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Never make a bet with your fox boyfriend where if you lose you have to tell him how you discovered one of your fetishes. And if you do, don't forget about it only to lose it at the worst possible time.

How Colton even won was beyond me, considering the bet was that he couldn't run a 25 minute 5K, and since we'd reached San Francisco on the unexpected road trip he'd sprung on me one evening, he'd been smoking and drinking like a rockstar.

I blamed arriving at Akio's place for that. Meeting Akio just seemed to change everything.

* * *

Akio Nakamura was the kind of man my father would have probably committed murder to keep me away from, not so long ago. He'd certainly been ashamed enough of his brother for ever having run away from home to meet people like Akio. And bury himself in their lifestyle. And every other part of them that suited him.

After my father had told the family he'd had a disowned brother who few other people ever knew about, and decided it wasn't too late to acknowledge mistakes of the past, we'd sought out the people from the last year of Deke Aldrington's life before he'd died of AIDS - the 'missing' year, as my father called it, in an attempt to find out exactly how Deke has spent his last year, and find pictures of him to replace the ones my father's parents had destroyed. He and I put a heartfelt message out on every online platform I could teach my father how to use. Akio was the one who answered.

Akio was originally from Japan, but said most people wouldn't know it from his accent, or from much of his appearance. His Alaskan mother had given birth to him over there, while married to a games designer she'd met on an exchange years ago. The two later separated when Akio was a teenager and he'd ended up with dual citizenship and half a year spent in each country at a time for years. Until he went on a trip to San Fran one summer, got into the music scene, decided he liked the climate more than Alaska's, started making a living off his artwork, met Deke Aldrington, and then somehow escaped a death sentence after Deke told him he had advanced HIV and they'd given him a year to live if he was lucky.

His website started with I'm an idly successful, promiscuous and polyamorous wolf who should have been dead thirty years ago. Any regrets? A few. The rest of me just wants to live to the full when some people I once knew no longer can.

Dad couldn't bring himself to talk to him, let alone meet him (he had as many problems with wolves as he did with his dead gay brother, and the very much alive gay son he was now trying to understand), so it fell to me to talk to Akio online. Then out of nowhere, Colton said we should drive to San Fran and meet him.

We asked him. He said he'd love to see us. What he didn't tell us until we got there was that we weren't going to need a hotel, because his house was our house.

That was when I looked at the picture of my uncle, who had looked so like me anyone might have thought here was a picture of my twin (save for my fur being blue with white on my chest and stomach, and his being good old 'traditional' raccoon brown mostly all over) and I tried to pretend I wasn't seriously apprehensive.

Colton wasn't though. I knew straight away how Colton was going to behave. Colton was going to pretend he was on tour with the Grateful Dead and the 70s were now.

* * *

The moment we got out of the car at Akio's place, it just had the kind of vibe about it that was like some sort of slow working siren-call to every sense Colton had.

I'd never have imagined Akio would own a house that was halfway to belonging on Hollywood Boulevard, complete with imitation Greek architecture pillars and olive trees. It looked what I'd always imagined L.A would be like, not San Fran.

Shit, was Akio a drug dealer? Was that how he'd met my uncle in the first place? Had the Yakuza been part of the San Fran underworld all along?

I looked at Colton, who clearly hadn't expected this either. 'Let's meet a random fur we found online, you said.'

'You found him,' Colton said. 'And he's...kind of family, isn't he?'

'He had a six month fling with an uncle I never met thirty years ago. Yeah. Family.'

'Relax,' Colton said. Still such an odd word coming from him. 'If we don't like him, we'll high-tail it.'

'How does a 70's bohemian get a place like this?' I said, trying to keep my voice down. Even the drive space probably would have fitted my family home back in Phoenix on it.

'I dunno,' Colton said. 'Love nest? We all know there's money in that. Come on, we might just have a sweet time in this place. Shall we see if he's in?'

We didn't need to. At the top of the drive was a blue/arctic-cross wolf, a good thirty years older than in the one photo I'd seen of him so far, but still so easy to recognise. He looked like he'd been working out, wearing only a set of sports shorts and still toned on his chest and stomach despite being at least sixty. (Seventy-two, it turned out later). He was holding a cooler with a straw and loads of ice in it.

'Well_Konichiwa._ Are these my two renegades in their stolen Shelby Mustang?'

'Borrowed,' Colton said, hooking his thumbs in his belt. 'Just a little overdue. We might end up with our ass kicked by two otters at the end of this trip. Worth it.'

'I'll give it to you, I've never been late returning a car to get an otter to spank me. All I ever had to do was get a pool installed and line up some snow.' Akio came down, moving a little stiffly at the hip, but otherwise looking like he might have been the kind of coach who could give any student a run for their money. 'Wow, just look at you. Isn't that just the sexiest raccoon who's set foot in this place in the last thirty years. Oh now don't be shy,' he said as I shifted my feet. 'I bet there's a fabulous athlete's body under all that trendy cotton.'

'You'd better believe it,' Colton said, giving me a noogie. 'And it's all mine. I'm a fox, and I'm not good at sharing.' He sniffed a few times. 'Unless it's a nice fat joint of course.'

'Now that's_a nose,' Akio said. 'Good job you're not a cop from back in the 70's. Legalisation means a nose like that can answer its _true calling. We'll get it all sorts of teased-up-happy later. Come in, you're probably hungry. My daughter's here. Kaede's a chef, she's making some sushi.'

Kaede, the daughter of a seventy year old gay wolf, who must have been fathered by him when he was in his early fifties, looked at both of us, swished her tail and said 'Okay Dad, at least they're not as jailbaity as your last lot of models.'

'These two aren't models, Kaede-ku,' Akio said. 'Or customers. Todd here's got a special story. He's Deke Aldrington's nephew.'

What passed between Akio and his daughter in that moment I couldn't have described. But the look she gave me, as she looked me up and down just like her father had, I certainly knew that: she wanted to tell me that bless my little cotton socks, I had no idea what world I was entering right here. Except I wasn't wearing and socks, and neither was she, even though the knives she was working with would probably plunge straight through her paws and into the floor if she dropped one.

'Barefooters rule!' She said, wiggling her own toes at me, then raising a foot to waist height. 'High five, Deke's nephew!'

'Errr...' a high five with my bare foot? I tried it. I couldn't get to my own waist height, let alone hers, a good few inches above, and I was trying not to look up her shorts and failing. At least she had underpants on.

'May I?' Akio said, and before I could answer gently lifted my leg, one hand under my knee-pit and the other on my ankle. 'There you are, paws high-five. The things you kids are into.'

Any other day, Colton might have looked rattlesnake-like with warning at anyone who touched me in a suggestive way, or got too close into my space, but right now he was looking relaxed and amused, and looking at Akio and me, and Kaede. Who I could tell he was hot for even though he was doing a good job of what we called 'managing his bulge.'

All through the Grand Canyon he'd been restrained on his usual lifestyle. Apart from the sex. He'd managed his hypersexuality by giving in to it at every private moment, and bringing me along for the ride every time. He'd turned sex into its own form of athletics, and I told him 'If this is what beautiful scenery does to you remind me never to book us a trip to the seven wonders of the world. I at least wanna see my mid twenties before you give me a heart attack.'

'What are you talking about, raccoon?' he said. 'I've heard your heartbeat, remember?' He was cuddling me from behind, and started making a heart rhythm by knocking his right fist against the side of my chest, sending the vibration all through my ribcage. 'It'd take more than a seriously horny fox to overload that engine.'

Even then I didn't remember we had that bet. Nor did I remember it now we were in Akio's house, and Colton was peeling the clothes off his daughter with her eyes.

Her sushi made him forget about any fantasies though. I'd eaten raw fish quite a few times before, but Colton never had, and was an instant convert. When he let himself drink Sake, thereby rendering us here for the night because I couldn't drive, I knew he was falling for this place. Especially when Kaede went home, and Akio made green tea.

'There's something I always like doing,' Akio said. 'Will you humour me?'

'Shoot,' Colton said.

'You're a little too eager for your own good, Mr Fox,' Akio said. 'Very good though.' He looked at me. 'Todd, will you tell me about your special person?'

Talk to him about Colton? In front of Colton? 'Errr...sure, I guess, but I've gotta tell you, the fox is nothing if not an expert on himself, so why don't you just ask him? He's gonna butt in any chance he gets anyway.'

'No, it's cool,' Colton said, much to my surprise. 'I get it. You're a therapist or a counsellor or something and you want to see how well we fit together.' Colton smirked. 'And then I get to talk about him, right?'

'No Colton I'm not a therapist, although perhaps in some sense you could say I am. I make a living from my paintings mostly. And a few other creative things on the side. But people talking about themselves is never a good first date, is it? How you feel about someone else though, that opens doors.'

Doors to where? I thought, but I was intrigued by the idea. I spent the next half hour telling the story of how I'd somehow, almost unwittingly, turned Colton from the fox I had a crush on who hated my guts into the fox who opened his tortured soul to me and then stole my virginity, after admitting that he actually found me as hot as I did him. Then I wasn't just talking about us, I was talking about who Colton was, surprised by how much I knew about him, leaving out all the quirks of our sex life, but I was amazed: Colton actually seemed to be enjoying me going through the story of his childhood accident, and everything that had come with it and run into his adult years. I explained to Akio why Colton sometimes had mornings where he couldn't remember who he was for a couple of hours. And how I'd got him to go to therapy to manage his sometimes fierce fox-temper a bit more evenly, and since then he'd been able to take the pace of his life down a couple of gears.

As if to prove it, Colton talked about me, and left out all the parts I thought he would embarrass me with. Even then I didn't remember our bet, where he was supposed to win the story I hadn't told him yet.

The Sake was dulling my head. Colton got to how I'd made some kind of peace with my father after my stormy coming out, and then admitted he really couldn't tell that story because he hadn't witnessed much of it first hand. He just told the part where my father took us both out for lunch and Colton decided to introduce two gay 'friends' to him - two otters he'd never even met before who worked in adult entertainment. 'Porn stars, bascially.' Colton said, as if Akio hadn't had more than twice his lifetime to get acquainted with it in every way shape and form. Colton was convinced my father hadn't had a clue about Trick and Dolphin, or read between any of the many lines that morning had brought.

'He knew,' I said. 'My Dad's not as dumb as you think.'

I couldn't read Akio's face right then, but I was wondering if when Dad had said the two of them had never met each other he was actually telling me the truth. Dad had come to San Fran in time to be there when Deke passed. When I'd told Dad that Akio had answered our page, he'd never given any sign that he knew the name, but right then, it was like Akio knew his. And him.

For the first time all evening, Akio didn't look like something was fun to him.

'Yes, your father, making his effort to correct the past. And here we are. He found someone who knew his brother.'

'You gonna do this little exercise on Deke then?' Colton said. 'Go for it, what was he like?'

'Colton,' I said, noting fearfully the deepness Akio suddenly had in his eyes. 'I don't think that's a first-night conversation.'

'It's okay,' Akio said. 'It's just hard to do what you two just did for someone who's been gone for thirty years. I don't know how much justice I could do him now. It's too bad Kaede had to go, I was going to let her go to town on me. I was married for a few years. I fancied trying a different life, perhaps even trying to change who I was a little. Be a good father. Devote myself to one person. It never quite worked. Ended in amicable separation. It never worked for her mother either. She was secretly seeing someone else all the way through. For some reason she thought I'd be mad about it. Why would I be? She gave me a wonderful daughter who against all the odds seems to understand who I am.' He got up. 'Would you like a tour of my home?'

* * *

Half of Akio's large, spacious house was a shrine to hippy bands from the 70s, decked out like a camper-van tour bus but with added designer names on all the retro stuff. The rest was his own artwork, or pictures and sculptures by similarly gifted people. He had no shame in displaying some of the naked portraits he drew. Especially not the gay stuff. He'd even dug out the picture of Deke reclining naked on his sofa that he hadn't been able to bring himself to look at for years but couldn't destroy.

'You really do look like him,' Akio said, confirming what I already knew from other pictures of my uncle. 'How old are you, Todd? Eighteen?'

Colton heard the unspoken 'yet?' on the end of that just like I did. I decided I had to at least let him grin at all the things he was thinking. I'd ordered him to put his most sensitive head on and keep it that way while in Akio's home. None of his stupid sex jokes, no playing up how much I looked like the man Akio probably still missed more than perhaps he knew. He'd reached out to us and here we were, and we were going to take this seriously.

Apart from Akio, it seemed, who was practically reading Colton's mind as soon as it came to comparisons of me and my uncle. Especially two days after we arrived, when he invited us both to smoke weed with him. Thankfully he didn't do coke anymore, hadn't for years, said he preferred his freedom to having to constantly being in and out of jail and throwing money at lawyers. The time for that had been the eighties, just after Deke passed and in some way that felt almost connected, Akio started painting pictures people actually wanted to buy, and the money rolled in. So did the drugs. Odd, Akio's body didn't seem to have paid any price for it at all. If anything, it was like the weed had always preserved it.

At least he respected my polite refusal of the various bags of buds he brought out, all displayed like an art exhibition in a leather case. I had to take drugs tests for my sports scholarship and anything like this was out. It was a good cover for how I didn't really want to try it anyway.

Finally, once under the influence, Akio came out with what I'd been waiting for: he'd like to draw me like he drew Deke. But it was okay if I said no. And if I did that, he wouldn't do it from imagination either. I got the feeling he probably would, but at least he'd never tell me and I'd never see the picture.

I said not yet.

It surprised both of them, even though they were a little stoned. Akio was an amazing artist, and part of me really wanted him to draw me, any way I could think of. Another part of me could never take my clothes off in front of a guy that old, even if I tried pretending it was strictly a professional thing. Because I knew I'd be more than just a model to Akio. I'd be the past returning, and maybe even he didn't know how he'd react to it.

'He's kinda bashful,' Colton said. 'When he gets embarrassed his ears go all floppy. The first time we did it, I really thought he was gonna keep all his clothes on. And this guy's a swimmer, I mean figure _that_out. He probably even laughs in the showers when jocks twice his size make fun of him. Then there's a fox in a barn ready to turn on all the lights he can find switches for, and I doubt I'd ever even have got his shirt off if it wasn't for -'

'Colton.' Akio silenced him effortlessly by putting a hand on his head, shifting a little closer to him on the couch. 'I think that joint's maybe making you forget your partner's boundaries. They do exist, even in front of the ones who've heard it all.'

'Shit,' Colton said, somehow not even reacting to Akio's hand on his head. 'Sorry Todd-coon.'

I didn't know what it was about Akio's presence right then, but somehow it just made me not mind anything, even though I was the sober one. Suddenly, I really did feel like just forgetting all the rules and trying a toke on the joint. It did smell good. Hell, maybe that was it: I was high just by being in the room with these two. And I'd needed to relax so desperately, even after two weeks on the road and not taking life too seriously.

'Boundaries?' I said. 'Nah. It's cool. You wanna see something really cool though? You could always pull Colton's tail.'

'You're a bitch, raccoon,' Colton said, tucking his tail behind him and out of reach.

Akio just laughed. 'Oh, a tail puller is he? Funny, I once watched Deke do that to a fox. It did nothing for him or me, but the fox? He made a real mess on my beanbag chair.'

I squirmed, and only just managed not to get up. I was sitting on one. One that I'd already noticed was so old and covered in patches that it probably did date back to when Deke had been alive.

Colton was practically pissing his pants laughing, and took another great drag on the joint and sucked it down like his lungs were a jet engine.

'I'm just joking,' Akio said. 'Deke only told me he'd once done that. He didn't get off on tails. But he used to like mine, in a completely platonic way. He used to sit and comb it for me, said it gave him this kind of focus while he listened to music. This one time, he did it while taking an acid trip. He found the meaning of life. In this old rag.' Akio gripped his own tail and shook it about. 'He said he could see symphonies between all the hairs. And he could see all of them individually, like he was looking through a microscope. Only he didn't explain it quite as coherently as that. I had this video camera, a real early model, and you've no idea how badly I wanted to get up and get it. But if I did that, what if I ruined the trip for him? So I settled for it just being a memory. He found his masterpiece in my tail for the next three hours until I got so hungry I had to just talk him down so I could go and get some food. When he woke up the next day he even said he remembered some of it. He wrote this whole bunch of songs for me he said were based on it, but I think he was just pretending.'

I was completely taken with his story. Colton looked like he was too, except to him it probably went deeper on some level he'd never find again.

'Give me that back, Mr Fox. I think you need a nap.' Akio took the joint and Colton didn't protest. He actually did lie down when Akio got up. 'Lie on your side, so you don't swallow your tongue.' Akio helped him do it, and Colton's tongue was lolling out of his mouth. 'Now close your mouth so you don't drool on my couch, there's a good boy' Akio stroked Colton's muzzle and closed his mouth for him 'Breathe through that impressive nose of yours.' Colton was completely hypnotised, and had a bulge in his pants. Moments later he was sleeping.

Damn, I was a little turned on too. Akio had one of those voices like the ones that read audiobooks that even the toughest of insomniacs could fall asleep to.

'I'm hungry,' he said. 'How would you like some noodles with river eel and some fried vegetables?'

'I'll help you make them,' I said. 'If you don't mind teaching me. I really can't cook anything.'

'I'd be delighted,' Akio said.