, ergo he thinks it's going well, ergo you didn't tell him otherwise."

The wolf thought that over for a moment, then looked up at Volle. "What's 'ergo' mean?"

Volle smiled. "Therefore."

"Well, you're a traitor, ergo I don't have anything to talk to you about." Streak fixed his gaze pointedly on the other set of shackles.

Volle leaned back against the wall. "First of all, I'm a patriot. And second, I'm dead anyway, so what does it matter?"

"If you'd just cooperate, then you wouldn't be dead. They would move you to a nicer cell, maybe even let you go."

Volle barked a surprised laugh that ended up being a racking cough. "I thought you were a little young to be on prison duty. First tour, isn't it? What, you have an uncle with the King's ear, didn't want his nephew hacked to bits on the battlefield?" When Streak didn't answer, he went on, "Or maybe you have a patron, someone who didn't want his little sex toy all chewed up."

"Shut up!" The wolf leapt up, but stopped himself before taking a step forward. "I'm nobody's toy." He sat down again and glared.

"Well, someone pulled strings to get you on prison duty this young."

"Why do you keep saying that?" Above the snarl, Volle could see confusion in his eyes again.

"I've seen prison guards. They're all veterans who've been through battles. Prison duty is easy. It's a reward. Not only are you young, you're also hopelessly naïve about what goes on here."

Streak shook his head. "I was chosen for duty by Minister Fardew himself. Top of my squad unit in drills."

"Drills." Volle coughed another laugh. "And your first duty was to rape a prisoner?"

The wolf's white ears flickered uncertainly. "He said the other guards refused to do it. He said they wanted someone younger and energetic, more..."

Volle watched his muzzle drop as he trailed off, and smiled despite himself at the guard's self-consciousness. In a pub, it would be adorable. "More virile?" Streak didn't say anything. "Well, you are that. No question."

He drew out the last couple words, and Streak glanced at him. "Why did you say I'm naïve?"

"Because you think I have a chance of getting out of here alive."

"They said—"

"They're playing on your sympathies. The only thing keeping me alive is that I'm not cooperating."

"No. Maybe that's how they do things in your kingdom, but here we keep our promises."

Volle looked at the earnest muzzle and didn't have the strength to argue any more. "You're probably right." He turned to the wall.

Streak got up, dusted off his clothes, and walked out.

Volle watched the door after the wolf left. He lay down on the cold floor, trying to sleep, but he kept asking himself how long Dereath was going to keep him alive. By now the rat knew he wouldn't respond to pain, and his gambit with Streak was failing; what else would he try? He was pretty well versed in most interrogation techniques, but he didn't know everything. The chains of his shackles lay on the stone beside him, and he wondered, not for the first time, if he could wrap them around his neck and strangle himself. The thought circled his head and then he drove it out. Not yet.

### Part 2

"What do you do when you're not pretending to rape me?"

Streak grinned—a definite grin, this time. "Guard duty on the top floors. I only come down here for special duty."

"Tough duty." Volle shook his head.

"Only the best can do it."

Volle chuckled softly. "What do the other guards think of that?"

Streak paused for a moment, then shrugged. "We don't talk much. They're all older. Like you said." He tilted his muzzle. "How old are you?"

Volle instinctively went defensive. "What does it matter?"

"I was just curious." He looked away, as he always did when he didn't know what else to say.

The quiet in the cell bothered Volle less when he was alone. When Streak was here, he felt that the quiet was a waste of an opportunity, or a waste of something. After a month of Limp Stripes' infuriating silence, Volle couldn't stay quiet for long. "How old do you think I am?"

Streak measured him with his eyes and then shrugged. "I'd say about a hundred from how you look now. Probably forty?"

"You're not out of your teens, are you?"

"I turned twenty two months ago." Streak settled back, smiling smugly. "So you're not right about everything."

"You joined pretty late. Aren't most male cubs conscripted at sixteen?"

"Usually. I got an exemption. My father died and I had to run the farm."

"Sorry to hear that. How did it happen?"

Streak shifted his gaze again. "Fits. He got bit by something and then it started a couple weeks later. We had to tie him up by the end of it."

"I'm sorry," Volle said again. "How old were you?"

"Eight."

"You were running the farm when you were eight?"

"My mom helped. It was just the two of us."

"That's pretty impressive." Volle watched the wolf get up to leave, and couldn't resist asking one more thing. "Who's running the farm now?"

"Jasper. Mom's new mate." The tone and the droop of his tail said more than those four words did. He stepped through the door.

"Hey!" Volle called, and then coughed from the strain on his throat.

Streak poked his head around the door. "What?"

"Twenty-six." The wolf didn't move, wreathed in shadow from the dying torch. "I'm twenty-six."

He couldn't read Streak's expression as the wolf slowly withdrew and closed the door.

A farm-wolf, eh? That explained the physique, and the naivete. Volle thought again, if only we'd met somewhere else. In a pub, in a bath, in the army...his eyes drifted shut, and in the darkness he saw the naked wolf again, reclining in a bath. He saw himself stepping into the bath next to the wolf, clean and well-groomed. Their paws reached out, touched each other's chest, then moved lower...

He stifled a moan. His shaft was fully exposed again, straining against his sheath, and the frustration was like a coiled spring inside him. He growled and tried to bend his head forward to lick himself, but the shackles prevented even that. Panting, he flipped over and pressed his erection into the cold floor. That discouraged it, though he couldn't help rubbing it against the stone, gasping in relief even as he winced at the abrasions.

Was this the game? Sexual frustration? Tie him up so he couldn't pleasure himself, then torment him with a gorgeous wolf, physically perfect, cute and seductive, until he begged for release? That would be perfectly Dereath's style, given their history. He clenched his teeth and swore that he wouldn't let that happen. _I should've just let him take me, the first time,_ he thought. But he knew even as he thought it that he couldn't have done that. It would have given the rat power over him.

But oh, he wanted it so badly.

### Part 3

Streak had questions ready the next time. "Aren't you a little young to be a spy?"

"What did they tell you about me?" Volle was wary, as usual. Streak's visits were erratic, and as they were not on his own schedule, they must be on someone else's. He was trying to determine the pattern between them. This one was the very next day, the first time he'd visited two days in a row.

"That you are a traitor who was captured stealing valuable plans of troop movements. That you're in the employ of the Ferrenians."

"I might have looked at the plans, but I'm not a traitor."

"What was so important about the troop movements that you risked your life for them?"

Volle studied him, and then chose his words carefully. "Do you know about the Pax Valleris?" Streak shook his head. "It's an agreement Tephos and Ferrenis entered into some fifty-odd years ago. It divides the Reysfields plains evenly between them. I heard rumors in the palace that the king was planning to break the Pax and I didn't think that was right. So I went to see if the plans were true. They were. I was chased from the office and captured. The plans were gone and they blamed me."

"Did you take them?"

Volle shrugged. "Go ask your bosses."

"We wouldn't break a peace. Not without a good reason."

"Like a poor harvest in the Reysfields?"

Streak's eyes glinted in the torchlight. "Like the Ferrenians moving first."

"You can check that too, if you like. Maybe they've done something in the last month. But last I heard, they were just fortifying defenses around the plains. Neither side is allowed to have armies on the plains , and neither side has violated that agreement."

"I will check it." Streak stared stubbornly at Volle. "What information do they want from you?"

Volle shrugged. "I don't know."

"Now I know you're lying. They must have asked you."

The conversation was treading too close to dangerous waters for Volle's liking. "Are those your new orders? Get information from the fox with kindness?"

Streak recoiled, but he didn't look away this time. "No," he mumbled. "I was...just curious. I don't know what could be that important to them. Or to you."

"I love my country and my King," Volle said, "and my life is worth nothing to me if it would be better spent in their defense. Don't you feel the same?"

"I...I suppose so..."

"Let's hope you never have to test it."

There was a lengthy pause, then Streak said, "No, I want to test it. I mean, that's why I'm a soldier."

"Aren't you a soldier because they made you one?"

"No." He shook his head. "I could've stayed on the farm, or taken a trade in town. I was past the age of conscription."

"Why didn't you stay on the farm?"

Now, he did look away. "My mom was okay without me. And you know, I'm too old to be living at home."

"Is that what he told you?" Volle spoke gently.

Streak nodded. He looked down at the ground.

"I don't think much of your stepfather, then," Volle said, with more feeling than he had thought himself capable of.

The wolf just flicked an ear, and said, "I'd better go."

Volle watched him go, watched the door close, and settled back against the wall. Poor kid, he thought, and set to grooming his tail again.

It was five long days before Streak appeared again. Volle had gotten fidgety by the third day, and on the fifth was almost tempted to ask Limp Stripes if something had happened to the young wolf. He bit his tongue just in time. That's what Dereath wanted him to do: get attached, pine away for him.

His body wasn't helping him much, either. It seemed every time he closed his eyes, he could see that white shape, highlighted by the flickering torch. The curve of his chest, the bulge in his arms and legs, and the large white ridge of fur between his legs, with the thick red shaft standing proudly above it. Volle envisioned all kinds of positions, most starting with the wolf just wrapping his strong arms around him and pressing that firm body against his. The dreams went on from there, and though he tried to avoid moaning his frustration, sometimes it was just too much. It was worst after he'd eaten, when he didn't have hunger pangs to distract his lust. Amazing that with his cramped, weak arms, his matted and dirty fur, and his imminent death, he could still be so aroused by a dream. He wondered whether at some point the basic urges of life were all that would be left to him.

On the fifth day, after he'd eaten the evening meal, the images returned unbidden to him and he was almost trembling with suppressed desire. He clenched his fists, then pulled all his chains to their fullest extent and let out a loud scream of frustration, then fell back to the floor, panting.

"What's going on here?" He hadn't heard the door open, but Streak was standing over him, a halo of weak torchlight around him. His expression was hidden in shadows, but his tail was twitching as though he were worried.

"Oh. Nothing. Sorry." Volle looked up at the wolf, and saw the slight shift of the muzzle as it examined his prostrate form, from his flattened ears down his gaunt, heaving chest, down to his tense and painfully obvious erection. "Uh..." He tried to swing his bedraggled tail around to cover himself, with only partial success.

"It's okay." Streak sounded amused. He walked back to the door and sat down. "Thinking of your mate?"

"Don't have one." Volle regretted the admission as soon as he said it, but then decided it couldn't hurt.

"So what do prisoners fantasize about?"

"I missed you." He'd wanted to sound coy, but there was too much raw emotion in his voice for that.

Streak's ears snapped up. "What, Gerrold isn't enough company for you?" He tried to keep his tone light, with more success than Volle'd had, but the fox thought he could detect some emotion there, too.

"Is that his name? I call him Limp Stripes."

Streak laughed, for the first time Volle had heard. It was a clean, happy sound, and brought a smile to Volle's muzzle. "Why do you call him that?"

"His tail has a kink in it. I think. Plus, I've never seen him get excited or interested in anything."

"I don't think I have either. Limp Stripes. I'll remember that." He inclined his head. "What do you call me?"

"What's your name?" Volle countered.

"What do you call me?" the wolf repeated, and Volle could swear his tail wagged slightly.

Volle hesitated. "Well, it was a tough choice between Gorgeous and Cute Butt."

Streak's ears flicked. "So? Which is it?"

"I don't think I want to tell you." Volle felt suddenly embarrassed.

"Aw, come on." Streak walked over to him and knelt beside him. He pulled Volle's tail away and brushed his erection with a paw. "I'll—"

He didn't get any further. The touch was electrifying; Volle jerked away from it, panting, and stared at Streak with wide eyes. "That's how you're going to get me? Tease it out of me with sex?"

The wolf had retreated and now crouched two paces away. "No! I didn't mean...I mean, I forgot. I'm sorry, really!"

Still panting, Volle relaxed slightly. He couldn't say anything, torn between his vigilance and his fantasies, which were now so close that he wondered if he were dreaming. Then Streak spoke again, and he was sure he was.

"Listen, I'll prove I didn't mean anything. Just...settle down, okay?" He inched closer, holding his paws out placatingly. Volle tried to stay calm, but his nerves were frayed and he didn't know if he could stand it. Streak was only an arm's length from him, and he couldn't back up any more; the stone wall pressed against his back. The wolf's scent was strong, filling his nostrils and adding to his confusion. He barely heard Streak say, "I'm not asking for anything, okay? I'll just do this and leave."

Volle understood a moment before he felt the warm paw close around him. He shut his eyes and moaned. Oh God, it was better than he'd dreamed. He tried to force himself to relax, but his body was tensing despite him, and the wolf had barely moved his paw up and down twice. He was going slowly, and Volle's hips, acting without his consent, pushed into his paw, forcing the rhythm faster. Sensations coursed through him that he'd almost forgotten, electric currents pushing at his muscles and lifting his fur. His head pressed back against the wall as his breathing came faster, and he strained at the shackles as he finally reached the climax he'd been dreaming about.

It seemed to go on forever, and he lay immersed in it, floating in the waves of ecstasy. As they subsided, he slumped back against the stone floor, and he felt the warm paw unwrap itself from his spent erection. Dimly, he was aware of the opening and closing of the door, but nothing else aside from the strong scent of his musk penetrated his senses before he fell fast asleep.

The musky scent lingered into the next day, when Limp Stripes came in to drop off the morning meal and change the torch. The skunk's nose might have wrinkled, or maybe he imagined it. He didn't care. He was relieved, relaxed, and felt better than he had in weeks. It wasn't just the release of more than a month of sexual frustration. He was looking forward to seeing the wolf again, actively now, rather than thinking about his situation or his companions. That was what they wanted, he knew, but he didn't care.

Streak occupied his mind on and off for the next five days, during which he waited patiently every evening. His fantasies recurred, but without the intense frustration he'd felt earlier. He had the memory of that night to hold him over, and when he replayed it in his head, he felt the response in his sheath. His erection was not one of urgent need, however, but of a warm diffuse pleasure.

When the wolf did reappear, Volle sat up and smiled. Streak closed the door and walked across the cell, sitting down next to him. "I'm sorry," he said softly. "They didn't send me back until tonight. I asked, but they wouldn't let me."

"It's okay." Volle smiled, enjoying the young wolf's scent and proximity.

"Looks like you didn't miss me quite as much." Streak gave him a warm smile.

"Oh, I missed you. It's just not showing as much."

"Really?"

Volle nodded. "I wish...I wish we'd met somewhere else." He voiced the thought hesitantly. It sounded awkward, not as he'd been thinking it in his head, but he couldn't stop now. "We might have been friends. Maybe more." The last part slipped out before he could stop it, and he fumbled to recover. "I mean, if you're interested. I don't know if you like males, or have a mate, or what..."

Streak shook his head. "No mate." He hesitated, and then touched Volle's paw. "And...I do. But, no offense, you kind of look like shit."

Volle grinned. "I feel like shit. But I clean up nice."

"I bet." He paused, ears flicking, and then went on. "Hey. You know something?"

Volle shook his head. "What?"

"I...I missed you, too." He said it bashfully, in a low voice. "I kept wishing I could come down and talk to you. Nobody else cares. They ignore me, or they call me 'pretty boy' when they think I can't hear."

"Well, you know, I'm pretty much a captive audience."

Streak laughed softly. "I guess so. But I wish...I wish we'd met somewhere else, too."

Volle smiled, flicking his ears. "Do they still think you're raping me?"

"I guess so. De—my boss just asks how the session went and if you're any closer to giving out information and I say," here he put on a rough voice, "yeah, I can break that fox, just give me time."

Volle's rough laugh turned into a cough. Streak tilted his muzzle. "Are you sick?"

"Oh, nothing a couple months relaxing in the sun wouldn't cure." He coughed again.

The wolf was quiet for a moment. "I could see about getting you transferred...or getting out once in a while."

"No. Don't put yourself in danger for me." Volle edged a little closer to Streak. "Tell me about your farm."

"We had four fields, all corn. There were two plows, and my mother and I both used them. We had three horses, one that we got to replace Jenny. She was my favorite, but she was pretty old. The other two were foals from Gerta, our old mare who died about six, seven years ago. We named them Gerry and Geena, and the one we got to replace Jenny was a pretty mare named Tanya. Gerry and Tanya were good plow horses, but Geena hated being hitched up. She liked to be ridden, though, especially if you let her gallop..."

Volle closed his eyes and let the words wash over him. He felt he was standing on the porch of the farm, looking out at the cornfields, watching Streak ride by on a beautiful bay mare. He felt the sun on his fur and the wind through his tail, and he smiled.

"...I loved going to market because of all the things that were there. My dad used to buy me maple candy there, but after he died, I didn't want it anymore. Last year we made enough from our corn to replace one of the plows."

He was beaming proudly when Volle opened his eyes. "That's impressive," Volle said, though he didn't really know whether it was or not.

Streak nodded, his tail wagging behind him. "Anyway. I'd better go. See you soon."

"I'll miss you," Volle said impulsively as the wolf got up.

"Me too." Streak smiled warmly, and walked out the door.

So there it was. He was falling into their trap. He couldn't help it, and he didn't care. At some point, when he didn't expect it, there would be a new face at the door, or maybe Limp Stripes would be the one, and he would be told that for the simple price of a piece of paper, or a name, he could see the white wolf again. If he held out, someone would bring him cloth with Streak's scent, to remind him what he was missing.

It would be painful, but he was sure he could hold out. Sure, he'd had plenty of good friends, plenty of lovers, but he'd learned ( _the hard way_ ) to keep himself unattached. That was partly what made him a good spy. But you've never been this lonely before, part of his mind cautioned. Never been confronted by this situation. It doesn't matter that you know exactly what he's doing. The rat knows how people work and he know how _you_ work, and you're working exactly the way he wants.

"I can hold out," he insisted, and then realized he was talking out loud.

And what if you can't? What then?

### Part 4

Streak held one paw behind his back as he entered the cell three days later. "What do you have there?" Volle asked as the wolf walked toward him.

Streak knelt down just across the channel in the floor and his ears flicked. He was grinning. "Close your eyes."

"Oh, I can smell it..." Volle closed his eyes anyway, and opened his muzzle. A few small cubes landed on his tongue, soft and thick. Meat! Chicken pieces, with some kind of sauce on them. He chewed ecstatically, letting the rich taste fill his head before swallowing. "Mmm. Oh."

"There's more." Streak was holding a pawful of chicken pieces. He placed them in Volle's muzzle a few at a time, smiling as the fox gobbled them down. "They really don't feed you much, do they?"

"Mmm. Just enough to keep me alive. All the same tasteless crap. This is so good."

"It's not, really."

"To me it is." He looked longingly at the wolf's empty paw, then stretched his shackles to lean over and lick the sauce from it. Streak twitched, but kept his paw steady until Volle had licked it clean.

As the fox raised his muzzle, Streak raised his paw to brush its underside gently. Volle looked at him and gave his paw another lick. "Thank you."

"There's more." Streak winked, reaching into his shirt pocket.

"More?" Volle stared in disbelief as the wolf's paw emerged with a thick slab of cake wrapped in a cloth napkin. He felt saliva pooling in his muzzle at the rich smell.

"Here, take a bit at a time..." Streak fed him the cake, piece by piece, and when he was done Volle licked his paw again.

"Thank you. Again. You didn't have to."

"I know. I wanted to. I can smell what they feed you. At least this is something nice I can do."

"You're too nice." The heaviness in Volle's stomach from the rich food was turning to unease, but he tried to ignore it.

"I like seeing you enjoy it."

"Glad to oblige. Were you...always this nice?" The turmoil in his stomach was getting worse. He just hoped he could keep it down until Streak left.

The wolf's ears flicked again, and he smiled that bashful smile. "I try to be. My mom always said to treat others as you'd want to be treated."

"You do...a good job." He was fighting a losing battle.

"Are you okay?" Streak leaned forward.

"Yes. No. Oh, I'm so-sorry." Volle gulped and then lurched toward the wolf, hanging his muzzle down into the channel as the meal came raging back up. His body shuddered and coughed, and when it was over he lay there, the sour taste still in his muzzle, his ears flat in embarrassment.

"Oh, Canis, I'm sorry. All that rich food." The wolf's paw was stroking his head, as grimy and matted as the fur was.

Volle lapped some water from the wall, spit it out, and rolled back over with a little effort. "Not your fault. I probably ate too fast." He gave a wan smile.

"Here." Streak took the cloth napkin and wetted it in the water, then gently wiped off Volle's muzzle. The fox held perfectly still while the napkin brushed the vomit from his muzzle and worked around his head, cleaning the fur between his eyes, along his cheek ruffs, and up his soft ears. Streak had to rewet the cloth several times, and when he was done it was filthy; even in the torchlight Volle could see that. But Streak stuffed it in his pocket without looking at it, his eyes fixed on Volle's muzzle.

"You do clean up nice," he said softly. Volle looked back at him without saying anything, looking into the clear eyes that were blue even in the dim torchlight. They came closer, slowly, until Streak's nose was touching his own. Then, gently, their muzzles parted and met in a soft kiss.

Volle closed his eyes and sighed. He kept his tongue in his muzzle because he still had some of the sour taste on it, but he could feel the light flicker of Streak's tongue against his lips. The wolf's scent at this distance filled his nostrils and made him forget the queasiness in his stomach.

Too soon, it was over, and Streak was sitting up. "I guess I should go." But he didn't get up, or move to the door.

Volle nodded. "I guess so."

They held each other's eyes for the space of several heartbeats, and then Streak got to his feet slowly and fluidly. "Bye."

"See you soon," Volle said.

Streak nodded, and then was gone.

Volle dreamt that night that Streak returned, naked and holding a glittering sword. He held it over the shackled fox and said, "I can cut you free, but you must renounce your country. Promise you won't give them the plans you stole. I'll take you away with me and keep you safe."

In his dream, Volle couldn't take his eyes off the sword. He could see its edge, sharp and menacing. "I can't," he breathed.

Streak's eyes pleaded with him. "It's the only way we can be together."

_Yes_ , his body screamed, but he couldn't make his muzzle form the words. "I can't give up my country."

"If you die here, they still won't have your information. Why should you die?"

He could see his friends beyond the cell, mute and staring at him. Beyond them, the country he loved spread out: the red mountains behind the rolling plains, the sparkling expanse of Kell Lake, and the shining towers of the palace. "We'll know," they seemed to be saying.

He moaned and turned away. "I can't."

Streak's blue eyes closed. Without a word, he raised the sword and swung it viciously downward.

Volle woke with a start. The torch had gone out and the cell was pitch black. His heart was pounding in his chest and his wrists were sore where the shackles held them. He flipped over, pressing his muzzle between his arms and waiting for his panic to subside. What would he do, if Streak came back and gave him that ultimatum? It would never happen, of course, but wasn't that what he was being asked to do?

No, it wasn't. He was simply being asked to betray his country and his friends. There was no chance he would have a life with Streak. He was going to die in this cell, or possibly in an execution chamber somewhere.

When Streak visited him the next evening, the dream was still lingering in his head, but he managed to force a smile. Streak returned it, and sat down across the channel in the floor, looking up at Volle.

"What's this all leading to?" He said it quietly, but the intensity of his gaze betrayed the emotion behind it.

"You're being used to make me betray my friends," Volle said dully. "They sent you here to make me fall in love with you so they could use you as leverage on me."

"They wouldn't..." Streak began, and then stopped, thinking.

"They would. They are." Volle looked away, at the stone wall on his other side. He traced the familiar pattern of cracks with his eyes. "Sometime soon, you'll be told that this duty is over. Depending on what I do, maybe you'll get to see me one more time. Maybe you'll get to see me when they kill me. Maybe not at all. But then it'll be over. You're better off forgetting me."

"I asked to be transferred," Streak said, and Volle turned to look at him. "After that first time. I'd been living alone in the guard barracks for two weeks, and I didn't think I could be the horrible thing they wanted me to be to you. But they wouldn't transfer me. And it's been over a month now, and you're the only person who's said more than two sentences to me in that time." He drew in a sharp breath. "And you seem so much better than the other guards. They just care about their pay, and what pretty things they stuck their cocks into last time down at the pub. You care about your country. You care so much that you went through being whipped and tortured, and you didn't tell. That's honorable. You don't deserve this.

"Maybe I would be better off forgetting you. But I don't think I can."

Volle's eyes misted over. He fought to control his emotions. "It's really the best thing..." he began, but Streak closed his muzzle with a paw.

"Oh, shut up," he said, and leaned over, pressing his muzzle to the fox's in a deep, warm kiss.

Volle arched his entire body into the kiss, his ears coming forward as his eyes closed in pleasure. Streak's tongue was cool and slick against his, and he pulled it into his muzzle as though his life depended on it. He felt the warm caress of the wolf's breath against his muzzle, the soft touch of his fur, and the hard points of his teeth as they slid against his own. The kiss was full of passion, hunger, and longing, and Volle returned it in kind.

He didn't want it to end, but of course it did. Slowly, gently, Streak pulled his muzzle back. Volle lay back and opened his eyes. "Wow."

Streak bit his lip, and rested a paw on Volle's chest, tracing the line of one of his ribs. "I know I shouldn't. But I can't let go. I keep thinking if I can find some way to get you out of here—"

"Don't think like that," Volle said sharply, though his fur was tingling at the touch. "If you have hope then I might have hope, and I don't want hope. That's what they want me to have."

"I think you're being paranoid," Streak said. "They can't know what's going on here. For all they know, I've been torturing you."

"I think they know, somehow. You're too...too beautiful. I thought when I first saw you that you were too perfect to be a coincidence. I've always had a bit of a thing for wolves, and you're just..." He sighed, and smiled. "Sorry. I wasn't expecting you to be as sweet inside as you looked outside. I don't know if they were either. But they ( _he_ ) could easily have found out ( _knows_ ) that I like wolves. I wasn't exactly discreet about my liaisons during my time in the palace."

"I bet you could have had any male or female you wanted."

Volle smiled. "Now you're just saying that to be polite."

Streak smiled back and lowered his muzzle, ears flicking. "So...what do we do now?"

"Now?" Volle flicked his ears and let his smile widen. "Well, I have an idea..."

Streak watched, amused, as the fox flipped over and lapped several gulps of water from the wall. When he turned back over, the wolf grinned. "What?"

"I don't want to think about the future any more. And there's something I've been wanting to do since that first day."

"Oh?" Streak's eyes flicked to Volle's sheath, which was showing signs of life. The wolf grinned. "What's that?"

"Mmm. Maybe you could kneel up here and let me see that equipment of yours up close." Volle tried to sound more bashful than eager, but he couldn't stop his tail from smacking the stone floor as it wagged.

The wolf smiled and stood up, unfastening his pants and sliding them down to the ground. He cupped his paw around his groin for a moment, self-consciously, then dropped it to his side, leaving his sheath exposed with his shirt hanging down on either side.

Volle followed the plump white ridge of fur, already showing some red at its tip, as Streak stepped over him and slowly knelt astride him. The fox craned his head forward until his nose was just brushing the soft white fur, panting with the effort until the wolf's paws slid behind his head to support him. Slowly, he drew his tongue up the warm length of fur, and was gratified to see how quickly it swelled and pushed the wolf's shaft further out.

Above him, he heard a gasp, and he felt the warm rumble of pleasure in the wolf's chest. He started the next lick lower, giving the dangling sac a curl of his tongue before sliding up the thick sheath again. He stopped just below the top, though his eyes were drawn to the length above it. On the next lick, he didn't stop, letting his tongue travel all the way to the tip and stopping there.

Streak breathed harder, and Volle wagged his tail as best he could. His sheath was hard and full too, lying on his belly, and the wolf's tail was tickling the skin of his member as it wagged back and forth. He licked again, and though he'd done this with many other males, was struck by how happy he was to be making this white wolf shiver. Streak had become important to him, and so this act was more than just the hedonistic enjoyment of a male in his muzzle, or a return obligation; it was an expression of his feelings. He was prevented from using his paws to caress the wolf, and this was all he could do.

He licked again and again, and at some point Streak's hips shifted and Volle found himself staring down the glistening length of the wolf's erection. He smiled and slid his muzzle around it, feeling its warmth on his tongue and its familiar hardness against his teeth. He held it for a moment, marveling again at how the feeling could be so new when he'd done this a hundred times.

The wolf's paws guided his head with the impatience of passion, and Volle could taste the wolf's need in the thick musk on his tongue. He slid obligingly back and forth, and the wolf's hips met him and pulled back with him. The musk grew stronger, the wolf's movements quickened and became more erratic, and Volle found himself tensing with excitement. Streak was moaning now, and Volle's erection shivered in sympathy as he felt the thick length in his muzzle drip musk onto his tongue. They were moving together now, as easily as if they'd been together for years, and Volle couldn't say how he knew the moment was coming, but he did.

He braced himself just before Streak let out a breathless squeak, pushing Volle's head into his hips. His knot pushed past the fox's lips, his whole length trembling, spurting musky warmth on Volle's tongue. He swallowed around the thick spasming member as the lovely white wolf above him bent forward, entirely focused on his climax.

It was over entirely too soon. Volle swallowed again, though he was trying to savor the rich musky taste of Streak. Slowly, the wolf sat back, letting his dripping erection slide out of the fox's muzzle. Volle looked up and gave the wolf a warm smile.

"I liked that a lot."

" _You_ liked it? Oh, gods, fox." Streak leaned over and let his paws slide down so he was holding Volle's chest. "I've been with a couple, but...never like that."

Volle licked his lips and nuzzled the wolf. "Mmm. I'm glad you liked it." He sighed happily.

Streak held him for a long moment, and then slid off to lie between Volle and the wall. He let an arm rest on Volle's chest, and rested his head on the fox's shoulder. "I liked it, yes. And now I don't want to go."

"You'll always have to." Volle sighed. He nuzzled Streak again.

"You're right, though. I will. But not just yet." He slid his paw down Volle's stomach and smiled. "I think I have some unfinished business."

"You really don't have to." The protest was weak.

"You can't stop me." Streak grinned, eyes half-closed as his paw closed around Volle's erection.

Volle shivered, and closed his eyes as the wolf started to stroke. "Wouldn't dream of it."

Again, he was amazed at the freshness of it. Even compared to the last time the wolf had masturbated him, this felt subtly different, even considering that it hadn't been two months since his last release. Streak's muzzle lay next to his, his soft breaths passing across Volle's matted fur. His taste lingered in Volle's muzzle. His body was warm and close, and his paw's strokes seemed each to be lovingly planned and executed.

It took longer this time, but not much. Volle felt the climax building a long ways off and panted more quickly as it grew. He felt Streak's body respond and felt as though the wolf could feel what he was feeling. And when it came, he felt the warmth between their bodies feed into it, holding him and Streak together in a trembling moment of bliss before he fell over the edge, moaning loudly as his seed spurted out over Streak's paw.

He almost fell back into the wolf's arms, still shivering. "Mmm," Streak said into his ear. " _I_ enjoyed _that_."

"Oh..." was all Volle could manage. He felt himself drifting off into sleep, his weakened body's reserves used up by the night's activities.

Streak held him, and as he drifted off he heard the wolf say, "I think I can stay just a bit longer."

He woke to inky darkness, alone, but his back was still warm. He heard the rustle of cloth on fur near him, and turned his head, the wolf's smell strong in the cell. "Streak?" he whispered.

The noise stopped, and after a moment there was a soft chuckle. "Is that what you call me?"

Volle flicked his ears back in embarrassment. "Um. Yeah."

"Why 'Streak'?"

"Are you leaving?"

His whiskers and ears told him the wolf had moved. "In a minute. Don't change the subject." His voice came from lower down, closer to Volle's muzzle.

"Oh, well, you have this cute black streak on your hip...and the first thing you did was take your clothes off."

"My clothes? What does that have to do with it?"

"You never streaked as a kid?"

"Don't know what that is."

"It just means stripping and running out in public. You know, naked." Volle chuckled. "It was a big thing at our school for about a year. I did it twice."

"You city boys." Streak sounded amused. "Well, I think it's cute."

Volle didn't know why Streak assumed he was from the city. He had grown up in the city, but the background story he'd told at the palace was that he'd grown up on a farm. He was too tired and happy to maintain the lie now, so he let it go. After a pause, he said, "What do you call me?"

"Just 'fox.'"

"You don't know any other foxes?"

"Not right now. Listen, I don't know how long I was asleep. I should get out of here before Gerrold comes in."

"Yeah. Hurry. I'll see you again soon."

"Count on it." The wolf's muzzle moved tentatively towards his; they found each other quickly and shared a brief kiss. He saw Streak's silhouette in the door's frame as it opened. The wolf turned and looked at him, then closed the door, leaving him in darkness once again.

He lay awake for what might have been one hour or three, thinking about Streak, and about his situation. He tried to concentrate on the pleasant memories, but the thought of what he'd do if they took the wolf away from him kept intruding. They didn't have much time left, he was sure of that. Maybe one or two more visits, and that would be it.

The door opened, and the skunk shuffled in with a plate of food. He set it down next to Volle, and in the dim light from the door, Volle thought he saw the skunk's nose wrinkle at the musky scents in the cell.

"So," he said impulsively, "what's the name of that white wolf who comes in here sometimes? I'd like to report him. He's been very abusive."

The skunk stopped and stared at him, then shook his head and turned away without a word. He picked the torch out of the ceiling bracket but didn't replace it with a new one.

"Hey! Where's my light? You can't just leave me here in—" The door slammed shut. Of course Limp Stripes could leave him in the dark.

This was different. And it didn't look to be good.

### Part 5

He ate the food slowly, sat against the wall, and waited.

In the darkness, he had no way of telling how much time had passed. He slept fitfully, lapped at the water when he was thirsty, and listened to the rumbling in his stomach. He hadn't felt really full in months, but the meals usually appeared at the right time to take the edge off his hunger.

No longer. He licked the plate clean, and kept licking it even after the smell of food was gone from it. He had slept five, seven, ten times, but he didn't know for how long. The ache in his stomach grew more and more acute, faded away, and returned with a vengeance. His sleep grew more restless, spotted with uneasy dreams.

Dereath was weakening him, he realized, starving him to batter down his resistance. He'd done it before. So this would be the end. Between physical weakness, and emotional, would he would give away his secrets?

He sat up, pulled one paw below his neck, and rested his head on the chain. With some difficulty, he lifted his paw around the other side of his head and then down, so the chain made a loop around his neck. The clinking of the links echoed around the cell. He lowered his body and felt the tension increase in the chain.

Could he do this? He lay down further and heard his breath start to wheeze as the chain tightened. The urge to sit up flooded through him, but his body was weak enough that he could fight it. He panicked as his breathing became more labored, and scrabbled briefly at the chain before pulling his paw away again. Spots appeared in front of his eyes and his body thrashed around, finally jerking forward.

The chain loosened, and he gulped down deep lungfuls of air, half sobbing as he did so. He felt dizzy; spots still danced in front of his eyes. Frantically, he tried to lift his arm over his head again as he felt consciousness slipping from him, but the darkness stole in before he could tell whether he'd succeeded.

"Fox! Oh gods, wake up!" He was being shaken. A grey shape with white edges was hovering over him.

"Stop...shaking..." He panted through a haze of dizziness.

"Are you okay?" The smell, the voice—he recognized Streak now.

He put a paw to his throat. "I...think so." Something was different. He held up his paw and looked at it. The shackles were gone. "What..."

Streak was unlocking the shackles on his legs. "I've got to get you out of here."

Volle paused to digest that. He moved his arms around experimentally. They felt oddly detached. "Why?"

"They're going to kill you. Starve you to death. How long has it been since they brought food? Three days? Four? Five?"

"Don't know. Since you came." Volle's head was clearing, slowly, but now he was becoming aware of the gnawing emptiness in his stomach and the weakness in his limbs. "How did...?"

"I stole the key." Streak picked up something from the floor and shook it out. "Here, put these on." Volle stared at the pants, and Streak sighed. "You poor...okay, here." He slid them over Volle's feet.

"Okay, okay." The fabric rubbed his fur the wrong way, and the sensation pulled him at least partly into awareness. Volle pulled them up and fastened them. They were extremely loose on him, and felt odd after so long without clothes. "Where did you get all this?"

"This is my spare uniform. It'll be loose but it'll fit. I can't carry you naked through the prison." He handed Volle the shirt.

With some difficulty, Volle slid it on. His fingers fumbled as he fastened it around the front, and at the lowest button, his muscles protested. He hadn't stretched his arms that far in months.

"All set?" Streak's ears were back and he looked grim. He set his arms beneath Volle and lifted. Volle felt the muscles in his arms tighten. "You're so light."

Volle put a paw on the wolf's chest. "I think I can walk."

"Later." Streak smiled, a tight nervous smile, and kissed his nose quickly. "When we get to the top."

He pulled the fox to his chest and stood up. Volle tried putting his arms around Streak's neck, but the tension was too uncomfortable and he dropped them to his own chest. The wolf turned and walked toward the open door and the light beyond, and as he turned Volle to walk through it, the fox caught a glimpse of his empty shackles, lying beside the gutter in the floor, water glistening on the wall beyond. Then they were through the door, and out.

He remembered the hallways, dead grey stone with torch sconces placed regularly. Compared to the blackness he'd lived in for the past few days, the light was almost blinding. Volle squinted as Streak hurried through the corridors.

"Do you know anyone in the palace who can hide you? I don't know anyone in the city and you're not strong enough to get out yet."

The name he'd made himself forget floated tantalizingly out of reach. He knew he couldn't go there anyway, though. But Helfer would be okay. Hef would help him. "Yes. West wing, second floor."

"I can get you there."

They hadn't met any other guards, and Volle thought this was strange, but perhaps he was the only prisoner down here. "Where are the other guards?"

"Other wings. You were pretty isolated. There's a back stair we can use. Then you'll have to walk to the palace from there. It's the middle of the night, though. We should be okay."

Volle nodded. Streak was walking quickly but not running, and the motion was pleasant, almost lulling the fox back to sleep. He forced himself to stay awake as they passed scores of open cells, walked up a dimly lit staircase, and passed slowly through a more open series of cells, with windows in the doors.

"Oops." Streak muttered it under his breath as he stopped and turned quickly, and Volle caught a whiff of rat scent. Then it was gone; the wolf marched down another hallway and to a staircase. At the top, behind a closed door, he set Volle down gently.

"We have to walk from here. I'll support you. If anyone stops us, you're my drunk friend, I'm walking you back to the barracks."

"They're not in this direction." He was surprised that the map of the city remained so strong in his head.

"It's the best I could come up with. It'll explain away part of the smell, too."

Volle nodded. "Okay." He stood gingerly, and his knees buckled almost immediately. He grabbed at Streak for support. The wolf had his arms around him in an instant, holding him upright. Volle looked into the warm blue eyes.

"Thank you," he said softly. He nuzzled Streak and braced himself on the wolf's powerful frame.

Streak looked embarrassed. His ears flicked and he nuzzled only briefly before looking away. "Let's get going before it gets light."

He pushed the door open, and Volle staggered at the cold, fresh air. The scents were clear and sharp, the air not musty with memories and pain. As he stepped out, he glanced up and stopped dead, transfixed by the glittering patterns of stars in the sky. The cold air seared his lungs, but he drank it in gratefully.

"Come on," Streak started to say, but trailed off when he saw the glistening in Volle's eyes. "Hey, it's okay."

Volle swallowed. "I really...forgot how beautiful they are." He lowered his gaze to Streak's white muzzle, looking at the blue eyes shining in the starlight. Slowly he lifted his muzzle, and the wolf hesitated, then met it, tightening his hold around Volle.

Volle closed his eyes and let himself be washed away on the sensations: the cold air ruffling his fur, the tight press of Streak's muscles against him, and the warm lupine muzzle locked with his. Their tongues caressed, and then separated.

"We should go," Streak said again, but Volle just looked at him with a slight smile. "What?"

"I never knew...how beautiful _you_ are."

Streak swallowed, and Volle saw him fight back tears of his own. "Fox..."

"I know, I know. Let's go." Volle turned, reluctantly, and stepped forward onto the road. His legs were still unsteady, and he needed every ounce of the wolf's support.

The palace's turrets rose about half a mile away, dull grey stone that reflected only a little of the starlight. Only the very tops, gold-leafed, shone at all. The road leading there from the prison was narrow and winding, and Volle kept looking back and forth at the dark houses and shops on either side.

"Keep your head down," Streak hissed nervously, and Volle tried to act drunk.

It took them forever to make it the half-mile. Volle had to stop and rest at one point, so he sat on a house's front stoop while Streak paced nervously. Twice they heard someone coming and tensed, but the passerby gave them barely a second glance. Finally, they came to a stop at a metal gate.

"You gonna be okay?" Streak braced Volle against the wall, and Volle nodded. He flexed his legs gingerly. They were sore and still unsteady, but he thought he could go a little further.

"What, did you steal all the keys?" he asked as the wolf fitted a key to the keyhole in the gate.

Streak didn't answer immediately, as he pushed the gate open. He put his arm around Volle and guided him in. "The guards have a master set," he said, closing the gate behind them. "I just picked the ones I thought would be useful." He jingled his pocket and flashed a brief grin, but he didn't seem to be any less nervous now that they were in the palace.

They had walked into one of the gardens, but Volle had to spot the elaborate flowery design before he knew which one it was. The garden seemed eerie in the starlight, deserted except for the two of them, the flowers' colors all muted and their scents faded for the night. It should be romantic, Volle thought, a nighttime garden, but the silence and the chill disturbed him.

"It's this way, I think." Streak was guiding him down one path.

"I remember. Down here and around that corner there's a door that usually isn't locked." The shortcuts were coming back to him, weak as he was. "Then there's a stair to the right. We can cut through the servants' quarters to the west wing."

"Okay." They walked quickly down the path. Volle felt the crunch of the gravel under his paws, and it brought back other memories. He pushed them aside and concentrated on taking steps.

The door was just as he'd remembered it, decorated with the king's crest in carved wood, not painted like the fancier doors in the main garden and out front. They pulled it open and stepped into the warm air and ancient smells of the palace.

Volle had barely had time to see the staircase when he heard footsteps coming down it. His eyes met Streak's, and then the wolf pushed the door open, looking panicked.

Volle shook his head quickly, then collapsed to his knees with his head out the door. He made retching noises, and tried to shake appropriately.

"Bad night?" he heard behind him.

"A bit too much," Streak said. Volle hoped the other didn't hear the waver in his voice. "Just letting him get it out of his system."

"Okay. Try to keep it down. And clean it up when you're done." The footsteps receded.

Volle braced himself against the door and levered himself upwards. Streak was at his side immediately, helping pull him upward. "You think fast."

"Have to." He gave the wolf a small grin. "Let's go."

They made it up the stairs and through the servants' quarters without incident. On the other side, Volle looked up and down the opulent corridor and headed immediately to the right. He found an ornate door and nodded to Streak, who pushed it open gently. It opened onto a small foyer, with a padded bench and a small side door that Volle knew led to the valet's room. He guided Streak past it and to the larger door on the other side of the foyer, which was made of polished wood, carved with Helfer's family crest, and brushed with gold leaf.

Streak moved to open the door, but Volle stopped him. He raised a paw and knocked. After a few seconds, Streak knocked, louder. They waited, and after a short time they heard shuffling footsteps inside. The door cracked open.

"Do you know what time it is? What is it?" Volle recognized the weasel's voice, which lost some of its sharp irritation when he spotted the guard's uniform. He hadn't seen Volle yet.

"Hi, Hef," Volle said.

The door opened slightly wider, and Volle saw the ruddy fur of his friend's muzzle. His black eyes widened.

"What the—Volle? What are you doing here?"

"Need to stay here for a bit."

"By the gods, you look awful. And smell worse." The weasel hesitated. "I've been hearing things..."

Volle managed a weak smile. "What are they saying about me?"

"That you were taken ill and had to go back to Vinton. That you're a spy, and a traitor. That you ran back to Ferrenis. That was just Dereath, of course."

"Oh, that."

" 'Oh, that'? Volle, if that's true..."

"I haven't been to Ferrenis. I've been in prison." At that, the weasel's ears shot up. "Relax, Hef. You're in no danger."

"I am now! Prison? You've been in prison? You've...escaped, haven't you? What if someone finds you here?"

"That seems a lot more likely the longer we stand out here in your foyer."

The weasel didn't move. Finally, he said, "Oh, all right. Come on in."

Streak helped Volle into the rooms, and Helfer shut the door quickly behind them.

Helfer's parlor, elaborately decorated with yellow velvet curtains and small tapestries lining the walls, showed signs of what the weasel had been up to the previous night. The curtains were closed over the elaborate double window, the door to the large wine cabinet hung partly open, and the loveseat had been moved to sit in front of the now-cold fireplace. On the floor to one side, a half-empty bottle of wine and two empty glasses stood forgotten, and Volle saw more than one article of clothing nearby them, almost forming a trail to the curtained doorway that led further into the apartment.

He often wondered why Helfer bothered to keep a desk in this room at all. Alone of all the furnishings, the desk showed no signs of recent use, and its simple wooden style didn't seem to fit in with the reddish-orange patterned loveseat, or the matching chairs and various small rugs that lay scattered over the floor.

Helfer looked Volle up and down as they stepped in, and now there was concern in his eyes. "You really do look awful. What in the name of Weasel happened to you?"

"He needs food," Streak said. "They starved him for the last three days."

"Mm." Helfer turned to Streak and gave him an appraising look. "At least your tastes haven't changed much. He looks as good as you look terrible."

Streak's ears flicked back. He started to say something, and Helfer raised a small paw. "I know. I'll get food sent up right away. And please, Volle, put something on besides that horrid uniform. It really doesn't suit you."

"Later," the fox coughed. "I was hoping to use your private bath."

"Yes, yes, of course. Phew." The weasel waved a paw in front of his nose. "Worse than the time you drank too much and fell into the gutter."

"Which time?" Volle cracked a small grin.

Helfer flashed a quick grin back, then bit his lip worriedly. "Stay here. Sit down." He gestured towards a richly upholstered chair, and then slipped out the front door.

Streak helped Volle over to the chair, and the fox collapsed into it. "You feeling okay?" Streak asked, bending over him.

"Apart from the hole in my stomach, the dizziness, and the feeling that I couldn't walk another step, I feel great." Volle looked up. "I owe you a lot."

The wolf nuzzled him, and looked away bashfully. "Not so much. I mean, I only did what I had to."

Helfer slipped back in. "He's going to get some food from the kitchens."

"Caresh?"

"Yes. Not even a question. Volle, what is going on?"

"Excuse me," Streak said, "I need to get back and put these keys back before Gerrold comes on duty."

Volle lifted a paw and Streak took it, holding it tightly. "Thank you again," the fox said, and lifted his muzzle.

Streak met it in a soft, quick kiss. "Bye, fox—Volle. I'll be back when I get off duty today. Be careful when you eat. Remember what happened last time."

Volle smiled at the use of his name, and at the wolf's concern. "I will. Be careful."

Streak let his paw go slowly, and walked to the door. Helfer was still standing there, watching them. As Streak approached, he opened the door a crack.

Streak extended a paw. "Pleasure to meet you, sir."

"Far as I'm concerned, you were never here." Helfer shook his paw with a smile, and shut the door behind him after he slipped out. He turned, looked at Volle, then padded over to the chair opposite him and sat down. "Volle?"

Volle gave him a measured look. "Thank you for all your help, Hef. This would be a very nice time of year to visit your Vellenland estate, wouldn't it?"

"Is it that bad?"

"It could be. I don't know yet, but it might. I'll probably be okay. But it would certainly be safer for you not to be here."

The weasel tapped his paw against the floor. "If you say so, I'm not inclined to argue. But Volle, are you really..." He stopped, tilted his muzzle and smiled. "No, don't bother answering. You know I never like to get mixed up in anything serious at the palace."

"I know." Volle smiled, and couldn't keep his eyes from drifting shut. He hadn't had time to make up a plausible explanation for why he'd been arrested, but he trusted himself to be able to later. "It's not true, Hef. Dereath caught me in what he thought was a compromising position. They've been interrogating me...some plans disappeared."

"Compromising position, eh? Probably not the kind I'm thinking of. No, no—I told you not to bother. So who's the wolf? He seems quite devoted."

"He saved my life." Volle opened his eyes again. "We were set up to fall in love, though."

"Why should that make a difference?" Helfer grinned at him. "Does it matter how it came about?"

"It was engineered by Dereath."

Helfer's nose wrinkled. "He kept asking if I'd ever seen you passing messages or doing anything suspicious. I said the only messages I'd seen you passing were to the cute guys down at the Jackal's Staff. He's not changed a bit. But still, your wolf is innocent, right? So does it matter if a rat pushed you together?"

"I guess not." Volle rested his muzzle on his paws. "But this rescue all seems a bit too convenient."

Helfer looked pensive, but before he could reply, there was a rustle from behind the curtain and it was drawn aside. A small brown rabbit poked his head around the curtain. "Lord Ikling? Oh, I'm sorry." He looked at Volle and then back at Helfer.

The weasel smiled. "It's okay, Georgie. Go back to bed; I'll be there in a moment. Wait!" The rabbit had pulled back, and now his head reappeared. Volle saw a bit of his naked hip around the edge of the curtain. "How would you like to be my guest up at my estate in Vellenland?"

The rabbit's eyes widened. "Really?"

"Yes, really. Go ahead and pack, and we'll leave at first light."

Georgie disappeared without another word. Volle watched him go and then smiled at Helfer. "I see your tastes haven't changed either."

Helfer grinned and shrugged. "He's a fantastic lay. He can almost keep up with me. I keep telling you about rabbits."

Volle closed his eyes again. "I'm not going to argue with you, Hef. I'm too weak."

"How long were you in prison? All this time?"

"All this time. They really didn't tell anyone?"

Helfer shook his head. "I couldn't believe you'd just left. Your rooms were left intact, nothing packed. Caresh heard you were running away. The other lords think there was an emergency with Ilyana. But we never heard anything about prison."

There was a discreet knock at the door. Volle opened his eyes in time to see Helfer glance at him on his way to the door. "That'll be Caresh," he said softly, but asked at the door to be sure.

Volle couldn't hear the reply, but obviously it was the valet, because Helfer opened the door. Caresh was a fox, about half a foot shorter than Volle and stocky, but always perfectly groomed. Even woken in the middle of the night, he had somehow managed to arrange his fur meticulously, and the jacket and pants he was wearing looked freshly pressed. He set down a tray on the sideboard with four platters and a small loaf of bread on it.

Helfer shut the door. "Caresh, nobody is to know that Lord Vinton is here."

"Of course, sir." The valet said it as though Helfer had asked for nothing more than a glass of water. He cleared off the small table, moved it over to Volle's left hand side, and put the tray down on it.

"I do apologize for the quality of the food, sir. The kitchen is closed and I was forced to find what I could without the help of the staff."

"I think that's best," Volle said. His muzzle was already watering at the smells coming from the tray.

Caresh lifted the covers from each platter. "Two quails left over from tonight's supper. I believe the sauce is a honey-citrus glaze. Potatoes cooked in the southern Vellenland style with onions and shallots. Beef cubes with gravy. Miss Taffen's celebrated soft rice cake with cinnamon topping. I am sorry, sir, but they were very popular. This was the only one left."

Helfer patted Volle on the shoulder. "I'll leave you to it. Oh, and Volle? Do get out of that outfit. Help yourself to anything in my wardrobe."

Volle nodded, and smiled. "I remember, Hef. Thanks."

Helfer was almost to the curtain when Volle said, "Hef." The weasel turned around.

"I'll stay out of sight when you leave. And I won't be here when you get back. So...good bye, and good luck. Thank you for being a friend."

Helfer walked back over to him and leaned over, giving him a hug. "You too, Volle," he said quietly. "Whatever you're doing, stay safe."

"Can't promise that." Volle grinned weakly. "But I'll try. And maybe someday I will be able to return this very great favor."

Helfer waved a paw. "Don't be silly. Six years of friendship is more than enough. Just keep yourself out of politics from now on. If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times, it's dull at best and dangerous at worst."

"I'll remember that, Hef. If I get out of here, I'll take your words to heart."

Helfer smiled. "See that you do." He disappeared behind the curtain.

"Will that be all, sir?" Caresh asked.

The platters had given Volle an idea. He lifted the rice cake delicately from the platter it was on and set it on the edge of the potato platter, then handed the empty platter to the valet. "Actually, Caresh, if you would be so kind, there is one small errand I would like you to run. And when that is done, I would be very much obliged if you could draw me a water bath."

"Yes, sir."

When Caresh had left, Volle attacked the platters hungrily. He tried to moderate his eating, but both quails and half the potatoes were gone almost before he knew it. The ache in his belly reduced to a grumble, he slowed down and wiped the juices from his muzzle. He'd barely tasted the quail as he bolted it down, but he took more time with the potatoes and bread. Nothing was warm, and the bread was slightly stale, but he thought it was the best meal he'd ever eaten in the palace.

When he'd eaten most of it, he picked up the rice cake and attempted to stand. After a moment steadying his legs, he made it to the desk, chewing slowly on the rice cake. Helfer had a cherry-wood writing chair that was nicely carved, and comfortable enough. Volle sat down in it gratefully, and began searching through the desk.

He found pen and paper easily, but had to search for the ink, and finally located it in a small side drawer. Still chewing on the rice cake (which was delicious), he sat down and began to compose two short letters.

Caresh returned while he was writing. He placed the covered platter on the sideboard beside the desk, and waited for Volle to turn around.

"Everything go smoothly, Caresh?"

"Indeed, sir. May I draw your bath now?"

"In a moment." Volle finished one of the notes and folded it over itself twice. "Do you know what happened to my old valet, Welcis?"

"I believe, sir, that Welcis easily found employment with Lord Castor's staff. He was not implicated in your unfortunate predicament."

"I'm very glad to hear that. Would you be so good as to convey this note to him? Not today, but when you return from Vellenland."

"Very good, sir."

"Thank you, Caresh. You are a credit both to your species and to your profession."

"One does one's best, sir. May I draw your bath now?"

"Please."

Caresh disappeared behind the curtain, and Volle heard him fire up the small stove. It would take about twenty minutes to get the water bath ready, he estimated, which was plenty of time. He finished the second note, and then made his way over to the window and opened one side. For a moment he just stood there, letting the cold air wash over his muzzle, then he leaned carefully out the window.

It was not yet light outside, but there was considerable activity. He looked down onto the street, checking carefully for palace guards in either direction, then hailed a young mouse who was running by.

"Ho! Mouse!"

The mouse looked up. "Sir?"

"Can you read?"

"No, sir."

Volle waved the second note. "Would you like to earn a silver piece for ten minutes' work?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Take this to the house at..." He gave the mouse an address. "You know where that is?"

"Yes, sir."

"Give it to the person who answers the door. Once they read it, they'll give you a silver piece. Can I count on you?"

"Indeed, sir!" The mouse moved closer to the window and held out his paws.

Volle folded the note over and dropped it from the window. The mouse caught it agilely and waved to Volle, then sprinted away down the street.

Smiling, the fox closed the window. He made it back to the desk and took the papers Caresh had brought back. After checking to make sure they were the right ones, he slipped them into an empty drawer of Helfer's desk. That done, he sat lost in thought until Caresh came to take him to the bath.

He had to lean on the valet to make it through the sitting room behind the curtain. It was a sitting room in name only; Helfer called it his "laying room," or cruder names, if he'd been drinking. The doorway at the far side of the room led to the bedroom, where he slept, and like the doorway back to the parlor, it was filled only with a curtain. Helfer didn't like doors much. The two small doors in the left hand wall, which led to his bathroom and wardrobe, were the only ones in the whole suite.

One entire corner of this room was covered with a thick, plush, Vellenland rug. The other far corner was piled high with cushions. On the near wall, long couches spread against the wall, both large enough for two (or three, Volle happened to know). Against the right hand wall were two chests, both of finely crafted teak wood.

Volle smiled at the familiar room. Only Helfer could get away with something like this. He didn't have time to linger there, though. The bathroom door was open and the scented steam was calling, and Caresh was bringing him there step by steady step.

The bathroom was filled with curling wisps of steam rising from the large circular stone bath in its center. The stove sat off to one side, filling the room with warmth, but Volle couldn't take his eyes off the bath. Caresh brought him right up to the edge of the tub, and he lifted his muzzle to smell the scent in the bathwater. Jasmine, he thought.

"That smells wonderful." Volle put one paw into the water. "Oh. Canis bless you."

"Thank you, sir." The valet stood by as Volle took off the uniform and sank slowly into the water. "Will that be all?"

"Mmm." Volle's eyes were closed already as the meal and the warmth worked their effect on his starved body. He rested his head on the side of the bath. "Caresh, when that white wolf comes back, let him in, please?"

Caresh coughed softly. "Sir, are you anticipating his return before our departure?"

"Oh. No. Well, don't let him in, then, I guess." Volle fought to stay awake, but he barely finished his sentence. He didn't hear Caresh leave, or even hear if the valet made a reply.

When he woke, the water was lukewarm and murky. He could still smell the scent of the bathwater, but it was mingled now with the dirt and grime from the cell. Fortunately, Helfer had soap, so Volle spent a good fifteen minutes making the water even murkier as he scrubbed every inch of his body.

His arms were still sore, and unused to stretching down below his chest. He scrubbed the white fur there, then slowly moved down his abdomen. The water helped his muscles adjust, though he was doubly sore when he tried to pull his legs back and stretch his arms down to wash them. His paws were a fright. He didn't think he'd ever get all the dirt out of them. And his poor tail—would it ever be as soft as it had been? He sighed, working another handful of soap through it.

Lastly, he scrubbed under his tail, and then his sheath. He closed his eyes as he did. It had been so long since he'd been able to touch himself. His fingers caressed his sac and rubbed slowly up his sheath's fur, and he didn't stop when he felt a swelling inside. Might as well clean that too, he thought with a grin. His fingers kept rubbing and squeezing in slow, rhythmic strokes, and he felt himself harden and slide out of his sheath.

He forced himself to wait until it was fully extended. Then he took a handful of soap and gently rubbed up along his length. The sensation made him shiver in pleasure. He repeated it, enjoying the freedom of movement as much as the stroke itself. When he felt his arousal getting more intense, he stopped, with a little effort. No need to waste his energy here when he had Streak returning tonight.

Standing up was still a bit too unsteady for his liking, though his legs were getting stronger. He settled for kneeling in the bath as the water drained out, agitating it to keep the dirt from settling on his fur. There was still a film of grime on him when the tub was empty, but Caresh had left a bucket of warm water for just that purpose on the tub's edge.

His arms were strong enough to handle the bucket as long as he stretched them back over his head. He poured the water over himself, keeping his eyes shut, and then replaced the bucket. Helfer had a pile of soft towels stacked beside the bath; he grabbed the topmost one and got as much of the water out of his fur as he could. He considered Helfer's grooming powder, but decided against it. It had a nice soft scent, but it was expensive, and he didn't want to use it up.

He poked his head out of the bathroom door. A quick sniff of the air told him that Helfer and his bunny had been through the sitting room and had left already. He held the towel around himself and peeked into the bedroom to be sure. Indeed, Helfer's large feather bed was sitting empty, neatly made with the velvet coverlet on top.

Good. One more thing, then. His legs were getting steadier as he walked around the apartment, and he managed to make it to the desk without holding on to anything. He took out the papers Caresh had brought back the previous night (morning?) and returned to the sitting room.

In the wardrobe, he chose an outfit of short yellow robes over a white shirt. Good traveling clothes. Suitably attired, he concealed the papers, and then walked back into the sitting room to wait for Streak.

### Part 6

The knock at the door came in late afternoon. He had been nibbling at the potatoes as he got hungry again, and reading one of the few books Helfer kept in the parlor. At the knock, he stood up, pleased to find that his legs were supporting his weight quite well. Nose to the air, he approached the door. The wolf's scent was there, and nobody else's. With a smile, he opened the door.

Streak returned his smile. "Hi."

"Quick, come in." Volle stepped back, and closed the door after the wolf. He put his arms around the muscular chest and gave Streak a warm kiss. Streak returned the kiss with some passion, but cut it short.

"Is something wrong?"

Streak shook his head. "No. I mean, yes. I was nervous all day today. I thought someone would find out. But when Gerrold raised the alarm, they just sent people out searching. Didn't even ask me to do that."

"Well, that's good." Volle smiled and walked slowly across the parlor, Streak following at his side.

"Say, you look good. And smell good. And you're walking!"

Volle spread his arms, showing off his balance. "I feel a lot better."

"I'm so glad to hear that. Listen, Volle, is there anything you need to do? Anyone you need to contact? Cause I can probably get someone to come here without arousing suspicion."

"In a bit." Volle drew the curtain aside. "I thought we'd take advantage of some quality time here, since Helfer enjoys luxuries that we probably won't see again for a while." He gave the wolf a coy smile.

Streak gaped at the sitting room, a bit taken aback. "It would be good to get the business over with fir-irst!" The last word became a squeak, as Volle slid his paw into the wolf's pants and found his sheath. He cupped it warmly, rubbing with his fingers, and even slid one claw into the sheath's opening, teasing Streak's tip just inside.

"Mm-hmm," Volle said, guiding the wolf to the plush rug. "I plan to take care of business." He grinned and unfastened Streak's pants with his free paw. The other continued rubbing, and a moment later the wolf had pulled him close and buried him in a deep, passionate kiss.

Volle curled his tongue around the slick, warm wolf tongue, keeping his paw busy. Streak was already mostly erect, and Volle's fingers concentrated on the warm shaft, feeling its smoothness and curling around its volume. His pawpads slid easily along the red flesh, and when they teased at the tip, the wolf gave a little yipping moan into Volle's muzzle. When his paws felt the knot at the base of Streak's shaft start to swell, he stopped, and broke the kiss.

"Mmm. It's so nice to be able to feel you," he said softly, and Streak looked back into his eyes.

"You feel wonderful," he whispered.

"Helfer has some stuff here," Volle said. "Don't move." He left Streak panting, red tongue and red shaft hanging out, and went to one of the chests. Inside, he found a small cup full of an oily substance, and removed it.

"Ever used this stuff?"

Streak sniffed it. "Something like it, I think, if it's what I think it is." He grinned. "This smells better, though."

"I think it is what you think it is." Volle grinned back. He took two fingertips and dipped them into the cup, then rubbed them up and down along the wolf's erection until it glistened. Streak moaned and squeezed his eyes shut, and then opened them again when Volle took his fingers away.

"And some for you, too?"

"Some for me." Volle lay down on his back, opened the robes, lifted his shirt, and reached into the cup again. He rubbed the oils under his tail, slowly, letting Streak watch as his fingers slipped slightly into himself and back out, smoothing the fur away from the pink opening under his tail. His erection was already visible, and as he lubricated himself, it grew fuller, resting against his newly-white belly fur. When he'd done with himself, he rested a paw on his erection, brushing the remaining oils up and down it, and spread his legs.

"Come on," he grinned up at the panting wolf. "You promised, all those weeks ago."

Streak laughed, and moved forward. He slid his paws under Volle's hips and lifted them to meet his own. Volle felt the tip of the wolf's thick shaft for an instant before it slid easily into him, filling him. He gasped; he'd gotten a bit tighter over the past six months.

"You okay?" Streak was shivering with tension and had moved his paws up to Volle's back, but there was concern in his look too.

"I'm okay." Volle smiled and wiggled his hips. "You're big. And I'm not as easy as I used to be. But I'm okay."

"You do feel tight." Streak nuzzled him gently.

"You feel wonderful." Volle reached up and pulled the wolf closer, pressing his hips forward until he felt the full thick length inside him. Streak gasped and returned his embrace, and for a moment they just lay like that. Then the wolf drew his hips back and pushed them forward, and Volle felt a wave of pleasure course through them both. He brought one paw down to his erection and started stroking himself in time with Streak's thrust. With the other paw, he traced a finger gently up and down the black streak of fur that ran the length of the wolf's supple white hip.

Streak's control didn't last for too long. Volle could feel his knot with every thrust, and as the thrusts got faster and harder, he tried to time his own paw's strokes. He shivered every time Streak's length slid past his tailhole, and he knew that the knot stretching him would just about send him over. It was hard to keep his paw from stroking faster; it wanted to. The desire in him was taking over, as it did at the best of times, and like the last time with Streak, he felt that the wolf was a part of it and not just the object of it.

There was a subtle difference in Streak, though. Volle thought he knew what it was. The wolf was thrusting with passion, and yes, love, but also with a touch of guilt. He was trying to restrain it, but as his control eroded and desire took over, the emotions became clearer in his muzzle and in his actions.

Volle observed this with a detached part of his mind and set it aside as he let his passion take him over as well. They moved together, each feeling his own arousal as well as the other's, and when the moment came at last and the wolf's thick knot stretched his tail hole and then popped inside, they both moaned with the same voice.

Volle's muscles squeezed the wolf's knot; Streak's knot stretched the fox's tail hole. The same motion drew them both upward, together, and their shared moans gathered intensity as their bodies gripped each other and shared a dazzling climax. Volle's shaft shivered in his paw and covered it with fluid, while inside him, Streak's erection spilled its own fluids. Both pressed close to each other, trembling in the grip of their passion, and their muzzles sought each other out, tongues meeting to hold the moment as long as possible.

Even the afterglow felt special to Volle. He wrapped his legs around Streak's hips and rested his head on a cushion. Streak lay gently atop him and nuzzled quietly, arms tight around him.

"I don't love you because the sex is so good," Volle said softly. "I think the sex is so good because I love you."

Streak nuzzled his ears and said softly, "I love you, too, Volle. I like knowing your name."

"And you think this is the last time we'll be together."

"What?" Streak jerked upright, pulling at Volle's tail hole.

"Ow!"

"Sorry!" He leaned over Volle again. "What do you mean? I'm not leaving you. Unless you want me to."

Volle brushed Streak's muzzle with his clean paw. "It's okay. You're a darling wolf, but you're not all that good at hiding your emotions. And there have been other signs, too. The rescue, the hiding here...it was all too easy."

"What do you mean?" But Streak was looking guilty, near tears now. "Don't you trust me?"

"Shh." Volle tried to lift his muzzle to kiss him, but the wolf didn't respond. "They told you that if you got me to give you the papers, then...what? You'd get promoted? You'd have me in your personal care? And you were so desperate that you had to try it, but in your heart you don't believe I'll betray my country, do you?"

"I...I didn't..."

"I don't blame you, Streak, my sweet young wolf. I know you did it out of love. Or at least compassion. Otherwise you wouldn't be so sad, thinking that at least we had this little time together before they take me back."

A tear dripped onto Volle's chest. "I do love you," Streak whispered. "I don't know how it happened or how they knew. They told me we could go away together, as long as they got the papers back."

"They used you," Volle said, reaching up to lick at Streak's muzzle. "They isolated you, kept you friendless, and told you to go do something against your nature. Then they made sure the only person you talked to would be me—a prisoner desperate for companionship and almost as isolated. We were all each other had for that time. And you're gorgeous, and I guess you saw something in me..."

Streak licked him back, another tear dripping down the other side of his muzzle. "How did they know?"

"The chimney hole, I would guess. Listening to everything we said and did."

"Quite astute." The sharp voice came from the doorway.

They both turned their heads to look. A slender rat was standing there, one paw twiddling his whiskers. He was dressed in a simple black outfit: sleeveless vest and pants, with a silver belt. His hairless tail swung idly against the doorframe.

"Dereath." Volle laid his ears back. "I wondered when I'd see you."

"You were supposed to wait outside!" Streak growled.

"Hardly any point to that now, is there?" Dereath smiled at them, a nasty smile that Volle remembered well. "It wasn't hard to figure out what you came in here to do, so when I heard you leave I thought I'd slip in and listen to the show. You perform quite well," he said to Streak. "I think we may have an opening for you. When you're done with that one, that is."

He leered at them, and Streak's growl deepened. "Minister or not, I'll break your muzzle for that."

"Oh, I don't think so, dear boy. Not for another five or ten minutes, at least." He smirked at their joined hips. "And in any case, I'm not stupid enough to come in here alone. Don't worry, the soldiers will stay in the parlor. This show is just for me."

"You said if you got the papers, we could leave together!"

Volle stared at Streak, realizing for the first time what the wolf had meant. He had put his whole career on the line. He'd been willing to give up his livelihood, the only life he knew. Even if he hated it, it was still a significant gesture.

"So I did. But now that he knows you're working for me, I think the probability of that is very slim." Dereath looked at Volle. "Unless this wolf actually means something to you."

"He does," Volle said evenly. "Not that you'd know anything of meaning, you poor excuse for a person. So if I tell you where the papers are, you'll let us go?"

"Of course, Lord Vinton." The rat bowed mockingly. "There is a carriage already ready at the door."

"We've arranged for our own transportation in the street outside," Volle said. "If you don't mind."

"Ah." Dereath straightened, smiling his oily smile. "We would be deeply offended if you chose to forbear our hospitality."

Volle watched the glint in his eyes and hoped Streak could see it too. He had a feeling he knew where Dereath's carriage would be taking them. "Very well." Streak's arms tightened around him. He felt the wolf's knot slip out of him, and the wolf prepared to draw his hips back, but Volle tightened his legs warningly. Streak stopped moving, and Volle didn't think Dereath had noticed.

"Lord Yardley has the papers."

Dereath's expression turned from triumph to puzzlement. "There is no Lord Yardley any more."

"Of course not," Volle said. "Behind his painting in the east wing gallery, there is a small concealed space. That's where I hid the plans I stole."

The rat grimaced. "We'll soon see if you're telling the truth. Meanwhile, you can stay here."

He turned and disappeared from the curtain for a moment. They could hear him talking to someone in the parlor, and in that moment Volle let Streak's length slip out of him. He restrained a gasp, and whispered in the wolf's ear, "The wardrobe. First chance we get."

Streak's eyes widened, but he nodded. Volle pulled their hips together to conceal the fact that they were no longer tied, just as Dereath's muzzle reappeared in the curtain. "There are still three soldiers here, in case you're thinking of trying something," he said suspiciously.

"Could you have them fetch us something to eat, leaving you alone and unprotected?" Volle didn't want to take too much time, but he did want to let the rat lower his guard.

"Ha ha." Dereath sneered.

"Could we at least have some privacy to be made presentable before you force him to take me back to prison?"

"Oh, you've got nothing I haven't seen before. Or won't see again," he leered.

Volle shrugged. "Fine." He wiped his belly with his shirt, and motioned for Streak to get up. "I need to change my shirt, though." Deliberately, he held his shirt up, giving Dereath a good view of his sheath.

"Mm." The rat was looking at both him and Streak. "Sure, fine."

Volle had to work to keep his tail still as he walked to the wardrobe. At the door, he turned to Streak, who was pulling his pants up. "Wolf? Can you help me pick out one?"

Streak looked at Dereath, but crossed the room before the rat could say "Wait!" He slipped into the wardrobe, and Volle closed the door behind them both. He slid the bolt and walked to the back.

"Why does Helfer have a lock on his wardrobe? And what does this gain us?" Streak fastened his pants and followed Volle to the back of the wardrobe.

"I figure we have about five minutes," Volle said, fingers running over the stonework at the back of the wardrobe. "Ah, here it is." He pressed on a stone about seven feet off the ground. There was a sharp click, and a section of the wall swung inward, revealing a dark passageway. The air inside was chill and dank, and smelled of mildew and rot.

Volle stepped into the passage. He held out a paw to Streak. "Coming?"

The wolf's eyes lit up. He bounded into the passage, almost knocking Volle over, and swept him up in a tight hug.

"Hey!" Volle laughed softly. "Careful! We need to get that closed. See the handle there? Pull it closed with that."

Streak licked the fox's muzzle and set him down carefully. He pulled the door closed with a satisfying click. Volle thought it was one of the sweetest sounds he'd ever heard.

The passageway went only a short distance before ending in a ladder. They climbed down a long ways, and at the bottom, Volle's arms hurt again. Only then did he feel it was safe to talk.

"Helfer used this passage to get himself in and out. So he wouldn't have to bother with security when he wanted to bring uninvited guests back, usually. I only used it a handful of times."

"Pretty lucky that you knew about that," Streak said. Volle grinned back at him. The passage wasn't quite wide enough for two, but Streak was walking close behind him. The wolf seemed to have a bounce in his step again, and his tail was wagging.

"I'm sure there are several other ways into and out of the castle." Volle knew of two others for certain. "I'm lucky that I got to know Hef well enough that he trusted me with this one."

At the end of the passage, Volle listened at the wooden door, then opened it slowly. They emerged into a dark cellar full of barrels and crates. A line of light at the far end indicated where the stairs to the street were, and gave them enough light to see that the cellar was deserted. Volle closed the door, which seemed to merge with the paneling of the cellar. He followed Streak across the cellar toward the stairs.

"You took your sweet time." Seir hopped off a crate and walked toward them. She looked exactly as Volle remembered her: half his height, thin and wiry, with a nondescript tunic tied with a length of rope around her waist. He remembered the scar in her left ear that she wouldn't tell anyone the origin of. He remembered the swing of her tail. And he remembered the way her eyes could look soft and hard at the same time, as they did now.

Streak growled and bared his teeth, but Volle waved him off. "Seir's a friend of mine," he said. "You got the plans okay?"

"Safe and sound and on their way home. And so should we be." She stood a foot away from him, arms planted on her tiny hips. "We were so worried, Volle. When I got your note..."

He stepped forward and hugged her, and she threw her arms around him. "It's okay now," he said. "Long as you can get us home."

"Us, eh?" She eyed Streak warily, stepping back from Volle.

Volle took Streak's paw. "He saved my life."

"Uh-huh. And more than that. I can still smell, you know." Seir nodded curtly to Streak. "Sorry. This one has a tendency to think with his cock sometimes."

Volle's ears flattened in embarrassment, but Streak just smiled politely. "We found that we do think a lot alike."

Seir chuckled, and walked over to Streak, examining him up close. "All right. I like him. Well, we'll have a good long time to get to know each other. It's a week and a half to the border, and we won't dare show our muzzles outside the carriage most of the way."

"The border?" Streak's paw tightened around Volle's.

"You don't have to go if you don't want to." Volle squeezed back. "I won't ask you to do anything against your country."

Seir looked back and forth, and stepped back. "So, ah, let me go get the carriage. Back in five. Don't go anywhere." She climbed up the stairs and slipped out the door, letting a brief burst of evening air and light into the room.

"You already gave her the papers?" Streak said, not letting go of Volle's paw.

"Afraid so. I told the truth about the portrait, but I had a friend get the papers early this morning." He chuckled. "I fear Dereath is in for a number of disappointments."

Streak wasn't smiling. "So...you could've escaped any time today."

"I...well, I guess so."

"But you stayed. For me?" Streak's voice had dropped to a whisper.

"You didn't think I'd run off without you, did you? Not after all you did for me."

"You knew I was betraying you and you still stayed for me?" Streak was sniffing back tears now.

Volle stepped forward and pulled the big wolf into his arms. "Of course I did, you silly. Because I knew you were doing it out of love. And I thought I had a pretty good chance of getting you away from Dereath. I mean, his tail isn't nearly as nice as mine."

Streak's composure broke, and his body shook with half-laughs, half-sobs. "No, your tail is much, much nicer." Volle held on to him and nuzzled gently. He nuzzled back, and then they were sharing a kiss again, and that's how Seir found them.

"Break it up, you two." She grinned. "Plenty of time for that on the way back."

They sat together in the carriage, with the shades drawn until it was safely outside the town limits. Volle leaned against Streak, who put an arm around him, and Seir smiled from the opposite seat. For a while, none of them spoke. Streak rubbed Volle's chest through his shirt, and Volle rested a paw on the wolf's pants.

"What are you going to do when we get back?" Seir said as the carriage turned a corner. "They might want you to stay on as an advisor."

Volle's tail swung lazily back and forth, brushing Streak's leg and foot. "I just spent five or six months in prison. I don't think I feel much like doing anything at the moment. Maybe I could get a minor estate somewhere in the country. Though I don't really know anything about farming." He tilted his head back and smiled up at the wolf.

"Mmm," Streak said, brushing a paw gently over his muzzle. "I think I know someone who might be able to show you a few things."

"Really? What's his name?" Volle grinned.

The wolf leaned over and kissed his nose. "You can call him 'Streak.' He likes that just fine."

Further Reading

The following books by Kyell Gold are available from Sofawolf Press (http://www.sofawolf.com) in print, except where noted, and from many retailers in electronic form:

_Volle_ – The story of how Volle came to Tephos, and the first adventure he had there.

_The Prisoner's Release and Other Stories_ – The story of how Volle escaped from prison, and the story of what happened after, plus two other stories following characters from "Volle."

_Pendant of Fortune_ – Volle returns to Tephos to defend his honor, but soon finds himself fighting for much more.

_Shadow of the Father_ – Volle's son, Yilon, must travel to the far-off land he is meant to rule, but he will have to fight treachery to take the lordship.

_Weasel Presents_ (print edition from FurPlanet.com) – Five short stories from the land of Argaea, including "Helfer's Busy Day" and "Yilon's Journal."

_Waterways_ – The full story of Kory's journey to understand himself, and what it means to be gay.

_Out of Position_ – Dev the football player and Lee the gay activist discover how to navigate their relationship.

_Isolation Play_ (available as e-book fall 2011) – The continuing story of Dev and Lee, as they contend with family and friends in their search for acceptance.

_Bridges_ (print edition from FurPlanet.com) – Hayward seems content to set up pairs of his friends. But what does he really need for himself?

### Coming in 2011:

**In the Doghouse of Justice** – A collection of seven League of Canids stories (including "Don't Blink") from Sofawolf Press (August 2011).

_Science Friction_ – Sexual hijinks in graduate school at a southern coastal college from FurPlanet.com (September 2011).

Follow http://kyellgold.livejournal.com or follow Kyell on Twitter for further updates on upcoming publications.

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