FSE

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story and all characters are copyright © 2012 K.M. Hirosaki.

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He was so very much like Ewan, this fox. His fur was the same shade of russet, his paws the same brownish-black, his eyes the same rich amber. His scent was the same, the way he flicked his tail when he laughed was the same. His wonderful, wonderful voice was the same.

He was so very much like Ewan. But not exactly like him.

"This was really nice," he said to Robin, smiling at the dingo from across the table. "I had a good time."

Robin had had a good time, too. It had taken a few dates, but he'd finally gotten better at letting himself forget, at least for a few moments at a time, that this new Ewan wasn't the old Ewan. They weren't exactly starting over from square one, but building things back up was going to take time.

"Yeah. I'd like to do this again sometime," the dingo replied. His smile didn't come easily, but it wasn't completely forced.

Ewan leaned in and took one of Robin's paws in his, and the dingo put all of his willpower into not yanking it away. Of course Ewan would want to do that. Robin should want it, too, he reminded himself. "How about that one restaurant we always said we should go back to? D'Agostino's, I think it was?"

Pressure welled up behind Robin's eyes. _The things we said we should do. The plans we had. Maybe someday. Maybe someday. _ "Yeah," the dingo choked out. "Yeah, D'Agostino's. That'd be nice."

"Are you okay, honey?" Ewan asked, and then he flinched at this own words. "Sorry. I forget that it's weird to call you that when we're still starting out."

"It's not your fault," Robin replied, and though he wanted to squeeze Ewan's paw back, he couldn't bring himself to. "I know that's how you remember it."

The fox folded his ears back, and he frowned for a moment before managing to turn it around into a partial smile. "Isn't that the whole point, though?" he asked. "For us to go back to how we remember things?"

A single, choked-out sob escaped Robin's muzzle, though he managed to keep it clipped and short. Of course that was the whole point. It was just so much harder in practice. "I'm trying," he said, needing to keep his voice soft, lest it break. "I mean, it's been nice, the two of us. Getting coffee, having dinner--"

"But we're not supposed to be just casually dating, honey--Robin, sorry." Ewan furrowed his brow. "No, you know what? I'm not sorry. I'm not going to pretend that I'm not who I remember being, and I'm not going to pretend that I don't have these feelings for you."

It had been over a year after Ewan's death in the shuttle crash that Robin had finally signed off on the order to have the fox regenerated. After their first meeting, it had been another three months before Robin could bring himself to see the new Ewan again. The fox had been so sweet about it, too. He'd said, "I know this must be hard for you to deal with. Take all the time you need."

And Robin did need time, but more than that, he needed Ewan back. After seven years together, he wasn't about to face the rest of his life without the fox at this side. Not when having him back was an option.

He was so very much like Ewan. But not exactly like him.

It was the memories that made it so weird, at least for Robin. Ewan came across as someone who'd read a very detailed report on their life together and was just very good at remembering various bits of information--where they'd had their third kiss, where they'd eaten the night before their first offworld vacation together, the way Robin would sigh after a long kiss at the end of a long day.

He had the memories, but he hadn't actually experienced any of it, and so he didn't have the proper emotional framework built around them. He could kind of mimic it, but Robin noticed the differences, the little ones, in the fox's mannerisms, in the way he smiled, in the foxy gleam in his eyes when he said something naughty.

It was enough for Robin to convince himself that the old Ewan really was gone forever, and that this new one could never replace him, not completely.

"I'm not going to pretend that I'm not who I remember being, and I'm not going to pretend that I don't have these feelings for you."

Maybe this new Ewan didn't actually experience the original Ewan's life. But he remembered it like he did. Maybe his feelings were left over from the memories of someone else's life. But if he was still having them, did that make them real enough?

"I want you to be who you remember being," the dingo said. "But you're--"

"But I'm not?" Ewan interrupted. "Maybe I'm not, no. Maybe I don't remember the last two months before that shuttle crash, because that's the last time the old me went and had his memories recorded. Maybe it's jarring for me that there's over a year missing in my mind because I was dead that whole time. And maybe I'm not a perfect copy of the fox you remember." He leaned further over the table, and looked Robin right in the eye. "But everything in my head is real to me, and that includes loving you for over seven years."

Robin looked away from the fox, ashamed. Unsure. Terrified. Lost. "I couldn't bear the thought of not having you back," he choked out. "And I know I should be happy that I have you back at all, even if you're not--"

"Perfect?"

The dingo lifted his head up. The look on the new Ewan's face was so very, very close to the concerned expression that the real--no, the old Ewan would have had. So very close. "Listen," Robin said. "How about we go back to my place? Our place."

Ewan's face didn't change, his eyes reflecting that same look of concern. But his white-tipped tail did flick out from one side of his chair. "Are you going to be comfortable with that?"

"I guess I'm going to have to learn," Robin replied, and he was proud of himself for stopping before he added, "Because you're all I'm going to get."

After his first coffee date with Ewan's replacement, Robin had gone home and cried in his room for hours. He was sure this was never going to work. Instead of filling the hole left by his lover's death, this new fox was just going to make the pain and grief that much harder to forget. Every duplicated smile, every duplicated wag of the tail, every duplicated bit of sweet-talking was only going to twist the knife deeper.

He had the option of just letting the new Ewan go. Legally, he had the rights to the real Ewan's life, and he'd be able to go back to it and to him, it would be the same as it had been.

Except for the missing year of being dead.

And except for not being with Robin.

In the nearly eighteen months since Ewan's death, the fox's scent had finally faded from the condominium he and Robin had shared. Now, with his replacement stepping in through the front door, it was back again, at least in the dingo's nose. He breathed it in as he looked around, remembering not for the first time what it was like to have the both of them living here together.

Ewan stepped up to the bay window in the living room and stared out over the city, at the lights of the spaceport in the distance and the countless crisscrossing lanes of ground traffic and mag-rail trains. His furred fingers spread out across the window's surface, and he exhaled softly, his breath fogging up the glass for just a moment. "I've missed this place," he murmured.

"I've missed you," Robin said, and for the first time, he was the one to reach for one of Ewan's paws instead of the other way around.

The fox squeezed his fingers around the dingo's as he turned to look into his eyes. "I've missed you, too," he said. "And I know that might be hard for you to believe, but I--"

Robin shut the fox up by kissing him hard on the muzzle, everything about the scent and the taste and the pattering of their heartbeats matching up with how he remembered it. Paws gripped at the dingo's hips, not quite in the right spots, but close enough that they found proper purchase after a brief moment of fumbled groping.

They kept their paws on each other as they stumbled across the living room and down the hallway to the bedroom together, passing a number of pictures of the two of them taken over the course of seven years. Robin kept one eye open, taking note of each photo along the way, and telling himself, over and over, "This is fine. This is normal. This is Ewan coming home."

There was a brief pause as they crossed the threshold into the bedroom. Ewan looked around for a moment in confusion, but he then took a firm hold of the dingo's hips, lifted him up, and tossed him onto his back atop the bed. His brownish-black paws fumbled with his belt as he hurried to get his pants open, and Robin let out a happy giggle as the fox did the same for him, yanking the dingo's legs up so that he could pull his jeans and boxers off with one mostly fluid motion.

Ewan fell forward and pinned Robin's shoulders to the bed, and the dingo tilted his head aside, letting the fox kiss at the hollow of his throat as he slung one arm over towards the nightstand to fish for the bottle of lube that had been left untouched for a year and a half. Familiar shudders ran along his spine, making his ears and tail and sheath tingle all at once, and Ewan growled low and deep, making that tingling grow even stronger. Shaking paws grabbed at the front of Robin's shirt, and the fox tore it open, sending buttons across the mattress and against the wall.

"It's okay," the fox panted as his paws rubbed through the fur of the dingo's chest. "I remember how to sew."

It turned out that he also remembered all the spots and ways the dingo liked to be touched: claws raking beneath the navel, fingertips pattering at the insides of his thighs, the backs of fingers dragging up and down along the fur of his sheath. The fox took the bottle of lube and flicked the cap open with his thumb, smearing some onto his fingers and rubbing it beneath the dingo's tail. The soft murmur of "That's it" could have come from countless other nights that Ewan had whispered his encouragement to his lover, and if the way he worked his fingers and the exact timbre of his breathing wasn't quite spot-on, Robin was distracted enough that he could afford not to care.

The fox tugged Robin's legs apart with only a modicum of restraint, then started to slip himself beneath the dingo's tail with even less restraint. "Careful," Robin hissed. "It's...It's been a while."

"Sorry," Ewan whispered, and he leaned forward, kissing Robin again, slow and deep as he took a more careful approach to working his hips down and forward, the smooth fabric of his shirt soon rubbing against the fur of the dingo's chest. The fox hadn't--didn't--usually leave clothes on when having sex, but--

--but no, sometimes he did. If he was eager. Or impatient. This didn't have to be weird, Robin told himself.

A bite to the throat and a hard thrust later, it wasn't weird at all. Robin let himself clench down, gently, as he rode out the jolt that shot through his body, and he wasn't shy at all about the higher-pitched, needy groan he let out as Ewan moved his hips again, and then again, wasting no time in settling into a good, firm, steady rhythm.

Robin tilted his head back and closed his eyes. He focused on the teeth at his neck, the pressure and thickness under his tail, and most importantly, the familiar scent in the air, currently flooding his nose. It was reassuring, in the way that only his aroused scent mixed with his lover's and a healthy bit of lube could really be. He could imagine that it was two or three or six years ago, and it was all fine, all the same, all like it needed to be.

The pressure on Robin's throat lessened as Ewan released the bite and instead began to lick at the spot where his teeth had been pinching in. For a few seconds, the harder thrusts were replaced by a slow, firm grinding, and a soft grunt from the fox made the dingo open his eyes again.

Splayed out on his back, legs wrapped around Ewan's hips just like old times, Robin gazed up into the fox's eyes and smiled.

He was so very much like Ewan. But not exactly like him.

But that was okay, because he was close enough. And close enough was a hell of a lot better than nothing.