The Price of Being Loved

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A short story about Nico and his time working at Dixie Tobacco with his boss Dirk.

Cover art by Concupisco!


"For fuck's sake , fox, your breath smells so strong'a liquor I can practically tell what brand you've been drinkin'."

A heavy-set male wolf was reclined back in his creaking computer chair in the back office of his convenience store, a small office that barely housed his heavy body amidst the desk, cluttered with paperwork and important documents disheveled and improperly filed, as well as a few filing cabinets that were in desperate need of cleaning. He was dressed in a pale blue button-up dress shirt that struggled to keep itself tucked into his khaki slacks, the shirt dark with sweat spots. He had grey streaking in his otherwise pale brown hair and his eyes were small, golden, shifty, in true wolf fashion. That small office was where Dirk, the owner of Dixie Tobacco, handled things the best he could as an independent business owner. It was also where he got his dick sucked by one of his keyholders, Nico, a scrawny red fox that was currently bobbing between the fat legs of the heavy male as he exhaled through his nose and looked up to the ceiling, imagining his wife down between his legs instead of the bearded male that was currently making rather vulgar throaty sounds as he took dick into his muzzle.

Dirk had taken Nico on when he showed up one day buying a case of beer and cigarettes, talking about how he was looking for work and how he had five kids at home. He had open availability and was a good working age for a man. Sure, he was on the small side, underweight and short even for a fox, but he had enough muscle definition to him that it seemed plausible he could carry cases of beer and unload trucks. Nico proved himself quickly as a go-getter and a reliable employee, and within a month or so he'd been given keys to open and close the store himself as well. Nico had also, though, shown himself to be quite the alcoholic, and was prone to showing up to work with a rather strong smell of liquor hanging off his breath that he'd desperately try to cover with aromatic mint gums, serving mainly to make his breath drip with clove and bourbon mingled together. The problem was, Dirk was understaffed, and Nico was a great asset to the store. Thus, strings were pulled, and Dirk tried to coax the fox to at least keep it to where the customers couldn't smell him. He was a damn good worker, and he clearly held his liquor well because he never was noticeably drunk. He just smelled of it, so Dirk let it slide the best he could.

One of the wolf's meaty hands would grab the fox by the back of his head, grabbing a fistful of oily black hair as he tugged the fox back and watched as drool poured out his mouth onto the concrete floor, some of it stringing from his teeth to the wolf's dick as Dirk finally took a moment to look down into the throat of his hired help, a gaping maw waiting to get back to work. Yellow teeth and empty spots where yellow teeth used to be lined the jaws of the fox, who was holding his tongue out his mouth and breathing that whiskey breath out for Dirk to smell as the fox looked up to his boss, a lusty look in his eyes as he played the part he was meant to play. Nico was a working class man, a scraggly, scrappy fella that just wanted to make an honest day's work, but he was also never too good to toss aside his dignity and pleasure the bodies and dignities of men, which is exactly how he ended up on his knees taking a dick the width of his wrist into his mouth on a regular basis nowadays. Dirk had first proposed it after finding out the fox had a fondness for his fellow male, the two of them sitting in the back room discussing plans for upcoming sales displays when the heavy-set wolf steered the conversation in a different direction.

"So y' like men, huh?" the fat wolf had said months ago, his hands clasped together and resting on his belly. He wore a gold wedding ring, which matched the gold necklace he wore around his neck that hid amidst his wirey chest hair.

"Yeah," the small fox would reply. He was dressed in his work attire, a flannel shirt over a t-shirt, the t-shirt tucked into blue jeans, a camouflage hat that bore a Dixie Tobacco patch on it. The dress code was minimal, which Nico loved. Dirk would nod and look off to the side as the fox sat on an upturned milk crate, the wolf looking at stacks of papers that explained what the upcoming truck order was going to contain. He was idly reading down the list, reading off brand names he knew by heart as he asked "so y' must suck dick, huh?"

Nico, surprised but not offended, sat up in his seat a bit, his body leaning backwards as an automatic "eh?" slid from his mouth. He'd shift his feet apart a bit as his posture settled and he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees as he answered "yea, I mean, obviously I do. Why?"

With a few months of trust built between them, Dirk felt that he had a chance of this not going catastrophically wrong, and though his mouth wriggled as he pressed his tongue to his teeth, then to his cheek, his eyes looking at everything but Nico, he felt that Nico was enough of a down-to-earth man that he could propose a question to the fox. Dirk's hands shifted from his belly to the office desk, a finger scanning down the upcoming delivery list as he asked Nico, while reading down at how many box wines they were going to receive,

"Y' wanna suck my dick for me?"

Nico's eyebrows would rise upward, and his head would tilt with bewilderment, Dirk catching both those reactions and stopping Nico before he could reply, reassuring the fox "s'fine if not. I ain't gonna fire ya or cut your hours or nothin'. Yer a big help. Just, uh...if y' wanted to, i'd pay y' a day's overtime for it."

The fox's eyes looked in Dirk's direction, but they weren't looking at Dirk specifically. Rather, they were looking at the wall behind him, something solid and inorganic to focus on while Nico pondered his dignity. He'd specifically gotten the job to get out of sex work, to no longer linger around truck stops selling his underweight body to men who liked to manhandle him like the woman they wished he was. Here he was, back in that situation, though the dynamic seemed a little more in his favor. He still had a job regardless, and it seemed the favor could instead get him even farther ahead.

"So I get my full week's pay plus eight hours'a overtime?" Nico asked, Dirk giving a short "yep" in reply. The answer, then, was easy.

"Yeah, man," Nico started as he gave an assuring nod, "yeah i'll do it". He wasn't exactly thrilled at the notion of it, but eight hours of time-and-a-half for a blowjob was a hard offer to refuse. His dignity was flexible, which was why he found himself crawling off his milk crate onto his knees, boney hands struggling under the weight of a wolf's belly to find his belt buckle and free that girthy dick from the confines of dress pants that could barely contain the man that wore them.

That was the first time, though, and this was now, months later. In the present, the fox was drunk, as he frequently was nowadays, and Dirk was holding him by his greasy hair as he looked down at Nico before remarking "Kentucky Racehorse. My ex-wife drank it. Rockgut shit. 'Least drink middle shelf if yer gonna be an alcoholic" before he would push the fox back down on a dick so fat it would fill the smaller male's mouth. Thankfully, though thick enough to feel like fisting to a smaller woman, Dirk's dick wasn't known for it's length, and the fox could feel it near the back of his muzzle but not yet to his throat, which made for a marvelous blowjob on Dirk's end as he got to hilt and facefuck the fox without much concern for his well-being, which he frequently did.

Heavy hands with sausage-like fingers sporting a wedding ring would eventually squeeze Nico's head tight and thrust it downward like the toy he was onto Dirk's dick as a needy load shot into his mouth, incredibly bitter from a meat-heavy diety, the fox gulping it down before it had a chance to pool on his tongue, drinking shot after shot until Dirk was satiated, letting go of his head and allowing the fox to sit back and catch his breath. The wolf must not have masturbated much, because he always pumped a generous load that went down thick and salty, and sometimes Nico would have to swallow two or three times afterward just to get it down.

"Still can't believe y' swallow that shit. My wife'll barely suck me off but she ain't ever swallowed in the twelve years we been married." Dirk said as he sat back, a hand reaching for the tissue box amidst the clutter on the desk as he wiped spit and residual cum off his dick, wadding it up and tucking it in the wastebin under the desk. If only the other employees knew what all those tissues contained...

"She's missin' out" Nico would say, practically giving Dirk a verbal post-cum handjob with the way he stroked his ego, grinning. Anything for that paycheck, he thought, looking up at the heavy wolf. Dirk was red in the face, sweating profusely, his pits and chest stained with it as he turned the small desk fan to face him and sat there breathing hard, letting himself come to his senses.

"Y' really gotta quit drinkin' so much, though," Dirk would say, sinking back to reality, back into his position as Nico's boss, "I can't cover for ya if y' get the cops called on you by the wrong old coot. Y' know how old folks can be. Plus it's not good for ya. Whattaya think yer kids think of it?" the wolf would ask.

"Kids don't know. I barely drink at home," Nico would say as he wiped his mouth, eventually finding his position on the milk crate on which he always sat in the back room with Dirk.

"Why do y' drink at work then, huh? Thought you liked this job?" Dirk would ask.

"I do. But bein' around people, it's hard. I ain't so good with socializing. Havin' some nips throughout the day makes it easier to talk to these folks, make 'em happy," Nico said as his hands clasped themselves, the fox nervously cracking his knuckles and displacing his nervousness, "yaknow, or suck 'em off."

Dirk's chair creaked as he leaned back in it, the swivel chair seeming barely capable to support how he shifted his center of gravity away from the column. One day, Nico thought, he was going to do that and the chair was going to break. Not today, though, it seemed, Dirk's hands pressing palms to his face as he slid them upward, through his salted brown hair.

"Nico," Dirk started as his head looked to the ceiling again, as it always did when they were interacting in ways that were hard for Dirk to handle, "I really care about you, man-to-man, and yer a great worker, but yer on thin ice. The drinkin's gotta improve or there's gonna be a point where I'll have t' fire you and it'll be outta my control. Don't take it to that point."

"I'm workin' on it, Boss, I really am. Just gotta find a way t' calm my nerves outside'a booze. They ain't bad at home, but when I leave the house, man, it gets hard. I gotta get somethin' in me to calm me down." the fox would admit. The confession fell on a quiet room, Dirk not responding, rather still staring up at the ceiling in contemplation of something Nico assumed to be related to his future with the company. The fox stared quietly at Dirk as the desk fan and the buzz of overhead fluorescent lights kept the silence from getting too deafening. The summer heat was oppressive, and the office wasn't close enough to the cooler section to benefit from it's chill. Instead, it suffered from the warmth that seemed to creep through the closed doors, even in this setting sun evening, around 7 PM or so. It was Sunday, the day when the store closed at 6 PM instead of it's usual 10 PM, and it was the one day Nico knew for sure Dirk wanted a blowjob. It was the easiest day to excuse staying late at work to his wife Charlotte, every Sunday now being "paperwork day" for Dirk. Ironically, if Charlotte ever saw the store's office, she'd realize that he did not in fact do paperwork on Sundays, or really most days, as it continued to pile up and seemed to only be done when absolutely necessary.

Finally, the silence was broken as a ruminative Dirk would ask "y' wanna make some more money next Sunday?"

Nico's ears would fold back a bit, the fox having hoped that Dirk's thoughts would've been a bit more substantial than that. He would answer "sure. Blowjob as usual?" before Dirk would shake his head, his tongue finding his cheek again as it pressed a slight bulge in the side of his face. Dirk always talked about sex like he was about to tell you bad news, his mouth moving about as his tongue writhed within his maw, sliding across teeth and tongue as his eyes darted around and inspected the room and the rising clutter within it.

"Nah, not a blowjob. You uh," Dirk looked over at his paperwork, grabbing a manila folder and proceeding to riffle through the papers inside, pretending to focus on that as he continued, "y' wanna lemme fuck you?"

Dirk asked that as he turned his chair and found his reading spectacles on the table, putting them on as he pretended to read some of the notes taken in the stack of paper, his fat finger tracing words entirely too quick for him to have been actually reading. Nico was far less shocked by that question than he had been by the first time Dirk had propositioned him. In fact, he was more surprised it had taken Dirk this long to ask for more than head. The fat wolf constantly complained about his wife's bitchiness, about her sour attitude, how she never put out, how much he wanted to bang other women that came into the store, and so on. Nico felt like it was only a matter of time before the wolf tried his hand at bagging a man.

"Like," Nico watched Dirk's piss-poor attempt at being casual about it as the wolf thumbed through paperwork pages, "like here?"

"Nah. Hotel room. I told Charlotte next Sunday I gotta go outta town for some business classes. I was gonna buy a hooker but I'd rather it be someone I trust and someone I know ain't got bugs. Plus yer about my wife's size, minus the tits." Dirk said.

"The usual rate?" Nico asked.

"Yeah, 'less you'll indulge me a bit and lemme play out a..." Dirk closed the paperwork and stood it upright, tapping it several times on the counter to align the pages, and also to act as a noise he subconsciously hoped would lessen the embarrassment of his confession, "lemme play out a fantasy a'mine. I'll give y' double-time if you will."

"Fantasy?" Nico asked. Dirk stood up and opened the file cabinet and began thumbing through folders that were entirely unimportant to the situation, not really looking for anything as he informed the fox "I've always wanted t' fuck Charlotte in the ass and she said it'll never happen. She's got this nice li'l black dress that she looks so good in, 'specially when she bends over. Y' can probably figure out where i'm goin'" Dirk said as he pulled out a document that looked like it was several years old, tossing it in the trash before looking through more of the folders.

Nico would never admit it, but he had been asked to wear dresses during sex before. He hated it, it was his absolute least favorite thing, but it was something men would occasionally beg from him, due to his small size and frame. He didn't at all make a passable woman, but a pent up man with an erection will still his dick in just about anything if it talks sweet to him first. Though he always charged extra for that sort of degradation, he tended to sometimes cooperate if the man was charming enough himself. He was no stranger to wearing the dress of a wife back home that a long-haul trucker had kept with him to admire on those lonely nights, thousands of miles away and desperate to unload. He was certainly no stranger to bizarre requests in general, and this one was one of the tamer "fantasies" he'd indulged. Plus, it was Dirk, and he was getting paid handsomely for it. The scraggly fox would grab the front of his beard and stroke it a bit as he thought, finally agreeing with a short "yeah, yeah i'll do it."

Dirk remained riffling through paperwork as he gave a short "good,", not looking up from the file cabinet as he closed with "she drinks tequila, though. I wanna smell that on yer breath next Sunday. No whiskey."

Fuck, Nico thought to himself, how far was Dirk going to go to convince himself it was his wife he was banging? Was he going to be calling Nico by her name too? He hated tequila.

The day ended and Nico found himself in his pickup truck in the parking lot, sitting and staring out at the setting sun and the cars that drove by on the main road, thinking to himself about his life and how he'd gotten to where he was. It had been about two years since the kids had been born, and he'd been working at Dixie Tobacco for over half a year. He'd long since left behind the life of sex for money, and ever since that first blowjob he gave Dirk, he'd found himself slowly sliding downward back into that place, into surrendering himself to men for the good pay it brought. It was hard to deny, it did indeed pay much better than a slightly-above-minimum-wage retail position. On a good night back at the truck stop, the fox could easily bring in what he made in a week at Dixie, and he'd never let himself forget that. Still, the danger of the diseases, the danger of the men, and the instability and illegality of it helped to pull him from returning to that line of work. He had children now, and though he did indeed need to support them, he had to take better care of himself as well. Dirk felt safe, though, like he wasn't a risky shot to take. They'd already been messing around as is, and as the fox lit a cigarette and cracked his window to let the smoke escape through the sliver of space out into the evening sky, he felt that he could trust his boss in a way he hadn't trusted other men before.

The following week was awkward, and Dirk couldn't have made it any more obvious that something was up. When he and Nico worked together, he kept a distance about him that was entirely unlike him, and it was even worse when there was a third employee present. He spent almost his entire time in the office, and he barely spoke to Nico when they passed eachother, to the point where a burnt-out stoner hyena they'd hired to work evenings even noticed, and would ask Nico what was going on. The fox would make an excuse, but it confirmed to him how weird Dirk was being about it. Thankfully, the week passed without much incident, and Sunday rolled around as usual.

The store was closed, the doors were locked, the money was counted and the work was finished. Here was when Dirk would usually ask for a blowjob, but as the pair stood in the office alone together, having finished the paperwork, Dirk was quiet. His tongue was pushing around on his teeth, Nico could see it in the way his lip bulged out in spots as it slid around inside his mouth.

"The Lazy Inn, across the street from that mexican place La Musica. It's room 128," Dirk began as he pulled his wallet from his pocket, the leather having been thoroughly crushed by the pressure Dirk's pants normally sported. The wolf pulled a key card from one of the card slots and handed it to Nico, continuing "get showered, get dressed, and be ready for me. I'll be there in an hour."

Nico squinted at the keycard, wanting to remark to how Dirk was acting like this was some sort of hit mission that he was explaining to him, but he chose instead to keep quiet, wanting to make this night as special as he could for his boss, and for the pay his boss would provide. Double time sweetened the deal, so the fox would give a short confirmation before heading out.

Nico had already cracked into a pint of tequila before he had parked his truck, and he wiped the booze off his mustache before tucking the bottle in a coat pocket and exiting his truck, breathing in the damp muggy air of the early summer evening. The cicadas were buzzing, the cars on the nearby interstate were whizzing by, the two together creating a rather noisy ambience as he made his way to a visibly unsettling motel. Lazy Inn couldn't have been a more awkward choice for their encounter, as it was known all over town as a place you go to solicit sex. It was known for rooms cheaper than fifty dollars a night, and it was known for chipped paint, stained bathtubs, and essentially everything you'd expect out of a sex motel except bed bugs. Somehow, they'd never gotten the bed bugs. The fox swiped the card and was greeted with a green light, entering the room to see the TV was on, turned to a low volume, and there was a black mini-dress laying on the bedsheets, poorly tossed there as if done so by a man that had no idea for the aesthetics of presentation. Nico shut the door behind him and closed the curtains, taking another pull of tequila before setting the bottle on the nightstand. He felt certain he'd need to finish off the entirety of it before tonight's events occurred.

The perks of even the sleaziest motels is that their showers tend to be strong, and quick to warm. They're practically made to provide you the feeling of scrubbing off the sins you committed, and as the fox stood nude in the shower scrubbing down his hairy body, he wondered how the night was going to go. With many of his men, he had no connection. They were strangers in the night. He'd stand around the truck stops, sitting on park benches or hanging out near the restroom doors smoking cigarettes, asking men if they needed some company. He'd never doll himself up, though, unless they asked it of him. He never wanted to sell himself as anything but what he was: a man that could play the part they needed him to play. Sometimes they'd come back, though, wanting more. They'd bring clothes, they'd bring makeup, they'd have him answer to a name that wasn't his, and he'd do it because he had to do it. He'd slept around for money a little before he'd moved away to the woods, but after he came home, he sometimes felt like he'd left some part of him there in the forest. Things felt different. He'd gone back to it because it was easy, because it allowed him to make a living while maintaining that instability in his life. Unlike Dixie Tobacco, he could drink as much as he wanted whenever he wanted. He didn't have to be professional. He simply had to pretend, and they'd almost always ask him to leave after they came. It was rare he was kept around, and it was even rarer that he was asked about his life, or even who he was.

Nico's hands would slide between his legs, and under his tail, preparing himself, preparing his body for what was going to occur tonight. He didn't have any sort of toy to ready himself for Dirk's size, he just had to use his fingers and do his best to be ready, and to relax when the time came. It wasn't unusual for him, being a fox. His smaller species size meant a smaller body overall, and he'd been with many men who were much more endowed than usual, and he'd taken them as expected. The fox would tend to himself in a purely professional way, never really losing his focus to the throes of pleasure, his fingers moving in calculated ways. He had to keep track of time. He had to not stretch too fast. It was work as usual.

Cheap shampoo, cheap conditioner, and a bar of soap later, the fox was towel drying his hair as he stood nude in the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror. The motel light cast a strongly artificial glow on him, something almost sterilizing about it. The white light was cold, no tinge of yellow to make this place feel welcome. Still, he cared about Dirk as a manager, and he knew this bode well for him financially, so he tried to shake how unwelcoming an environment it was.

Another swig of tequila, and his eyes wandered to the dress on the bed. He'd pull it over his body and tug it down to find that it stopped just below his sex, clearly the sort of dress that was meant more for these sorts of encounters than anything you'd wear out on the town. It reeked of a strong, feminine perfume, presumably added by Dirk to bolster the fantasy of his wife inside it when he mounted Nico. The thin red fox looked down at his scrawny body squeezed by tight black cloth, which served to almost give him a feminine shape with the sharp angle of his hip bones. His dark, thick chest hair stuck out prominently in the open space where cleavage should've gone, and the straps hung off his gaunt shoulders loosely, his arms and legs devoid of curves, devoid of the softness of a woman's body. He looked ridiculous, but he was just frail enough to create the illusion of a woman if you really imagined hard enough.

Another pull of tequila and the pint was almost gone. Nico laid back on the bed, reclined on the large amounts of pillows as he splayed his legs slightly, looking down at his body, imagining what it was going to be like in only a matter of minutes when Dirk arrived. Sure enough, as he was polishing off the last of the tequila, there was a knock at the door. Nico would answer it to Dirk standing there, dressed in his work clothes, the large male hurriedly pushing past the small fox with a short "shut the door" that Nico didn't need to hear, the fox already in the process of locking the deadbolt and chain before offering Dirk a short "hey".

The fat wolf threw his keys and wallet on the nightstand and replied an equally short "hey" as he stood with his back facing Nico, looking at the strange photo on the wall that the motel had hung for aesthetic purposes. Nico made his way to the bed and sat near the large wolf, his legs drawn together, lady-like, as Dirk turned to look down at Nico, freshened up but still hideously male, his hair long enough and his body small enough to mirror Charlotte's, the rest of him lacking. He didn't smell like her, he didn't sound like her, and he certainly didn't have her soft features. Dirk's mouth adjusted slightly as he pulled some of the meat inside his lip between his teeth, subtly chewing on it as he said "surprised it fits ya" before taking a seat on the bed next to Nico, the two of them sitting sideways on the edge like friends about to have an important discussion. The energy in the room was so oppressively transactional, so tense, so staged, and Nico's brow furrowed with a pitied awareness of that as he skipped Dirk's remark and proceeded right to asking "can I take your shirt off?"

Dirk's expressions were always muted, never particularly enthusiastic. He always had an air about him that he was aggravated, and his faces always stayed in the orbit of scowling and fatigued. The beginnings of this encounter were no different, and that tired-eyed face of his gave a nod and a short "sure" as he scooted back on the bed a bit, his hands at his sides. Nico rose and stood before him, a soft smile across his equally tired face as his hands, slender, dainty, touched carefully at Dirk's face, palms on his cheeks. Dirk's fatigued expression barely changed, but there was something in the way his eyelids shifted, something in the way his pupils dilated for a moment, something that said he liked that Nico had touched him like that. The fox's hands, though calloused on the palms, had a frailty to them like a woman's hands, and as they gently pet along the grain of Dirk's face fur, backwards from his cheeks to his jawline, to his neck, brushing his slightly silvered brown beard, the wolf's solid demeanor would shift. His mouth pulled the slightest bit back, like it wanted to smile, Nico whispering kindness to the heavy wolf as he brushed his face for a moment.

The fox's hands eventually trailed downward, past the girth of his neck to the buttons of his shirt, where nimble fingers popped open each of them, one by one, until the strained fabric was held taut only by the remaining shirttail tucked in Dirk's pants. The wolf was in his late 40s, but his size had done well to prevent all the signs of aging other than the color of his body hair. He had a strong belly to him, bigger than anyone Nico had ever been with, and his chest sat on the girth of his stomach just as heavily. His body hair was so dense, remarkably dense, longer than the pelt of his fur and salted with silver amidst that dusty brown. Nico couldn't resist splaying out his fingers, running them through the coarse, sweaty pelt. Dirk hadn't had a moment to wash since he'd left work, and he always sweated throughout the day. Even in some of the cooler days, the back room was so confined, the box fan so ineffective, that Dirk's shirts tended to always have those dark sweat spots on him by the end of the day. Nico could feel the cause of that all in his thick chest hair, the skin underneath his hair and fur damp, hot to the touch. He had that strong musk to him, that sweaty smell of body odor overpowering deodorant and cheap cologne, and the fox found himself enticed by the aroma, the damp feeling of a man's body after a long day's work.

"Glad y' didn't have time to shower beforehand," Nico admitted, "I've always liked the way y' smell at the end of the work day..."

Dirk had been looking upward, away from Nico, but as the fox remarked that, the wolf would look downward at the top of the fox's head, which was now pressing snoutfirst into the long hair between his heavy pectorals, sniffing him. This was something Charlotte had never done, and would likely never do, and though it broke the immersion of Dirk's fantasy for a moment, he found his dick was very much responding to his body being sniffed in such a way. It jumped to life in his pants, stirring, making the wolf suddenly aware that the act was in motion. Nico was leaning forward on him now, hands pressed into the fat of his pecs with his snout buried in the chest, sniffing downward, down his belly, the fox lowering to his knees on the floor before the much larger male, an imposing sight above him as he looked up into the wolf's yellow eyes, watching for his reaction. Dirk's eyes had opened a bit, more than Nico usually saw them open, and there was a curiosity in them, almost youthful, perplexed at how he was being handled.

"Why are ya...doin' all this stuff first?" Dirk would ask as Nico was in the process of unbuckling his pants, tugging the leather out belt loops as he tossed it to the floor, fingers already on the buttons as the fox shrugged those sharp shoulders.

"Well," Nico began, "y' just talk like you ain't ever had anyone really spoil you much, so I figured we'd both have a little fun before we get to the main event. S'that alright?"

Nico's gravely drawl had all but tossed out Dirk's fantasy, for now at least. He sounded nothing like Charlotte, and that foxy smell of his lingered even after his shower, hanging subtly off him for now. As time went on, it would surely only get worse, and Dirk knew that as well as Nico. It seemed he'd have to settle for fucking his keyholder in the ass instead of his wife...not that the tone of his voice sounded like he minded, a rising pitch of "y-yeah, s'alright" as the fox unbuttoned his pants, fishing the girth of a full erection out the fly of damp briefs as Nico's mouth sank down onto it, taking it to the base as he was known to do. Dirk usually looked up and away from Nico when this happened, but this time he watched. He watched as his dick would disappear into fox mouth, sliding down over an eagerly wet tongue into maw, no trace of teeth against the skin as the fox pleasured him, getting him wet, getting him ready.

It was unclear to Dirk where Nico's mind was at that moment. He certainly played the part well, eager and attentive to pleasing the man that had purchased him for the night, but this was also his career. He'd had plenty of experience in showering men with the affection and intimacy and admiration they desired, and it could have all easily just been a performance for him. Dirk didn't care, though, even if it was. It felt good, and it was an attentiveness he'd never received from women, and he wanted to savor it regardless of how authentic it was.

For Nico, though, it was business as usual. The man did smell nice, and it was always fun to get to indulge in his musk fetish with his clients, but he had little sexual interest in Dirk otherwise. Despite all his performance, it was still all business to him. His mind was focused purely on making sure he didn't use teeth, making sure not to be too repetitive with his tongue work, and wondering how long he could go at it before Dirk would ask to switch to anal. He certainly didn't want to bore the wolf, though. He did care about him as a friend, and as a manager, and he didn't want the curtains to slip away and reveal how detached he was from the situation.

Nico would eventually pull off with that starry-eyed smile on his face, as he always did after taking dick in his mouth, a grin from ear to ear as he looked up excitedly to Dirk, not wanting to bring him too close to climax from head alone and ruin the fun for the wolf. Dirk had a noticeable shine to the fur on his body, already starting to sweat from excitement and the rising body heat between them, the smell of his armpits noticeable even down closer to his dick.

"Well?" Nico would ask with that excited smile on his face, "how bout y' lose the clothes and we really get t' goin' at it?"

Dirk was panting, and he wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist, replying "we can get started, yeah. Lay on your belly, spread your legs, don't show it off just yet."

The wolf stood and tugged his shirt tail from his underwear as Nico crawled onto the bed, laying instead on his back, propped up with motel pillows, his knees drawn together, the dress pulled down, a seductive position that would've probably been more enticing on an actual woman with the shape to fill the dress. He wanted to watch Dirk undress, but as the wolf turned around to get a glimpse at Nico, his brow would furrow as he repeated "on your belly".

"What? Can't I watch y' undress?" Nico asked with a hopeful tone to his voice, sounding eager to get the show.

"No, y' don't wanna watch a fella like me get naked. Ain't no one wanna see that." Dirk replied, his hands on the fronts of his shirt, tugging it somewhat closed. The comment caught Nico off guard, and it was clear the character he was playing slipped for a moment as his expression changed from a flirtatious smile to a pinched mouth, his eyebrows raised and concerned. He'd known Dirk for less than a year, but nothing about the man seemed bashful or ashamed of himself. He was a very large man, yes, and he cracked jokes about his weight regularly, but he never seemed to be any sort of self-conscious. Here he was looking rather pensive, and Nico found himself sitting up a bit and leaning forward, surprising even himself when he replied "i sure as hell wanted t' see y' show off for me".

Dirk was far from Nico's type. He liked men that were larger than him in height and bulk, but he'd never been much for fat men. He never knew why, perhaps they were farthest from the taste he'd developed due to his Freudian affinity for men like his father and grandfather. Sitting before Dirk, though, he found himself genuinely disappointed he didn't get to watch this heavy wolf undress himself and stand eager before him. Dirk must've detected that shift, too, because the "really?" he asked in reply sounded flabbergasted.

"Y-yeah," Nico admitted, "yeah I was kinda lookin' forward to it."

It was clear from Dirk's demeanor that the honesty had completely disarmed him, and though he replied a dismissive "whatever then", it was clear by the way he kept looking at the fox as he eased off his button-up shirt and tugged down khakis and briefs that he was enjoying the way the fox's eyes followed his hands, and fixated on parts of his body as he finally stood before his much smaller partner entirely nude now. His dick was standing straight out, excited, veiny, and as he lumbered toward the bed, Nico would give a quiet "hot damn" that seemed to not be part of the character he'd been playing. Something about Dirk really tickled his fancy, and he became aware just how much it was doing as he shifted slightly on the bed and found his thighs were wet with his own arousal.

As Dirk put hands on the bed and began to crawl onto it, it would creak loudly, struggling at first to take on his heavy weight, but as he was entirely on the bed, he would lay on his side next to Nico, his head propped up on an elbow as he free hand finally found the fox's body, resting on his clothed stomach. Dirk's hand moved like it wanted to slide upward, to cup breast as part of his typical foreplay, but the top of the fox was a flat chest, ribby with flat pectoral muscle and a generous amount of striking black body hair that stood obvious against his red fur. Dirk's hand would instead stay in the middle of Nico's body, rubbing his stomach through the dress as the fox stayed looking at the man next to him, easily at least three times his size.

"Y' like the show?" Dirk asked, the pitch of his voice a bit tight, like he was nervous, uncertain where to go from there. Nico detected it easily, and he'd spread his legs a bit as his eyes looked to Dirk's.

"Yeah," the smaller fox said, "wanna feel how much I liked it?"

Nico would then spread his legs just a bit more, an invitation for Dirk to slide his hand downward, an invitation Dirk thankfully took. He would slide that heavy, meaty paw of his downward to the hem of the fox's dress, sliding it up just enough to curl his wrist up underneath it as his girthy sausage fingers found Nico's pussy, wet and aroused. The wolf's ears perked a bit as that fatigued expression once more rose to life, a surprised "damn" coming from Dirk as those thick fingers awkwardly felt around between Nico's legs, causing the fox to squirm a bit as fingertips with chewed-down fingernails prodded just inside the slit of his vulva, feeling the opening to his sex and prodding at it some, almost threatening to open the fox but instead curiously, clumsily poking around instead.

"So it's real? You ain't had none'a them surgeries or nothin'?" Dirk asked.

"All real." the fox replied in a low tone.

Those clumsy fingers suddenly, carelessly, breached Nico's sex and probed into him, two digits entering him at once and causing him to stir a bit, to arch his back and pull air in suddenly through his nose, Dirk awkwardly agreeing "it sure does feel real" as he scissored those stubby fingers strangely inside Nico, exploring his pussy like it was something he'd never played with before. He'd then scoot a bit closer, palming the fox's hairy muff with his hand as he curled his fingers, hooking them into Nico and proceeding to awkwardly fingerfuck him, asking "y' like that?" in a low, sultry tone into the fox's long ears.

Nico did not like it, but he would give a squinted smile and a reassuring "o-oh yeah..." as he parted his legs to hopefully goad Dirk into repositioning, or perhaps just getting eager enough to fuck him instead. Being fingered rarely felt good, most men too clumsy and excited and unfamiliar with the feeling of being penetrated to know how to properly use their hands. Dirk was no different, and the girth of two of his fingers easily felt like a normal man's dick, inelegantly spreading and pushing around inside him.

"Charlotte don't like fingers neither", Dirk admitted, and for once Nico could agree with the woman. Dirk was clueless at fingering, but the fox would play his part and push his hips into it a bit as he gave a low moan, lying as he said "don't know what she's missin'..." as he humped on it a bit, clearly exciting Dirk as the wolf sat up, asking a lusty "yeah??" as he started to use a bit more force to it. Nico allowed it for as long as he could before he'd try his best to revive Dirk's fantasy, asking a breathy "w-why don't we try somethin' different tonight, honey?"

Dirk would pull back his fingers like he was eager to find out what was next, which he surely knew, and as he freed Nico of the girth of his fingers, the fox would roll over onto his belly, hiking up his backside as his chest remained on the bed, his rather toned arms crossing with his head resting on them, the position only making it more obvious that his arms were muscular and male. Presented in such a way, his backside was fully exposed, and Nico would look over to the fat wolf laying next to him and ask "why don'tcha go back there and see what other places y' can find to play in?"

It was a cheesy line, but men like Dirk loved that sort of cheese, that goading playfulness that made them feel like they were being teased. It, indeed, worked wonders on Dirk, who replied "oh? other places?" in a similar corniness as he rose up on his knees and crawled behind Nico, getting his first full view at his fellow coworker in such a way. Nico's body looked even less female under the dress than above it, even with the vulva between his legs. His limbs had that angular masculinity to them, and his thighs down to his feet were adorned with body hair that thinned on the cheeks of his flat, boney ass, but grew abruptly black and dense near the crack of his ass. His vulva was overgrown with dense, thick hair that thinned only a bit up his taint, thickening out again around the rim of his asshole, and no part of it looked feminine. Truly, in this position, he was undeniably a man in an awkwardly fitting dress, and Dirk squinted at it for a moment, the silence growing as he stared, making Nico wonder if the illusion had been ruined.

The silence was eventually broken by the inevitably curious hands of Dirk reaching forward, grabbing Nico's small ass in his much larger hands and squeezing it, pulling it apart as he remarked "needs a trim, but", his thoughts unfinished as he used a girthy index and thumb to spread the fox's vulva apart. It was generously wet, fluid glossing on Dirk's fingers as he looked at it, inspecting it almost like he didn't believe it was real. Nico had a perplexed look on his face, though he was looking ahead, to the headboard of the hotel bed as he asked "y' find somethin' you like?"

Dirk gave a breathy "yeah" as he dragged a slimy finger up from Nico's vulva to the star of his anus, rubbing the mucus-y fluid around on his rim before pushing at the bare skin, watching as it clenched and protested being opened. Nico had already preemptively stretched himself a bit and squirted a bit of lube up into himself for preparation, and as Dirk pressed a fingerpad to the rim of the fox's hole, he'd feel the warmth of his insides just on the other side of that clenching. Instead of fingering the fox, though, he wanted to get right to it.

"Do I gotta wear a rubber?" Dirk asked as he pulled away, staring at the fox's backside.

"Only if y' wanna. I know you're clean, and I'm on birth control." Nico replied. Amidst his downstairs situation, he was still fertile, and still menstruated. With his line of work, an IUD was necesseary. Those sorts of preventative measures made good for the men he trusted, though, so they wouldn't have to worry about condoms. Guys often happily paid more to get some raw action, so it was worth the awkward medical procedures here and there to make the extra money. Dirk spit down on his dick and began to slather it around until his dick was glossy, scooting forward and pressing the head of that girthy, monstrously thick cock against the lips of Nico's vulva, the fox rising up a bit as he asked a curious "that hole, huh?"

"Nah," Dirk replied as he pushed forward until his cock slipped off the fox's vulva, thrusting between the folds of his muff and jutting out below his belly. He was using the fox's fluids to get himself slippery, those heavy hands finally grabbing hold of Nico's waist as the small male realized it was all about to happen. Dirk was preposterously thick, and though Nico had taken him in the mouth many times before, he genuinely wondered if he could ever take a man like that in his front side. Luckily, Dirk wanted the back door, and after a few more thrusts against the fox's labia to get himself good and slick, he'd spit once more on his dick and line the head up with Nico's tail hole.

"S'so tight..." Dirk said, his tone having lowered to almost whispering, causing the gravel in his voice to become especially prominent. He'd hold the shaft of his dick as he pushed against Nico, causing the poor fox to suddenly wonder how this was going to feel. Maybe he hadn't prepped enough for it...

He had little time to think about that though, as Dirk would put one hand on the small of Nico's back and, with his other hand holding his cock steady, he would thrust suddenly, a quiet *plpp* sound as the weight of the wolf's body allowed him to easily breach Nico's backside, feeding a dick the size of Nico's wrist up his ass, about two inches deep now as the wolf gave a satisfied "ohhh...oh that feels good" from the rumble of his throat. His heavy hands would rest on the fox's hipbones and hold him steady, the fat wolf pushing forward and easing his dick an inch deeper into the fox, that thankfully being about half his length.

Nico, on the other hand, felt like he'd just gotten fisted without warning. His shoulders would rise up, and his body would raise onto his elbows, his head facing downward toward the mattress, his eyes shot wide open, staring anxiously downward as he wondered if he'd gotten in over his head with this one. Dirk was just so much bigger than him in every way, and the fox could feel his hips already aching taking such a massive size into his slender body with so little preparation, his body trembling as he struggled to imagine what it would feel like once it was completely inside him. The fox had taken many larger men, but he normally had known what species his client was and he'd have time to better prepare.Dirk's girth was so sudden, though, so thoughtlessly blunt, that he was forced to adjust as it was driving deeper into him. As the wolf pushed forward again, Nico's backside would groan quietly in protest as Dirk hilted in him.

Nico had to maintain that composure, though, and while his eyes were staring wide and nervous at the bed, he'd ask "s'it everything y' wanted hon?", as composed as possible, to Dirk, who was groaning low, audible groans as he simply stood there on his knees, hilted in Nico, getting clenched by a body far too small for him to be inside. Looking down at such a smaller creature, a man the size of his wife, spread open with his dick balls deep inside, Dirk couldn't believe the view. He'd had sex with women here and there throughout his life before Charlotte came along, but he'd always been a big boy, and it was rare that a woman was able to entirely take him to a hilt. He'd always wanted to try this hole, though, to see how it felt to really have no worries about the back walls, about how gentle he'd have to be, and the wolf would moan a low, needy "oh, Charlotte..." as he leaned forward, his hands pressing down onto the bed as he mounted himself over the small fox beneath him.

Though he held himself steady, the weight of his belly and hanging on poor Nico's back had the fox struggling to hold himself up. The fox would eventually have to lower himself back down to his chest, his arms crossed, his nose pressing against the mattress as he kept his gaze downward, not wanting to let Dirk see the strained expression he was wearing trying to adjust to the size, or to the weight hanging over top of him. He only prayed that Dirk didn't want to lie down on him...

Beneath Dirk, Nico wondered what the big male was thinking. He'd began to moan his wife's name, low, needy, and the fox wondered how much of his mind was truly thinking of her. Nico wondered if a part of Dirk was still thinking of the fox below him. As he pondered, though, the heavy wolf was picking up the pace, thrusts that made the bed creak and a battering ram of a dick hilting in him, the pace thankfully slow and intimate. Dirk must've been thinking of Charlotte, because he was never gentle when he was in Nico's mouth. It was then that the heavy wolf would shift, though, an elbow resting on the bed as he hooked his arms up under Nico, lying his full weight down on him, pressing their bodies together as he began to hump him faster, the angle and the girth of the wolf causing Nico's guts to make an audible groan with each thrust, a wetter noise punctuating it as the precum the wolf was drooling was clearly beginning to fill the fox's backside.

Nico felt himself smothered into the bed, over 300lbs of man laying on him now, holding him still, a snout at his neck breathing steamy air into his fur moaning "Charlotte" into his ear, the small of his back arched upward as Dirk began to truly make use of his backside. It was half comforting, half alarming, being pinned down in such a way, this much larger body imposing its weight on him. He couldn't move, even if he tried, and yet the pressure of it seemed to bring some awareness to his full body, rather than just his poor guts, currently being yawned open by his needy dominant. The sheets smelled so fresh, Nico could smell them almost more than the sweating, musky man on top of him, seeing as his face was currently sandwiched between Dirk's meaty pecs and the fresh linens.

"Charlotte, I," Dirk breathed into Nico's ear, leading the fox to assume he was about to announce his climax, his breath warm, almost comforting in the fox's face,

"I love you. Say you love me too, please." he would finish his statement, and in that moment Nico was thankful once more to be pressed to the bed, unable to show his emotions, because the softening of his expression even admidst the sex would've surely disarmed Dirk.

"I--" an apprehensive pause. For Nico, this was his boss, his buyer, but for Dirk, this was his wife. "I love you too, Dirk."

Not a moment later, Nico would feel it. The thrusting, growing abruptly wet, the swelling, the way Dirk's dick became slippery with his own seed. He shot as heavy a load into the fox's backside as he usually did in his mouth. Dirk's breathing was hoarse at this point, his heavy body tired and enthralled with the thrill of release, the fox's small body bearhugged by a man so heavy he couldn't fully breathe beneath him as his backside was pumped full of seed. Dirk pulled back and it spilled out of Nico, the smaller male plugged back up quickly by Dirk thrusting back into him. He was, in this moment, everything but himself. He was a toy, he was Charlotte, he was the release of pressure, but he was not Nico, and as Dirk rode through his climax he'd continue to breathe needy "i love you"s to the substitute for his wife beneath him. That, the bed creaking, and the obscene sounds his backside was being forced to make, were all Nico could hear. He reciprocated, of course, in the voicing of affection, and as the heavy wolf above him finally bred him to completion, he'd find himself thankfully pulled onto his side.

Nico couldn't see it, but Dirk's eyes were closed, and he pulled the tiny fox into a loving spooning position, arms hugging his chest tightly, knees drawn up and squeezing him, a heavy embrace while staying hilted in Nico that made the fox, despite the aching and discomfort under his tail, feel surprisingly secure. He'd been with many a larger man, but Dirk really made use of that weight in the way others hadn't, and it made Nico wonder what about Dirk was so unadmirable to Charlotte. The man worked a full time job, often well over fourty hours, and let her stay at home, free of charge, and clearly loved her. In a strange way, he loved her so much he paid someone else to be her, just so he could have her in even more ways. It was hard to even see it as infidelity, Nico thought as he laid there feeling Dirk's shaft softening inside him but his bear hug only growing tighter, more intimate, hugging onto Nico like some sort of childhood plush as he nestled his face in the fox's neck, such docile behavior for such a stoic and indifferent man.

There were no words for a good while, well over ten minutes, just touch. Just the embrace, the warmth. Finally, Dirk would speak.

"You can go now."

His grip loosened a bit on Nico and allowed him freedom to move, but the fox laid there, unmoving, only asking "do you want me to go?"

"I'm sure you want to go. Feel free t' shower and leave." Dirk said. The love in his voice was gone, he was back to his managerial voice.

"Well i'm not in a hurry. I do need a shower, though. And," Nico paused, the bedroom reeking of sex and fox musk, "y' really do too. Wanna shower together?"

Dirk was quiet, unanswering, and Nico eventually would answer his own question with "well the door's unlocked if y' wanna join me. I'd love to wash your back for ya."

He would slip out of Dirk's grasp, and the wolf would roll onto his back and stare at the ceiling. His body was a mess. His hairy stomach and chest were matted with sweat and his pubic area was even worse, soaked with sex, his entire body reeking of fox. He needed a good scrub, but Nico wasn't going to press it, though as he walked to bathroom door he'd look back once more and add "i really did mean it, sayin' i liked the show earlier. Wouldn't mind a little more."

Nico liked his showers cool, and as he stood nude in the bathroom he would periodically check the temperature until it was comfortable, stepping inside and beginning to wash himself for the second time that night. This shower was usually a much less pleasant experience. He was often alone, his buyers having left in a hurry, or he was eager to wash off the smell of a man he didn't admire. This time, though, he took it slow. He had nowhere to be, and he wasn't alone. In fact, he found himself still thinking about Dirk in the shower, the neediness of the man, his desire to be loved by his wife. It was a painful feeling on which to ponder, a feeling familiar to Nico and yet so incredibly foreign at the same time. He wondered what Dirk's life was like outside of work, if they even touched when they slept, if they even kissed. Did she ever tell him she loved him?

The fox's thoughts were cut short by the bathroom door opening and the curtain rather ham-fistedly being opened, Dirk's large body stepping in behind Nico, leaving the two space essentially just to turn around but not much else. Their bodies were continuously touching, either a belly against Nico's back or an ass against his stomach, but Dirk would cut the awkwardness of his introduction with "figured I could use some help scrubbin' off the fox smell."

"Yea, it's a sticky smell. Don't wanna go home wearin' that on your neck" Nico smirked. Dirk had his scowl back, his bitter expression Nico always saw at work.

"Lottie's out at her bar doin' karaoke, hell, she ain't even gonna know i wasn't home on time. Could come home wearin' skunk and she'd prolly not notice" he said as he found the bottle of fur shampoo and squirted some into his hands, slathering it up and proceeding to slap them on Nico's shoulders, scrubbing him in the same way he did everything else: rough and awkward. He'd jostle Nico around as he scrubbed his fur, getting his chest, neck, shoulders, stomach, all before he would take Nico and force him to spin around, getting his back as well.

"y-you...y' don't gotta do that," Nico said, "hell i was plannin' on washin' you, not the other way around."

"You really gotta get the drinkin' under control, fox." Dirk would talk through the offer to be washed, seeming to be shifting back into a managerial role now that his post-sex clarity was kicking in. His hands were so heavy, so paternal, being in the shower with him and having him wash him had Nico feeling like a child again, when dad would wash his back when he was just a boy.

"I know, i'm workin' on it it", Nico would defend as he faced the wall.

"Well, work harder on it. I don't want some dumb shit t' happen and me have t' fire you. It's easy t' cover for you if you're hidin' it well but every day it seems like you hide it less and less. You've got kids to feed. Don't fuck it up. Close your eyes." Dirk was washing Nico's hair as he spoke, already having lathered in shampoo.

"I'm tryin'. It didn't used t' be like this, I--" Nico started.

"You've been through some shit. I know." Dirk replied.

"What? How do you know?"

"It's obvious. Y' don't gotta explain it. You've got that energy about you that you've been through hell. When y' first talked about needing work, I thought you were one'a those combat vets, the ones that saw some really awful shit and can't talk about it. There's somethin' in your eyes, somethin' still there." Dirk said it so matter-of-factly, like he knew, like he had some first or secondhand understanding of what that was. He was so good with his hands, careful not to pull knots in Nico's hair.

"Yeah. Yeah, maybe one day i'll tell y' about it" Nico said, quieter now.

"Don't gotta tell me. Don't wanna know. Nothin' that happened in the past matters. You need t' focus on you, the you right here and now, and your kids. Drinkin' isn't gonna unfuck you." Dirk spoke so plainly, so coldly but so...effectively. He wasn't wrong. It was callous but it was true, Nico knew his alcoholism wasn't going to fix what happened in the woods, nor was it going to help him hold a job more effectively. It was clearly causing him to walk a tightrope over a ravine of unemployment, and in that ravine was his return to prostitution.

The reality was too much for Nico to continue to think about at the moment, so he instead deflected and asked "do you have kids?"

"No."

"Do you want 'em?"

"No."

Nico didn't want to ask 'why not', so he instead just nodded as Dirk washed his hair. He wanted to continue shifting back to Dirk, though, to avoid the inevitable return to having his drinking criticized.

"What do you want in life?" Nico finally asked.

"To keep doin' what i'm doing. Wake up tomorrow, go to work, do papers, sell cigarettes and beer and lottery tickets and throw out the bums 'cause you're too scared to do it yourself. Clock out, go home, go to bed."

"What about Charlotte?" Nico asked.

"She can be wherever she wants t' be in that." Dirk answered. It was clear that he had a moderate level of acceptance about his marriage already, about how emotionally disconnected he and his wife were from one another. There was part of him that clearly still wanted her, as the preceding events of the night had shown, but he clearly had a strong sense of independence to him as well.

"That's big to say," Nico would speak softly, "i don't think I could have that kind of peace."

"I know. S'why you drink at work. You're full'a worry," Dirk began, applying a second lathering of shampoo, "but you can't live like that. You need to worry about you first and foremost. Everyone and everything else that's meant to be will fit into your life. You can't just sit around worryin' about other things that take away from you takin' care of yourself. You got a job. I like you. I wanna promote you. Other people'd want to have you as an employee. Focus on that."

Nico didn't answer after that. He had nothing but excuses to say, and he didn't want to waste them on a man that wouldn't have tolerated them. It was something simultaneously aggravating and relieving about Dirk, he took no excuses. If you made mistakes, you owned up to them, and you took the consequences. It was hard, and it often made Nico mad, but it also made him accountable. There was no weaseling out of things as many men had allowed Nico to do, and it bolstered his sense of responsibility. Dirk finished washing the fox, which gave him an opportunity to steer the conversation elsewhere, asking "y' want me to wash you now?"

"No. Just look at me." Dirk replied. His eyes were closed, he was washing his face currently, scrubbing his palms in circles causing his chubby cheeks to pull around on his face. "Just," Dirk continued, pausing his washing to look up at the water as it sprayed him in the face, rinsing soap off his brow and muzzle, "just lemme open my eyes and see you lookin' at me like you were earlier, like you loved me."

Nico wouldn't answer that. Anything he said would've shattered the illusion, though there was a very real part of him that didn't really have to act to play the part. He didn't love Dirk, at least not romantically, but he did admire him. He did find his demeanor to be charming, and his body to be attractive in a strange way, and he cherished the risks Dirk took for him, and Dirk would see that all in Nico's eyes when he opened his own, seeing that slightly upturned brow and smile on Nico's face as he looked at Dirk washing himself. The heavy wolf would pause, and would roll his eyes and smile as he continued about his bathing. Smiling, something Nico genuinely couldn't recall Dirk doing before now.

The pair would finish bathing and would step out of the shower, drying off next to eachother, feeling once more like friends than coworkers. As they both headed nude out of the bathroom, Dirk would follow behind Nico and would ask, as the fox began to dress himself, "can we do this again?"

It would indeed not be the last time they did things together. In fact, on top of Nico's usual oral attentiveness to his boss at work, Sunday evenings became "late paperwork days" for Dirk for quite some time, Charlotte showing little concern as to why her husband sometimes ended up home late. As time went on, Dirk would ask progressively less often for Nico to play Charlotte, though he always brought the dress. This would continue for several months until Nico was fired from Dixie Tobacco for drinking on the job. Dirk did his best to maintain a connection with Nico after that, and though Nico held no resentment toward him for the necessary actions he took, they found their encounters only happening a few Sundays after Nico's termination before Nico didn't answer Dirk's text one Sunday, and Dirk never texted him again after that.

Dirk still owns Dixie Tobacco, and Nico is still a shopper there, buying cigarettes and beer and catching up with his old boss, the two of them talking like none of it ever happened.