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I got his call a few days later, with his mildly stumbling apology for "passing out" on me. He thanked me for locking up for him and, after another few exchanges of relative banalities, he asked if I'd like to see him again. I arranged to take him to dinner, in an area of the city that he trusted and at a restaurant I was reasonably sure he'd reconnoiter before meeting me. For those reasons, I selected a place that I'd known for a long time, and I called them to ask the favor of reserving a particular table for me. They weren't used to such requests, but they knew me as I knew them, and they indulged me.

Johnny met me outside of the World of Noodles restaurant on the dot of 1900 hours (I used "7pm" when I invited him, but I suspected that he translated it in his own mind). He had taken greater pains to groom himself, and his pants and shirt were inexpensive but clean, and they were a solid level up from his army gear. He comported himself well; if I hadn't known of his inner turmoil, I might have taken his uptight emotional state as the sort of nervousness one has on what could be termed a First Date. We entered together, and the young collie at the hostess station recognized me, picked up some menus, and took us back to our table.

The Wednesday evening crowd was small, the restaurant interior large, so I knew that our conversation could remain quiet and private. The collie led us to the side of the dining room, away from most of the other diners, and our table was near to the wall, positioned diamond-like rather than square to the rest of the room. I gestured for Johnny to sit where he wished; he took a chair with his back to the wall and, as I sat to his side, he quietly scanned the room, making note of the exits. It was no great feat to guess that he'd be hypervigilant (also called hyperarousal, as a symptom of PTSD), and I tried to make it easy for him. It was a concession to keeping him calm.

It might help to explain that the World of Noodles prided itself on dishes made with various types of noodles, including pasta, in-house-made ramen, udon, pho, and various exotica from around the world. Any of these could be paired with anything on their extensive list of entrée ingredients, sauces, vegetables, etc. From this offering, Johnny selected a smoky, highly-spiced chicken dish paired with bun, or Vietnamese rice vermicelli. When the meals arrived, he eyed my beef stroganoff with interest, and I managed to get him to try a forkful. It was the sort of thing that a couple on a first date might do, something from more innocent times, something that he might only have experienced by seeing it in a movie. It actually made him shy for a brief moment, and I found that endearing.

I won't regale you with the minutia of the evening. He had not been stateside long enough to reacquaint himself with most of the simple pleasures, and it was awkward for him. I did my best to make it easier, and he seemed to want that sense of normalcy. I didn't realize, at the time, that he had never experienced what might have passed for "normal" at any time in his life.

We walked back to his apartment slowly, with pleasantly full bellies and an air of building camaraderie. When we arrived, he hesitated for a moment, perhaps unsure how I'd react. I gave him just enough reassurance, by way of a hug that communicated my desires, and he pulled me back into his bedroom. Our first coupling was swift, hungry, desperate, and he collapsed atop me with genuine exhaustion from the effort. After a few minutes, he began to rouse himself, and that was when I had to take over. He had gotten what his body wanted, and his mind was eager not to let him remain vulnerable for too long. Surprised that I didn't want simply to leave after the consummation, he was forced to improvise. Again, I'll spare you the details. The important thing to know is that I broke through an initial barrier with him, through no magic beyond words, emotions, and physical reassurance. The dinner fed his body; the sex fed his craving; the emotions fed his spirit in a way that he was unaccustomed to, and it clearly frightened him.

That was the beginning of our relationship. We started seeing each other regularly. I became a touchstone to his new reality of being back home. He kept his psych appointments, stuck to his drug regimen, drank less, worked out more (yes, with weights and exercises outside of the bed as well), and I put effort into helping him trust his environment a bit more. He was still hypervigilant, but less agitated about it, bringing it down from paranoia to a mere excess of caution. We had created the equivalent of a social safe word, giving us both a way to signal being overwhelmed and needing to retreat to a quieter place. In our lovemaking, he became receptive to greater sensitivity, more patience, and a much better approach to kissing. He would still go off the sexual deep end quite gladly, and I right along with him, but it was no longer the part and parcel of our joining. More simply, he was learning how to be a lover -- something else which, I was later to learn, he had never been before.

Included in this advancement was his mental state. He had begun to talk more, with his therapist, yes, but also with me. Trust was being built, slowly, and by winter, I had learned all of those horror stories that I had mentioned earlier. He was certain that I'd bail out on him by that point; instead, I held him closer and told him that he was home now, that he didn't have to keep reliving it. It was its own form of commitment: I didn't run away from him, and he didn't run from me either.

All this should have added up to some sort of success, wouldn't you think? He seemed to be getting only better. He still had nightmares and sleep terrors from time to time, which were a natural part of the PTSD. He told me what he could remember of his nightmares; during the sleep terrors, of course, he remained asleep, which allowed him no recollection of what was happening. The dream states were variations on a theme -- wartime, destruction, death, violence, killing, everything gruesome and lurid in detail. That would be enough to terrify anyone. What was terrifying for Johnny was watching it all through the lens of someone who was not a soldier. He described it as watching someone he knew was himself, a fox with his markings and face, but that he -- the one doing the watching -- was somehow innocent, naïve, forced to watch some evil double doing horrible things that he couldn't stop. The vision was dissociative, and his therapist thought it a good idea for Johnny to embrace the innocent self, to let the violent self be who he was (emphasis on past tense), to forgive him, to mourn and, ultimately, let go. That therapeutic technique was on par with "positive thinking" as a genuine cure for anything. I always thought that Norman Vincent Peale had a lot to answer for, but what could you expect from an up-and-coming self-styled salesman who packaged God and capitalism into its own religion?

My approach was to keep reassuring him that he could adapt to being home. The war that he had fought in was slowly, agonizingly coming to a close, at least in theory. The whole nation was being encouraged to put it behind us, stop thinking about it, pretend it never happened. Only the most cynical and fully-entrenched middle-class capitalists could do that. Pardon my politicizing, but it was part and parcel of the problems that Johnny was having to face down. Those who created the war wanted to bury it, forget about it; those who didn't want another one like it to happen again were trying to keep the atrocities alive in the public mind. The returning warriors were battered from both sides, unable to find time and space to become real again. It was, to my mind, the first and only time that this country actively turned its back on its military survivors; the recurring neglect in other areas was passive, yet no less devastating.

It was this constant shifting of environmental attitudes that kept Johnny's stability equivalent to trying to stand one-pawed on a vertical wooden dowel aboard a small ship on a storm-tossed sea. His medications were the main element of his stability and, as anyone who's been on such medication will tell you, the natural and pervasive response is to fight it, to see it not as help but as external control, something that made his "real" self a prisoner to what others thought he should be. All antipsychotics work that way, and it takes a vast and reliable network of support to keep someone from abandoning the drugs and trying to control his behavior without it. Even the newer varieties have this flaw, and in the early 1970s -- the time we're talking about -- it was a cycle that had little chance of being broken in a good way.

The changes started in mid-winter, which was unsurprising for many reasons. We were not in a part of the country with deep snows or other such issues, but short days and long nights are always taxing to a mind that has seen more than its share of darkness already. I did my best to provide happier ways to spend those nights, in and out of bed, but the pull to step away from the pills was getting stronger. He spoke of the desire more often, missed a therapy session here and there, asked me outright if I was counting his pills to make sure he took them (I hadn't been). I still wouldn't give up on him, but I wasn't sure what more I could do for him without actively interfering, which I told myself I would not let myself do.

He didn't go ballistic, didn't get into issues with the law, none of that. In many ways, his behavior was passably "normal," as if that were a word that described anything real. It was the more subtle things. More hypervigilance, less trust, more aggression in the bedroom. He would disappear sometimes, for a night, or for a few days, and he was more guarded, physically, when he would return. I put a few of the pieces together easily, but the rest was more difficult. I asked him about it, often, and he usually just shrugged off an answer. When came the night that I wouldn't let him off that easily, his demeanor changed into something I hadn't seen before.

You need to know a few things in order to make sense of the rest of this. One is that I never showed my tails to him, and neither did I use my magic on him during this time. I did my best to guide him, but never with any artificial or magical aids. I knew that he was slipping back into old habits, and I'd had the feeling that he would; between fighting the drugs, not having a good environment in general, and having no other support network than myself... not a lost cause, but I figured on setbacks of one kind or another. He had never asked to see my own home, and I didn't encourage his curiosity. He felt safer in his apartment; it was a known quantity, so to speak, a location where he felt safest. I would visit him there often, staying with him when he wished. Such visits grew fewer during this period, and I had the sense of something brewing in him, a storm that might I might not weather easily. I hoped that I wasn't being paranoid myself, but I found myself watching him and his behavior very closely.

He had been wearing his army gear more often, the various "olive drab and cammo" garb that likely came from his time in the service rather than purchased recently. On occasion, I'd find him after one of his brief disappearances, his fur matted in places, the smell of him a further indication that he'd not tended to himself for several days, probably not changing clothes; my nose further informed me that he had been in some sort of vigorous, sweaty activity. I can enjoy a certain amount of male scent, but at those times, I made a joking show of dragging him into the shower and scrubbing him down. He took it as a form of love play, and as you might guess, he would get slippery and frisky, so perhaps it was just as well.

This particular evening was already strange for several reasons. When he called me, he began by asking if I were alone. The rest of the conversation was more or less normal (again, whatever that word may mean, in this context), and he asked me to bring an extra shirt with me. I had thought that might mean that he was wanting me to stay overnight with him, but it wasn't something he'd asked before. He said that he had something special in mind. The telephone line muted some of the subtleties of voice that I could catch in ordinary speech; even so, something sounded "off." One doesn't reach my age by being careless.

When I arrived, as punctually as I could arrange it, he met me at the door dressed only in his OD dungarees with a canvas web weapons belt that appeared to be empty. He had been brushing his fur upward so that it stood out more, but his nipples were exposed, hard nubs of flesh protruding sharply outward. His body language was mildly aggressive, his eyes a little wider than normal. The smell of him spoke of eagerness, a touch of fear, a hint of predation. "Excited" was a mild descriptor.

He pulled me into the apartment, locking up behind us, as he always did. He spoke little, barely waiting for me to get out of my coat before getting me to the couch. After I was settled, he knelt astride me to face me, locking his legs with his own. He took my cheeks into his forepaws, gently but firmly, drawing me into a deep and powerful kiss. I wrapped my arms around him and went with the feeling; I'd enjoyed his more aggressive moods sometimes, although this time, I was wary. He skirted the edge of being dominant on these occasions, but we'd never established any formal S/M play or safe word. For the most part, I simply followed his lead, and that seemed sufficient. He hadn't gone too far... yet.

After long moments, he broke the kiss sharply and looked into my eyes. "I want to play a game," he said softly. "I need for you to trust me."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Close your eyes. Keep them closed."

I nodded and closed my eyes.

My ears moved forward, listening to his voice, to his movements. He began by slowly unbuttoning my shirt. My chest was laid bare to him, and he bent down to bestow a kiss atop my breastbone. The gesture, like the kiss, was tender, erotic, and I wondered if I had gone too far in my assessment of his current emotional state. He kissed and licked his way up to my neck, and I leaned my head back to get as much of this attention as he wished to give me.

"Yes," he whispered gruffly. "Just like that."

Leaning back from me a little, Johnny ran a forepaw down my chest and toward my belly, rubbing sensually, suggestively, giving me ample reason to, as the crude old joke would suggest, "relax and enjoy." The paw was removed, and I felt something else against my upper belly fur -- something long, metallic, flat-edged, ruffling my fur against its normal direction. There was no pain associated with it, just the sensation of having my skin less protected than usual. This continued up toward my neck, stopping before it got there. The item was removed, replaced a little further to one side, pushing up my fur, and the action was repeated on the other side.

There is a natural reflex reaction that helps settle the fur back down to its usual position. My skin flinched a little to start this process, and I felt Johnny's forepaw on my muzzle.

"Relax," he said. "Let your fur stay where I put it."

"I'll try," I replied softly.

I felt the item again, slowly ruffling up my fur, and I did my best to let it remain so. On its own, the feeling could be considered erotic, a sense of being vulnerable, of relinquishing control. I'm not truly submissive, especially not without full trust and mutual assurances in place. I let him have his game for the moment, not entirely sure where he intended to go. I had my suspicions. Perhaps foolishly, I thought it might be cathartic for him.

"It's good to see the skin sometimes," he said dreamily. "Not like shaving it down or something; that's too much. Just enough to see the paleness."

The nature of the metallic item changed from dull to sharp. Johnny had rolled it in his forepaw and brought the tip of the blade to my bare skin. He didn't poke or press; he simply let the knifepoint rest carefully on me. I didn't move, realizing that I would be safer if I let the game progress until it was genuinely dangerous. A stupefaction spell is easy to bring forth.

"Just stay still for me, okay?"

"Okay."

"Eyes closed."

"Okay."

He didn't say I couldn't look at him; just that I had to keep my eyes closed. I raised my Sight.

The young fox was entranced, wrapped up in his own mind. His breathing was slow, steady, his eyes unblinking, his body still. He was entirely in command of himself, within the fixation that held him. His groin pressed against me, and he was extraordinarily stiff. I could see and feel him drag the point of the knife over my skin in a straight, horizontal line on my chest. I let a hiss escape my lips.

"No blood," he said, as if to reassure me. "It's just a line. A beautiful line. Like art."

My own breathing increased, slightly exaggerated, to signal him that I was getting uncomfortable. I didn't think subtlety would work, but I wanted to give him at least one chance. I cared for Johnny, perhaps loved him, and I didn't want to hurt him. Worse than this had happened to me.

"You don't mind this, do you? It's so pretty."

"It scares me," I said truthfully, still keeping my eyes closed.

"No fear. Excitement. Gets the adrenaline going."

He shifted enough to grind his crotch against me, bringing forth a soft grunt from him. My Sight showed me the half-lidded look of sexual intent on his face. What it couldn't show me was what caused it. Dominance? Sadism? The obvious connection was the great confession that he had made to me not all that long ago. Flashback? Reliving the experience? Wanting to do it again?

"Johnny, this game is too rich for my blood."

"Blood?"

"I want to be with you, Johnny, but not like this. Can we back away from this? Will you let me open my eyes?"

He flinched slightly, and I Saw the strange smile on his muzzle. "Asking permission? Am I in control of you?"

"We haven't prepared for this sort of game, Johnny. There's no safe word in place. I want to respect you, as my lover. I want this game to end by agreement. Do you agree?"

I felt and Saw the knifepoint move close to my left nipple. I stopped breathing for a moment in order to keep very still, then to control my breath so that the rising and falling of my chest would not increase the risk being cut.

"Maybe just a little more. A little pattern on your skin, beneath your fur, to make you mine. Just for tonight. It won't scar or anything. I can handle the blade better than that."

"I'm sure you can," I said softly. "You told me about that."

The knifepoint moved slowly, like a strange itch, on my areola. "Is that what's worrying you? No no no, nothing like that. You're not part of that. You're just... part of me."

"Not like this, Johnny. This needs to stop. I want you to stop voluntarily."

"Just a little more..."

My eyes flew open, my forepaw grabbing his, but not before he made a shallow cut to my chest, missing the nipple, but unquestionably drawing a bit of blood. Before me, Johnny's eyes opened wide, staring into my own, first with rage, then then fear. He dropped the knife onto the sofa cushion beside me.

"Baby... oh, baby, I'm so..."

His muzzle flew down to the cut instantly, and he licked at it, as if to kiss away the hurt. His body tensed suddenly, and I didn't need my Sight to know what was happening. I stayed still, to see what he would do next. Unsurprisingly, he sucked at the skin, to bring another drop or two of blood to his muzzle. I healed myself of this small injury, so that he couldn't get any further blood from me. He continued to lick the area, as if apologizing for the cut, yet I felt sure that it was the blood he was after. I took his head firmly in my forepaws and raised it to look at me.

"Johnny," I said softly. "You have to stop."

He stared at me for several seconds, as if I'd spoken some unfamiliar language that he couldn't quite understand. Suddenly, his palms hit my chest hard as he pushed himself off and away from me. Regaining his hindpaws, he padded a few steps away from me.

"I thought you loved me."

"I do." I kept my voice soft and reasonable. "It's why I'm still here. I haven't left."

"You're supposed to stay," he spat at me. "If you love me, you're supposed to stay with me."

A key element that hadn't been present before. Interesting.

"Johnny, I'll stay with you. We can talk, we can make love, hold each other, spend all night to talk it out."

"Talk, always talk." He began pacing across the small living room, a caged beast. "Everything is words with you."

"Then come hold me, Johnny."

"Just a little more, that's all I wanted, just to make some pretty lines on you, wouldn't even stay longer than an hour or two, they didn't hurt you."

"They hurt our trust."

He stopped pacing, whirling on one heel to look at me, his eyes hot, angry.

"That kind of play is about trust, Johnny, and it relies on safeguards for both partners."

"Maybe you just don't wanna play."

"Maybe not tonight."

"Then do what you want."

The young fox grabbed a jacket off the coat tree near the door and pounded out without even bothering to close the door behind him. I hesitated, which might have made what happened my fault. I could have cast the stupefaction spell and kept him there. I could have followed, in a concealment glamour, if needed. I could have tried some bit of magic that could track him, if only to make sure that he would stay out of trouble. I didn't want to use my magics on him; it might have made things worse ("good intentions" and all of that).

The silence that he had left behind throbbed around me. I roused myself from the couch, gaining my hindpaws as a door in the hallway opened. I heard pawsteps before the head of a young bespectacled mouse peeked carefully into the apartment. I began buttoning my shirt, saying, "We had a disagreement."

"You okay?" she asked softly. "I heard some shouting, and running down the stairs..."

"I'm sorry that we disturbed you."

"It's cool." The mouse set paw just inside the threshold. "I'm Lily. I've seen you with Johnny before."

"Abram," I said, making the introduction proper. "Do you know Johnny well?"

She shook her head, making curls of blonde headfur dance gently. "Enough to know his name, that he's former military, and that he probably got a raw deal."

"That's a good way to put it." I finished buttoning my shirt, glancing at the hook near the door. "He's taken off without his keys."

"Not like him. What happened?" She blinked, embarrassed. "I'm sorry; none of my business."

"I'll credit it to your being a good neighbor." I smiled softly at her. "It's safe to say that he's had some troubles lately, and I'm afraid I disappointed him."

The question was on her lips, but she couldn't bring herself to ask it. This was only a few years after Stonewall, remember; being gay wasn't entirely "okay" yet. She hesitated a little longer before asking, "He gonna be all right?"

Truth is always important. "I hope so."

"You all right?"

"Going to be."

She paused again, her shyness curiously endearing, a coquettishness that wasn't entirely conscious on her part. "Anything I can do?"

"Would it be too much to ask for a hug?"

The young mouse padded over to me swiftly and wrapped her arms around me. I embraced her warmly, my chin atop her head, the slow wag of my tail not the least bit faked. She needed it as much as I did, and I sensed that she probably wanted more. This was the "free love" era, where sex and love were equated rather than set in their proper association. The older generation called it "promiscuity" and shamed it; the younger called it "freedom" and championed it. The pendulum must swing wide, and often, before it settles into something resembling a sensible mid-point. I was no prude, but neither was I a wanton nor someone to take advantage of vulnerability.

I broke the hug gently, still holding her as she looked up into my eyes, a tender balance of hope and fear showing in her look. Petting her headfur softly, I said, "Are you going to be okay?"

Her crestfallen look was replaced swiftly by one of sympathy. "I think so." Another pause. "He really... means a lot to you?"

"Yes," I said, my sincerity answering her unasked questions. I felt a need to reassure her. "That doesn't mean that I don't care."

"I know," she whispered, a sad smile on her muzzle. "I guess I had my hopes up too much."

"Do you have someone?"

"No."

So much finality in a single word. It hurt my heart. "Neither of us has someone tonight. Would you care for dinner with an old fox?"

"You're not so old," she giggled cutely.

"What happened to 'Don't trust anyone over 30'?" I quoted to her a popular slogan of the time.

"Special rules for neighbors." She smiled up at me. "Let me get my bag."

She skipped off happily enough, and I made sure that the knife in the couch cushions was relocated to Johnny's bedside table drawer. I couldn't be certain that he kept it there, but it was a safe bet.

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

Lily and I dined well, talked, enjoyed each other's company. She accepted the Question and Response and, although she wanted more, she appreciated the nearness for its own sake. So did I, for that matter. She slept in my embrace, and I hoped that Johnny's disappearance was like those he'd had before, that he'd return in a day or two, call me, start over again. I didn't expect things would be different; I simply hoped that we could ride out the storms together until he could decide for himself that he wanted things to be different.

I spent the next day doing what I could not to worry. Perhaps the biggest chance that I had taken was to purloin his keys, lock up his place, and leave a note on the door for him to call me at once, that I'd get him back into his apartment, and we'd move forward from there. I found out from Lily that there was a super who lived onsite; at worst, Johnny could get in that way. There were other keys on his ring, and I was hoping that he'd want them for something. That might open the door to our conversations again.

After two days, I began to get worried. After three, I showed up at his apartment, letting myself in, looking for signs that he'd been there; I found none. Lily hadn't heard anyone other than me, although she wasn't in her apartment 24/7, and I was sure that Johnny could be stealthy enough to avoid detection, if he so desired. The one thing that let me know I was getting paranoid was my checking his bedside table drawer. No, he hadn't come back for the knife. There was no reason to think that he didn't have others.

I felt trapped by not having many options to pursue. I wasn't a relative, so I couldn't ask for information at hospitals. I perused newspapers at the library, covering the prior few days; I looked for any reports that might have listed a fox of his general description as victim or perpetrator of a crime, anything to do with accidents, everything I could imagine. Nothing.

Late on the fourth night, I got a phone call. He wanted his keys back.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"Need to get inside."

"Johnny, are you all right?"

"Fine. Just bring me the keys."

It was no time to argue. "I'll be there as fast as I can. Ask Lily to look after you."

"Who?"

"The mouse across the hall from you. She's worried about you."

"I'll be near the entrance to the building. Bring the fucking keys."

He hung up before I could say anything further.

In those days, it was easier to get around the city than it is now. Most of the same transports are in place, including hindpaws, but it was less populated. It took less than fifteen minutes for me to get there but, at first, I thought he'd gotten tired of waiting. I didn't see him anywhere around the building. The phone booth on the corner was vacant, and the street was reasonably well-lit.

Finally figuring he'd gone upstairs after all, I went up myself, only to find the hallway empty. I had about decided to let myself into his apartment to wait for him when I heard a soft chuckle behind me. Whirling about on one heel, I found that Johnny had followed me upstairs without my having had any sense of his presence. The only thing more shocking than that was his appearance.

He wore the same pants and jacket that he had worn four nights ago. Both were grimy with dirt, engine grease, and food stains. The coat hung open, showing his chest and belly fur, ordinarily a rich cream color, now dirty, matted, caked with what my nose confirmed was blood. His arms hung loosely at his sides, his forepaws bruised, claw-like, fur likewise matted and bloodied. One eye was still healing from having been swollen shut; his muzzle showed cuts, bruises, and yet more blood. His open eye regarded me with savage ecstasy, and through the rictus of a death's head grin, he spoke.

"It's good to be back."

...to be continued