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Sometimes Harley believed her when she told him she was okay.

He really had no reason to think otherwise. Early on in their friendship, they had arranged a sort of pact that they would never lie to one another, and so far, both of them had honored that pact. This, of course, didn't count for things that they could just willingly omit, though. They both knew that. He had to have his secrets, and she had to have hers. There were things in her life that he would rather not know about, and things in his life that he would rather not tell her. That's just the way it was.

And it worked out. He knew that it would. There was just something about her, about that loud, rough, brusque otter that drew him in from the very start and caught his attention like no other. They had history class together their senior year, and on the first day, Harley found that he could hardly look away from her. Everyone else on his mind, each of his current flings - Julia, and Shelby, and Melissa, and Esteban - faded into the distance, and there was only her. Only Natalie.

He liked to think that she returned some of his glances in class. It was the weirdest thing: where he had so much forward courage and confidence with everyone else, when Mrs. Tassiter placed him as her partner for the final research project, he found himself unable to say... well, much of anything.

Her voice, smooth, easy music heard on the street from an open window on a warm evening; her eyes, amber-orange like the fires of the sun when seen through a veil of clouds; the sleek streamlined form of her lutrine body, the long rudder that trailed along the floor behind her, around her, and - and occasionally flicked and twitched at Harley's ankle while they studied their chapter in class...

She was the one to give him her phone number, without him asking. It was at the end of class one day, and scrawled in purple ink on a corner torn out of the class set textbook - that weird kind of glossy paper on which ink too easily smears. That glitter in her eyes let him know just what she thought of him, and by midnight that night - of course he stayed up late; this was something he'd been thinking of for quite a while.

From the start, they hit it off. It quickly became a nightly routine for the coyote: get home from school, toss his things onto his bed, slide onto his computer to play some games for a bit, and then wait for Natalie to send him a message. Eventually his eagerness got the better of him, and he'd shoot her a text as soon as he got home - and she always responded. Always.

And then one night, she didn't. Harley didn't want to worry about it, didn't want to seem like he was clingy or expected more out of their friendship, but - it's not like he could help it. She didn't show up to history class the following day either, so the coyote went and waited at their usual lunch spot for her. She never came. He went home with a sinking feeling in the pit of his chest that he'd never really felt before. But, then, thankfully - his phone in his paw vibrated: Natalie wanted to come over. Without asking his dad (he wouldn't care anyway - he was gone most of the day), he told her yes, and within the hour, she was standing at his door.

Standing at his door with a thin jacket on, despite the warm spring day. Standing at his door with her little teacup ears folded down, her orange eyes averted, her thick rudder tail hanging down behind her. "Hey, Harley," she'd said. He never forgot that sound in her voice.

He learned that her depression had come back this past week, and she'd fallen into that very same horrible pit out of which she had already climbed so many times. That thin jacket fell down from her shoulders, and - fresh cuts along her wrists, up her arms, individual tallies marking off things and memories that neither of them would like to remember. That was the first time he pulled her into his arms and hugged her tight, the first time he'd pressed his lips to the top of her muzzle in a kiss to let her know that he was there for her.

"I'll always be here for you," he found himself mouthing. Her ears flicked with his warm breath. "I'm always here, Natalie."

That was really when things between them heated up and actually began. Just as their talks became a nightly thing, her coming over - and eventually, him going over to her place to meet her family and eat dinner - became a regular ritual as well. She had shown him something close to herself, had revealed to him that she was Imperfect. Just like him. He just hadn't figured out his own imperfections yet.

As it would turn out, though, this otter with the sunfire eyes would be the one to help him see.

Their first night together had been something that would always stick in his memory, stronger than his first time, stronger than his previous 'best' time. It was on one of the nights when Harley had come over to eat dinner with Natalie and her family and then was supposed to have left, but - they planned it out perfectly: they went on a walk late at night, her mom and dad and brother went to bed, they came back... and next thing he knew, she had thrown him down onto the downstairs couch and was tearing hungrily at the fly of his pants.

The vibrant energy pulsing and rippling through her whole body that night was like nothing else Harley had ever felt before. Paws first on her hips, then along her sides, then up her back squeezing her to him, her heavy panting and little breathy moans of "harder - God, Harley-" in his ear. That was also the night that he learned just how sharp otter teeth are; Natalie made him bleed from the shoulder, multiple little pinpricks in two half-moon arcs beneath his fur.

As it went, the following day (Harley had to hitch a ride home from a good friend of his) was when they had to give their presentation on their history project. Throughout the whole thing, Harley kept on looking at her and watching how confidently she gave her part, as opposed to his clumsy dictation, how he stumbled over his words and his facts, a thousand other things. Natalie looked like an entirely different person than the otter who had shown up to his house that one night. All of the stress sadness and hate, for herself and anyone else, had just... melted out of her, leaving her with that natural inner brightness that he had originally seen in her.

"You keep on rubbing your shoulder," Natalie had murmured to him once they made their way back to their desks. He thought she hadn't noticed. "I didn't mean to bite that hard..."

"No, no-" he said, able to feel his ears flick down with embarrassment. Natalie Cordova was the only girl who had been able to make him blush and feel like he wasn't the one in control. "I - kind of like the pain."

If only he knew. At that point in time, there was no way he possible could.

After that, things kind of evened out between them. Their senior year was coming to an end; Natalie had her birthday party, which was the first time the coyote legitimately stayed the night - and worked a paw down beneath the waistband of her pajamas on the floor of her bedroom, with one other person on either side of them. When he got home the next day he had to wrap a bandage around his upper thigh over where she had dug her claws into his flesh amid the throes of three separate climaxes.

Then, following the conclusion of the semester, she left for two months to visit family out-of-state. Harley made sure to send her a text every day, even if she didn't get back to him until the following. Now he was actually open and had free time, when for the last few weeks he had been busy almost every day with Natalie - not that she was his girlfriend or anything. They were just... friends with benefits, like all those others that Harley knew. There was something in his heart that definitely set her apart from everyone else, though, but when it got down to it, when Julia showed up unannounced at his house and slid her paws into his pants without a word...

He was a teenage boy and a coyote. What could he do? That day, he held Julia up against the wall right there in the entryway, her legs wrapped around his hips and his muzzle firmly in her shoulder. That happened three times while Natalie was away - and then two more with Shelby. This was one of the things that Harley elected not to talk about.

When she finally returned was when the guilt started to blossom in his chest, cold and heavy. The more time they spent together, though, the better he felt. He almost forgot about it. And then came his birthday, when all worries faded from his mind if only for a day: his dad made sure to be home for it, and he'd even gone through the trouble to pick up his favorite kind of cake on the way back from the airport. Chocolate on chocolate - even though if he ate too much, he always ended up with a bad stomach ache. Worth it, though.

Natalie was the only other person to show up, and she did so with a small wrapped package under her arm and a bright grin on her face. Around the dinner table, fresh tamales from Harley's dad's friend, the three of them sat and ate and talked and laughed, and then-

"So, Harley. Are you going to introduce me?"

"Yeah," he remembered saying, and looked between his father and the she-otter. The words just kind of... fell out of his mouth, and once he said them, he found he couldn't stop his tail from wagging behind him: "This is Natalie. My girlfriend." At the same time, he caught the little flick of her ears and whiskers out of the corner of his eyes.

"Girlfriend, huh?" she'd said to him afterwards, sitting atop him and grinding down into his lap. Her scent tickled at his nose, the same soft mix of floral perfume and something sharper and more acrid that was, strangely, so enjoyable to him - atop the deeper and heavier aroma of her arousal. "That what you think of me?"

"I guess it is," was his reply, as he unhooked her bra with one paw. Then, their lips met and locked again, and again, and again... it was that night when she asked him to never love anyone other than her. He gave the deepest promise he could.

He didn't put much thought into it, though. Nothing really seemed to change between them - other than that Natalie got a little bit friskier, a little bit more eager to slide a paw along his body or give him a gentle squeeze. Not that he minded, of course. The coyote spent the later days of his summer scanning the internet, looking for a job or an internship or something, thinking through his options for college...

And then Julia called again. It was no excuse, but he'd entirely forgotten about what he'd said to Natalie, what he'd told her, what he'd promised... and once he did remember, lips pressed to Julia's - not of her muzzle - he shrugged it off. Self-control had never been a strength of his anyway, and besides, Natalie had only asked him not to love anyone else. She'd said nothing about sex.

So just like all the other steps in their relationship, that continued for a while. It rose, it elevated, it plateaued. He wanted to tell Julia that he wasn't really comfortable with it, wanted to tell her to stop, but - God, if she didn't know how to get him worked out. It wasn't as good as it was with Natalie, wasn't as exhausting or resounding, but it was still up there. And, besides, with her in his lap, or pinning him down by his shoulders, or keeping his muzzle down between her legs - how could he say no? In the moment, he really genuinely enjoyed it.

The blossom of guilt that he himself had planted in his own heart grew into a thorned vine snaking around his entire being and conscience. Nervousness started to come over him whenever Natalie or Julia or Shelby or any of the others asked to come over if he was free, and late at night he'd be busy 'enjoying' memories of those hookups, and then would realized what he was doing, and just couldn't go on.

Then one weekend, late April, he made the decision and asked her over. Again she wore that thin jacket, arms wrapped around her chest, ears lowered... but he didn't really notice at the time. He was preoccupied with trying to figure out what he was going to say and how he was going to say it - and if he'd be able to tell her at all. That was really the hardest part.

So, then, he came clean to Natalie. He hadn't told her that he'd been cheating on her; that's what it was, plain and simple. No "pretty much", no "essentially". That's what it was. Just with that, though, there had been something she hadn't been telling him either, and she never did tell him. He had to figure it out on his own, and after the fact, it was so obvious to him.

For his birthday Natalie had given him an adorable pair of otter-print pajamas, the bottoms of which were in the wash that night due to a mishap with a bowl of soup the night before. Harley's dad was out again, and it was just the two of them on their own for the night. He felt certain that she knew what was coming, too, or had at least suspected it; it had to have been obvious in his awkward, bumbling speech, his shuddering breaths, his lowered ears and tail threatening to curl beneath him. He brought her into his bedroom, sat her down on the mattress, took her paw in his... and told her.

Her response was a solid "I know". Just how was a mystery to him. Seeing the look on her face, though... that was when the crawling vine of guilt tightened around his throat. He broke down crying; she remained silent. She had her jacket in her lap at this point, and he should have seen the fresh razor gashes along her arms. He should have seen the look in her eyes, should heard the too-familiar lack of energy in her voice. After all, he knew that he would never forget the first time he'd heard her like that.

Eventually, though, he calmed down, and - silent, they curled up in bed. But Natalie was distant. She wouldn't look at him, always moved a short distance away whenever he tried to nuzzle up against her or drape his arm around her body. Somehow, he managed to fall asleep, and it was her getting up around two AM that stirred him awake. The hall light flicked on, then off; the bathroom light did the same and remained on, and then the door closed. Just wanting to move on to tomorrow, Harley rolled over and started dozing back off.

Natalie didn't come back for quite a while, though. Harley thought he'd heard a gentle clattering from the closed bathroom, like the cup of toothbrushes being knocked over. It caught his attention but did not hold it, and he started to drop off again - but then a louder, deeper resounding thud caused him to jerk upright, and soon make his way over. Knuckles against the door - "Natalie? You okay?"

No response. He put his ear to the door; heavy breathing, soft whimpering. Again he said her name, but still to no response. Until, shakily, weakly- "Harley..."

Luckily, his dad would forgive him for breaking the door open, shattering the hollow wood around the locked knob. But when he finally got into the bathroom, when he finally looked around... he thought it was a nightmare. He legitimately, actually thought and hoped that what he was seeing wasn't real. It just couldn't be. It was so - so absurd, so...

Natalie had been standing over the sink when she'd done it. That much could be seen from the rivers of blood across the smooth white marble, dripping down the front of the cabinets, puddling on the tile and coursing through the grout below. He didn't know where she'd got the blade from, and he didn't know if this was her intent or if she had just cut too far, too deep, too much. She'd then made her way over to the bathtub, clinging to the towel rack for balance - bloodied prints on the walls, dripping, oozing - the pool beneath her, draped over the edge of the tub, steadily growing. She was shaking, and crying.

Harley might have fainted. He wasn't sure. The next thing he knew, the next thing he remembered, he had stumbled back into his bedroom to grab his phone and dial 911. It took five tries, his paws and fingers were shaking so much, he couldn't see through the brimming tears - and once they picked up, he had to repeat himself another four before they could understand the address through the sobbing. He didn't even bother plugging his phone back in. Where he dropped it on the carpet of his bedroom, it would remain.

And, then, after that, he was sitting back against the corner between the tub and the wall, the she-otter clutched in his arms. It felt like she couldn't breathe, felt like she was right on the edge. Harley's paws squeezing at her chest, keeping her firmly against him as he tried to keep a hold on the warmth of her body. Whether it was her tremors shaking the two of them or his own, he couldn't tell.

"Natalie," he managed, his voice an empty rattle in his throat. "Natalie, please..."

There was the time back in history class when they had an entire period assigned to review and practice their presentation. They had started out on-topic just fine, but soon devolved into endless laughter: Harley told a dumbass joke and Natalie started laughing, which made him laugh until he snorted, which made her laugh even harder, which made him do the same... that day was a good kind of that can't-breathe feeling, of a tightness in his chest that ended up just making both of them laugh even harder, because every time he tried to get a good breath, he just ended up snorting again. Mrs. Tassiter gave both of them an office referral for disrupting her class.

"I love you." He dragged his shaking fingers through her bellyfur, matted and soaked, oily with rich fresh blood. That wasn't the kind of warmth he wanted to feel from her. "I - goddammit, Nat, I love you..."

And he did. That's what this was, and it took him until then to realize. The way that she made him feel when she looked at him, the way his heart jumped every time her muzzle stretched into a wide, bright smile. He genuinely loved seeing her happy, seeing her free of the burden that he had been able to sense weighing down her spirit. It would be almost two years since he had first laid eyes upon her, a year and a half since he had first pressed his muzzle to the top of her head in a kiss that would bind their hearts together stronger than he could know. His back was turned, and he could never see her reaching out for him.

"Ambulance is - is on its way. You're gonna be okay." He reached for her wrists, for the open wounds, tried to squeeze them shut. The otter winced but did not resist... and the crimson blood just kept flowing between his fingers, soaking deep into his fur. This couldn't be real. There was no way. He wasn't sure if he was actually saying the words, if he was doing what he should, if he was even here at all. His heart pounded in his ears, in his chest, in every part of his body. Guilt had a firm hold on him, and now that it had had time to settle its roots and vines, it squeezed him and dug its sharp thorns into him with every passing second, every weakening, wheezing breath.

Before she had left to visit family over the summer, Harley had invited her to a movie. It was a sci-fi action thing, something he had a passing interest in but could never find the motivation to actually devote time to it. Natalie had absolutely loved it, more than he'd expected: she drove them home afterwards, and there was not a span of five seconds on that drive where they weren't discussing the plot or science of the movie, or tie-ins from related franchises, or theories or hypotheses. After she had left that night with a kiss on the cheek, a kiss on the lips, and a mutual squeeze to the rump, Harley had sat down in front of his computer and started working on a spacefaring choose-your-own-adventure novel. He'd been meaning to show it to Natalie once he'd finished the first planet arc, but had never quite gotten that far.

The worst part was that he could feel the strength and will leaving her body. Her breaths became shallower and shorter, though still retained the whistling, wheezing quality that grated on his ears and worsened his shaking. Every few seconds he would think that he'd heard the ambulance sirens, but would perk his ears and inevitably find himself wrong. He lost track of what he was doing, whether he was stroking her fur or squeezing her paw or wiping the tears from his eyes - which just replaced them with fresh blood.

"Natalie... please..."

"...Harley," she managed, barely. She half-raised her arm; another streak of bright red flowed out over her chest and splashed into the pool beneath her, sickly warm, soaking into the fur of Harley's legs. It felt as though his heart were about to burst out of his chest. Part of him wished it would.

"I love you." Shakily, he ran his fingers up along the smooth curve of her short muzzle, just as he had done so many times when bringing that muzzle towards him for a sweet kiss. All he could taste right now was the characteristic metal bittersweet tang; he had to bring a fist to his lips to choke down an unsteady heave.

When free from the tight claws of her depression and other mental instabilities, Natalie treated Harley - treated her boyfriend better than she treated herself. More than a few times over the summer and months following, she'd paid him a surprise visit and brought him out to the mall, to sample the excellent gelato there or scan through the more video game releases - Harley had yet to get his license, and the chance rarely came up to practice what with his dad gone most of the time. Natalie treated him to lunch, and movies, and sometimes to just go wander around the bookstore and read through the manga until one of the employees kicked them out. It was because of her that he had to rearrange two of the shelves in his bookcase, to make room for so many new additions.

Finally, then, the sirens pierced through the near-silence of the night, broken only by the dim humming of the air conditioning unit in the vents above and his own sobbing. Natalie scratched at the tile beside her, claws dragging and fingers trying to grip, trying to grasp, but finding nothing. Harley slid his paw up into hers and squeezed it tight.

She managed to tilt her head back one more time, made eye contact with him one more time. Those three words remained on his lips: "I love you." She started to say something, her mouth and whiskers twitched with the effort... and she remained silent. Doorbell ringing twice, a series of fervent, heavy knocks on the door, someone shouting something.

Bright amber-orange eyes, as radiant as the fires of the sun on a beautiful spring sunset, when the sky and clouds tint to hues of flowers the kinds of which you can't find in the city. Harley watched that fire flicker, sputter, spark... fade. Harley watched the light go out of those eyes.

"I love you, Natalie."

He couldn't remember hearing the front door being broken down, couldn't remember stomping footsteps up the stairs. At least six voices he didn't recognize, shouting, yelling - rough paws on his arms and back, dragging him away from under the still otter, patting him down, pulling him downstairs and into the back of one of the ambulances. He didn't see her again.

Afterwards, he wasn't sure whether it was he who called his dad and begged him to come back home, or if it was the police that demanded he did. Once he finally found his way back home, the first thing he did was run into his dad's bathroom, turn on the shower, and sit facing the corner, arms wrapped around his legs, eyes open and staring at nothing.

For a period of two or three weeks, the coyote wasn't really sure about anything. In and out of police stations and psychiatrists, testing him and interviewing him over and over... the former held on to him for a period of time after hearing him repeat, over and over, "it was my fault, it was my fault", but there was nothing there. They released him soon after, strongly urging his father to put him into therapy.

So he did. It started out six times a week, once every weekday and then either Saturday or Sunday, depending on his current state of mind. It became a physical affliction as well, to where he couldn't walk on his own or eat more than a quarter bowl of oatmeal without having to double over the side of his bed and empty the contents of his stomach. He'd lost count of the times he found himself downstairs in the kitchen, one paw holding the drawer open, other wrapped around the handle of one of the knives - with no real memory of how he got there. For a while, he lost track of what being "alive" and "awake" was.

College would be put off indefinitely. His father became worried that Harley had developed OCD: every day, twice a day once at nine AM sharp and once at nine PM sharp, the young coyote would be in the laundry room drumming his untrimmed claws on the lid, wide, empty eyes staring at absolutely nothing in particular, until it dinged completion... and he'd remove his pajama shirt from the wash, sopping wet and even darker blue than normal, the little cartoon otter faces printed all over becoming steadily more worn and less clear.

"Won't come out," he'd murmur to himself, again and again. "The s-stains are still there. They're still there... it won't... FUCKING come out..." His father came home one day - he'd put his main job on hold, in lieu of family emergency - to the smell of char and smoke filling the house, and found Harley cross-legged in the middle of the kitchen with the smoldering ashes of the pajama top in front of him. He'd kept his thumb on the trigger of the lighter for God knows how long: most of the fur around his pad had been scalded off by the heat, with the flesh itself cracked and vibrant red. He couldn't write anything and was told not to play any video games for four weeks, but of course he still did. His father didn't want to leave him alone for longer than two hours at a time, and the young coyote needed something to occupy his mind and attention or else he'd break down all over again.

Long repeated nights spent with Harley clutching tight to his father's arm, openly sobbing into the sleeve of his shirt. "It's not your fault," his dad would say, over and over. "It's not your fault. There's nothing you could do."

"I could have checked on her earlier." "I could have gone and made sure she was okay." "I could have kept an eye on her." "I could have made sure that she was alright." "I could have paid more attention to her." "I could have kept my promise to her." "I could have said no." "I could have loved her more."

"I could have done anything, and she might still be here."

Sometimes, it's a change in perspective that can cause such a major difference. After a few months Harley had gotten to the point where he only had to go to therapy four times a week instead of six, but then one night he'd shocked himself awake with the realization - "Someone is dead because of me." He'd been sweating in his sleep, and the hot, wet blankets squeezing down on his body felt like the slickness of fresh blood soaking through his fur. That night, his father barged into the bathroom to find Harley bent over the sink, naked with a night's worth of vomit just then being washed down the drain. It was the first time he had entered that bathroom since the night of Natalie's death; until then, it had remained closed with the door half-blocked by one of the coyote's bookcases, dragged out into the hallway for that sole purpose.

Still, though, he slowly started to get better. It wasn't something of his own doing - by far, no: could he have chosen to push away the anxiety and panic attacks, could he have just decided "oh, I'm going to feel better now", than he would have done so long ago. It was a tough path, and it absolutely drained him of all his energy to the point where he was awake for maybe only ten hours a day, but he got there. Step by step.

Step by step, he told himself - one day at a time. It has to get better eventually. Harley had forgotten what it felt like to smile and be actually, genuinely happy, but he was starting to remember. College would be good for him, he decided: it would give him something to do and focus on, and maybe he'd be able to make friends again.

Three days of therapy a week, two days... one day, eventually. Tuesday afternoons. The coyote managed to remember who he used to be and how life used to feel. He missed that, and wanted to feel it again. Too long without the light of the sun.

Three years later, though, he still hadn't quite come to terms with it. Part of him made him think he never would. That was okay, though: it was a damn harsh way to force him to learn from his mistakes, but he liked to think he had. He stopped pursuing pointless relationships (after trying to get with Julia for a period of about a month), dropped all of his friends-with-benefits after a bit of carnal difficulty. The pajama bottoms that Natalie had given him for his birthday made their way out of the back of his closet, and became his favorites - not only for the memories they carried (the time she fell asleep on his lap and drooled all over his left leg; the time they were mock-dancing in his room and bumped against his desk, spilling orange soda on him; the time they went on a late-night walk following a good winter rain, and came back with mud soaked up to his knees) but also because, at its simplest, they were the softest pajamas he owned.

Sometimes he still woke up late at night with his heart and head pounding and his mind full of terrible thoughts and images, and he'd have to take another dose of his anxiety medication - "only for when it's at its worst," his therapist had said. "You've come a long, long way, Harley. I would love to see you able to stop needing it entirely, but there's nothing wrong with that." Sometimes he stopped on his way into the bathroom, looking at everything the way it had been that night - they'd had to throw out the towels and the rug - and would have to catch himself right before he tumbled right down into that pit again.

He thought he was getting better. And, then, in the middle of the spring semester in his history class, he was paired with a shy, cute wolf named Daniel Lane for the final research project. Daniel had a boyfriend, which Harley knew, but - life was good. He was happy. Frankly, these last few months, everything had just seemed to go right for him.

And he wasn't really aware of just how deep his feelings for that damn wolf ran until an April afternoon, unseasonably cool, rainy.

Daniel made him feel something that he hadn't in three years.