FSE

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The train was almost deserted. Nobody left over from rush hour, save for a few stragglers and probably a couple bums. It was dark outside.

"Well, that sucked," Toane muttered through his teeth, and took another look around the car as it ambled along tracks that were, indeed, dark. But there had to be a better way to describe it. Something else besides "dark" and "outside". Worst of all was that it was dark outside. "Stream of consciousness, my ass."

The fox's paws rested atop the smooth surface of the Moleskine notebook in his lap, black on black. Tucked under its cover was the Mont Blanc pen his father had given him as a high school graduation present. "You may not appreciate it now," he'd said, "but you'll be surprised how many times it will come in handy."

Toane had smiled and thanked him, wanting more than anything to know why his sister had gotten a car for graduation three years ago and he hadn't. Which was precisely the reason he was on the light rail right now, riding through the dark early evening, feeling much less safe than if he were tooling around in his own set of wheels.

Thinking of Dad made the fox snicker to himself. If only the old man could know what his son had done with that graduation present. The pages of erotic ideas, some of which he'd had in his head since he'd entered puberty and hadn't had the guts to put down on paper until he'd moved out, sat tucked between the soft covers of that notebook. All of them remained ideas, mere half-page blurbs, except for one. The one written in snippets of time between college classes, between homework assignments, and as a break from the all-night test-prep sessions.

He wasn't sure if he would survive this night. Okay, that might be a bit dramatic. He wasn't sure his ego would survive this night.

Checking around the car to make sure he was relatively safe--the old homeless badger in the corner seemed preoccupied with the graffiti on his window--Toane reached into his satchel and brought out his iPhone. Sliding his finger along the bottom of the screen, he unlocked the device and navigated around to his text message Inbox. He brought the most recent message up:

THAT'S FINE. I'LL SEE YOU AROUND 7. LET ME KNOW IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS FINDING THE PLACE.

There it was, in plain dark grey text in a light grey bubble. No emoticons, no exclamations, just all caps and straightforward. It made Toane even more nervous than he already was; from the other side of the car, the badger tilted his head in the fox's direction as if he could smell Toane's fear, but he kept on muttering to himself and staring out the window.

Toane sighed and sat back against the bench. Overhead, a polite female voice announced the stop at Woolsey Heights. He was two stops away. When the car crested a hill and arrived at the edge of the Financial District, a wave of people rushed in through every available open door. The train was headed in the direction of the outer burbs, and most of these people had just gotten off work and were grateful to be headed home. Suddenly, Toane was an anonymous vulpine among a sea of species, their scents overwhelming his nose, so he shrank back into the corner of the bench and opened his notebook to the pages he knew intimately by now.

His own writing sat there, blue scrawled onto the lined paper in his block-capital style. Printing turned into chicken scratch, so he had to resort to the slow, painstaking process of using uppercase to make it legible. There was Loewy, his fox (modeled after himself, of course), getting ready for a night on the town, on page two. Little did Loewy know that, in just a few pages, he would be the victim of random gang-related gunfire. And that, the club's bouncer, the wolf named Giesso, would tend to his wounds, sparking the slow-burning flame that would eventually lead to a sex scene so hot he'd had to take two "breaks" just to get it written.

Of course, thinking about the night he'd finished the story got him to feeling uncomfortable, so he closed the notebook and positioned it conveniently in his lap. Even though there were too many people in the car to notice a small scent like that, it would figure that some bloodhound or Grizzly would pick up on it and give him a dirty look. But it would be their problem, not his. Tough shit.

The iPhone came out of his pocket again. Twenty-three minutes before seven o'clock. Plenty of time, because he'd been planning this trip for two weeks now. Take the bus to the Amtrak station, ride into the city, and hop the local trains from there. Two blocks north and two blocks west to the home of Pierce Stanton.

Just thinking of the name brought Toane's ears back against his head, his tail nervously twitching between his legs. Pierce Stanton, author of Skye's the Limit, the futuristic coming-of-age novel that had gotten the fox through the latter half of his awkward teenage years. Author of Moonchild, the sexy thriller that had kept him awake late into the night, and not just because it was scary as hell. And author of Off the Menu, the latest romance centered around the especially lecherous staff of a fine-dining establishment. He hadn't finished this last one just yet, but he had it in his satchel in case Stanton was in the mood to give an autograph.

It still surprised Toane on a number of levels how he had come to be invited to the house of one of the best writers of gay erotica around. At least, in one fox's opinion. Especially since it started with a rambling, drunken e-mail. One too many (okay, three too many) Tequila Sunrises had gotten him way too drunk, and when Toane got drunk he got miserable. He would try to make sense of his young life through the thick haze of inebriation, get nowhere, and give up. And he would cry, alone in his little apartment, the faggy virgin fox boi who couldn't find love and whose family didn't accept him. Never mind the fact that when he was sober, homework mattered more than a relationship and he hadn't told either parent about his sexuality.

The result of that night of self-absorbed depression he hadn't discovered until the following morning, when he'd checked his email and found a reply from "[email protected]" Paw over his muzzle as he read what he'd typed out: the fact that he was a fan boy, his hatred of his family, the embarrassment of virginity, and all the things he'd wanted to say but didn't have the courage or balls to without the help of intoxication. He had also tried to sell his story as something existential, something to change the world of fiction, when in real life it was merely a fantasy, extended and put to paper.

But Stanton had replied. Not only had he replied, but he'd invited Toane to start up a back-and-forth conversation of sorts, talking about general things like his latest project and an interesting experience he'd had at the grocery store that morning. It was like a blog, but for Toane alone to read and respond to. He felt special, and he soon forgot the episode that brought it about in the first place.

Until the invitation. Toane failed to realize that even though he was happy to be engaged in a pen-pal relationship with someone he admired and respected, he had been leading Stanton down the path to discussing the fox's story. The trouble was, Stanton was so damn personable. Everything a big-name writer wasn't supposed to be. He wasn't egotistical, narcissistic, or overbearing. He legitimately listened when Toane told him about little problems in his life. It was off-putting, but after a week of it his trust had grown considerably.

So when they got to talking about that story, that mere exercise in masturbatory fantasy, Toane made the mistake (or had the good fortune) of telling Stanton he wished he lived closer. Except Stanton was vacationing at his second home, which just so happened to be an hour and a half from Toane's tiny midtown apartment. How fortuitous. At that point, there was almost no excuse he could make, especially when Stanton offered to pay his fares to come down. The fox couldn't refuse either the hospitality or the opportunity, so he'd agreed. And promptly drunk himself into a stupor the same night, full of regret and worry.

Now there was no alcohol to quell the dull ache he felt in his stomach. It wasn't hunger, he knew, but dread. Anxiety at getting to meet Stanton, sure, but the dread came from what might happen when he gave one of his heroes what amounted to a stroke-off piece. The plot was contrived around the sex because that was the mood he had been in when he wrote it. He had gotten in that mood three times, and whether that was because he was a fox or he was just horned up, his box of tissues had been severely depleted by the time he wrapped things up.

No one looked down at him with disdain, no one wrinkled their nose at the sudden burst of vulpine musk in the rail car. In fact, the crowd hid him, made him more anonymous, and it was comforting. He clutched the notebook to his chest, curled his tail around his satchel, and waited.

It wasn't long before the polite (yet still cold) female voice announced the train's approach to Cresleigh, Toane's stop and Stanton's neighborhood. All he had to do was swing himself around the edge of the bench and slip out the door onto the platform with about six other people. By the time he found out in which direction he was supposed to be headed, he was alone again. The fox turned north, up towards the top of a steep hill.

Toane hadn't noticed how much the train had climbed since he'd boarded it. Between rows of nicely-kept houses he could see glimpses of the sprawling urban landscape below, closer to the bottom of the river valley where the metro area got its start. It was foggy up here, or the ceiling was especially low. Colder, too. Moisture clung to his whiskers and made the ends of his cheek ruffs mat together, giving the impression that he'd just washed his face. What better way to meet Pierce Stanton than by looking like a half-drowned fox?

After another check of the iPhone, to make sure he wasn't late (he wasn't) and that he was headed in the right direction (he was), the fox tucked the notebook in his satchel, stuck his paws in his pockets and began the trek upwards. The street was a lot quieter than Toane's neighborhood, even for the middle of the week.

It was also fortunate that he didn't have class on Thursdays, a fact Stanton had taken into consideration when they'd discussed a meeting time. "So we don't have to keep looking at the clock," the writer had said. Toane agreed that a curfew would not be the best thing for either of them, and so it had come down to tonight.

Once he got to the crest of the hill, he turned left on Dormond and started checking addresses. After a couple of blocks, Dormond Street became Dormond End which, apparently, was the fancy-schmancy name for a cul-de-sac over here in the high country. Fifty Fifty-Two was down on the right side, one small house nestled among a multitude of small, but neatly kept, houses.

Toane swallowed back the bile that rose in his throat and threatened to ruin the tooth-brushing he'd done just before he left. Staring at the house right across the street, welcomingly lit and unassuming, the fox's gut seemed to roil. He was about to meet the man to whose work he'd quite feverishly pleasured himself. Didn't that seem just a little odd? Perhaps, not as odd as it should, considering the things contained within that Moleskine notebook. The fox sighed and stepped off the curb, crossing the street and mounting the steps to the front door.

He nearly squeaked when the door opened before he could reach the brass knocker. "Sorry, sorry," the grey fox said, palms out. "I saw you coming up the walk and moved to intercept."

"No problem," Toane replied after catching a couple of breaths, aware that his tail had poofed out to thrice its normal size. Wiping his feet on the mat, he smoothed himself down as he followed Stanton's tail into the entryway.

"Jacket can go on the banister, unless you're cold, in which case I can turn up the heat," Stanton said. "Go ahead and make yourself comfortable in the living room to your right. It's small but cozy."

Toane wandered into the living room and sat down in the first thing he saw, a well-worn leather recliner that turned out to be more comfortable than it looked. His tail threaded easily through the hole in the seat, and the material was nicely cool on his fur. As the red fox sat with his paws in his lap, he became aware that he was almost immediately at ease, and the heavy weight of his previous dread was all but gone. Stanton hadn't so much as offered his paw to shake, but he'd done something even better: he'd told Toane, without words, that he was welcome already. That made him smile.

The living room looked like something a college professor would have decorated: mismatched but homey furniture, a few fine art prints on the walls, and shelves of books all along the side opposite the entryway. Everything was tastefully organized, with nothing scattered about on the hardwood floor, which looked to be original. But Toane's eyes rested on a bronze statue of a nude male canine form that dominated the mantle above the fireplace. The first thing he noticed was that it was visible from the street, should anyone care to look longer than a moment. Second, the statue was sporting a full erection. The fox quickly looked away, feeling a blush creep up his neck into his face.

"I got that at a flea market, believe it or not." Stanton padded into the room with a tray that held two glasses, a pitcher and a silver box. He set it on the table between Toane's chair and the other recliner in the room. "It's just plain old iced tea. I forgot to ask what you liked to drink, so I figured this was better than water, but still universal. Lemon's on the side, and sugar is in the box."

"Thank you," the red fox replied, skipping the lemon but opening the box, which contained a rainbow of sugars and sweeteners.

"I played it safe," Stanton shrugged, his ears slightly back. Toane opted for a few of the yellow packets, mixed them in with the accompanying spoon, and held it in his paws as he sipped. Very shortly, he became aware that the grey fox was watching him, albeit not in a creepy way. Merely observing, and Stanton also seemed to be content with maintaining the silence that hung in the room, light but noticeable.

He waited until Toane replaced his glass on the tray before speaking again. "So," he grinned, fingers interlaced under his chin, "if you have any gushing to do, go ahead and get it out of the way. I find that once that's over, people feel more comfortable."

"Well, Mr. Stanton--"

"Oh, please, call me Pierce. Mr. Stanton is my father. You make me feel old." Toane felt relieved that the grey fox had said it first. He looked over across the table, across their respective iced teas, and knew that Pierce was old. Not aged, but mature. Pierce still supported his chin with his paws when he said, "I'm thirty-seven."

"I didn't mean--"

"Don't worry about it," Pierce dismissed. "You're not the first, and you certainly won't be the last."

"Well, I wasn't going to say anything."

"Of course not. That would be rude." Yawning wide, the writer leaned back in the recliner, and Toane used the opportunity to study the grey fox a bit more. Navy collared shirt and khaki pants, fur a few shades lighter than charcoal, with a bit of silver at the tip of his ears and muzzle. Darker at the paws and feet. Typical fox pattern, just a different palette. But still a bit shocking as far as his age. Well, old_er_, compared to Toane himself.

"It's none of my business anyway," the red fox managed, although he couldn't look Pierce in the eye when he said it.

Crossing his legs, Pierce said, "I would hardly think it isn't your business. All you would have to do is type my name in a search engine, and you would have all the information you could want. In fact, I'm surprised you didn't know what I looked like. Usually, when I have company, they end up telling me something about myself that even I didn't know before." He chuckled, the paunch under his shirt making gentle waves. Toane also couldn't reconcile the stories he'd read with the grey, slightly chubby vulpine sitting across from him.

The red fox brought his satchel out from beside his hip and lay it across his lap. He could feel, under the pads of his fingers, the outline of the spine and the expensive pen tucked within. He wanted to take it out--eventually--but he wasn't quite ready to move the conversation in that direction yet. He looked toward the iced tea, but he wasn't thirsty enough to keep drinking. He looked around the room, but realized that might give the appearance of boredom. Then he made the mistake of looking at the grandfather clock over in the far corner, and noticed Pierce's tail twitching.

"I know what you're thinking."

"What?" Toane sputtered, his eyes back on the grey fox's. Pierce was smiling softly, but his ears were up.

"Come on, now. You think I can't see how uncomfortable you are? You're disappointed, and no matter how you may want to spin it, you can't deny it. Actually, I'm surprised. Have you never seen a picture of me?"

Toane's face was flushed, but he knew Pierce would be able to smell the embarrassment rather than see it, hidden under his fur. He was embarrassed at having offended one of the few people he looked up to, and even more so that he'd sold himself as a serious fan and not even done a simple search for a single picture.

He cleared his throat and said, "I'm sorry. I should have done that before I came over here."

"Would it have mattered if you had?" the grey fox asked, leaning forward, his ears cocked, and Toane's flush was accompanied by a cold knot of adrenaline just above his stomach. At once he felt stupid. No, he felt absolutely idiotic. Now, he'd just labeled himself as shallow, which he wasn't. At least, he didn't think he was, but the way he'd felt when Pierce had first opened the door couldn't be redone. Yeah, there was a little disappointment. And that was shallow. And he didn't want to be that kind of person. Either way, he didn't have to explain himself; his eyes and ears did all the talking.

Still smiling, Pierce crossed his arms and leaned back. "I thought so. It never fails to amaze me how powerful the written word is. You read enough stories about well-endowed, muscular men and you begin to attribute those characteristics to the author. Am I right?" After seeing Toane's hesitation, he leaned across the side table and put a reassuring paw on the red fox's shoulder, its warmth cutting through his deteriorating mood. "You don't think I'm mad, do you?"

Toane stared straight ahead, his vision out of focus as he tried to find the right words. "I know I would be, if someone came into my home and didn't like what they saw."

"But you didn't not like what you saw."

"No, it was...just different."

A deep-throated chuckle. "Did you know that you're not my core audience?"

"What do you mean?" Pierce's paw was still on his shoulder, the fingers splayed slightly, but reassuring. Toane finally got the courage to look him in the eye again, relieved that he was not on the writer's bad side. Had he thought that might happen? Come to think of it, he hadn't thought of much beyond how cool it would be to visit the home of Pierce Stanton, let alone talk to him about his craft. At once, he felt not only shallow but opportunistic.

"Young. Thin. Disgustingly handsome." The grey fox said that last with an accentuated lisp, though Toane hardly talked like that. "You know, like the people I write about. My agent did a study about a year ago, right after One-Way Ticket came out." One-Way Ticket was a collection of short fiction, and the only book of Stanton's that Toane hadn't read. "The average reader was in his early thirties, single, overweight, and generally straight-acting." The red fox's eyebrows went up only slightly, though he was fairly shocked at the revelation.

Treading carefully, Toane replied, "So, a bunch of losers, is what you're saying? I mean, is that true because people don't have someone in their life to love, so they fill it with...uh, erotica?"

"You know, I posed that same question to Til--my agent--and he said, as bad as it sounds, that may be the niche I'm filling. I don't really care, because I like doing what I do and as long as it's read then I'm happy."

"Me too," the red fox said, feeling a smile creep into his muzzle for the first time since stepping over the threshold. "I'd much rather get someone saying they liked my story than nothing at all."

"Speaking of which," said Pierce, switching legs, "you did bring what you told me you'd been working on, right? You wanted me to take a look at it?"

Heat spread from the collar of Toane's shirt upward. "Yeah, uh, if you want to."

"I'd love to, of course. Didn't I promise to give it a once-over?" Toane nodded and handed the notebook over to the other fox, holding his tongue. He had halfway expected Pierce to either forget or dismiss reading his work altogether, but that was something the person he had expected Pierce to be would have done. Not this gracious guy sitting across from him, who was now opening up the collection that contained every erotic thing he'd ever written.

"It starts about a third of the way through," Toane said. "It's called Ties that Bind."

"Gotcha," Pierce replied, though the grey fox seemed more interested in the first page, Toane's page of ideas. Some of which were quite outlandish, others very personal. But he didn't have the guts to protest. So he sat back and put his paws in his lap, feeling his heart beat quickly in his chest.

While Toane was excited for the opportunity for Pierce to critique his work, he suddenly felt very vulnerable. Watching the grey fox hold the notebook in his left paw, the other scratching his chin, made a lump of guilt form where there had been none before. All the time while he had been writing away on Ties, all the "breaks" he had taken because his libido wouldn't allow him to continue, seemed juvenile in comparison to what Pierce Stanton stood for. What kind of writer had to stop to paw to his own work? What kind of person would allow fictional characters to have such control?

Just for something to keep him occupied, Toane held the iced tea to his lips, taking a small sip that did nothing to alleviate his dry mouth or the butterflies in his gut. The sweaty glass did feel good on his chin, though, and he kept it there, daring to glance the grey fox's way every couple of minutes. But as they dragged on, little annoying thoughts kept popping up in his mind, and he found he could remember precious little of what he'd written. Images of Loewy and Giesso floated around, coming together in a plethora of lascivious couplings, any number of the story's sex scenes. Fox under wolf, fox riding wolf, fox sucking wolf.

Was that really all he could recall? The red fox looked through the glass at the floor, swallowing reflexively. It felt like a mistake. Coming here was a big juvenile mistake. He had about as much business talking to Pierce Stanton as someone who'd never even heard of him. Panic seized him; it wouldn't be that hard to just pluck the notebook from Pierce's paws, thank him for his time and walk out the door. Catch the last train back. Not hard at all. So why was it so hard to stand up?

"Heh," the grey fox chuckled, turning the page. Toane glanced over and saw the lines full of text. It was indeed Ties That Bind. Pierce's face had gone neutral so quickly that there was no telling if the chuckle had been derisive or amused. But he was more than just reading. He was studying. And was that a surprise? Yes, in some form, but Toane should have expected that. People like the grey fox didn't just read and write, they studied and created. They wove, and worst of all, they made it seem like an attainable goal to hacks like Toane who thought they could pull words out of thin air and expect them to make sense, much less cause a boner.

Pierce was too engrossed to finish his tea, and Toane was too nervous to finish his. Both glasses sat, sweating onto their respective coasters, as neither fox said a word for the better part of ten minutes. Toane had resigned himself to staring into the floor, trying to find shapes in the grain of the wood. He was just beginning to wish the grey fox had chosen a nice deep shag carpet so he wouldn't have to make such an effort, when a sharp bang brought him back to attention. Pierce had closed the notebook and set it on his lap, his tail giving away nothing.

"I know it needs work," Toane managed.

"Everything always needs work. As soon as a book goes to press, I want to snag the manuscript back and break out the red pen. Someone told me once that the sign of a good writer is never being satisfied with your work. Always knowing there's one more thing you could change," Pierce said. "It can be as small as eye color, or taking out a whole scene because it doesn't set up another scene further along in the story."

"I can't imagine having to deal with continuity on a novel scale," Toane replied, glad to fend off the topic of his story for the moment. In his head, he was going through a list of things he might have screwed up. He couldn't even remember what Loewy and Giesso had been wearing, other than the wolf's leather jacket, because that was a cool renegade touch. Now that he thought about it, it seemed more like a cliché.

Nodding, Pierce said, "It gets easier the more you write, trust me. A few more stories under your belt and you'll have found your style. Now, do you want the good news or the bad news?"

"Let's lead off with the good news, since there probably won't be too much of that."

The grey fox scowled, making the thin lines on his forehead even deeper. "First of all, Toane, you need to understand that attitude is a big part of this whole writing thing." His tail twitched irritatedly. "If you have that thin a skin, you might want to reconsider what you want to get out of it. Money won't work. Fame is a shot in the dark. Happiness, and only then happiness with yourself, is what you should see at the end of that tunnel every time you write that first sentence. What I'm seeing, besides a lot of self-doubt, is a cynicism that, come to think of it, shows up glaringly in your work."

Toane's ears had been flat since he heard the tone of Pierce's voice. Eventually he couldn't look at the other fox anymore, and the sharp pain of his first real criticism sat heavily in his chest. Nothing had been said about his story yet, but the fact that mere words on paper weren't enough sank in as the concrete and obvious indicator of his amateur status.

"I'm sorry if I wasted your time."

"There it is again!" Pierce was out of his chair and standing above Toane, pointing a stiff finger in the red fox's face. "You know, you guys are really good at making me feel old. You know that?" That silvery grey tail flicked from side to side, fanning the air. "Then I have to spout off, sounding like a jaded old man who knows all about the world, when all I know is just about what I've been through. What I was going to say was that I really liked your story, but I don't know if it would do any good because you might not even believe it."

"What?"

Pierce dropped the book in Toane's lap. "It's good, Toane. I like it. That was the good news. The bad news isn't really bad at all, but I'm kind of afraid to tell you, judging by your attitude."

"You liked it?" Toane turned the notebook over in his paws, staring at the cover. He hadn't expected Pierce to like his story, and this was no posturing for the sake of a fan. The older fox was intense, his words not those of someone who was trying to placate some hack's attempt at meaningful prose.

"Do you want to listen now?" Pierce asked. "Because what you have is a good core story, but it's by no means finished. You may think you finished it, but in my opinion, you could easily triple the length and have something spectacular. Four thousand words is a good start, but it's the other four, or eight, or twenty thousand you choose that take the sketch and flesh it out into this tapestry of imagery in the mind of the reader." He stopped and thought, then: "Okay, well, maybe that's a bit heavy. But you know what I mean."

And the red fox wanted_to know what Pierce meant by that. Because he had worked _hard on that story, and he still knew it was nothing even close to what he'd read from the grey fox's paw. He'd wanted so much to take some of those sentences, word for word, and see how they worked in his own world. But plagiarism wouldn't make him a better writer, and he'd set aside the "cheat" material and set to work using his own mind's eye. He was heartened by Pierce's words, but terribly intimidated at the same time.

"I want to make it work," Toane said, his voice catching. He took a drink of his iced tea--now watery--and continued. "I...I see the stuff you write, and it all seems so effortless. I know it's not, but it flows so well."

"You have to remember it's gone through three or four drafts, and been under the scrutiny of my editors," Pierce said.

"Yeah, and that scares me. I know I'm not even close to being there, but..." He felt the growl in his throat before he could finish the sentence. "I feel like such an amateur!"

"You are, though." Toane looked up, stricken. Pierce's expression was unchanged, not haughty. The guy was so hard to read, adding to the aggravation. "This is your first story, right?"

"The first one I finished, yeah."

"That makes you an amateur. It's not a bad thing, not by far."

"It makes me a wannabe."

Pierce looked like he was disgusted. Muzzle wrinkled, ears flat, and he could barely keep his tail from thrashing about. Toane realized what he'd been doing this whole time, and that it might be too late to fix what he'd all but destroyed. The grey fox had given him ample opportunity to accept his position in the realm of fiction, but all he'd offered was his own emo, fatalistic view of things. To someone like Pierce, he probably sounded hopeless and unhelpable. And that was exactly the opposite of why he'd hoofed it all the way up here in the first place.

"Wait," said the grey fox, waggling his finger. "You wait right here, smartass. I'll be right back." Pierce stalked off, and suddenly the room was way too quiet. Their exchange echoed in Toane's head, just as painful as it was when they had been face to face. He didn't want to be here anymore. From what words they had already said, it felt like he had wasted enough time, and ruined his chances of gaining anything of value.

"Oh, God," he said as he felt tears prick the corners of his eyes. "Quit it, quit it." He wiped them away just as Pierce strode back into the room with a tiny netbook in his paws. The glow from the screen cast a silvery blue hue on his fur from below, making him look slightly demonic.

"Are you ready? Here it is. 'Amateur. Old French. From the Latin amatorem, meaning lover.' Literally, 'lover of.' Someone who pursues an interest or activity for the sake of itself, without the benefit of pay or formal training. Isn't that what you are?"

Toane almost asked the grey fox why he hadn't been asked to leave, but the voice in his head--mercifully, finally--told him it wouldn't be wise. Pierce had nailed it, though, but good. He'd always hated that word, amateur, because it carried with it a sense of lacking: less skill, less dedication, less professionalism than the true craftspeople of the writing world. When he'd finally relaxed enough to speak, he looked down to find he'd sunk his claws into the cover of his notebook.

"Well?" Pierce closed the small laptop and kneeled down by the red fox's feet, paws on Toane's knees. "What do you say?"

Toane sniffed and nodded. "That sounds like me, yeah."

"Unless, for some reason, you find some sick sadistic pleasure in beating yourself up over writing about hot wolf-on-fox action," said the grey fox, grinning. It was contagious, and Toane had to grin back. "I thought so. You did pretty good, for a virgin."

This time, the blush rushed from Toane's neck to his ears so fast it prickled the thin skin there and bushed the black fur out. Clearing his throat didn't help much, either. It wasn't like Pierce didn't already know his status. On the other paw, it wasn't something Toane liked to talk about, or even be made to mention.

" How old are you?" the grey fox asked.

" You already know," Toane replied. They had discussed that on the second email, when Pierce had wanted to make sure the red fox was of legal age, drinking aside.

" Twenty-two, right?"

" Yeah."

" I was a virgin until twenty-nine." Pierce was leaning over the arm of his chair now, forearms crossed under his chin. A shadow of a smile curled the edges of his lips, his green eyes glinting in the room's low light.

Toane didn't know what to say.

" Kind of puts it into perspective, huh? I wrote my first piece of erotic fiction when I was fourteen." Pierce lay back in his chair, tapping the Moleskine notebook for emphasis. "I would tune out my French teacher because I knew all the words, and I would keep this junky old Mead notebook in my Trapper Keeper."

" You..."

" I was lame. Very lame. It had a Testarossa on it." It was so disarmingly honest, the red fox couldn't help but laugh a bit. Not only did Pierce have a knack for personability, he had summarily knocked down Toane's anxiety over just about everything with which he'd come in the door. Certainly, he hadn't expected any of this, and thinking about the train ride earlier, he couldn't figure out how he'd gotten so many ideas in his head in the first place.

" See?" asked the grey fox. "Now you know embarrassing details about me and my start in the world of smut. I don't think I'll even tell my publicist that part about the Trapper Keeper, not even for a memoir, should I become pretentious enough to write one."

" Aren't you kind of young for a memoir?"

" Hey, if child stars can write memoirs before their voices change, I think I'm old enough." Pierce tapped the notebook again with his knuckles. "But really, this is a good start. And that's a lot better than most people. Have you taken any writing classes?"

" I've got Intro to Composition so far, because I don't have any prerequisites," said Toane.

" Good, because pretty much what you're going to have to do is lie your way through that class and promptly forget everything they teach you."

" Wait, what? I thought writing classes were supposed to make me a better writer."

Chuckling, Pierce said, "That's what the Registrar's office wants you to think. More likely than not, they've got either a tenured professor with a Masters in English teaching the class, or some lackey TA. Am I right?"

Toane couldn't help smiling. "We have a TA. She insists we go by the syllabus like it's the Bible."

" They're paid to do that. They're also paid to get you in and out and onto higher-level classes as soon as possible, so I'm glad I met you before you could get into the elite stuff. _That's_where you get the uppity artsy guys and gals who think they know everything and it gives them a right to break all the rules of basic English."

" What, like spelling?"

" Let's just say I had to read a novel that looked as if it were written by e.e. cummings."

The red fox was flabbergasted. His anxiety was gone now, replaced by disbelief. "And he got it published?"

" Rubber-stamped and everything, sadly," the grey fox replied, his face tight. "It really does hurt to watch things like that go to print, when there are actual _deep_works that can't ever seem to make it beyond an editor's desk."

After a thoughtful pause, Toane asked, "Have you ever had anything rejected?" Pierce looked, for a moment, about to break into fits, but he just settled deeper into his chair and smiled. "Tons. I have two manila file folders stuffed with rejection letters. Two of my novellas were rejected, and I finally had to settle for using a pen name and a lesser-known publishing house. They're out there, but I doubt you've read them."

" What's the name?"

" Johnny Latreme."

" I have Bishop's Game on my shelf at home. No shit. I thought something seemed familiar!"

" Wow. Do you know you're the first person I've met who's read that book? I know it sold, but still..."

" At least you got it published at all," said Toane.

" True. Is that what you plan to do, ultimately?"

" Oh." That wasn't something the red fox had considered at all yet, and that sudden realization surprised him. Up until now, publishing had always been something that "authors" did, something unattainable to small-time writers like Toane. But Pierce had said it, and him saying it meant it wasn't out of the realm of possibility. "I hadn't really thought about it."

" Well, the bad news part of it is if that's your goal, you have a long road ahead." With that, the grey fox stood and opened the notebook, skimming through pages while he paced before the hearth. He looked to Toane like a man comfortable in his craft, and that made the older vulpine even more admirable.

" Like here, for instance," said Pierce, tracing the text with a claw. "As a whole, the idea--the premise of it--is strong, and the characters are strong, though they could use more fleshing out. But here, when you're getting into the sex scene, you seem to fall apart as the action progresses."

Toane wasn't aware of any kind of falling apart, though that didn't stop him from trying to go over parts of the story in his head. "Which part?"

" Well, what you've set up is a cliché fox-and-wolf scenario, which is proved by you deciding to put Loewy on the bottom. He also seems kind of prissy to me, which isn't enhanced by his actions or dialogue at all. He's one-dimensional in a fictional sense. Only good for one thing, and that's bottoming for wolves."

When Toane didn't defend himself, Pierce continued: "So yeah, they're going at it, they're doggystyle, and up until this point it's been relatively smooth. But, do you know what sucks about writing anything involving sex?"

" What?"

" It's the same damn thing over and over again!" Pierce threw his paws up, the pages of the notebook fluttering like a seagull on a breeze. "Somebody's dick goes in somebody's hole, and it's in-out for I don't know how long."

But that wasn't how it went in Pierce's stories. There was in-out, there was love, there was callousness and randomness and everything Toane associated with the act. "What are you talking about? You don't write it like that at all."

Pierce turned, the notebook in his paws like a preacher with a hymnal. "But I used to. Back when I was at the same stage you're at now. Back before I knew what sex was, what it really was. And you know what?" Toane did nothing. "I read this and it reminded me of myself, twenty years ago."

Astonishing as it was, the red fox could see how Pierce could be reminded of the writer he used to be way back when. In a way, it was flattering to be compared to the great Pierce Stanton at all, considering the grey fox was something of an idol to him.

" What I'm trying to say is, on the face of it, in the mechanics department, you have a dick and you have a paw, or a muzzle, or a tailhole stroking it enough times until it shoots. Right?"

" Um, right." Toane watched the other fox pace, his tail fluffed out and jittery behind him.

" That's okay, until you go just one step beyond the penis. Nerve endings, pulses, all going to the brain. Now, the brain is fucked up like that; on the one paw, it feels those mechanics and sends the signals to shoot or stall or whatever. On the other paw we have emotions, which opens up a whole 'nother realm of possibilities, good and bad, millions of 'em, in endless matchups. It's there that erotic fiction is born. What?"

" Did you just say '''nother?'"

" Oh. I guess I did. I do things like that when I'm on a roll." And Pierce did seem to be on a roll, like when his gearhead uncle talked a steady stream of auto-related nonsense. It was the same breed of hopeless optimism and endless information. But it was also confirmation that Pierce was truly in his element, and that he'd spent a lot of time thinking about it.

" But your stories don't go like that. Even your earlier ones were good. Narcissism for Two really blew me away." One of Pierce's first published works, Narcissism was the kind of story that set up a premise, only to blow it up halfway through. Starting with an anonymous hookup in a motel room, it had ended in suicide, the main jackal character somehow jealous of himself for having so many males, so often, in such whore-like fashion. He would look at his reflection, envy it because it looked like it was having more fun than he, and ultimately he'd hanged himself in front of a mirror, splatters of his cum running down the glass as he finally found peace. Granted, it was out there a bit, but Pierce had made it believable.

" Oh, God, you read that?" The grey fox clawed his head fur backwards. "That was some crap I cooked up in college! I never expected anyone to take it seriously."

" Well, I did, because it's that good."

" I'll have to take your word for it. What were we talking about again?"

" Penises."

" Right, penises. And, uh, and the nerves and emotions thing. I'm still correct in assuming you've done nothing yet?"

" Nothing, nope." Toane felt partly foolish for coming up here, only to be chided for his virginity. But he had to temper that with the fact that a popular and respected author was trying to help him out in his craft. If Ties was in need of a serious makeover, anything Pierce could give him would be valuable. So he stuffed that negative emotion down and forced his ears forward to listen.

" Okay," Pierce said, sitting back down in the recliner. "Well, from what I read, I can see how much you wanted to get it right. There's a lot of me in you." When Toane looked over, to confirm what he'd heard, the grey fox was grinning at his own joke. "You did some critical thinking on my style and tried to incorporate it into your story. It's not plagiarism, it's flattery. I like it."

" I didn't really have much to work with."

Pierce opened the notebook again, licking a finger pad and turning pages, stopping here and there to read. "I'd say, you could easily add ten thousand words of emotional gobbledygook to this whole thing, and it wouldn't read as long or boring."

Hearing that made Toane wince inside, though he hid what his ears wanted to do. He leaned forward, paws clasped between his knees, and stared at the floor, trying to remember passages from Ties in his head. The shootout, how Loewy and Giesso met, all the crap in the middle he struggled with, and then the penultimate scene?with predictable wolf-on-fox action?that led to them falling in love. It hurt, it really hurt, to hear what Pierce had to say. But he couldn't forget why he was here.

" Why do you look so dejected? I didn't say I hated it," Pierce said.

" Sorry." Toane sat up again and wiped his face with his paws, though thankfully there were no tears. That would have been outright childish. "Finishing that was the best feeling. Now, I'm...I'm right back in the middle of it, and...ten thousand words?"

" Welcome to writing," Pierce smirked. "It's not as bad as it sounds. This is normal, in fact. When I write a novel, this happens four or five times. You get used to it after a while."

Four or five times. "Really?" Toane didn't like doing any_thing four or five times over. Okay, there was that _one thing, but...

" Yeah. You send it to editors, and they send it back with changes. And you keep making changes until everyone's at a consensus. You know what else? You have to get used to never being satisfied."

Toane flailed, slapping the armrests frustratedly. He could feel his hackles rising. "Then why the hell do it in the first place, if you're never going to be happy with it?" Right after he'd finished speaking, he knew it had been the wrong thing to say in front of Pierce. He'd immediately gone the fatalistic route, the weakest and least mature route, and he sounded like an entitled child. "Sorry."

Chuckling, Pierce said, "You sound like me when I started. It's not like that, though. Most good writers are perfectionists, and it's that constant drive that pushes us to write more, and write better each time we do it." The grey fox had used "us," not "me."

" Do you really think I can do it?"

" Anyone can do it, Toane. It's the few who never give up who become the authors of the world." The red fox didn't expect those few words to hit him as hard as they did, nor did he expect a roiling wave of stress to come crashing down in his head at that moment. At first, he felt like a fool, feeling the knot travel from his stomach to his throat, his eyes screwed shut to keep it from bursting out. But when Pierce asked if he was okay, it all came bubbling out in a choked sob that sent him to his knees, gasping for breath.

He was too old for this, too old to be kneeling in his hero's house making an ass of himself with snot dripping off his snout, getting on the nice carpeting. The dramatic ramifications of Pierce's words had struck a chord with him, something that somehow resonated stronger than all the encouragement his father had given him over the years. Because Dad didn't really know Toane--his son, the gay fox, the porn writer--at all. He'd raised a good boy, but Pierce, just by being who he was, knew so much more already.

And so the red fox clutched an expensive-looking Ottoman and choked on his own saliva, his head turned to the side as his body vibrated with the effort. He was brought back to the day, when he was fifteen, when his father had sat him down and, in as steady a voice as he could muster, told Toane his Uncle Jason--not the gearhead--had been killed in a car wreck. The uncle who had been a second father, a close friend and confidant. How the red fox had curled up in the living room, shaking and drooling. He'd thought those days were over, now that he'd grown up. That didn't seem to be the case.

Toane barely had time to register Pierce's approach before the grey fox had come up behind him and wrapped his arms around his sides. But instead of yanking him off or telling him to get out, Pierce just covered the red fox's body with his, and held tight, and talked to him.

" Hey now, just calm down," the older fox said in a soothing voice, that was slightly strained but genuine. "You've already started, so go ahead and cry it out. I don't mind." That got Toane going all over again, the emotion of Pierce's hospitality and empathy. No one had held him like that since Uncle Jason had died, and even then his father believed in the invisible "guy barrier" when it came to matters of emotion.

Despite how ridiculous the concept was, Toane felt loved. He didn't bother trying to understand or reconcile the thoughts or feelings; for now he just wanted to feel them. And he realized, with no small amount of shame, that he'd gone about it all wrong with his novel. It wasn't because he was a bad writer, it was because he simply had no experience upon which to draw. Until now.

He was_Loewy. He _was the fox crying in the arms of Giesso, except Giesso happened to be another, older, chubbier, greyer fox. So what? When he felt Pierce's paws start to move, he clamped his own over them and held them on his belly. He wanted to keep feeling, to take it all in and lock those mental notes up in a forget-proof safe in his brain. In Ties, the sentence had gone, "Loewy cried and cried while his wolf held him." But now it was tears, it was snot, it was warmth and tightness and intimacy and Pierce's voice and Toane's hard, hard sheath that he hadn't noticed until his system was lit up like a Christmas tree. Nor had he noticed a similarly hard sheath pressed just where it seemed it was supposed to be, causing an involuntary hike in the red fox's tail.

" Are you alright?" asked the grey fox, maintaining his embrace. The wisps of his breath stirred the minute hairs in Toane's ear, and he moaned. "I guess you are. Sorry if it's a little close, but you scared me there for a bit and I didn't want you concussing yourself."

" No, it's fine." He _would_be fine, too, if he could catch his breath and clear his thoughts.

" Don't go dying in my house," Pierce chuckled. "I don't want to deal with the paperwork." Toane let out a barking laugh, his body bouncing with the movement, against that bulge. He knew he shouldn't be so aroused, but it seemed as if every nerve in him was on some new, raw edge. "Now, would you mind telling me what that was about, or is it a private thing?"

Toane hesitated. He was mostly calm, but the grey fox still had a hold of him, and while it was a bit excessive, there didn't seem to be a need to stop it. "Not private, just an old memory, but that's not what happened. I just...I just think something snapped in my head when you said that about the real writers not being satisfied. You said that and, and, all the stress must have blown up at the same time."

Pierce's paws parted, and the grey fox sat back away from Toane, giving him room to turn around. "Writing a novel at a leisurely pace without a deadline doesn't exactly strike me as stressful. Pardon me."

" It's more than that," the red fox said, wiping his nose on his sleeve and not meeting Pierce's eyes.

" It's me."

" Yeah. I mean, no! You don't know what I mean."

" Not really. Enlighten me." A car drove by outside, the noise of its tires the only sound in the room. The red fox almost swore he could hear Pierce's heart beating. He could certainly smell the other fox from where he sat. Exertion, a little residual fear. Arousal. Story ideas began forming in his head.

" I didn't know what I was doing until I came here. I thought I had a pretty good story, and then you read it. I expected that you would be a harsh critic, but you're a lot nicer than I thought."

" Thank you?"

Smiling, Toane continued. "I don't want to sound cliché, but when you were holding me, I knew I'd gotten everything wrong because I had nothing to compare it to."

Now it was Pierce's turn to smile. "You know, I didn't plan that out. I was prepared to do the Heimlich, if that's what it took. But I'm not going to lie: it felt nice." Whatever blood had drained from Toane's sheath was right back down there. "Sorry if it was too forward, again."

" No, it was good. I mean, awesomely good. I don't know how to explain it, other than when I felt it, I could easily add a couple pages from what I felt. Does that make any sense?"

" It was the same way with me. I can show you stories from when I was a virgin, and even though they're passable, there's something missing. Once I got my cherry popped, it changed." The grey fox's frank words were doing nothing to help Toane's erection, which throbbed needfully beneath his clothing.

"You got a head start on me," said the red fox.

" Not by much, remember. I bet that's something you can't search for on Wikipedia."

" No way."

" So you're the one who has a head start on me," the grey fox said, clasping his calves and rocking a bit. "Probably discovered your dick before you were ten, horny at the push of a button, you know what I'm talking about. Hell, I'm still a hair trigger!" Pierce adjusted himself for emphasis, but what he did was outline his equipment even more severely instead of hiding it. He wasn't entirely comfortable, but neither was Toane.

Silence settled once again, each fox regarding the other. One the apprentice, one the worldly master. Toane didn't know what he wanted to happen, but part of him wanted to give in, and he suspected he saw the same in Pierce. The scent of vulpine was becoming overwhelmingly dizzying.

" So," the grey fox began, "tell me more about what you felt that was different." His voice was lower, huskier. He wasn't moving. He wanted to hear Toane say it aloud, say what they both knew.

" No one...no one's ever held me like that before. I mean, I've been held, but...you're different, and I don't know why. I just know what I felt." Words escaped without meaning, tangling in his mind.

" Like..."

" Your paws. They were warm, and you leaned over me, so you had your whole body on top of me. I couldn't move, but I didn't want to." Nothing left but the obvious: "I...I could feel you. Back there."

Pierce smiled. "So could I. I apologize for that; it wasn't my intention, but it was a welcome side effect. Did you learn something from that?"

Toane's heart triphammered all throughout his chest. What was he going to do, lie to the guy? If so, then what was the point in coming here at all for advice, if he couldn't be honest about his feelings? "I learned that I don't like being teased very much." He didn't mean for it to sound as hokey as it did, but, double meaning or not, he'd said it.

City light reflected within Pierce's pupils, then disappeared when the grey fox crawled over to sit next to Toane, his tail swishing the air behind him as he moved. His scent was stronger now, telling the red fox more than he ever wanted to know, sparking areas of his senses that had been dull before now. He clicked his throat, swallowed, and said, "Who said I was teasing?"

Oh Christ. Toane's mouth felt like he'd just swallowed a hundred cotton balls, and he noted to himself that the expression was quite accurate. "Nobody," he replied in a soft, tiny voice.

" Right. I wasn't expecting this. I should tell you I don't make a habit if seducing my readers." Pierce let go of his legs, allowing his pants to spread even tighter up against his bulge, and he placed a paw atop it, savoring the feeling selfishly.

" It sounds like something I would write."

"A bad, cliché 'fan visits his idol only to get his brains fucked out' story?"

" Yeah."

"It doesn't have to be cliché, and it doesn't have to be bad," Pierce said, now stroking the fabric that covered his arousal. Even though Toane's head swam, the red fox could tell the writer was still testing the waters, purposefully ambivalent in case one or both of them decided not to make a move. He had a feeling he was going to have to be the antagonist, but the harder he got the less he cared.

" Might make it hotter if I didn't have to claim it as fiction." Toane felt himself giving the grey fox a coy smile, very corny, it was working.

"True stories are so much more interesting than fiction. That extra connection really increases the reader's, um, relatability to the author." Pierce's tail thwacked the floor with soft, eager strikes. "But you won't know how to write it until you try." And when the grey fox crooked a finger, Toane came willingly, wiping the remnants of his tears from his fur and sniffing to clear his nose

He sidled up against the grey fox, whose arm was extended to welcome him, then curled around his chest to pull him close. From here, he could smell Pierce's cologne through his shirt, and hear just how fast the writer's heart was beating. He'd told the truth about not making a habit of seducing fans. He was nervous as fuck. But Toane felt great, and he nuzzled up against Pierce's throat to tell him that.

It seemed like the thing to do--what he would have written, anyway--and Pierce churred a bit at the gesture. He hadn't heard a fox churr since he was a kit, and hearing it from this guy immediately put him at ease. There was no more awkwardness, just horniness. Toane put his paw on Pierce's chest and began to rub.

His mind ran amuck with information, taking in everything he was thinking, feeling and smelling down to the smallest detail. He had no idea how patient he could be when all he wanted to do was get off. His cock raged, swollen and half-knotted in his sheath, yet he took his time (several minutes, at least they seemed longer) tracing his finger- and palm pads over the grey fox's belly and chest, grazing the slight humps of pectoral muscle and the larger hump that was Pierce's stomach, pushed out because of his bent position. He wasn't nervous to touch the writer's cock, he merely wanted to make it last as long as possible before one or both of them came.

Pierce's paw stroked along the red fox's back in slow movements, going no further because it was trapped where it was. But this was Toane's show for now, his shots to call, and when his paw lit upon the swollen sheath, he got squeezed in return. He didn't know why he expected it to feel any different from his own, but when he felt the arcing shaft and sizable knot, the mere fact that it was someone else's excited him further.

The grey fox's pants were easy to undo, and Pierce's positive reactions told him he could go faster if he wanted. But when he pulled the boxer-briefs down below the writer's balls, Pierce stopped him before he could dive in.

" What do you see?"

"What?"

" Take it in. How would you describe it." Pierce gave his shaft a tug, milking out a string of pre onto his shirt, still tucked in. "I know you want to keep going, but you want to think critically." There was a quaver in those words; the grey fox didn't want to stop at all. But he did have a point.

Toane grasped the writer's knot and lifted, and he saw what Pierce meant: so much to be described, catalogued in his mind, the matted fur, the crisscross of veins running the length of pink flesh, the way the knot was much darker than the rest of him. And the scent, strongest of all. Male musk, Pierce's cologne, testosterone, sweat, all combined to drive the red fox crazy. But he took it all in, and he knew how he felt. He could never study himself this way.

" Now put it in your mouth." For never having practiced, not even on anything as modest as a cucumber, Toane went down without a problem. Pierce's taste was almost as strong as his scent, and not a bit of it was unpalatable. Cupping the grey fox's balls in his paw, he closed his eyes and felt, rather than heard or saw, whether or not he was giving pleasure. He didn't have to look up to know he had just grazed a tooth too close, or listen for changes in Pierce's breathing. He found out, to his surprise and relief, that sucking a cock didn't involve suction at all, but relied on lips and tongue and throat instead. The claws digging into his side gave Toane great clarity on how close the grey fox was.

Suddenly, Pierce grunted. "Coming. Hold still and jerk the knot, oh yes, ohhhhh God..." Toane did as he was told, making quick, short thrusts behind the bulbous swelling that he couldn't believe would fit in anyone's backside. His muzzle was filled with a warm salty explosion that felt like he was drinking Pierce in wholly, a concentrated version of the grey fox's being. It filled him up, he swallowed, and it filled up again. For once, the stories he'd read about "cum floods" and "spooge lakes" weren't too far from the truth, although Pierce was probably an exception to the rule.

"I didn't know if you were going to pull off, but I wanted you to experience a mouthful of cum," Pierce said, trying to act nonchalant about it. There was that, and there was the fact that the grey fox most likely wanted to dump his load in a warm muzzle instead of on his stomach. Either way, Toane smacked his lips and swallowed again.

" I didn't think I'd like it as much as I did," he said. "The texture's something to get used to, but I like the taste."

"Thank you. Did you make mental notes?"

" Oh, yeah."

Pierce sat back, massaging his sheath back over his knot as it retreated. "Truth be told, I didn't think I was going to come that fast. I had wanted to warm up and show you how intercourse felt--for research--but I might be done for a while." Toane blushed again, his erection almost painfully hard.

"You could have just said you wanted to fuck me."

" Well, yeah, but..." The grey fox shook his head and smiled. "Heh, I guess sometimes the smaller words work better."

"Less is more."

" In the case of fiction, absolutely. You find out that there are just so many ways you can put a dick in a hole before you start concentrating on plot and character development more than the sex. And _that's_when you really start getting good. People come to you and they tell you things like, 'Oh my God, I liked your story so much I forgot to paw off to it!' And then you know it meant something." Pierce tucked the last of himself back into his sheath, but he shucked his pants rather than pulling them up. "What about you?" He indicated the red fox's bulge. "Do you want to 'make notes' on the receiver's side of a blowjob from an old hack?"

" No."

"Oh?"

Toane unzipped himself, his clothes joining Pierce's on the floor. His cock was finally free, jutting out from his body at a right angle. "I want to make notes on what it's like to get a blowjob from someone I really admire and respect."

" Despite being a slut?"

"You said yourself that you don't do this often."

" Touché," the grey fox said, crawling over to Toane and sliding his muzzle all the way up to the red fox's pubic fur.

*

Toane hadn't had much time to make many mental notes about the indescribable feeling of a first blowjob before he held the grey fox's head still while he pumped his climax through. He'd begun to get overstimulated, and by that time he just wanted to feel good and let himself go. And for the first time, he thought, he felt energized after an orgasm.

The two talked about what had happened at length...not the taboo-ness or the morality of it, but the pure physicality of sharing one's body with another. It was almost a quiz of sorts, with Pierce questioning nearly every one of Toane's observations and his reactions to them, and discussing how it varied from person to person and partner to partner. The grey fox wasn't just a slut who had a lot of sex and wrote about it. He was worldly wise in the art of weaving stories with just the right amount of real-life detail to make the fiction seem like nonfiction.

Nevertheless, Toane was floored when Pierce asked him to stay the night. "Because it's way too late for you to brave the crazies on the trains," he'd said. And while service ran for another hour, it was almost tomorrow. Plus, the writer had hinted at further "note-taking sessions" if the red fox hung around. Pierce was too tired for a second round, but there was always the morning. Toane offered to take the couch downstairs, but he was promptly rebuffed and told the bed was much more comfortable and roomy enough for plenty of bodies. This last he'd said with a knowing wink, and Toane sprang another mini-boner.

As he sat in the grey fox's big bed, propped up by pillows, he listened to the water running in the adjacent bathroom and tried to imagine if this was what it would be like to live with a lover/partner/whatever. But something was off, and he knew what it was: they were two random people, and the love wasn't there. Still, it was a look into what could be, were he to find someone at some point, and it was encouraging.

Pierce had given the Moleskine notebook back to him before they'd mounted the stairs, and it now sat in his lap, somehow heavier than it had been before the grey fox had read through it. He flipped through the pages of aborted ideas, his novella-that-could-easily-be-a-novel, and endless notes on characters and life and all the little things he thought up every day. They all seemed possible now, instead of dead on arrival. The old adage about writing what you know was just as true as ever, now that he knew more about what he wrote. Plus, it felt fucking awesome.

The bathroom door opened and out stepped the grey fox. He was completely nude, as was Toane, because they both admitted they slept better that way, and modesty was kind of moot by this point. He might not have the perfect body, but he had a normal body, and the paunch of a belly, unrefined musculature and average endowment was more endearing than repelling. Toane found himself wondering why the writer was still single, but that question was just none of his business.

" I'm glad you decided to come," the grey fox said, lifting the covers and sliding into the cool, crisp sheets. His thigh was warm resting against Toane's. "Even if we'd just had a brainstorming and proofreading session, I would have been happy. But this is pretty damn cool too."

"You're the one who wrote back," the red fox replied. "Was more than happy to make it, if only to get some meaningful crit."

" Is that what they call it nowadays?" Pierce chuckled, then yawned. "Oh, wow, I'm just gone. If I try to stay awake any longer, I'll get incoherent. Are you gonna stay up with that thing?"

"I've got a few things I want to jot down quick, but I'm winding down," Toane lied. He almost wished he was sleepy, so he could sidle up to the grey fox and share the warmth.

" Alright. Well, sleep well, and we can go over more 'notes' in the morning," said Pierce with another of those dramatic faux winks. Then he leaned over and tilted his head, thought better of it, and just pecked the red fox on the cheek instead. "Better leave it til later. Morning kisses are my specialty, and I don't want to give you any half-assed examples of making out."

"You're the master," Toane replied, opening up the notebook and twisting the pen out.

" Quit making me feel old," the grey fox said, yawned, rolled over and went still. Toane lay with the notebook on his lap, eyes closed, listening to Pierce's breathing as it slowed down and became more regular, until he was reasonably sure the writer was asleep. After trying to understand what had happened this evening, all he could do was grin and be thankful. Naked next to Pierce Stanton in his own bed. Unbelievable.

It had been less than three hours since he'd walked through the front door and left behind Toane the timid no-risks amateur writer foxboi. He could still remember every detail, every feeling and scent and most of the words, they were so fresh in his mind. If he didn't get them down now he might never be able to recall them. For now, sleep would wait. But, how to begin?

Just start at the beginning, stupid. Just make it catchy. The red fox put pen to paper, pressing gently as he stroked out the first few words of what he hoped would be a step up in his life:

The train was almost deserted. Nobody left over from rush hour, save for a few stragglers and probably a couple bums. It was dark outside. He read it over, but it left a bad taste in his mouth. "Well, that sucked," he muttered through his teeth, but it was exactly how he'd felt on the train earlier. It was real life, and it was an accurate presentation of what he'd seen and experienced. Maybe the straightforward approach was more about nuance than brute fictional force. The more he wrote, he supposed, the more he would get into his element and incorporate the things his readers would like to see.

With thoughts about the next morning to fuel him, he touched the nib to the paper and drove it home.