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Chapter 1--HUGO

After he'd been banned from Vertigo for letting some wolf hike his scut on the dance floor--it wasn't that kind of club--Lyle figured out what his problem was. The deer had shitty taste in men. All it took was a firm grasp on his antlers, and--

"That is your epiphany?" said the jackal beside him. Lyle envied his fur. Envied his everything, really. Golden fur with smokey patches, and one just under his muzzle, like a chinstrap that gave the impression he was always on the verge of laughing at you. Which, usually Hugo was. He swiveled on his barstool. "Merde. Sounds more like pornography."

"Dude, shut up," said Lyle.

"Epi-pornography. Epi-phornography?" continued Hugo, still swiveling. His muzzle wrinkled from its usual, sort of passively-fuckable look to more of a sour lemon frown. Still fuckable, really. He looked across the bar counter to the ibex behind it. "Zuzanna, help me."

"Don't. Don't help him with shit."

Much like her stature, which was squat and vaguely Slavic, Zuzanna had a brevity to her. Useful for a bartender, even if she lacked, as Hugo would put it, that je-ne-sais-quoi charm that most other bartenders always possessed.

"Pornophany," she said, punctuated by a sharp, curt nod.

"Pornophany!" said Hugo, golden eyes overjoyed. He slid an enthusiastic paw from his own knee to Lyle's to stop himself turning, but it lingered. Squeezed. "The problem, mon ami, is not that you have shitty taste in men. That is not why you were banned ."

"Here we go," called Zuzanna. She was fucking around with some empty glasses.

"Dude--"

"No, no," interrupted the jackal, who had only one volume setting, "hear me. You know that I know lots of things about these subjects. I cannot make you believe me, of course, but you must hear the French wisdom even if you do not listen to it." He paused. Leaned forward. Planted his other paw on Lyle's knee, so it wasn't like the deer had the option to get up and leave. Then he batted his eyes and looked sad and French and Lyle wanted to bend the jackal over the counter, which Hugo probably knew, so with the deer's silent acquiescence and too much amusement, Hugo said, "Perfect."

"Algiers wisdom," said Zuzanna.

"Born in Algiers, né à Paris," said Hugo. "French is French. And what would you know of Lyle's problems?"

Zuzanna ducked beneath the counter with a box of something, then dinged her horns--just as stubby as the rest of the ibex, really--which set Hugo off cackling. Being an absurdly physical creature, however, laughter wasn't something Hugo just did with his face or his muzzle. It was a whole-body affair. A favorite move of his was leaning both paws on either of the deer's thighs and throwing his snout in Lyle's face to snicker before bursting out in giggles. Folks often mistook them for a couple. That couldn't have been further from the truth, of course: Hugo only ever dated in the physical sense.

There'd been some drinking too, despite the relative emptiness of Pouncey's, or maybe because of it. It exaggerated things. Not that Lyle minded any of it, of course, or how Hugo's paws had a very generous understanding of what counted as thigh.

"Mon ami," said Hugo, who always caught his train of thought the way a clumsy waitress caught an overturned tray, "your problem is that you want to ruin yourself. Self-destruction. Oblivion! You love it," he continued, leaning in closer, paws squeezing. Lyle could smell the fruity alcohol on his breath. The jackal could probably smell it on his, too. "If you love to get fucked," closer, "then you dream to be destroyed."

The tinkling of glass first pulled away Hugo's eyes, then his snout. He pulled back.

A jackrabbit--two of them, actually, both that post-winter grey and about the same height--deposited their now-empty glasses on the bar with obvious attitude. Well, one of them did--she had a sort of overeager look to her and her ears were always perked. The other had a disinterested air about him. Like he'd never given a shit in his life and wasn't about to start now, even though Pouncey's was the kind of dive where no one brought you your drink and they certainly didn't clean your table for you.

The disinterested jackrabbit winked at Lyle.

"Wrong," said Zuzanna. She ignored the jackrabbits, who promptly returned to their far-end table. They'd been there before, obviously, but they'd been out of focus. Smudged out. It happened often with Hugo. At times, the jackal had so much gravity he could bend light.

"Yeah," said Lyle, "Wrong. Defend me, Zu."

"Problem Lyle has is that--"

"--not like that."

"You want my defense or not?"

Hugo rested an elbow on the bar counter, one paw offering a perch for his snout.

"Continue," said the jackal. "I would like to hear this, even if Lyle does not."

"Problem for Lyle is not self-destruction. These things are too fanciful," said the ibex, setting down her work for a rare moment. Maybe it was the long pauses. Maybe it was accent. Whatever it was, however, something in Zuzanna's manner of speaking always gave the impression of a great weight in her words. "Many of us desire things we know are bad for us. Lyle is no different. But like many of us," she continued, pensive, "Lyle will never say such things are bad."

"Because to say it is bad," continued Hugo, extrapolating, "is to say, 'I know I should not have this, even if I want it.'"

"Yes."

"An excellent point, Zuzanna. But, have you considered..."

Most of Pouncey's public space was a long, narrow fire hazard with tables and chairs on the curved sides of the corridor, these dumb concrete pillars in the middle, and a bar jammed up against the wall at the far end. Low ceiling, too. Lyle always had to duck his head to avoid scraping his antlers. Given that the whole thing was an unlicensed establishment run out of a warehouse basement, you couldn't expect much, but it did give a sense of privacy, if only because the line of sight was godawful. Unless you were sitting at the corner edge of the bar, you couldn't see any of the tables.

Lyle was at the corner of the bar, though, and looking between Zuzanna and Hugo gave him a surprisingly perfect view of the far corner table with the jackrabbits. The perky one had her back to the deer, while the disinterested one, who honestly had a jerk vibe to him, was near dead-on to Lyle.

Not that the deer had a reason to be watching the jackrabbits. The wink had fucked with him just enough, he reasoned, and the mild intrigue edged out listening to Hugo and Zu discuss in detail which particular way Lyle's psyche was damaged.

Perky was still a blur. She gesticulated a lot and was dressed in a way that might've suggested she was cool if Lyle hadn't just seen her be an ass to a dive bartender. Jerk was also blurry in that he was wearing a tank top and denim shorts in the middle of Spring, which told Lyle about as much as he needed to know about the jackrabbit's priorities, but there was a little depth. Clearly, he had some superpower that allowed him to adopt the most disinterested stance imaginable--slouching in his chair, elbow crooked on the table, snout resting on his fist, long grey ears flat--and yet still have someone like Perky not notice.

Or, maybe she noticed. Maybe he just that good in bed. Lyle's eyes flickered down beneath the table on reflex--the deer blamed Hugo's absently wandering paws--and when they flickered back up, the jackrabbit was watching him. A smile spreading on his muzzle.

Lyle ducked his head and looked back to Hugo.

"--no, no!" said the jackal, frustration folding itself into the wrinkling of his snout. "Wishing to be destroyed is not the same thing as wishing to die."

"No?" asked Zuzanna. It wasn't really a question.

"It--it is about obliteration. L'appel du vide ," he explained. Lyle could listen to Hugo talk about anything for hours. The facial expression alone were worth it, and the passion was just gravy. "Call of the void," he continued, very French, yes, "it is about destruction, yes, but it is also about becoming something more. When you are emptied of everything that you are, the rest of the world invades you. It is why we call orgasm la petite mort."

"The little death," said the deer, trying to focus. A difficult task, what with Hugo pawing his crotch under the bar and the dickish jackrabbit watching him get flustered. "Response, Zu?"

"What is this, mon ami? Debate club?" A free paw from the jackal grabbed light hold of one of Lyle's antlers, dragging Lyle with canine insistence to meet the jackal's laughing eyes. "Do you have nothing to say--"

"Am weighing my options."

"Touché," said the jackal, beaming at the deer. Squeezing. Lyle nearly kicked a hoof, his leg was twitching so bad. Jesus, he wanted to drag the jackal out of there by the tail and lift it. "Zuzanna?"

"Need time to think."

"Oh," said Hugo, "then I will continue. You see..."

Behind Zuzanna, Perky had toned it down. Not by much, but by a hair. Maybe that smile had eased her a little bit. Maybe she wasn't an asshole. Maybe, and Lyle was beginning to suspect this was the case, maybe Jerk made her an asshole. He seemed the type, with his tank top and vaguely-fit body and the fact that he was still watching Lyle from across the room.

Jerk winked again.

Lyle didn't break eye contact. That would mean Jerk was winning, and jackrabbits like him won far too often in life. He still held that disinterested pose, like a hard-to-please statue of the thinker, but he slouched further, knees spreading wider under the table. It was an odd move--one that Lyle didn't understand at first, because Jerk lost some of his disinterest and started having a conversation proper with Perky. Below, however, another conversation unfolded. A kind of conversation Hugo would've been ace at.

The jackrabbit was groping himself. For the first minute it was over-the-fabric, obscene in the moral sense but not scandalous, just a slow drag of palm over loose denim. Mesmerizing. Like a moth to flame, Lyle watched the curve of his dick firm up against the fabric, tenting up for a moment as he flexed. That opportunity Jerk didn't waste--dragging his paw up along the inside of his thigh, fabric included, to flash his package at the deer.

Even when he released the bunched-up denim, the head of his dick and half his shaft hung out the side.

He hadn't even looked away from Perky yet. Or maybe he had. The deer had given up watching Jerk's eyes and instead spent his limited brain capacity trying to will a pair of shorts onto himself. Lyle knew the jackal could feel him throbbing. He'd eased up his touch. Hadn't even realized there was an extra game at play.

That part turned Lyle on the most.

"Lyle?" said Hugo, snapping the deer to attention. Whenever he asked a question, his muzzle always quirked just so on an off angle, and God did Lyle need to fuck that golden muzzle.

"Hm?" said Lyle.

"You have to pick which one of us is correct," said Hugo. "Is it the need for self-destruction that underlies your bad decisions? Or is it--ah, what did you say, Zuzanna?"

"We all want bad things, even if we won't say so," said the ibex, sage, "because it is difficult to reconcile desire with place they come from."

Lyle considered it. It was hard. He was hard.

"Wait. Dude," said the deer, frowning. "You make it sound like my only two options are that either the men are shitty because I wanna ruin my life, which I hate, so their shitty-ness is a byproduct of me seeking that goal and maybe wanting to be like them--"

"--that is not entirely correct, mon ami , but close enough--"

"--or that it's not that I have bad taste and can't tell what's coming, but that I have great taste and am specifically picking shitty dudes without interrogating why."

"Yes," said Zuzanna. "Choose."

Lyle considered it.

Behind the ibex, Jerk stood up and headed around the corner. Bathroom.

"I gotta go take a leak," he said.

"I told you!" said Hugo, and no amount of waving-off could keep the jackal from elaborating.

Pouncey's bathroom was tiny by normal standards but decent by dive ones. Lyle still had to duck his head when passing through the doorway, but, hey, what else was new? Its features included two stalls--both without locks to minimize the fucking on party nights, not that it helped much--a piss trough that could fit maybe three people if they were real comfortable with one another, and, on special, limited-time offer, a jackrabbit with his shorts bunched up at the thigh and tank top looped over his neck again, exposing all that gorgeous grey fur and his half-hard dick.

Jerk cocked his head to the side and perked one ear.

The door swung shut behind Lyle.

"We both know you're gonna blow me," said Jerk.

All that ran through Lyle's mind as he knelt before the jackrabbit was that this was definitely Hugo's fault, and any illusion he had of savoring this moment and going slow went away the moment the jackrabbit hilted in Lyle's throat. He firmed up quick. Both paws gripped, hard, around the base of the deer's antlers.

That was the thing about jackrabbits--strong legs, hips like pistons. Jerk gave the deer a fifteen second grace period of easy-paced muzzlefucking while he got fully hard. After that, he scoffed, and Lyle was lucky to breathe for the next three minutes. He pretended he was Hugo.

Through his tongue he felt that telltale throb, the excess salt of precum, and braced for a flooded throat. To Lyle's surprise, however, Jerk pulled out and pulled back on Lyle's antlers, holding the deer's muzzle in place while he painted it white. The first jet nearly caught Lyle in the eye and ended up somewhere higher, and for the rest, the deer was lost, shuddering as the jackrabbit's scent flooding his nose and over his tongue.

When Lyle finally cracked open a clear eye, the jackrabbit was gone. He was still hard. Hadn't even unzipped his fly.

Lyle washed off his muzzle in the sink and, less than five minutes after he'd left, rejoined Hugo at the bar. There were more customers there, now, but not a jackrabbit to be seen. Zuzanna was off pouring drinks.

"So, mon ami?" asked Hugo, leaning in again with those golden eyes. He'd had another drink. Something minty, this time. Lyle could smell it fresh on his breath. He watched the jackal's sudden curious snuffling, whisker's twitching, and met the new intrigue in his Hugo's golden eyes with his own secretive look. "Which did you choose?"

"You know," said Lyle, "I think I'm gonna keep my options open."

---

Chapter 2--JULIAN

Beneath the unspoiled starlight of open prairie was one of few places where Lyle felt at home. He wanted to freeze the stars and the moonless sky and live there, on the back porch, sweaty and splayed out over those weird puzzle-piece yoga mats forever, his antlers knocking the weather-worn floorboards and, occasionally, against the numbed skull of the jackal beside him. This moment was perfect.

Lye said so, but it came out slurred and Hugo started giggling and so did he because, Jesus, they were really, really fucking drunk.

"No, no," said Hugo, tongue lolling out at the night's sky. I agree. C'est merveilleux." He fumbled, elbow overturning a bottle, maybe empty, before landing his paw with a plap against the bare fur of Lyle's chest. Lyle had lost most of his clothes somewhere--strip poker came to mind--but had managed to keep his briefs. Summer was too hot anyway. The night air was nice on his fur and soothed his aching back. He couldn't remember why it hurt.

Eventually, the jackal found Lyle's paw and held it loose. "What you said, it was poetry," he continued. "Poetry!"

"Poetry?" said Lyle. "Dude, you're fucking with me."

"What can be more poetic than the earnest words of a drunk?"

"Spoken to the very stars themselves, no less," said another voice, one Lyle had, in the hazy twilight of alcohol, either forgotten or edited out of existence. It spoke from the other side of Hugo and was named Julian.

"Voilà," said Hugo. "You are a poet. It is in--it is inargue--it cannot be argued," continued the jackal, flailing their collective, still-clasped paws at the stars.

"Inarguable," said Julian. The Iberian lynx sat up, rubbing at his silver and spotted face with both paws as if he could somehow stretch the alcohol from his skin. Unlike Lyle, he'd managed to hold on to everything except his shirt, which he'd oh-so-graciously donated. Then he looked down, doting, at the near-naked jackal beside him with a look that filled Lyle's throat with bile and envy. "Do you want me to grab you some more water?"

There came a pause. Maybe he was considering it. Maybe the lag was just that bad.

"No."

"Are you sure, love?"

"No. Yes," said Hugo, snout wrinkling again and then smoothing, suddenly, with the onset of an epiphany. "I am not a creature of water anymore. I do not need water. I am a being of vodka now."

Lyle snorted, and, with that, they all started giggling again.

"Think I'll join you," said the deer. "Renouncing water as we speak. Pass the bottle, dude?"

Hugo did. It was empty. They held a funeral. Julian pinched off his nostrils and, with irritating accuracy made all the more cacophonous by the bass-boosted late-90s remixes blasting from inside the farmhouse, sang his best nasal bagpipe rendition of Scotland the Brave.

All of them laughed and wept. It was a proper send-off for Ms. Vodka Bottle, we hardly knew her.

"In life," started Hugo, after a pause that could've been a minute or could've been a half hour, because slow-rotating stars in the sky made for poor time-keeping, "we have many funerals."

"Deep, dude."

"Do not--Julian!" cried Hugo. "Lyle is mocking me. Mon cher ami. My best friend. How could--I am trying to be profond," continued the jackal, a mock woundedness building in his tone, "and he is mocking me even though he cannot even stand on his own to hooves."

"Can you?"

"We are not talking about me. I do not have hooves."

"This is true," said Julian. "We aren't talking about Hugo. He doesn't have hooves."

"He also doesn't have pants on."

"Neither, if I must rebut, do you."

"He doesn't have anything on."

"That is not true!" said the jackal. "I have a shirt."

"Jules' shirt."

"What is the point of having a boyfriend if I cannot steal clothes from him when needed?" said Hugo. He turned on his side and yanked Lyle's paw, still intwined, to make the deer do the same and face him. "We have, if I am counting correct," he started, staring down his gold-and-black-and-fuckable muzzle at Lyle, "the same number of clothes on."

"Well--"

"--no, I forbid you from borrowing clothes from Julian. It is forbidden."

"It is forbidden," said the lynx, sage. They made a decent pair. From the moment Lyle had met him, Jules had always and infallibly bought into all of Hugo's bullshit, no questions asked. Maybe more than decent pair. "Moreover, it's a feedback loop. If you borrowed my jeans--never mind that they're too big for you--then I wouldn't have any, and I'd have to borrow them back. Repeat ad nauseum."

"Ah," said Hugo, rasping like he was tasting a fine wine, "a paradox. In life, we have many paradoxes."

"I'm sensing a pattern, here, love."

"In life--"

"--okay well how about those paradoxes?"

A really good pairing. One that made you mad to see, particularly because they were as nauseating as they were happy together, and particularly if you were a deer, and if you and your best friend didn't date other people, ever, because those weren't the people you were, supposedly, and then your best friend suddenly had a boyfriend from Europe and they had decided to be something that approached monogamous. Sure, the lynx was hot. All that sleek, silvery fur, those tantalizing spots that made you want to play connect-the-dots with your tongue, and sure he was smart and funny and sort of charming once you got past his overspoken European ways, and surely, Lyle realized, he had lost the plot of what he was thinking.

"Consider me," said Hugo. "I had not considered myself a creature capable of a romantic relationship, and less even that I would want one." He was speaking to the both of them, of course, but he was staring at Lyle. Just the physics of their positioning. "You would blush, Julian, if you knew the, ah--Lyle, what is the word?"

"Shenanigans?"

"No, no."

"Tomfoolery," offered the lynx. He had evidently tired of fighting gravity and lay back down, spooning up against the jackal's back like only a feline could.

"No, no!"

"The dirty details of your sexual exploits," said the deer. He spared a fuzzy look past Hugo's smaller head to watch Jules for any reaction. The months hadn't yet softened Lyle's protectiveness of the jackal. He wasn't sure years would. Instead of disgust or judgement, however, the only thing that crossed Jules' starlit snout was a thoughtful look.

"I should think you would also blush," replied the lynx, "if you knew the dirty details of my own sexual exploits, as Lyle so nicely put it." He snuck his wide, spotted paws underneath the open fabric of Hugo's borrowed flannel and continued, "I could tell you about them, if you like."

Quasi-monogamous. Schrödinger's monogamy. Lyle's brain was too steeped in alcohol to understand the nuances, and even the broad strokes became incomprehensible because precious blood was flowing away from his brain and toward his dick.

Lyle wasn't the only one. He watched Julian's paws trail circles in the pale gold of Hugo's bellyfur and the jackal firm up a few inches lower. Whenever Hugo twitched, the tapered tip of his dick brushed Lyle's thigh.

The deer's gaze flicked every so often between the jackal's laughing, golden eyes and the display below.

"Q_uel diable._ Julian, we are not talking about sexual--sex--sexuality," said the jackal, with surprising discipline through the stumbling. "We are talking about paradoxes and philosophy. Merde," he whined. _"_I am so horny."

"Mmhm." Julian kept rubbing.

Lyle shot down the urge to say 'get a room' or anything to that effect, mostly because they couldn't. Zuzanna had driven them, and even if the ibex was somehow still sober, she'd vanished into the throng hours ago and 'being horny' was not a good reason, in Lyle's book, to leave a party and drag your friends with you. As for the farmhouse, all available rooms were occupied by drunk folk at this hour of the night-slash-morning, and waking them up with the sounds of fucking was a surefire way to be heckled out of good sex.

Plus, if they got a room, they would be in a room, and Lyle would still be laying on yoga mats on the back porch, deprived of the way Hugo's pale golden fur and Jules' silver looked like precious metals in the prairie starlight.

"I think I am much happier, this way. There was an exhil--it was exciting, yes," continued Hugo, a true trooper, "to have spontaneous sex with a stranger at a party, or in a lavatory, or that one time on a pool table. Do I miss it?" he asked, not waiting for a response. "Of course. But I know that I miss it the way I miss drinking after I have lost the hangover, and the excitement is the excitement of playing with matches."

"I know exactly what you mean," said the lynx. Paws still trailing. "I think for a long time I'd assumed that polyamory was the natural fit for me, given, my proclivities, shall we say. But this feels more all-in, I suppose, if that makes sense."

"Yes, yes!" said Hugo. He let go of Lyle's paw only to clasp both sides of the deer's muzzle, as though words alone couldn't carry the severity of his agreement. "'All-in.' That is poetry, too, because to love only one person at a time, it is like a poker game. You are doing a gambling."

Lyle shrugged, watching the night's sky again. The night air felt too hot. They should have had dew forming on them. Grass didn't have to think about relationships.

"I dunno, dude," said Lyle. "Sounds like a lot of work."

"It is," said Hugo.

"Very much," said Jules.

"How do you adjust? Like, Hugo, you went from relationships-never, and Jules, you went from many to just one. I don't wanna sound rude, but--"

"I am French, mon ami. Be as rude as you please."

"Sort of sounds like you're both jamming yourselves in boxes that weren't made for you, dude."

A loud slam, hard enough to carry through the floorboards all the way to the back porch, jolted them in place, and was followed by a series of mocking cheers, shot-to-chaser. Hugo perked an ear and Julian's leaned up to peer through a darkened window, but that was it.

"How will I know the box was not made for me," asked the jackal, snapping Lyle's eyes back to him, "if I remain forever in the one where I began?"

"And with regard to adjusting," continued the lynx, adopting the helpful, instructive tone that had become too familiar over the past few months, "we sat down, talked, and figured out a bunch of rules that still fit us."

"Yes, yes!"

"Certainly I've always been very, shall we say, physically affectionate," said Jules, lifting his paws from Hugo's borrowed flannel as if the gesture was a needed demonstration.

"And me also," added Hugo.

"I suppose I never was able to distinguish between a friendship and a romantic relationship, and I also suppose I never needed such a distinction. I love many of my friends," he continued, "and so I explained that to Hugo, and we both realized that, well, if I want to hold hands with a friend while out and about, why shouldn't I? It's not necessarily a romantic gesture."

"And I am French," said the jackal. Hugo smiled, tongue lolling, and Lyle was warm again. He scooted closer on the yoga mat, and just a touch higher. The deer couldn't tell if it was Hugo's own insistence or if the lynx had adjusted position for him, which, of course, begged the question of where Jules' other paw had gone or why he heard the metal of a belt buckle, but that was a question for a soberer brain. "We kiss friends and coworkers and anyone at all after saying oh-là-là when the fireworks are happening for the old year."

"In essence," finished the lynx, "monogamy means what we want it to mean."

Something about it rang hollow, or didn't quite fit together in the deer's brain, but Hugo's light grinding against the small where the deer's hip and thigh met smoothed down any inconsistencies in the pieces.

"We leave to each other's discretion," continued Hugo, speaking softer, "everything but the passionate sex. So if I want to get fucked on the pool table in front of everyone," he breathed, leaning closer, "then I will ask Julian to do the fucking."

Hugo arched his head forward and licked the side of Lyle's muzzle.

Then they were kissing in that sloppy, mindless way you did with boys whose names you didn't know after a few too many drinks, but it was better, because Lyle knew Hugo's name and almost everything else about him. He whined into the deer's muzzle, needy, and ground his dick against the trapped and tented fabric of Lyle's briefs, which neither of them had removed or could remove because their arms were tangled around each other's necks.

When the jackal flipped onto his back and his hips pulled away, and when Lyle flipped with him to keep their tongues together, he felt the shape of the lynx and picked out the sounds of Jules' slick muzzle around the jackal's dick. Hugo moaned into the deer and Lyle muffled him harder.

He'd been wrong. This moment was perfect. The deer would have given anything to listen to the urgent noises, ascending notes from the piano of the jackal's mouth, on loop, forever, again and again until the end of time. And when the jackal came, thrusting with desperation into the lynx's mouth and against Lyle's weight, he'd have done anything to be the Jules' tongue.

Lyle didn't do anything. Instead, he peeled off Hugo like a long sticker, flustered and breathing heavy and painfully hard, and he watched the stars to the soundtrack of Julian licking the jackal clean.

The stars turned in the sky.

Minutes later, Hugo began to snore.

"I'm afraid that did him in," said Jules, sounding amused with himself. The lynx had sat up and was preening his paws. It wasn't his. While somewhere in the haze Jules' jeans had migrated across the porch, his underwear, a pair of ironic heart boxers, was still on.

"Think we should find Zu?" asked Lyle, abrupt. He averted his stare and stretched out wide across the yoga mat, whatever mild ache in his back now a touch further strained. His antlers scraped the floorboards. The deer winced.

"No, I rather think we don't have to. Besides," continued the lynx, sounding coy, "by the time we'd find her, Hugo would be awake and dragging me off into the field for another round, I imagine."

"Probably true."

"Is your back all right?"

"Just got a weird kink in it, is all," said the deer. He kept stretching, which helped, moderately, with both problems, although his back denied him that satisfying pop. "A little too much twisting."

"I suppose carrying Hugo around on your back probably didn't help matters much, either," said the lynx. It sounded familiar, in the vague, alcoholic kind of way.

Jules stretched, which was as annoying and luxuriant as feline stretches always were, and gave a great, whisker-wrinkling yawn. Then, blinking the sleep from his eyes, he said, "Lay flat, then."

"Huh?"

Jules twirled a paw. "On your stomach? I'll rub your back."

"Oh. Okay," said the deer.

"Unless, of course, that's weird for you, in which case, please do not."

It was a little weird.

"I apologize--"

"What the hell, right?" said Lyle. "Least my antlers won't keep banging the floor." He scooted further from the sleeping jackal and, as instructed, lay flat on his belly.

In lieu of a moonless and starlit sky, Lyle watched a tall field of dried-out prairie grass sway in the gentle night's wind. His ears twitched to follow the medley of sounds around him, paws moving, belt buckle--moving his jeans closer, Lyle guessed--Hugo snoring, and the approaching lynx, who hopped a knee on either side of the deer's back to straddle it and put his wide paws to work.

Maybe it was the alcohol, but Jesus that felt good. Good enough that Lyle was glad he was belly-down on the mat. The first stroke, with only mild pressure, smoothed a half-held breath out of the deer.

"Someone's happy," said the lynx.

"It's not weird," said the deer. "Like you said earlier, right? You wanna hold hands with a friend, or, I guess--"

"--give them a massage, perhaps--"

"--you do it, and it doesn't have to be weird and romantic."

"Precisely," said Jules, again with the instructive tone. "Gold star. Pressure okay?"

"Dude. More would be great."

As requested came another stroke, both paws together from the small of Lyle's back just above his scut with firmer pressure, smoothing out another shuddered breath until Jules stopped between his shoulder blades, where he held the pressure for a moment. Like a slow piston in a cycle. Lyle could see why Hugo kept the lynx around--he gave excellent massages.

That, and the end of each stroke brought with it not only the full bodyweight of the lynx, but also his hips against the curve of Lyle's ass. An innocent byproduct. Jules probably didn't notice or mind. Probably.

Lyle kept his scut from twitching with all the effort your average drunk could manage.

"You really believe all that stuff you said?" asked Lyle. The words spilled out like an overturned bottle of vodka, half-drunk, an accident. Then, since it was already said and the deer was feeling brave, he added, "The stuff about being monogamous, even though you're both not really monogamous people."

"Oh, that stuff," said the lynx, tone dry. "Certainly, there are parts of it that I always believe. Monogamous folk have to deal with jealousy, but when you're fucking other people and each other, I think polyamory more so involves envy. The problem isn't that they're dating, or, I suppose, fucking other people."

"It's that, when they are," continued the deer, extrapolating, "you're not sure if you really want them, or just really wanna be them?"

"Very astute."

"I try. But you didn't really answer my question."

Paws stilled on Lyle's back, for a moment, and then resumed as the lynx spoke. "I'm not always convinced," he said, uncertainty plain in his voice. Like he was venturing out into unknown territory. "I love Hugo--of that, I am absolutely certain. And, of course, I firmly believe that he believes in what he's saying, but I lack the passion and conviction we both, I think, know he has in excess." He paused again. "Also, I'm going to do a thing with my forearm now."

Besides being delicious, the thing with his forearm involved dragging it across Lyle's back with the entirety of the lynx's weight behind it. Lyle moaned. He'd had his back blown out before, but this was something else.

Jules exhaled, sharp. "Wow, it is warm for, what, two in the morning?"

It was. Alcohol and global warming, a compound effect.

"Do you mind if I--"

"--dude, as long as you keep up this massage, I don't care what you do." The deer had long given up the sight of the dried-out field for the sweet, sense-enhancing bliss of closed eyes.

"A moment, then."

Above him, Jules shifted, but as per the terms of their agreement, at no point did the massaging stop. One knee lifted off from his left before bonking back down against the yoga mat, and then the right. A quiet sound of fabric sliding across fur. Louder than that, the snores of a sleeping jackal. Jules sighed with relief.

"Now that's better."

When he did the forearm thing again, Lyle became acutely aware that, not only were Jules' hips grinding against Lyle's ass, but those hips were naked and the lynx was firming up. A little disquieting. A little exciting. Not entirely outside the realm of what had happened earlier in the night, even if, as Jules added more and more bodyweight to his massage strokes, he also added more and more grinding.

Each time the lynx dragged his paws back down to the small of Lyle's back, he began to dip a little lower, claws trailing with a nice sting until they met the deer's white-tailed scut, then later the hem of the deer's briefs, and the next time further still, until finally Jules was tugging them down and off and the pretense of massage was as naked as they both were. That too soon vanished. The lynx teased between the deer's cheeks and, in needy frustration, Lyle arched his back to catch Jules' tip against his hole.

The massage was over and the lynx's tongue was inside him. One of Jules' wide paws spread his cheeks wider as he made out with the deer's ass, while the other fumbled, Lyle heard, with the belt and jeans.

A minute later, a few cold dollops of lube spread across and inside his hole solved that mystery.

"I don't have a condom," said Jules. Hesitating.

Lyle didn't. "And?"

The lynx shuddered, lined himself up, and Lyle, ever-impatient, dragged his hips backward and split himself open around the lynx. That got a sharp moan out of Jules. Grabbing hold of the base of the deer's antlers, he tugged, slow and sure, until he bottomed out against Lyle's ass and the deer was forced onto his knees. Held him there a minute, hilted and whining and scut trembling.

For the first minute, Jules had the courtesy to take it easy on him. Stretched him out a little.

After that, he pulled back hard on Lyle's antlers, and the deer saw stars.

---

Chapter 3--LYLE

In the final hours of Old Year's Day, Pouncey's had transformed from the shittest dive LaColle had on offer into the vaguest approximation of an actual establishment.

A much more impressive feat than it sounded, and made all the more magical because it only happened a few nights each year. Free-flowing booze and a near guarantee you wouldn't be banned--an old fugue tradition--brought out both the best and the worst in Pouncey's usual patrons. Among the best were the outfits. It was like a very gay and kinky opera, varying from inventive new uses of latex and neoprene to the timeless translucency of mesh. The smell was chemical and atrocious, but the looks? The looks were good.

For the worse was the behavior. Folks had straddled that fine line between naughty and bad and were careening off into the deep valley of no-good awful.

This, Lyle was reminded of while waiting in the circus of sweaty plastic that was the crowd around the bar. He'd been lucky enough to snag a barstool and sat, uncomfortable, with his back arched and scut hiked, a pose the deer had learned to endure over a few months of his own bad behavior. The only reason you wore a jockstrap and vest combo to a place like Pouncey's was because you wanted someone to see your tailhole and drool.

Just because the deer wanted it seen, though, and possibly eaten out, didn't mean folk should do so without asking. Between a few wandering paws, Hugo and Jules sniping at each other all evening for no fucking reason, and the fact that the bartenders appeared to be dodging him, Lyle was getting pissed. It was all so gauche.

It was also assault, technically--the groping, not the lack of service--although, if he was getting technical, letting a wolf knot you on a dancefloor also lacked the pre-obtained consent of any observant bystanders.

As a matter of fact, this whole thing, which Lyle had let lay uninterrogated for years by a series of elaborate mental gymnastics, had started to bother him, and that bothering had manifested in some truly bizarre behavior.

Two separate Pouncey's regulars, both otters, had hit on Lyle with all the respect one could fathomably muster when asking someone if they'd be interested in blowing and/or be blown by you in a bathroom stall that couldn't lock.

Lyle had waved them both off. Then--

"You should put your ass on the counter. Damn," said a gruff voice behind him. He punctuated the damn with a slap to Lyle's ass. Not a gentle one, either--one that scooted him forward in his seat. It stung. "Only meal worth eating in this hellhole, I reckon."

The deer was an alien watching his own body from the outside.

Lyle turned, one elbow left on the bar, putting on his best unamused look, although it was undercut by the mistletoe and bells jingling from both antlers. He had about half a second to think of something clever.

Standing nearly two heads taller than Lyle was a timber wolf, too familiar in that canine way, with mottled amber-and-black fur almost all over. Almost included his upper body, all bare excepting a harness, plus the wolf's thighs and groin--polyvinyl chaps, a classic--but did not include the tapered red dick hanging out of his sheath. Half-hard, still long. Lyle decided to assess his eyes later.

"Like what you see, baby?" said the wolf, smug. He closed what little distance there was between them and took Lyle's wrist by his paw--that, he didn't have to do forcefully--and, with the other, folded the deer's paw around his own shaft. Still a little slick to the touch. Spit? Lube? "Don't have to look with just your eyes, you know."

The wolf didn't even move his hips. He was that cocky.

Lyle rolled his neck and his eyes at the same time and squeezed the base, groping for the tell-tale swelling of the wolf's knot.

That was the problem distilled in its essence, really. Hugo would've had a field day. Fuck, the jackal could write an entire thesis just on the first stroke Lyle gave him, let alone all the other bullshit he'd just entertained. This wolf might as well have had bad things branded on his navel. Lyle would've kissed those letters off.

"Fuck," said the wolf, breathy and grinning. "In about ten minutes, every bottom in this place is gonna wish they were you." With obvious practice, he swiveled the stool back so Lyle was facing the bar and pressed a paw down between his shoulders until the deer was chest-down on the bar.

A complaint died on his neighbor's lips when, presumably, he saw the wolf running the show.

This was the allure. The kink that couldn't be consensual--not the exhibitionism, which was to be expected on a night like tonight--but the casual stranger-ness, like a kind of cruising. Sometimes the deer didn't want to be asked. Sometimes asking ruined the whole thing. Which was awful and not consent and only encouraged the bad behavior of folk who basically embodied the prior two descriptors.

Claws and a touch of teeth dug into Lyle's skin as the wolf spread his cheeks wider, sliding more tongue into the deer. Drool matted his fur down, dripping down either thigh onto the sleek pleather of the barstool beneath him.

This was the fantasy. Wasn't it? The timber wolf was going to eat him out until Lyle begged for his knot, which they both knew he'd take, easy, and if there truly was a God, someone would slide in after him to ring in the new year.

And if at any point someone stopped to tap Lyle on the shoulder and ask if he'd be okay with that, he'd instantly go soft and the fantasy would be ruined.

Not that it turned out to last, either way.

Less than two minutes after the wolf started making out with Lyle's ass, the deer's ears perked and caught the telltale sound of French cursing. He looked up--it was only a fleeting glance through the throng of grinding animals between them--and caught a furious, red-eyed Hugo emptying a glass of water into Jules' face.

It stilled the crowd for a heartbeat.

The lynx recoiled like he'd been shot. Whiskers dripped. Silver fur darkened. From the wounded look in his eyes, tears might as well have filled the glass.

Hugo softened.

Jules stood, overturning his chair--that drew a few more onlookers--then walked, not stormed, away. A maniacal hyena laughed. Elsewhere in the crowd, some drunk heckled something inaudible, which broke the spell, and then folk turned away to continue bump and/or grinding to undanceable music.

The timber wolf was not pleased to be interrupted. Lyle promised to find him later--a pipe dream, probably--and make up for it, wink wink, et cetera, and once the wolf was at least partially placated, he crossed the fray before Hugo, too, had a chance to vanish. This was awful weather and dress to go chasing after people in the snow.

"Dude," said Lyle, "what the hell was that?"

"Did you get our drinks?"

"What? No. Are--" started the deer. He stopped. Took a breath. He set Jules' abused chair upright again and took a seat. Folded his paws over the jackal's if only to stop him from twiddling his thumbs. He could look so small, swaddled in yet another one of the oversized flannels Lyle usually saw him in those days. "Dude. Are you okay?"

"No."

"Talk to me."

"Are you sure you do not have drinks."

"Dude--"

"--merde, this is the worst night." Hugo ducked his golden muzzle, and the deer watched his ears swivel, as if they might, however improbably, catch the sound of the lynx returning over the jukebox and cackling gays around them. "Julian is being a fucking asshole," he explained, with disquieting calm, "and too much of our relationship has been built on lies, so I cannot tell which parts are real." He wrinkled his snout. " Were.

"He saw you and that, ah, wolf of yours enjoying yourselves at the bar, and he suggested that would like to put me beside you, so we could wait for our drinks together. It was not such a bad idea, but then he said that he and the wolf 'could trade,' and I may have said some unkind things because this is not the first time that he has proposed such an idea, and, because I am very French, we say these things without hesitation.

"Julian has decided that he does not like monogamy. He would like for us to open our relationship again. Again," he repeated, spitting the word like it left an acrid stain on his tongue. "Even though it was never supposed to be open in the first place. And he has told me that he never wanted it to be closed at all, but that he tried, because he loves me. Fucking asshole. He tried. I succeeded. And now we are here, and he is gone, and he is missing from me, and he has tricked me into loving him.

"Eight months and so many years more of friendship," said the jackal, ears flattening with realization, "and they are gone in two minutes of words. Merde." Hugo looked up, staring at the deer with golden eyes still stung red by furious tears. "What am I supposed to do?"

Fuck.

Fuck.

"I--dude. I need a minute to think."

"I am so sorry. I am ruining your night."

"No, it's fine," said Lyle. He squeezed the jackal's paw. His mind ought to be racing, the guilt ought to be eating him alive, but whether it was the absurdity of his own appearance or his brain simply overloading, an eerie calm had fallen over the deer. "Do you still love Jules?"

"Yes. No. I do not know," said Hugo with a whine. "I have fallen in love with the idea of Julian and his fucking asshole face. He has lied to me and hurt me very badly," continued the jackal. He ducked his snout, averted his eyes. "I know I should not still love him."

"But?"

"But nothing. He is bad for me. I am bad for him."

"Dude, and?" said the deer. It came out a touch brusquer than he intended, but continued on regardless. "You're allowed to want bad things. You remember the choice you and Zu gave me? Few weeks before you and Julian got together?"

"You said--"

"--I choose option three. My shitty taste in dudes," explained the deer, "is like when I watch porn and get jealous of the twinky deer with perfect asses. I know it's bad for me, I know I haven't looked deep enough at why I'm jealous, but that doesn't mean my relationship with it is toxic or whatever. I know it's bad, but I still want it," he continued, groping to find the right words, "because, dude, I'm the one who might get hurt by the bad thing. It's my choice."

The jackal considered this. Lyle's muzzle opened, partly on its own accord, in an attempt to disclaim the way that he had just taken a friend's crisis of faith and made it about himself, but Hugo held up a firm paw as if to say, Enough, I am considering your idea, so please do not ruin it, and also I am wise and French enough to understand that what you just said was not truly about you and instead a metaphor for my position, and so the deer closed his mouth and sat still.

For that he was grateful. Lyle knew he had just enough drinks in him to make his words as sloppy as his decision-making.

"Okay," said Hugo, after a long pause.

"Okay?"

"Okay, I like your words," he repeated, a smile returning to his downtrodden eyes. "But I am putting your words into practice. Julian would like to be open? Fine. Let's be fucking open. Take your dick out."

"Dude. What?"

"Take your dick out and hold my phone."

"what."

"Be a friend, mon ami. This is a bad thing. I am doing a bad thing," said the jackal. He passed his phone across the table while he bodily slid off the chair. "And I want it anyway."

Lyle swallowed hard. "Was kinda implying that you should find him, dude," he explained, attempting and failing to not shudder as Hugo slid his paws under the elastic of the deer's jockstrap. "Talk to him, kiss and make up because you love him. That stuff."

"I will do all of those things and more. Are you recording?"

Fuck. "Yeah." Fuck.

"Good. He has suggested we have a ménage à trois a few times before." Hugo's breath on his dick was almost too much to bear. That, and the guilt. "I think he wants to fuck you very much. He will be very jealous watching this video and perhaps it will help him understand some of the hurt he caused to me."

"I really," said Lyle, breathy, "really think this is a bad idea, dude."

The jackal's tongue was just an inch away. He paused. Considered it.

"You are right," said Hugo.

Fuck.

"I have the keys to his truck," continued the jackal. "We will do it there so he has to smell it for a few weeks. He hates to wash it."

Fuck.

They were out the back door in less than a minute.

As a pair, they were individually tipsy and only drunk as a collective, so navigating the unsalted snow-paths of the warehouse district was, for the most part, a simple task. Plus, Lyle had hooves.

Any hope the deer had that Jules would be smoking an angry cigarette outside his car was cut down as they turned the alleyway corner. A fresh pair of wide-set pawprints--one leading to the car, one away--could have been a clue, but by the time Lyle recognized what that offered, Hugo had turned the engine on and pulled him into back seat to escape the cold to which the jackal had never grown accustomed.

The door slammed shut with the volume of a gunshot.

His vest was off. So was his jock. Lyle was braced on one elbow over the back seat.

Hugo was passing him a recording phone and only wearing stolen flannel. It bunched up at his waist, raised high by his own high-lifted tail.

"Dude, wait," said Lyle. "I--fuck, I need to tell you something."

"At this very moment?"

"This very one. Fuck, dude. You're gonna hate me."

"Mon ami--"

"Jules and I had sex."

Hugo closed his mouth and sat up straight.

"Both of you gave me the whole talk about affection versus romance," Lyle said, words spilling out like a waterfall of vomit, "and at first it was pretty innocent, a massage, whatever, and--"

"--how many times?"

Would that some of that earlier dead calm returned to him then.

"Four--"

He didn't catch the stream of curses that preceded Hugo slamming the door and storming off. It would've been like trying to catch a river with your hands, except the river was a loud French jackal and made of hydrochloric acid.

After he watched Hugo's tail wobble through the snow and past the corner, Lyle flopped backward on the seat--antlers scraping the door behind him--and finally, after several months, let himself exhale.

He breathed in.

He breathed out.

He noticed a set of keys on the floor beneath the seat and swore.

The recent snowfall proved useful again. He followed Hugo's smaller tracks, which lead him, obviously--but, hey, you never knew--back to the concrete side staircase you had to use to get into the basement in which Pouncey's made its home_._

Most nights there wasn't a bouncer. They couldn't afford one, and if you knew about the place, odds were someone had vouched for you. But this was Old Year's Day, and folk could get a little rowdy as the night went on.

Lyle recognized the timber wolf at the door twice, mostly because the lights inside were dim, while out here they were an anti-intravenous blue. He had the same get-up as inside Pouncey's--same harness, same chaps, same big red dick only moderately cowed by the cold. Vertigo, however, had favored technicolor lightning.

"You?" said the deer.

"You didn't recognize me?" said the timber wolf, a wide grin split across his muzzle. "Suppose you did spend most of that time turned away from me."

"You--"

"--saw your friend. Looked real upset," he said, unbothered by the deer's fumbling. He put on a mock pout. "Asked if I'd seen some lynx. I did, by the bye. Checked out my ass as he went. Good taste, that one." Both paws slapped against the vinyl of his chaps, sound only dampened a little by the snow. "Anywho. You've been 86'd. Zu's call."

"you--"

"--something about not shitting where you eat, I didn't really listen. But I like you," continued the wolf, "so I'll cut you a deal. Here's your choice."

Inside, the jukebox's volume dropped, and Lyle picked out the sound of voices. Counting. Sixty! Fifty-nine! Fifty-eight!

"Been cockblocked twice tonight, so here's option A: you get on your knees, suck me off, swallow, and I let you in to see your friend, and you can deal with..." He paused and waved a vague paw. "With whatever that bullshit is. Option B: I take you in there and knotfuck you on the bar. I'll take you off the blacklist here and at Vertigo. Think we can have some real fun together, you and I."

Thirty-six! Thirty-five! Thirty-four!

"Choice is yours," said the wolf. "Offers expire at midnight."

Twenty-seven! Twenty-six! Twenty-five!

The goddamn choices Lyle had to make.