FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

First in a series. I've been taking advantage of other author's generous work for years now, so I thought I'd contribute a little something I've been working on myself. I'll warn you up front that if you're looking for a quick bit of stroke fiction, you'll probably want to skip this storyline and move on to something less involved. But if you want to invest in a good story (one that does eventually "pay off", I promise!) then I hope you enjoy reading this!

********************************************************************************************************************

One

Kip was still breathing hard ten minutes after he'd finished his last set. His lifting was going well lately, and today had been exceptionally good. He'd changed up his routine a bit, and the results were beginning to show!

He stripped off his sweat-soaked sleeveless T-shirt and, after glancing around the locker room to make sure he was the only one there, faced the big mirror lining one wall of the room and flexed his arm back and forth. Kip liked the way his arms and shoulders were shaping up! They weren't as big as some of the other meatheads in the gym, but then again, they were dogs and he was a fox. He wasn't supposed to be as big.

Kip flexed his bicep and examined the thick muscle that bulged up. Not world-rocking, he thought, but it was certainly a good start. Extending his arm the other way, he flexed his triceps and moved from side to side to let the light catch them from different angles. The back of his flexed arm was ridged with ropes of muscle on either side, and his forearms, after months of persistent exercise, were finally seeming to grow a bit, too. His fur lay flat with

perspiration, which enhanced the definition of his growing body. Not bad, he thought, not bad indeed.

His reverie was broken by the sounds of an elephant herd stampeding into the locker room. As they rounded the corner, Kit saw that it wasn't elephants, but a small herd of the very large powerlifters and bodybuilders that usually inhabited the gym. He was amazed that the six or seven triple-x sized men could make as much noise as they did. To his sensitive ears and prey-based genetics, it was more than a little unsettling. He usually tried really, really hard to be showered and out of the gym by the time this group finished up, but tonight's workout had been so great, he'd stayed out on the floor longer than he usually did. And this is what it got him. He sighed.

Suddenly the room felt very crowded to him. Part of that had to do with cramming a half-dozen grossly oversized dogs into a relatively small space, but most of it was thanks to remembered beatings he'd taken almost twenty years ago at the hands of football jocks at his junior high school. Back then, with his above-average intelligence and his gentle spirit, he'd been an obvious target for humiliation and abuse. Kip tried to remind himself that situations like this were one of the reasons he was in the gym in the first place. He was determined not to live life in fear, and

the best way he could think of to accomplish that had been to confront his fears head-on by joining a gym. And he'd accidentally joined the most hardcore gym in the city. Every day, he worked out side-by-side with some of the biggest, most aggressive dogs he'd ever seen. To his surprise he found that he actually enjoyed the physical element of his workouts, and instead of letting his membership lapse after the first month, he had continued his four times a week workouts. That had been three years ago, and it finally seemed like his body was making some real progress.

Regardless of his body's improvement, his mental state sucked. Kit still found himself shying away from the big men if they got too close. More than once, while catching his breath after a particularly punishing set, he'd see someone big walk by out of the corner of his eye, and a flash of panic would bolt through him like an ice axe cleaves snow. A split second later he'd overcome his fear and realize that Junior High School was twenty years behind him and he had nothing to fear, even from these monstrously huge men. They were all adults, and nobody here would disrespect him, much less go out of their way to hurt him. Hell, he didn't think a single one of them had ever even talked to him, much less abused him. Like the ants that sometimes crawled out from the cracks in the wall to wander aimlessly around the gym floor, he was beneath their notice.

As he stripped off the remainder of his clothing, he listened to the boisterous camaraderie of the guys on the other side of the locker banks. Much as he hated to admit it to himself, a small part of his annoyance with them was rooted in jealousy. Okay, it was a big part. He was envious of their easy athletic manner, their comfort with their own bodies and the nudity of the men around them. Why did he have such trouble interacting with the other men, and they didn't have to think twice about it? They played, they roughhoused, and they occasionally fought teach other. Why did he have such trouble with interactions?

Mentally he picked off the more obvious reasons. First of all, they were predators and he carried the genetics of a prey animal. Secondly, since birth, they had all been steeped in the proper behavior of the Gym Rat, whereas he'd only been going for a relatively short time. And there was also the tiny little fact that he was queer as a three dollar bill, and they'd pound him to a pulp if they found out. Yep, those were some powerful arguments for keeping way the hell out of their way.

Mindful of the others, Kip packed the last of his sweaty clothes in his bag, tied his towel around his waist and made his way across to the showers. The stupid jocks seemed to be enraptured by the basketball game playing on the TV above the lockers, and Kip dared to think that maybe he'd make it out of the showers before the herd lumbered in.

Although none of the shower stalls had doors or curtains, Kip was thankful that whoever designed the showers had the presence of mind to put in partitions. Being able to face into the corner gave him some fleeting illusion of privacy. The middle shower stall had the shortest showerhead, so was his favorite. He tossed his locker key into the soap tray (which was devoid of bar soap, as usual) and turned the shower on full blast so it would warm up faster. With the fury of a thousand exploding suns, he hated cold showers. While it was heating up, he noticed that he was, indeed, completely alone in the shower room. This was a rare thing. Usually there was at least one other man or morph in the room with him. In fact, his usual shower "companion" as of late was an ancient otter hybrid who either had a real cleanliness fetish or his genetics overwhelmed him when he got wet, because he usually stayed in there for almost as long as he'd worked out, repetitively soaping himself up and rinsing off. Kip had to chuckle a bit at the thought, "maybe he took the phrase, "lather, rinse, repeat..." on the back of the shampoo bottle a little too literally." Having the room to himself was nice, in a way, but it was also worrisome. There were no witnesses.

When the water was hot, Kip moderated the temperature and wasted no time in getting under the spray. The brilliant red hair on his face turned the color of dark bricks when hit by the water, matching the color of the sweat-soaked fur on his body. He pumped a couple of squirts of shower gel into his palm, rubbed it into the velvety fur on his scalp, and tried to relax a bit. The fact that he was even able to be in the shower at all was a major accomplishment for him. It took more courage than anyone would ever recognize for him to be standing in this room in the first place. He took a few extra seconds to run his short claws over his scalp, massaging some of the tension away.

He closed his eyes and rubbed more soap into his face, scrubbing away the stink of his workout, and hopefully helping to prevent the accursed pimples which had plagued him during his school years from coming back. Being a genetic recombinant, his acne had been fairly well hidden by his facial fur, but since his skin was light, if you looked closely enough you could see red, irritated patches under the fur when he broke out.. Not to mention the fact that it had itched like crazy, and his persistent scratching made him look as if he had fleas.

Holding his breath and shoving his face under the spray, he rinsed the soap away along with a good chunk of the tension that tightened his shoulders. Three more pumps of gel rubbed between his palms made a fragrant lather that he rubbed into his body fur, over lumps of muscle that, when he'd started, had been soft pillows of fat. He'd come so far, he thought. But, soaping up his belly, he thought he still had so far to go. The troupe of meatheads in the locker room weren't anywhere nearly as soft as he was, and his puny little muscles didn't have anything on theirs. With resolve he didn't use to have, he pushed down his growing feelings of inadequacy with the same mental mantra he'd used when he had been embarrassed to come back to the gym on his second day. THEY didn't all start out being big meatheads - they used to be where he was today, and one day he'd be where they are. They didn't quit, and he wouldn't either, God damn it!

They.

Thinking about them made him pause for a moment, listening. His prey drive was strong, and it snapped him back to reality. Daydreaming wasn't something a wise fox did, if he wanted to keep from getting beaten up - or worse. The locker room was getting noisy again, and the tone of the chatter and slamming of locker doors told Kip everything he needed to know. Furious with himself for allowing himself the luxury of a leisurely pace, he turned the water volume to its maximum and hurriedly rinsed the soap out of his fur as fast as he could. A man used to squeaking by on the margins, he instinctively knew that it wouldn't be fast enough. He scrubbed his fingers through his fur to help the soap rinse clean, but he knew that he wouldn't finish before the jocks got there.

Fuck it, he thought frantically, spinning the water control off and grabbing his towel. He didn't even take the few seconds to shake the excess water from his fur, he just wrapped his towel around his sodden body and leapt out of the shower, now in full panic mode, frantic to be out of the close quarters of the tiled shower room before the abusive jocks got ahold of him.

Instinctively he looked around. Was there a place to hide? Shit! No. Then there was no alternative left to him but to run. The loud voices of the angry jocks were getting closer, but if he ran at full speed, he could make it past them before the corridor narrowed down and he was trapped. Panic rose like bile in his throat.

RUN!

At full speed, Kip bolted out of the showers. His feet slipped on the wet tile floor and threatened to slide out from under him, but somehow he managed to stay upright. Only now he was headed for the wall opposite him faster than he could turn and maintain his balance! He used his arms to push against the wall and change his vector like the ball in some sadistic pinball game, and although he still bounced off the opposing wall with punishing force, he was at least going in the right direction now. He scrambled around the corner with all the speed he was capable of, the adrenalin raging through his system narrowing his focus to the space between the first jock in the pack and the end of the wall that defined the wet area of the locker room. If he didn't make it through that space before the jocks closed it, he would be trapped.

That. Space. Was. Too. Small.

In the instant before he hit, Kip's eyes locked on the biggest, meanest jock in the pack. Looking like some unholy cross between a rottweiler and a bull, the pack leader bared his teeth in a vicious snarl and spun around so that Kip slammed into his back. For an instant the fox hoped that maybe he'd knock over the attacking pack of wolves like so many bowling pins, and the confusion would give him the cover he needed to escape. But nothing so fortunate ever occurred in his world. Far from being bowled over, the leader somehow managed to counterstrike and throw Kip to the ground. The instant chill of the tile on flesh told Kip that somewhere during his panicked flight he'd managed to lose his towel and, along with it, what shreds might have remained of his dignity.

Whirling, the Alpha dog snarled a signal to his pack, who boiled around him like Satan's angels to either attack or witness the humiliating beating that was in store for the helpless fox. Either way it was going to be good entertainment for them, a belly laugh at the expense of someone weaker than them, and the best way to finish off an aggressive workout.

Kip's hand shot down to cover his crotch, not only to hide his nudity but to protect his testicles from the coming kicks. As if in anticipation, the Alpha dog's hand shot out to block his reach, pushing him back to the ground and keeping the little fox unprotected and vulnerable. Kip had other defensive weapons, and he moved to bite his attacker's forearm. Before he could even bare his sharp teeth, though, he saw the huge fist raised to knock out his teeth. Kip recoiled instinctively, and a hollow sound like a melon dropped on the ground was the last thing he remembered hearing before the blackness claimed him.