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Velvet & Bone – The Hairy Fig

© 2025 Bruno Hirschkoff

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Part 1

Sequel of “A Father’s Praise”

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Stillwater Cove, 1420AD

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Kristian & Lukyan

Lukyan Velasco’s mind whirled and swum with a maelstrom of emotions as the slender wolf walked alongside Sammael, the fallow stag, and Kristian, the elk, towards their hometown of Stillwater Cove. The three had spent the hot summer’s afternoon at the Temple of Dytaea – Sammael’s home – a mile or so north of the town in the forest, while Sammael helped to re-thatch the roof of the granary before the summer harvest arrived.

While Sammael had worked, Kristian and Lukyan had their first proper one-on-one conversation, sitting, as it turned out, on the grave-barrow of the Temple.

The elk and the wolf had first crossed paths almost four years earlier, the very first time Kristian, in Sammael’s company, had ventured into the Hairy Fig. The Fig was Stillwater Cove’s best-known and largest adult venue, and boasted a range of intimate lounges, private rooms and a bathhouse, in addition to a tavern. Lukyan was a courtesan. He lived and worked at the Fig, and had immediately been drawn to the handsome young elk and his natural, uninhibited curiosity. For the first couple of years, Lukyan and Kristian never saw one another except when the elk visited the Hairy Fig. But as that began to occur more frequently, Lukyan began to develop a friendship with him, and with Sammael – the two Cervids seemed to be a package deal. Gradually, they grew closer, but until only a year or so ago, they’d never been sexually intimate. And even then, it had mostly been teasing, with the occasional brief session of drunken, horny fumbling.

Lukyan was surprised by how comfortable he felt dropping his guard around Kristian – it had just felt right, somehow. And the way Kristian had shown such tenderness and compassion to him caused his heart to surge in his chest. Today was the first time Lukyan had truly seen Kristian. And, perhaps more importantly, it was the first time Lukyan felt seen by Kristian, beyond the fleeting moments of lust they had shared in the harem rooms of the Hairy Fig. It was a feeling the wolf was entirely unprepared for, and it had set his heart afire.

He wanted nothing more than to get Kristian alone. To know him, in every conceivable way. Emotionally, physically, sexually, with an intensity Lukyan was well aware of being related to his deeply traumatic youth. His desperation to please, to be accepted and loved, often manifested in ways that many seemed to find too intense. It was sharply at odds with his profession as a sex worker, even if that played a role in moderating his libido around those with whom he wanted genuine friendships and relationships.

The elk was some years younger than the wolf, and a similar age to Sammael. Kris was well built; his shoulders and chest were broad, his waist narrow, and his legs were well-muscled. His hips had a delectable curve to them, and Lukyan’s eye was invariably drawn to the shape of his buttocks within his leggings when the elk’s tail flagged and caused the back of his tunic to rise.

But Lukyan’s desire for Kristian was deeper than base carnality, even if most would perceive it as little more. It was through the intense sensation of sexual intimacy that Lukyan found his inner peace, and his truest self. His body spoke in ways his mind couldn’t, a secret, tactile language through which he was able to express himself, feelings and emotions that were otherwise bound and caged inside him.

Tonight, Lukyan thought, he would have the opportunity to know Kristian more intimately than he yet had. Over the preceding months, the elk had been withdrawn, sexually – a stark change from his usual casual openness that caught the attention of those around him. Sammael was the cause. While no one suggested the fallow buck had intended any hurt, his singular obsession with a key difference between them – Kristian being circumcised, and Sammael not – had driven the elk to a new feeling of resentment for it. Sammael was indelicate, but at least he acknowledged that his actions and words had caused hurt. Tonight was Sammael’s idea. The three of them were going to the Hairy Fig, and it was intended to be Sammael’s opportunity to make amends. To reaffirm to Kristian that he was not any less than Sammael.

Lukyan’s mind lingered on the possibilities. The opportunity he may have to worship the elk’s body, to hold him and taste his breath, to feel him tense and shiver and jolt in pleasure, for the wolf to evoke in him the same carnal desire he felt quivering in his chest at the merest thought of such intimacy.

He only prayed that Kristian would be able to hear the language Lukyan so desperately wanted to speak to him, with his body and his soul.

*

Dusk was falling by the time Lukyan, Kristian and Sammael arrived back in the heart of Stillwater Cove. Although it was mid-summer, a dense cloud had rolled over the coastal town, diffusing the green light of Seilyr, the verdant moon, and causing the glow of the street lanterns to reflect gold off the underside of the heavy sky, beneath pitched shingle and thatch roofs. A few fat, heavy raindrops began to fall as the three made their way down the tow path of the Artisans Union Canal, between warehouses and workshops shuttered for Ysion’s Day. Lukyan’s sensitive lupine nose twitched to the scent of petrichor in the air. The restless rumble of distant thunder spoke of a storm soon to break, and the wolf glanced westward to where the cloud was densest, just as it was lit momentarily from within by lightning. He walked a little faster.

Kristian, of the three of them, seemed to relish the latent power in the heavy sky. He became more animated than usual, all but dancing in the street as they walked, and raising his arms to the sky. Lukyan found himself watching the elk closely, and felt warmth around his heart for the Cervid’s obvious affinity for the forces of nature that bore down upon them. As he danced, Kristian produced a small wooden flute from within his clothing and played a short, repeating tune on it, which Lukyan recognised as a Dytaean prayer-chant to Lakesh, the storm goddess.

“A stranger might struggle to pick which of you is the Dytaean,” Lukyan observed to Sammael, as Kristian cavorted a few paces ahead of them, laughing in glee as a roll of thunder erupted into a sharp crack that split the sky.

Sammael hated storms. The thunder crack caused a flinch in the fallow buck, and his tail was held tightly downward.

“Lakesh stirs!” Kristian called back to them, “and Dytaea awaits her like a lover in the night! You forget, Luk, that I too suckled at the teat of the Bringer of Dreams, not only of the Storm Goddess.”

Sammael and Lukyan exchanged a glance, and the wolf broke into a chuckle. Sammael’s eyes narrowed. Lukyan caught his expression, but found that he could not suppress his smile. Kristian pranced back to them, tucking away his flute, and slipped his arm around Lukyan’s slender waist. The wolf, without thinking, returned the gesture and turned to briefly nuzzle Kristian’s cheek.

Sammael’s eyes widened, and jealous anger flickered across his features. Abruptly, he turned on one hoof and walked briskly away.

“Sammael, wait!” Lukyan called, jogging to catch up to the fallow stag.

Sammael whirled and Lukyan collided with him, nearly knocking them both to the ground.

“Wait for what?” Sam said. “I saw that, the way you look at him! I should have known, the moment you had any time alone with him, you’d be all over him!”

Lukyan flinched and flattened his ears. Sammael’s tone was sharp. Kristian caught up to them and squared up to Sammael, walking backward in front of him.

“Sam, what in Hadriel has come over you?” The elk asked. “Don’t you still want to come to the Fig with us?”

Sammael grunted. “Not if I’m going to be a third wheel. I should not be surprised, I suppose. The whole point of tonight was for me to apologise to you, Kris, but clearly you two have other things on your minds. So I shall leave you to your newfound romance!”

Lukyan was shocked into silence. Did Sammael really think his feelings were so shallow as that? He glanced at the elk, and saw him similarly confused, and shocked.

“I… cannot help how I feel, Sammael,” Lukyan said quietly, his hackles rising at the sudden need to defend his feelings. “I…did not know you had any feelings for Kristian! Nothing is… I mean, we have not…”

“I did not know you had such feelings for me, either, Sammael!” Kristian added. “And I am sorry to see you this way. Perhaps it is the storm, I know you do not like them. But this… jealousy you seem to have, suddenly…”

“I hear you, Kris,” Sammael sneered, “and you, Lukyan. I shall be little more than a hindrance to your continued mutual exploration tonight, it seems. Falling in love the very day you find out you’ve both been similarly cut, fancy that. Very well. I shall take my leave. Maybe he’ll get you off easier than I can, Lukyan, since he’s so used to his own being so numb he can barely feel anything.”

Lukyan stared frostily at the fallow buck. The wolf had been dimly aware that Sammael’s commentary about Kristian’s circumcision had been contributing to the elk developing negative feelings about it, but he’d never heard such words from the stag himself, particularly dripping with jealous vitriol as they were. It felt to Lukyan as if Sammael had revealed a part of himself he usually kept hidden behind his playfully hedonistic exterior. Lukyan felt anger rise like bile in his throat, although it was frustrated and impotent, because before he could find the words to calm Sammael down or formulate a response, the fallow buck had spun on his hoof and stormed off alone between two warehouses, just as a rolling peal of thunder shook the heavens, and a slow, heavy, warm rain began to fall.

Lukyan stood silently for a moment, and then turned to Kristian.

Kristian blinked rapidly a few times, frowned, opened his mouth, closed it again, exhaled sharply through his nose, stammered a couple of times, while he processed such a sudden change in the demeanour of the evening.

The rain intensified, soaking their hair and fur quickly.

Lukyan trembled slightly, and felt Kristian’s hands squeeze his shoulders gently. He met the elk’s gaze again, and saw not derision or distaste, but warmth and hope. The wolf’s tailtip twitched nervously between his legs.

“Are you alright, Lukyan? I had no idea Sammael had any feelings for me besides lusting over me and getting himself off over our… differences,” Kris said.

“I think you have the measure of him,” Lukyan said coolly, “at least as far as tonight’s plans were concerned. That was… I don’t… I’m not certain that I understand what just occurred, but… is that the way he has been speaking to you about… it?”

“We have known one another since we were button-antlered fawns, uhm…” Kristian trailed off, and Lukyan had the distinct feeling he was holding something back. “He… has just always been there, in some capacity. He’s always enjoyed that I am cut and he isn’t, but yes, that is the tone he has taken lately. I’m numb, dried out, can’t get off without him, that sort of thing.”

Lukyan squirmed, and managed a thin smile. “Ych. He certainly does have… a fascination with you. You’ll have to tell me how you actually met him, when you’re comfortable. But I would not wish to darken the mood between us by focusing on that just now.”

Kristian dropped his hands from Lukyan’s slender shoulders and fell in beside the wolf to walk slowly alongside him in the rain. Then he smirked at Lukyan. “Sammael’s sexual fascination with me has always been shallow and… blunt. I didn’t mind it, generally, because I can be similarly blunt in my desires. It’s just been… difficult recently. He’s very possessive and jealous and it has been wearing thin. I am more than just a cock, you know?”

Lukyan’s heart raced. “I think I understand, now, how he has made you feel. He has a jealous side I was not expecting, and can be sharp in his comments. And you are far more than a cock. I’ll admit that part of you intrigues me, of course, but as a part of the whole creature.”

“And I’m interested in you for far more than both of us being circumcised, you know,” the elk smirked.

Lukyan felt Kristian’s hand bump his, then capture it. Their fingers entwined, and Lukyan’s breath caught in his throat in a powerful uprising of emotion. Kristian squeezed his hand, and Lukyan once again met the elk’s gaze. Kristian’s eyes were the colour of ripe chestnuts, soft and gentle, and sparkled with mischief and humour even in a serious moment. Lukyan felt entirely unworthy of his affection, but then, he always did—it was his curse, in the wolf’s mind. The Arahanic upbringing he’d suffered through was often cruel and demanded abstinence of the heart as well as the body. Lukyan blinked raindrops out of his eyes and wrestled with an intense urge to push Kristian against the nearest solid object and pleasure him until he…

Abruptly, a bright flash of lightning illuminated the low cloud, followed instantly by a deafening crack of thunder. Lukyan yelped and recoiled, and Kristian laughed good-naturedly. The rain began to turn to hail.

“Ahh, I think we should seek shelter for a time, Lakesh seems intent on making herself known…” Kris observed.

They were nearing The Harrows, a public square at the junction of five roads. It was not far to the Hairy Fig from there, but the hail would make the journey painful. Happily, this part of Stillwater Cove was dense, and there were many row houses whose upper levels overhung the lower, some nearly touching overhead over the narrow streets. Here, shopfronts shuttered for the night faced the streets in the undercrofts of the row houses a few steps up from street level, while their occupants slept on the floors above. The rain had caused many of the street lanterns to gutter, deepening the gathering darkness of the night, although in the undercroft of the rows, the lanterns continued to glow brightly.

Kristian pulled Lukyan up narrow, grimy steps to the undercroft of the rows, where several other people had taken shelter from the sudden hailstorm. Most here were regular people going about their evening business. Kristian kept walking, leading Lukyan towards a darker, deeper and much older section of The Harrows. Here, the undercrofts were low and uneven, with heavy, gnarled and soot-blackened beams overhead and far fewer people. Lukyan glanced around. Several lanterns had been deliberately extinguished in the deeper recesses of this undercroft, and he could see several pairs of eyes glittering in the deep shadows. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Lukyan saw many of them were street whores and their clients, and that they were dry, indicating that they had already been there when the hailstorm forced others to seek shelter in their secret spaces. They were not supposed to be working on Ysion’s Day, but few could deny them the lure of the extra coin they could make. Several eyed the wolf and elk warily as Kristian led Lukyan boldly into ‘their’ section of the undercroft, continuing to engage in acts that were, strictly speaking, forbidden.

The hail drowned out most noise, but Lukyan’s nose twitched at the scent of sex and aroused bodies. The complex scents of Cervid, Equid, Caprin and even Laska pheromones permeated the humid space, overlaid with the dominant scents of lamp oil and the storm. The wolf felt warmth and pressure in his loins at the thought of being pressed by Kristian into one of those shadowy places and…

“Not a fuckin’ word, wolf,” hissed one of the whores, a grey dapple-pelted Aethyrfiodh mare, catching his eye even while her hips continued to gyrate against the body of her client, who was leaning against a stout wooden column with an expression of drunken pleasure on his Caprin face. She was fully dressed, with her skirts hiked up around her hips and her bodice pulled down to expose her tits, into which the Caprin was drooling.

Lukyan was momentarily confused why she would single him out for her warning, but then remembered his style of dress was that of an Arahanic ordinary, and Arahanites took a dim view of ‘common’ street prostitution. He gave her a conspiratorial wink, then unbuttoned and parted his rain-soaked Arahanic-style robe to expose the red sash he wore around his waist beneath it, a common mark worn by courtesans. “My lips are sealed, my friend.”

The Aethyrfiodh mare grunted breathily, and Lukyan found he could hear the wet slap of her body against her client’s even over the roar of the hail, this close to her. He leaned closer and smirked, openly watching their congress.

“Y’come any closer’n I’ll ‘afta charge ya, puppy,” the mare laughed. “Tuppence ta watch, if ye’re one o’ them types-a perverts.”

“By the sound of it, being watched makes you wetter,” Kristian interjected, peering around Lukyan from behind him.

Lukyan’s tail wagged.

“This is our patch ye’ve dragged yer pretty arses into,” said another whore, from behind them. “If yer not buyin, move along…”

“Is that how you treat every prospective client?” Lukyan interjected, turning to face her.

Kristian watched this exchange with amusement, and leaned against Lukyan, draping his arm around the wolf’s waist inside his robe. Lukyan returned the gesture, daring even to turn in and playfully nip Kristian’s cheek. The street whore stammered, staring up at the handsome wolf and his elk companion. She was a thickly-built, raven-maned donkey with crooked teeth and a pronounced limp, and wore a much-mended dress that might once have been a fetching shade of red.

“Well are ya buyin, pretty boys?” she said with blunt flirtatiousness, fluttering her eyelashes first to Lukyan, then to Kristian, and unlacing the bodice of her dress. “Two pence fer a tug, three fer a suck, four t’fuck… an’ I’ll take ya both fer six. Tuppence extra iff’n ye don’t wanna pull em out when ye squirt…”

“Oh stow it, Ymma,” laughed a third whore, a tiny fieldmouse who stood barely above Lukyan’s waist height. “Can’t you see they’re together, an’ the puppy’s a whore like us? Let ‘em shelter! They probably came ‘ere because they want a little show… y’know, fire ‘em up a bit…”

They’re together… the simple observation resonated inside Lukyan’s skull, and he could not stop his tail wagging, or the bloom of warmth in his chest.

Ymma the donkey pouted, but she relented and stepped aside to allow Lukyan and Kristian deeper into the shelter as, with a flash of lightning and a booming roar of thunder, the hail intensified, beginning to bounce into the undercroft and skitter around where they stood. The Aethyrfiodh mare swore loudly, and briefly dismounted her Caprin client with a wet slurp and a splat of fluid hitting the floorboards, only to relocate him against the inner facade of the row house. There, she once more hiked her dress up around her hips, raised one hoof, braced it on the windowsill of the shopfront, and unceremoniously shoved his bright pink, wet cock back inside her. The Caprin was not a Seilyrian, Lukyan noted.

*

Across Asantrea, there are broadly two groups among the population – Seilyrians, and Naturals. They are categorised most easily by the shape and form of their genitals, although there are a range of other, more subtle markers – pheromones, sensory differences, dietary needs and the like. Seilyrians are the more populous group, those who had stood upright at the behest of the Gods of Seilyr when they had walked Asantrea during the Fifth Age of Ammunash – in short, those who were ‘created’ by the Gods in their own image. Seilyrians tend to be omnivorous and often have far less acute senses of smell and hearing.

Naturals, on the other hand, evolved on Asantrea independent of the Gods, and retain the genital forms and sensory acuity of their non-sapient ancestors. Lukyan is a Natural, being Lupa Incultus_, while Kristian and Sammael are Seilyrians, with broadly comparable genital shapes despite being of different species._

A Seilyrian and a Natural of the same species are typically able to conceive young together, whereupon the traits of each ancestral clade are distributed by genetic selection. Some scholars believe that the evolution of Naturals was greatly accelerated by relationships formed between ancient Naturals and early Seilyrians before the final sacrifice of Ammunash.

*

Lukyan wondered whether Kristian realised he was Lupa Incultus. It had never come up in conversation between them, but Sammael could easily have mentioned it. He leaned against the facade of the row house barely an arms’ length from the mare and her client, and Kristian gently pressed against him. Lukyan’s ear twitched. He could hear the rhythmic wet sounds of their congress, and the suppressed, shaky breathing they shared, even over the clatter and rumble of the hailstorm. Then he felt Kristian’s muzzle against his ear and gasped.

“They’re all doing it,” Kris whispered to him. “All except the donkey. The fieldmouse over here’s stroking her client off under his tunic.”

Lukyan exhaled slowly through his lips and calmed his heartbeat. Kristian’s arms were around his body still, inside his open robe. He could smell the elk’s wet fur, feel his warmth through their clothing, and taste his breath. And he could hear Kristian’s excitement in his whispered words. The wolf had already been aroused, but now he felt the rhythmic, watery spritz of fluid typical to Lupa men of his anatomy commence inside his clothing as his knot thickened. He subtly pinched and adjusted the crotch of his trousers to trap it down his leg, and felt it slip out from within the soft loincloth he wore to keep it contained. Kristian chuckled in his ear.

“I saw that,” the elk murmured. “Are you getting excited because of them? Or because of me?”

The wolf stifled a whimper of desire, and finally, his resolve crumbled. Kristian was obviously interested in him, and Lukyan cast his dice.

The wolf turned to face Kristian in the darkness of the sex-drenched undercroft. He must have had sex in his eyes, because Kristian’s widened in surprise momentarily. Lukyan gripped Kristian’s shoulders and spun the elk, pushing him bodily up against the facade of the row house. He pushed his body up against Kristian’s, and cupped the elk’s cheeks in his hands. His muzzle, lips parted, lingered alongside Kristian’s, a tentative moment of latent desire and the delicious thrill of anticipation, which Lukyan savoured like an elixir. Lukyan could feel firmness in Kristian’s groin, and pushed his thigh up against it. Kristian grunted quietly and ground forward, and the wolf felt one of Kristian’s hands rise to brush back tendrils of his wet hair from his face. Lukyan felt a sexual urgency for the elk, a desperation to entwine their bodies in shared ecstasy.

“Oh, it’s you, Kris. It’s all you,” he murmured.

Then their lips met in an achingly needful, oddly chaste caress. A momentary sharing of warmth, of lips on lips, a tender brush and tremble that ached with longing and desire; tentative at first, as the wolf asked a silent question with his body. Kristian answered in kind, with a soft and gentle kiss, little more than his lips lingering against Lukyan’s for a deliberate moment.

Lukyan tilted his muzzle, and pressed forward. The world around them seemed to fade into the background of consciousness. The whore riding the Caprin man right behind Lukyan, the fieldmouse spitting wetly into her hand as she continued masturbating her roe stag partner, Ymma the donkey’s crude observations and gestures, even the hailstorm felt muted, distant and detached from that moment. Kristian’s lips were soft and warm, his arms were strong and sure in their hold around his slender body, and nothing else mattered, save his surging excitement, driven by his hammering heart. Lukyan’s mind whirled. Was this truly happening?

His thoughts came into sharp focus when he felt Kristian’s hand move, slipping downward and across the front of his thigh. He deepened their kiss with a trembling whimper of anticipation, then gasped sharply when the elk’s palm pressed warmly over the trapped firmness of his erection, exploring him with subtle movements of his fingers. Lukyan’s hips jolted firmly forward against Kristian’s touch, and he felt his arousal squirt wetly down his leg, the fluid cooling and chilling quickly in the fabric of his clothing. Kristian’s fingers circled around the crown of his tip, and Lukyan heard the elk exhale shakily when the wolf’s wetness transmitted through the fabric to his touch. His fingers plucked softly over his tip, eliciting another flex and another equally wet squirt from Lukyan, then another, and another. His knot ached with arousal, engorged and hard. He wagged subtly inside his robe and pushed his hips into Kristian’s touch. The elk grasped his shaft and squeezed. Lukyan’s kiss became more urgent, almost desperate, and he brought a hand up to the back of Kristian’s neck, raking his fingers up through the elk’s rain-soaked hair.

He felt, more than saw, Kristian smile, and felt the elk’s hips roll, pushing his own growing arousal against his thigh. Lukyan wanted desperately to touch it, to fall to his knees and push his nose into the crotch of Kristian’s leggings, to feel him against his lips. It took all of his willpower not to do just that. His mind whirled with the possibilities, and his heart raced with the knowledge that Kristian was highly receptive to his advances. But equally, he was frozen in place, hyper-aware of their public location and reminded of being surrounded by strangers - even if those strangers were mostly sex workers covertly practicing their profession against the writs of the powerful. But mostly, he desperately wanted not to push Kristian too far, too fast. To inadvertently push him away.

Behind him, Lukyan dimly heard the Caprin man grunt and snort his lust as he climaxed inside the Aethyrfiodh mare. He swivelled his ears backward to listen, and Kristian broke their kiss to peer across at them. Lukyan felt Kristian’s fingers part around his shaft, pushing it side to side across his thigh behind the thin fabric of his summer pants, and fantasised that the elk was imagining what it would be like to share that moment of ecstasy with Lukyan. The elk felt fully erect against him, and Lukyan dared to shift his body slightly to slide his hand downward. He trailed his claw tips over Kristian’s waist and hip, down the outside of his thigh and then back upward. He came painfully close to touching him, and then:

“Aye now, what ‘ave we ‘ere?” the Aethyrfiodh mare said loudly, wriggling her hips so that her dress fell back into place and strutting across to interrupt them.

Lukyan let out his breath in a frustrated whine, lingeringly suckling on the elk’s lower lip. The mare was staring directly at them. Ymma the donkey, who’d flounced off to flirt with someone else, was there in a heartbeat, leering lewdly at them with a gap-toothed grin. To Lukyan’s shock, she reached for his robe and pulled it aside, to where Kristian’s hand was still holding his trapped erection.

“Hah! Look, two boys playin’ sausage-hunters right ‘ere while we’s tryin’ t’work?!” Ymma laughed. “Ooh, ‘e’s a wet one! Didja cum, puppy?”

“Good thing they’s both good lookin,” the Aethyrfiodh conceded, giving Kristian her best sultry eyes and jiggling her still-exposed breasts at him.

“Aye, but I’s prettier!” Ymma protested.

“Ymma, you’ve a face like an ox’s arse!”

“Oh here now, I wouldn’t be so cruel,” Kristian interjected. “Some oxen have very fetching arses.”

The Aethyrfiodh mare spluttered and whinnied her laughter, and clapped him roughly on the shoulder. “T’the likes o’ you two, mayhap! Hey, th’storm’s passin. Git yer pretty little arses outta my undercroft, we’s got coin ta make an’ yous makin’ us look ugly! Unless you want me to suck one outta ya real quick? Fourpence and you can both squirt yer jelly on me tits?”

She pointed to the tent in Kristian’s leggings. Lukyan too, glanced down at it, and flexed his cock firmly in the elk’s hand.

“No, I think I have everything I need right here,” Kris said silkily, giving Lukyan another squeeze and then releasing him, lifting his arms to drape them around his shoulders and kissing his lips.

Lukyan nearly collapsed.

Between them, Ymma and the Aethyrfiodh mare bustled Lukyan and Kristian out of the undercroft into what was, once more, heavy summer rain.

“Aye, ‘ave fun with ‘im, y’hear?” the mare called after them.

Raucous laughter followed them, along with the exaggerated sounds of the two whores pretending to fuck. Kristian fumbled for Lukyan’s hand and gripped it once again, and the two men made their way back up onto the hail-covered street. Lukyan turned to face Kristian, and the elk gave him a wide, cheeky grin.

“That was certainly entertaining,” the elk said, then glanced at Lukyan’s groin. “Ysion’s balls, you leak more than I do when I’m in rut! Does that always happen?”

Lukyan plucked and adjusted his clothing until he was once again contained within his loincloth inside his pants, and scuffed his palm across the palm-sized wet patch on his thigh in a vain attempt to make it slightly less obvious. “Yes… once it starts, it… takes a long time to stop…”

Kristian made a soft throaty noise of lust, and squeezed his hand. “That is… very erotic. I like that.”

Lukyan wagged like a puppy. Despite the drifts of hail that piled against the sides of the narrow street and the dirty, slushy river of meltwater that cascaded down its centre, his footsteps felt as light as air. He felt as if Kristian accepted him in a way no one had ever done before, save perhaps Rhell, the Caprin courtesan who had rescued himn from the mean streets of Fràwic and paid his retainer to live at the Hairy Fig. But Kristian was different. His interest in Lukyan wasn’t pitying, nor was it purely lustful. It was simple and honest and complete, and intensely exciting.

As he walked alongside the elk, hand in hand toward the back entrance of the Hairy Fig, Lukyan allowed himself to hope.

*

The evening of Ysion’s Day was often the busiest at the Hairy Fig. It was the day of rest for many workers, and the busiest for others – particularly the brewers, vintners, publicans and innkeepers, as the people celebrated and relaxed.

“I wonder if Sammael will be here,” Lukyan observed quietly.

Kristian heard the uncertainty in his voice and squeezed the wolf’s hand. The two men were approaching the Hairy Fig from the eastern side of the Artisans’ Union Canal, the side on which the indentured courtesans’ row occupied the embankment of the canal. There was a back entrance there, accessible only to those with a key—generally, the courtesans themselves. Kristian followed Lukyan through a narrow squeezeway between two warehouses, down a dark and treacherous stair made slick by the melting hail and the continuing, although much lighter, rain. The heaviest portion of the storm appeared to have passed, and the thunder was ever more distant, retreating to the east.

The squeezeway reminded Kristian of the colloquially named Peepers’ Alley, a similar squeezeway nearby where it was well known that youths would congregate to ‘peep’ into some of the Hairy Fig’s windows and hope for a voyeuristic show.

The way Lukyan had rounded on him in the whores’ undercroft was a moment that would stay with Kristian for life, he just knew it. He was glad they’d been interrupted when they had. If Lukyan’s hand had found its target, Kristian was certain he’d have ejaculated in his leggings, he’d been so excited in that moment. It was a curious dichotomy the elk noticed about himself. At times he was prone to spilling his seed prematurely, but often when he was actually trying to do so, his peak was elusive.

“Don’t worry about him, Luk,” Kris said, while the wolf fumbled inside his robe for his key. “I doubt he’ll show up, and if he does, we can move elsewhere.”

“I feel terrible. I didn’t mean to step on his hooves, or damage your friendship with him at all…”

“You didn’t, Lukyan. If Sammael has his muzzle out of joint over us getting closer, that’s his jealousy speaking, not anything you did wrong.”

It wasn’t lost on Kristian that Sammael was the reason he was there. He couldn’t deny that he felt intensely drawn to Lukyan. Sammael’s jealousy confused him and hurt him, and it seemed to have a similar effect on Lukyan.

“Do you need to bathe?” Lukyan asked him as they ducked through the narrow doorway into the dimly lit courtesans’ foyer.

“I bathed only shortly before we went to the temple,” Kristian replied, experimentally sniffing his underarm. “I don’t believe so, unless you find the smell of wet elk offensive?”

“Not at all. And after an extended bath this morning my arse squeaks when I walk, it’s so clean,” Lukyan quipped. “However, your leggings are drenched and muddy, and I imagine your fetlocks aren’t much better.”

Kristian laughed and flirtatiously thumbed at the lacings of his leggings. “A fair observation. Why, would you like me to take them off?”

“Yes,” Lukyan replied without a moment’s hesitation. “Blessed Lakesh, yes. But perhaps not right here, I’m not sure I could contain myself.”

Lukyan shrugged out of his rain-soaked robe, leaving him in his equally soaked summer pants and leather boots, his red sash and a sleeveless linen undershirt. Kristian’s eye lingered on his lower half, remembering the feeling of Lukyan’s hardness in his hand in the undercroft at The Harrows, the way it had felt almost burning hot, and how profusely it had dampened the thin fabric it hid within… Kristian felt arousal tightening his leggings and forced himself to think of something else, at least for the moment. The whole reason he was here tonight at the Hairy Fig had changed, and he did not wish to push Lukyan for something he wasn’t comfortable with.

“So this is home, is it?” Kris asked, wrenching his gaze away and changing the subject. “I know we have been aware of one another for some time now already, but I never actually knew you lived at the Fig.”

“Yes, I… have been most fortunate,” Lukyan replied quietly. “You know Rhell, don’t you?”

“The markhor? Yes, I believe so.”

“Rhell and I crossed paths in Fràwic some years ago, when I was at my lowest ebb. She still pays my retainer here, to live and work at the Fig. She is one of very few people who… understand me…”

Lukyan trailed off, and seemed unsure of himself.

Kristian turned to face the wolf and took his hands. “I think I would like to be another of those people, Lukyan.”

Lukyan stepped in close and awkwardly hugged him. It was a subtle, instinctive movement, tempered in uncertainty, and Kristian gently enfolded the wolf in his arms and held him close. He immediately felt Lukyan relax, and the wolf’s muzzle press into the side of his neck. He gasped softly, and became very aware that Lukyan would be able to feel his growing arousal against his body once more. He shifted, swaying his hips until their clothed members brushed alongside one another. Lukyan whined. The wolf was similarly aroused again, as well, and was clearly struggling to hold himself back. Then Kristian felt the wolf’s hands plucking at the lacings of his leggings at his hips. Kris gently drew back from him.

Lukyan, to his surprise, flattened his ears in submission and flinched back from Kristian altogether. “I… my apologies, I don’t mean to be… You can always tell me if I’m too much,” the wolf said softly.

“Dytaea’s hooves, Lukyan… you are not too much. I want you so deeply. But we’re in a passageway. Come, we both need to wash the mud off our legs, for starters.”

“Yes… and then I do feel the need to divest myself of these wet clothes. Come with me…” Lukyan said.

Lukyan took Kristian’s hand in his own, lacing their fingers together, and led the elk swiftly up a steep, spiralling stairway into a narrow gallery that led from the courtesans’ row across the canal bridge into the core of the Hairy Fig, past a variety of doors behind which the Fig’s private rooms lay. The gallery led down a similarly narrow and steep stairway on the other side, which opened onto the bathhouse. Its stone walls echoed with voices, laughter and the constant trickle of running water, taken not from the canal, but from a natural spring that sent forth a continuous stream of water heated deep underground, enough to supply the entire town. Nudity in such a place was entirely natural and expected, and under any other circumstance Kristian would have readily divested himself of his clothing the moment he entered. But this moment with Lukyan felt different. It would not be right for their first true shared experience of nudity to be so casual and public.

Lukyan led him towards a relatively secluded corner, where a small, in-ground bath was being vacated by its most recent users. Rather than undressing, Kristian bent at the hips and rolled his leggings up to his knees, then sat on the edge of the bath with his hooves dangling in the warm water. Lukyan followed suit, leaving his boots beside the bath, and sat beside him.

“I’m sorry that…” Lukyan began.

“Don’t be,” Kris cut him off gently, then paused, gazing into his handsome face. “There is… a darkness inside you, Lukyan. A place where you hide away the things that have happened to you. They have shaped you, and how you seek the affections of others. I’ve seen your scars. I can’t imagine how deep the wounds are that I cannot see.”

Lukyan was silent, but his ears twitched forward, then flattened back submissively. He averted his gaze and focused on washing the mud out of his lower legs by swaying them through the water, and Kristian released his hand.

“I don’t want to push you to tell me anything, Luk, but I’m… I’m here for you, no matter what it is. You don’t have to hide yourself from me. I want to see all of you, and feel all of you.”

Lukyan remained silent, but Kris felt the waft of air from the wolf’s tail wagging, and rested his hand companionably on Lukyan’s thigh. The wolf moved closer until their legs touched, and Kristian leaned in to nuzzle Lukyan’s neck.

“Gods you smell good…” Kristian breathed in deeply through his fur. “I can smell your cock, your wetness… I am glad we are not washing that away.”

Then he drew back to scrub the last of the mud out of his fetlocks. Lukyan whined loudly and reached for Kristian’s hand. He pulled the elk’s palm firmly into his groin, and Kristian curled his fingers easily around Lukyan’s cock through his pants. The wolf hardened rapidly, and Kristian felt his heartbeat through his palm, and then slickness in the damp fabric of his pants.

“You are so incredibly arousing…” Kristian said huskily. “It hardens so quickly…”

He pulled his hand back, sniffed his palm deeply, and then rose to his hooves and held out his hand to pull Lukyan upright. The wolf rose, and plucked the front of his pants to disguise the swelling.

“A shy courtesan. Come now, display it proudly, Lukyan.”

“Shy? Hardly, my dear. Only…” he trailed off.

“Worried that your sexual energy, directed entirely at me, will be ‘too much’?”

Lukyan’s tailtip wagged between his legs in affirmation. “I do not wish to push you away. My sexual expressions are more than most can understand or respond to. I will completely understand if that is the case.”

“Instead of warning me off, how about you show me?” Kris said.

Lukyan led Kristian from the bathhouse back up that narrow stair. But instead of following the passage across the canal, he tugged Kris instead up another narrow, spiral stairway, and then another.

“Lukyan, where are we going? This reminds me of climbing up into the clerestory at the Cathedral when I was a fawn!” Kris called up to the wolf.

Lukyan peered back over his shoulder down to Kristian, and playfully draped his tail around the elk’s shoulder. “Rhell maintains a room in the upper levels, when she is entertaining clients she does not wish to invite to her private residence. She… very generously allows me to store my most precious possessions there, few though they are. It is safer than storing them in my own room in Courtesans’ Row.”

Lukyan had paused to speak, so as not to lose his balance on the steep, narrow stair, and Kristian didn’t hear much of what he said, given that the wolf’s buttocks were at his eye level. He did hear him chuckle though, and definitely noticed when he sensually swayed his hips.

The third stair opened onto a small, but luxuriously appointed landing surrounded by four doors. It was dimly lit by two small, sconced candles, which cast a soft golden glow. Kristian leaned on the railing and peered back down the dark stairwell, then upward. They were not yet among the rafters of the Hairy Fig, and Kris couldn’t help but wonder what lay in its uppermost reaches. Generally, he had found, the higher one ventured in the Hairy Fig, the more seductive and exclusive it became. Lukyan drew a key from a pocket sewn into the hem of his pants, secreted beneath his sash, and opened one of the four doors.

“Come, Kristian,” the wolf said, approaching the elk from behind and placing his hands on his hips.

Kristian felt a surge of excitement at being approached thus; he carefully tilted his antlered head aside and twisted to breathe across Lukyan’s muzzle. Lukyan whined softly and pushed forward, and Kris felt the wolf push against his buttocks, and his clawed hand seemingly wrestling with an urge to slide down over his crotch. Kris playfully pushed Lukyan’s hand down, and felt his fingers curl around his cock through his clothing. Lukyan ground forward against him, and breathed shakily against his neck.

“You tempter…” Lukyan said huskily.

“When we have… become more familiar with one another, I want you to make me spill my seed over this railing,” Kristian said, turning in the wolf’s arms to face him.

Lukyan’s eyes glistened in the candlelight, and in more privacy than they had yet experienced together, his tongue hung from his mouth, breathing rapidly. His hands pulled Kristian’s hips flush with his own, and he leaned in to kiss the elk with heated urgency.

“Over this railing,” Lukyan mumbled through the kiss, “is one of many places I want to make you spill your seed for me… Now, get your delicious elken arse into that room…”

*