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That went poorly. You'd think that, given almost a whole month to work on it, I could write one f#!king part. Apparently not - I was running behind anyway, and it turned out a lot longer than I planned (like always). Here's the first half. It's all I can give you right now.

Nick's bi, I love feedback (positive and negative), and the second half will be up in a week, barring a death in the family. Thank you all for reading.

EDIT: This part has been retouched, thanks again to suggestions from Tank Jaeger

Part 19

It was funny how little had actually changed the next day at lunch compared to how different I felt. The food still tasted awful, and the room was still deafeningly loud. I still sat next to Ivan at lunch, and we still shared the table with some of his friends. Not as many anymore, though. But that had been happening all semester. He'd even talked to me about it once or twice. I'd been worried it was because we'd become friends, but Ivan said they just weren't the same furs he'd thought they were now that he was trying to make something of himself. Besides, there were still a bunch left, and they filled the vicinity with familiar conversation.

No, it was only little things that were different. Things like the paper and used textbook paper sitting next to the lion's lunch and which he occasionally gave a dirty look and read a couple sentences of.

Or like the tingling in my paw where Jake had held it when he showed up after Biology to walk me to lunch.

A rude flick to the forehead brought me unceremoniously back to the present. "Earth to Nick," Ivan said with a sadistic chuckle as I yelped and pressed a paw to the abused area. "You gonna finish that?" He pointed to the largely-untouched slice of cardboard and ooze masquerading as pizza on my tray.

I gave the offending item a dirty look of my own and shoved it over to him. "No thanks. I think I want to live to my next birthday, if it's all the same."

He laughed, cut off the part I'd bitten into, then took a large chomp out of the rest, breaking a string of processed cheese with one claw. I shuddered theatrically, then grinned.

"So what'cha doing, anyway?" I asked, pointing at his book.

The lion grimaced. "Studying. I've got A-levels at the end of term, and I blew off all last year, so..."

I winced. "Ouch."

"And you gotta get all three to get into university," a badger sitting next to him - across from me - added, working his way through a large corned beef sandwich. Ivan nodded, running a paw through his close-cropped mane.

"What do you want to get in for, anyway?" I asked, curiosity piqued. I mean, 'Ivan' and 'career' hadn't exactly gone together in my mind when I first met him.

He shrugged.

"Aw, come on," I pressed.

Ivan ignored me except for a rather rude paw signal, which I laughed off. "All right," I said, getting into the game, "what sort of things do you like?"

"I dunno."

I rolled my eyes. "Okay, do you want to take music?"

"Hell no!"

"How about sociology?"

Ivan groaned, the sound simultaneously annoyed and curiously shy. "All right, I was thinking maybe engineering, like for cars. But I'm sure as hell not taking the right courses for it."

"Wow," I said, fascinated. "I knew you worked in a dealership, but I thought it was just a job." The lion shrugged, and I grinned at him. "But who says you can't? Just go to a two-year college or something to take what you need to get in." I fell silent after that, though, my smile slipping a bit as I pondered my classes. I mean, architecture and biology don't generally go together either.

Ah, well. I was trying to be in a good mood, so I grinned again, filed that issue away for a later date, and set about enjoying - as much as the indeterminate mass I'd been told was macaroni salad allowed - the remnants of my meal.

Afternoon sunlight poured onto the deck at Jake's house a week later, illuminating everything from the honey-colored flagstones and outdoor table where I'd unpacked my homework to the budding leaves of the trees on both sides in a rich, warm golden glow.

It also cast the red-brown fur on Jake's newly-shirtless neck and shoulders into stunning, gorgeous relief, making my heart constrict painfully even while I scowled at him.

"What? It's hot out!" he told me. I ignored him, looking down at the page in front of me and clamping my teeth shut to hold in a whimper of desire.

"Nick, what's wrong?" he asked in an entirely different voice, dropping his pretense.

In lieu of a response I snapped my book shut and started to get up, hoping to get the hell out of there before he did anything. It didn't work, though - his warm paw caught my arm two steps later.

"Come on, mutt, talk to me," the wolf pressed, holding my shoulders so I couldn't twist away.

"Fuck off," I responded, avoiding his attempts to meet my eyes.

He didn't take the hint. "How am I supposed to help you if you won't tell me what's wrong?"

I growled, angry with myself for ever being weak enough to ask him to help me, because now he wouldn't leave off.

In response, the wolf pushed me back a couple feet until my thighs hit the railing around the deck, then pushed me down until I was sitting on it. Then he used one paw to grab under my muzzle and tilt it up so I had to look at him.

"Come on," he murmured again. "We got through the week okay - what's come up?"

I shook my head out of his hold, concentrating on the hard corner of wood digging into my thigh while I tried to figure out a way out of this.

"It's nothing," I said at last, trying to sound offhanded.

He waited.

"It's really stupid," I told him.

He cupped the side of my face in his paw, and waited some more.

Finally I sighed. "It was just a dream again, okay?" I muttered, and cringed. It sounded even more pathetic than I thought it would. "Nothing that hasn't happened a thousand times before. I'll get over it."

"About?" he prompted.

"Nothing."

"Me?"

"No."

"Then who?"

"Nobody."

The wolf shook his head and sat next to me on the railing. He wasn't kidding when he took his shirt off earlier - the heat washing off his body was incredible, beating the unusually hot afternoon paws down.

"So you dreamed about nothing and nobody, and that's why you've been sulking all day?"

"It was about my mum, all right?" I snapped. "And it's not something I want to talk about, so thanks so much for butting into my business."

He didn't answer directly, just let me stew in my resentment for a little while until it turned into guilt. "Sorry," I muttered.

I felt his shrug. "You're mostly right, actually - it isn't any of my business. I'm just trying to help."

Well. Now I felt even worse. I twisted and nuzzled his shoulder in mute apology. I'd promised him I'd try. "I know it was ten years ago, but it still bothers me," I confessed. "She... well, I didn't really know what she was doing then, but she..." my voice devolved into a whisper, "she raped me." Jake's arm tightened around my shoulders, hard. Half of me badly wanted to jerk away from his touch, but the other half made me hold still. "J-just like one time, but - sh-she got home, and she was r-really mad, and I -" I started squirming as the urge to pull away won out, but Jake held on tightly. "I j-just asked if there was anyth-thing for dinner," I said pleadingly.

"Shh, shh," the wolf said above me, moving from the rail to the stone deck next to it and pulling me close while my struggles slowed. "It's okay mutt. It wasn't your fault - you didn't do anything wrong. I'm here, Nick. Hey, it'll be all right..."

Finally I calmed down enough to finish. "Then she pushed me over, and s-sat on top of me, and made me t-touch her, and screamed at me... I don't even know what she was saying, but I was..." I changed tack, trying to sound scornful. "Anyway, it was just the once. Usually she just hit me."

Completely ingnoring my attempt at bravado, Jake gently stroked my back. It soundls like such a little thing, but it was all it took for me to lose it again and bury my face in his fur to muffle my whimpers.

The sun was noticably lower the next time I peeked out. Jake carefully caressed the wet, matted fur on my cheeks. "You doing a little better?"

"Yeah," I said, nodding. My lips twisted. "I seem to have been doing a lot of crying on your shoulder lately."

He actually whined unhappily, which made me feel like a complete jerk. "God, mutt, I'm -"

"Please don't say it," I interrupted, with rather more vulnerability in my voice than I would have liked. Jake stopped short.

We spent about two minutes awkwardly not looking at each other before we both stood. "A-anyway, I'm supposed to be doing homework," I said, forcing levity into my voice. "I'm still a bit behind."

"Yeah," the wolf said, accepting the change in tone. We moved back to the table and sat down across from each other.

A while later I piped up again in a more genuinely sheepish voice. "So, um, speaking of being behind - could I get you to check my maths problems?"

Jake looked up and grinned at my one-ear-up, one-ear-back expression, and I threw in my puppy dog eyes for good measure. He caved, stood, and came over to my side of the table to look.

"It's just they take so much space," I complained. "Are they really this long, or am I doing it wrong?"

"No, they really are long," he answered absently, half-sitting as he scanned my paper. "That's why they don't assign as many." He pointed out a couple spots partway through. "Okay, your calculus is fine, but you might want to retake kindergarten, mutt. Minus seventeen and eight is what, again?"

I groaned, and his grin widened wickedly. "I'm pretty sure there ought to be an extra minus sign in there somewh - oof!" The last was when my elbow connected with his ribs.

"So what're you doing?" I asked after correcting that problem. I scooted over to his side of the table and looked at his paper. "Chemistry?" I said after a short study. "Yuck."

He laughed and sat next to me so he could get back to work. "It's not that bad, mutt."

"If you say so," I said dubiously. Rather than go do my own work I elected to stay where I was and watch Jake do his. Then, blushing a medium pink, I tentatively fumbled my right paw into his left, earning a gentle squeeze in return.

He was apparently nearly finished - maybe fifteen minutes later he'd done six or seven more problems, snorted derisively, and closed his book. "I guess everyone else in class agrees with you," he said. "My lab partner said it was hard."

"Mm," I answered, then took a deep breath and looked at him. "So... I'm supposed to give a statement to Claire's lawyer tomorrow, about her parents."

"Yeah," he answered. "I overheard you telling Mum and Dad about it."

"Are you coming?" I tried to keep the plea out of my voice.

"Of course," the wolf answered, sounding a bit confused. "I mean, if you want me to," he added hastily. "If you don't I -"

I tapped his lips to stop him. "Thanks," I said simply. Then, gathering my courage, I half-stood, licked Jake's cheek, blushed, and went back to my side of the table.

Claire's attorney was typical of the breed. The grey-and-charcoal tabby cat gave me a warm smile as I walked nervously into the downtown office, then followed it with a summary of all the things I was and wasn't supposed to say. Make sure to give lots of details about the home environment, emphasize my feelings of discomfort as I spoke with Claire's parents, and above all be sure to avoid sounding happy. All good advice, I suppose, but it didn't help me to relax much. There were all too few furs who'd actually been inside Claire's house, since neither she nor her parents were terribly social. They'd sent a social worker over to investigate, at least, but I was one of the only witness accounts. So no pressure.

It didn't help that Jake had to stay outside when we reached a coat closet that had been remodeled as an office and sat across a minuscule desk from some clerk.

We got through the preliminaries okay - who was I, how did I know Claire, on which days had I visited her home - but all too soon those were over and the clerk was asking me to recount my first visit.

And, quite suddenly and quite completely, my mind went blank.

God, not now, I thought panicking. Come on. The first time had been...

Oh. While I was fighting with Ivan, and Claire'd called me when I was going to meet him. The memory didn't exactly help to calm me down.

"I'd... Claire had called my cell phone and asked me come over," I began haltingly. I hated the dead, emotionless way I was saying it, but I couldn't seem to fix that. Here she was counting on me to get here away from her parents, and I was letting her down. "So, I walked over - I mean, I knew she was having problems at home, so I got directions from her and walked over, and..." I trailed off.

"Did you meet her parents?" the recorder prompted.

I nodded. "Just her mother," I said. "I didn't go in that time, but -" deep breath; it was amazing how nervous you could be even though I'd rehearsed this all a few days ago "- she smelled like alcohol and smoke, and she told Claire to, um, 'get your fat ass down here'. And I heard them yelling some more inside before Claire came out and we left. And that was it."

That wasn't it, obviously. The recorder spent another ten minutes dragging out details about what neighborhood the house was in, how Claire had acted, how I'd felt physically intimidated by her mother - the whole deal.

Then we got to the second, and it was worse. It turned out I'd badly underestimated the recorder. The bored-looking otter relentlessly teased out every single shred of that visit, and I slowly began to realize all the little things that made me scared - I admitted it now, if only in my head - of Claire's father. The way he'd turned her mother from a terror to a mongrel just by being in the room. The way he'd stood just a little closer than he should have, the way he'd laid a paw on my knee and smiled as he said Claire couldn't come, without even looking at her. The way he'd invited me - me personally - to come back sometime.

It occurred to me that this one nameless clerk - she could have been an intern for all I knew - was a better therapist than the entire staff of the correction center combined.

Then we got to the last visit.

"How close was Mr. Terrod standing?" the otter asked neutrally.

"L-like a foot or two away," I whispered, huddling in the uncomfortable metal folding chair. Then I cleared my throat and repeated it louder. "He was - holding my paw, rubbing it."

"How did that make you feel?"

I was being flooded with memories of his slightly-coarse fur on my pawpads, his breath pressing softly against my nose, his pale green eyes and artificial smile. "Uncomfortable," I answered, miserably aware that didn't even cover a tenth of it.

"Did you ask Mr. Terrod to stop?"

"N-no. I just left, after that." I looked into her expressionless brown eyes, imagining all the names she should be calling me. Coward. Baby. Whiner. Tattletale. ...Traitor. "I d-didn't know anything!" I whimpered, cringing back.

The recorder remained silent for a moment while I regained some composure, then resumed her questions.

I was shaking like a leaf and completely drained when I left the office a quarter of an hour later.

They'd banished Jake clear back to the lobby, thankfully, which gave me a chance to compose myself before I saw him. Some of it probably leaked through anyway, but not badly enough to stop us as we walked back outside. The office was far enough from school and the house both that we'd taken a bus, which meant now we had to wait at the stop down the street for the next one.

"So we're going to see Claire now?" the wolf asked, and I nodded. I'd made myself visit every day for the last week, trying to help Claire move on. So far, it hadn't really worked.

Which fact was almost painfully apparent once we got there.

They'd moved her into a different wing after a few days, but Dr. Pillai had kept her promise to do her best by Claire, and so she wouldn't have to go home at least until a court hearing at the end of the week to see about taking custody from her parents. I spent a significant portion of each visit silently thanking the tiger for following through.

Claire, on the other paw, was less happy. Part of that was because she was less happy in general, and another part because she'd been cooped up for the last week. She'd fallen feet first, which had probably saved her life, but it also meant she'd broken all three long bones in her right leg and the fibula and tibia in her left, so she was wheelchair-bound for the next forever.

But the worst part as far as I was concerned was that she didn't seem to want to leave home, which was what we'd started talking about again once Jake excused himself and left us alone.

"I know," the bear-fox said, sounding half-frustrated and half-tired. "I know they were abusive, and I know they 'are not providing a supportive atmosphere for a child'. I've heard all this from every lawyer and therapist they've thrown at me, Nick."

"Then why?" I asked, matching her frustration while trying hard to mask how much it hurt to be with her.

She didn't answer.

I took a deep breath. "Claire, you weren't happy there."

She shrugged, and I flinched at her casual dismissal of that consideration. It shook me pretty hard every time she did that. I nearly blew up at her, but violently shoved the urge aside. Instead, I hesitantly placed a paw on the side of her shoulder, and relaxed minutely when she sighed and leaned into the touch.

Neither of us said anything for a few moments. We were in a quiet corner of a common room, with a telly showing a football game in the opposite corner, so we pretended to watch that.

"It wasn't really them, was it?" I whispered, choking on the words. I'd been told not to bring it all up again, but that question had been haunting me more and more over the last week. "It - what you did -" I still couldn't bring myself to say it directly "- it was because of me, wasn't it? What I s-said to you when we were f-fighting..."

She whimpered and shook her head, staring at her lap - but she didn't say no. I gave a whimper of my own and squeezed my eyes shut, biting my cheek until I was fairly sure I wouldn't cry.

"D-d'you want me to go?" I asked finally, voice ragged.

"No," she answered miserably.

For the thousandth time, I wondered if that was the same 'no' she gave about her parents. If I was in the same category.

And that was why I had to make myself visit.

I'd been silent too long. I had to say something. So I gave her shoulder a light squeeze to get her to look up at me. "Claire - you're my friend, and I don't want to keep hurting you. Was it me?"

Her gentle, brown-furred face crumpled, and after a single instant to wonder if it was the right move I scooted closer to hug her. It frightened me how silently she cried.

But she sounded a little better a when she stopped few minutes later, anyway. "It wasn't just you," she whispered. "It was everything. I just wanted to rest."

She whimpered again when I started to pull away, so I stayed there.

The football game had ended when she sat up, looking much calmer this time. "So it's just you again," she observed.

"Huh?" I said intelligently. She actually chuckled, just a little.

"Jake disappeared again," she clarified.

"Oh. He... well, it must be uncomfortable for you to see us," I mumbled in response.

She looked down. "A little," she admitted softly. "But he's a nice guy, and it's fun to get more visits." Her blunt muzzle stretched into a tiny smile. "You ought to know it's kind of boring here when nobody's around.

Fair point. So I fished out my phone and hit his speed dial.

He responded almost before it started ringing. "Yeah?"

"Hey," I said. "Could you get your fuzzy tail down here, please?" I hung up before he could answer, and grinned at Claire. "There."

She smiled back. I think it was even genuine.

We played a game of scrabble for about half an hour - I won - before Jake and I had to go.

As we were leaving, I suddenly realized that she'd said "wanted". Up until now she'd always said "want".

"Y'know, we've still got like the whole afternoon ahead of us," Jake mentioned conversationally ten minutes later. We were still waiting at the bus stop near the hospital - the bus was running right on time, by which I mean several minutes behind its official schedule - standing an awkward one foot apart. I swear we must have looked like a pair of characters from a bad sitcom: too close to be friends but too far and too stiff to be anything else. Oi.

"Mm," I replied a moment later. Then we resumed our silence for a bit before I ventured another statement. "Good thing, too - I have to write a make-up essay for history, and you were talking about something for your anatomy course."

"Yeah, but I could finish that after dinner," Jake returned. I shrugged, and we fell silent once again. His face fell a little, though, as if he'd been disappointed. It was so slight I probably wouldn't even have noticed a few months ago, let alone cared, but now it made me want to grab his paw and make it go away.

Which sounds like a really preschool thing to say, doesn't it?

The only reason I didn't was because it scared me how badly I wanted to. I mean, I wasn't supposed to even like him. I told him I didn't quite regularly. And yet I still wanted - God, I needed this wolf to be there. I'd missed him during every single piddling little class at school this week.

The bus finally got there, and we wound up standing about a quarter of the way down because all of the seats were taken. A couple yards farther back, a thirty-something raccoon leaned against a coyote-dog I assumed was her husband, her eyes shut as she dozed. He looked a little motion sick himself, but he held an arm tenderly across her shoulders anyway.

"I'm going to need that paw later, you know," Jake murmured, startling me. My face heated as I hastily released the paw I'd not realized I was clutching. But he stopped me when I tried to say sorry.

And then, a few seconds later, I felt his large, warm paw sneak up and gently take mine back.

It took several more stops before my distracted brain finally ran back over the conversation at the bus stop and realized what should have been almost painfully obvious at the time. Aw, crap, he was asking if you wanted to go do something with him! And I'd been so completely clueless that I'd unwittingly turned him down flat.

Lord, quit whining and just do something about it. "Let'sgetoffhere," I said in a rush - just as the bus doors shut and we started moving again. Jake snickered while I groaned, earning both of us a disgruntled look from the rather overweight basset hound edging his way down the aisle. I blushed even more and squeezed back apologetically to let him pass. "Erm, next stop, then," I amended. "I mean, we're close enough to walk the rest of the way, and this way maybe we can stop for - for ice cream, or something?"

The wolf chuckled again, and for I second I didn't know why until he gently nipped the ear I'd inadvertently shoved against his soft-furred muzzle when I backed up. Cutting off my increasingly-embarrassed apologies with one paw, he softly nipped me again. "I'd love to, mutt."

A warm tingle ran through my body, and I flicked my ear against his lips as a slow grin stole over my face.

Well, I felt pretty accomplished. I was caught up with my schoolwork, I hadn't gotten into any fights with anyone recently, and I had an absolutely smoking hot wolf lying on the couch with his head in my lap, reading his notes. Running my fingers slowly through his fur, I was having some difficulty getting over that last part, and even the knowledge that I probably looked like a moonstruck puppy couldn't stop me.

Especially when he smiled up at me like that.

"You enjoy making it hard for me to focus, don't you?" he teased.

I grinned. "Not my fault you still have work to do and I don't, lazybones."

"Jerk."

"Slowpoke."

"Boys," Dan cautioned from the other seat.

"Sorry, Dad," Jake said, stretching a little and starting to read again. I echoed him and determinedly stopped stroking his head. I couldn't resist sticking my tongue out at him first, though. His tail managed to thump the couch a couple times despite being stuck under him.

I hadn't brought a book down or anything, which was just as well - it was taking a considerable amount of my concentration to keep my paws to myself as it was. Besides, this way I could just look down at him almost without distraction, except for the occasional sounds of Dan turning a page in his book or of Michael and a friend playing outside.

Some time later he yawned, dropped the sheaf of papers to the floor, and stretched again, startling me out of my reverie. "Well, that was boring," he said, groaning as he worked the kinks out of his neck. I throttled an urge to help him.

Then the wolf turned and buried his nose in my stomach, sighing contentedly. Dan, blessedly, turned to watch Michael and pretended not to notice, but I turned pink anyway.

The sound of tires on the driveway finally tore my gaze away from him. There was a beat-up pickup truck pulling up to the door, and I had just enough time to wonder why it looked familiar before a youngish, powerfully built grizzly stepped out of the driver's side he walked around to the passenger's side and opened the door to reveal Claire sitting there.

I broke into a smile and - after making sure I wouldn't hit Jake's head on the way - jumped up and ran outside. "Hey!" I called while the bear unfolded a wheelchair on the drive and gently helped Claire into it. I pulled to a halt a couple feet, suddenly uncertain. "Um - I'm not going to break anything if I hug you, am I?"

Claire actually laughed, which sent a wave of relief through me. She'd been getting better, but she still had bad days. It looked like this wasn't one of them, though.

"No," she answered, and I bent down to awkwardly hug her shoulders. I wasn't quite sure how to do that while not sitting next to her, but it seemed to work okay.

By this time Jake and Dan had followed me out, while Michael and his friend had scampered over to see what was happening. Dan smiled at Claire. "Hello, Claire. Good to see you out and about." He held out his paw to the grizzly. "My name is Dan Altera. These are my sons Jake and Michael, Michael's friend Raleigh, and our foster child Nick."

The grizzly shook the paw firmly. "I'm Thomas, Claire's brother," he said in a curt, but polite, baritone, deeper than Jake's. He nodded at each of us in turn, even Michael and Raleigh, who were looking somewhat intimidated.

Dan invited both of them in, waving aside Claire's apologies for not calling ahead, while Michael and his friend went back to burning calories. Once inside, Thomas looked too big to fit, but he held the soda Jake got him gracefully enough.

"So how'd the court hearing go?" I asked a few minutes later, cautiously. I didn't know if it would be good news or bad, and I didn't know how Claire would feel about it either way.

"Oh, it went okay," she answered, which told me nothing. When I cocked my head inquisitively, she went on. "I guess I'm staying at an orphanage until the end of term."

Well, that sounded... well, "good" was a strong word for the situation, but better than it could have been. What worried me was the deliberately neutral way she said it. "Is that okay?" I asked tentatively.

The bear-fox shrugged. "Yeah... I guess so. It's just that after that I go to Ireland, to stay with my aunt and uncle."

Thomas leaned over to touch her knee. "They're good people," he rumbled. "I've been to stay with them a couple times."

Claire briefly looked even more unhappy, but then physically shook herself out of it. And winced, one paw moving to her stomach. "Ouch," she said in a livelier voice. "Shouldn't do that just yet. But anyway, it's not that - it's just a long way away."

"You know I'll call as often as you want me to," I told her - and then suddenly realized I might not be able to keep that promise. After the term ended I was slated to go back to the correction center, and I didn't know if I'd be able to keep my phone. "Or - or write, if I can't call," I finished, trying to mask my plummeting stomach.

Jake looked at me in concern, but I think I at least fooled Claire, because she smiled at me. "Thanks."

I forced that worry way, way to the back of my mind and smiled back.

"What about you?" Dan asked, looking at Thomas.

The grizzly smiled too, though he didn't look especially happy. "No, I'll stay here. I plan to take classes at the vocational school on the west side."

Claire wound up having lunch with us and staying for a couple hours afterwards, though Thomas bailed, saying he needed to get some things. He came back just as we were finishing the third Harry Potter movie.

"You should come back tomorrow!" Michael said enthusiastically. Raleigh'd left and he'd come in soon after we'd started the movie, and the deer had warmed up to Claire - and vice versa - in thirty seconds flat.

The bear-fox laughed. "I'll see what I can do," she promised. She looked over to Dan. "Thank you so much for having me over, Mr. Altera."

"It was no trouble," he assured her. "You're welcome back any time."

I trailed outside after her. I almost told her to take care, but I didn't want to ruin the mood. "Thanks for coming over," I said instead. "I know I had a great time, at least."

"Me, too," Claire responded. Thomas and I helped her up into his truck again - there's something inherently sad about doing that, by the way, but I tried not to let it bother me - and then he coolly shook my paw and left.