FSE

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2012

Sierra Snowpaw checked in to the Lonnegan Ski Resort on February 28th, 2012, with all his worldly possessions in a large hiker's backpack and small computer bag. He did not have a job, nor a plan, and as of midnight the following night, the room in one of the elegant, fiery red lodge buildings would be the closest thing he had to a home.

"Business or pleasure?" the pine marten at the desk asked as he took Sierra's credit card.

The snow leopard looked down. "Sure," he said. It probably didn't matter that he wasn't going to be able to afford this stay, because without an address, it would take the credit card company a good couple months to track him down. Given a good couple months, Sierra could straighten out--well, nearly anything.

"There's a corporate retreat here," the pine marten said. "Sonoma Systems. Are you with them?"

The marten's name tag read "Bret," and he had a nice, slender face with kind eyes that looked up at Sierra, whiskers twitching. "Oh. No. Just here alone." Sierra smiled down. "Pleasure, I guess."

"Excellent." Bret tapped some keys on his terminal. "You'll be over in the Elm Lodge. Let me just get your room keys. Do you need equipment rentals?"

"Yeah." Sierra leaned forward, resting his elbows on the counter. Bret had no rings on his fingers, a silver ear stud in both ears. He wore the uniform of the resort, but his scent was individual: his natural musk enhanced with...Sierra breathed in. Bobbi Jean's 'Temptation for Males,' that was it. It had a nice sweet aroma that was popular with gay guys, who also liked that they could call it "BJ Temptation." It had been a while since he'd gone looking for a short-term hookup, but of course that was just another kind of story to tell someone. The question was more, did he want to try?

Well, why not? He certainly wasn't going to have anything else to do tonight, and if the past fifteen years were any indication, he wouldn't have anything to do the other three or four nights, either. He'd followed stronger clues to deader ends.

He sized up Bret: young, single, probably very open to flirting from hotel guests, especially if they were well-off and cute. Sierra knew he could fake the former and act the latter. "I just decided to come down here at the last minute. Do you have any recommendations for some trouble I could get into?"

Bret hesitated, and then a smile curved up his lips, though he didn't look at Sierra. "Let me get you a ten percent off coupon at the rental store on the property. How well do you ski?"

"Used to quite well." Sierra lifted his eyes to the rustic logs framing the desk, the pictures of athletic arctic wolves and hares in dramatic skiing poses against the white snow and green pines of Mount Gondorf. "Haven't been in about five years. Five? Yeah."

"Where's the last place you went?" The printer on his desk spit out three coupons. Bret collected them efficiently and folded them into a stack.

"Chartrier-sur-Neige," Sierra said. The stories were always easiest when they were mostly true.

Bret whistled. "Fancy. Well, our slopes here are as good as any over there, if not better. Just cause there aren't many people here don't mean it isn't top-rate." He grinned. "I can't promise the same about the food unless you stick to the resort restaurant. It's just there across the lobby." He pointed behind Sierra. "Um, what else. You just missed the big music festival over in White Springs. 'Alternative' music." He wrinkled his nose and then leaned forward, taking a chance. "I hate calling them that. You know?"

Sierra smiled back. "Defining them in terms of what they're not, not what they are." He knew the argument, also knew that defining a genre as "alternative" appealed to people who wanted to be something different. That was the story they were telling. And Bret, because he liked alternative music but not the name, wanted to be different--but not too different.

"Exactly!" Bret's smile widened.

"Remember Valhalla?" Sierra said, and the pine marten nodded. "I got to meet them once."

"Wow. I liked them. Too bad about Joey Stone. Did you talk to him?"

Sierra's tail twitched as he nodded. "just, like, 'hello.' But it was exciting," he said.

"I bet." Bret dropped the coupons on the counter and tapped the small pile. "These are coupons for the rental at the ski area. Ten percent off skis and boots, ten percent off any purchase you make there, that's good for all four days of your stay, and then this one gets you a free lift ticket when you buy two days."

Sierra put his large paw over the coupons. "Thanks." He looked down at the pine marten, who let his paw linger next to Sierra's for just a moment longer than needed.

"Not a problem, sir. And here's your room key." Next to the coupons, he slid a plastic card with a photo of a skier against a bright blue sky, and a folded map. "I found a room in the Aspen Lodge. It's a newer lodge, and this room has a nice balcony that looks out onto the mountain."

"Thank you. That sounds really lovely." Sierra slid his paw over to cover the room key as well. It held a small amount of warmth from Bret's paw. The pine marten was still looking at him attentively, waiting for the hook he knew Sierra was going to drop his way.

Sierra paused and then said, "You've been really helpful. Is there some way I could repay you?"

1997

The mountain behind the school rose higher than anything Sierra had seen in his life. Thin lines carried rows of bars, some with people on them, about two thirds of the way up to the jagged tip of the mountain, a claw at the end of a finger jabbed into the sky. Sierra extended his own claw, holding his finger up to the mountain, and then followed a chattering group of arctic foxes through the glass doors marked "Tartok Ecole Internationale."

The hardwood corridors bore the marks of hundreds of claws, but Sierra kept his retracted, his feet silent amid the tik-tik-tik of other footsteps. While the other students filtered into their homerooms, Sierra had to ask directions to the principal's office and then wait for the secretary there to tell him where to go. As a result, announcements were already echoing over the school's PA system by the time he opened the door to room 20.

In his hurry to get into the room, he stumbled, and then the door closed on his tail. Nobody in the class laughed outright, but they snickered behind their paws, the arctic foxes and ermines and ring-tailed lemurs and tapirs. On the far side of the classroom, a female snow leopard sat up straight, eyes wide.

"You must be Sierra." The red fox in the tan blazer at the front of the room smiled. He gestured to the back of the room. "I'm Mr. Dvorczak. You're coming to us from the States, right? Where in the States?"

Sierra nodded, waiting at the front. "Howard High in Millenport." Before Mr. Dvorczak could ask the next question, he said, "My dad's in the military."

"So you've moved around a lot. Any foreign languages?"

Sierra shook his head. "No, sir." Well, not unless you counted Unix, he said to himself.

"We'll be speaking English in most of your classes." He glanced down at his desk. "There's an open seat in the back row next to Mr. Coyote, if you don't mind--"

Mister Coyote? He had barely glanced up to see that 'Mister Coyote' was, in fact, a coyote, when--

"Sir! Mr. Dvorczak!" The female snow leopard had her paw up in the air and was half out of her seat. "Paula is going to move to the back." She beamed at the sulky hedgehog next to her, who stood at that remark with an armful of books and stomped to the back row. "So Sierra can sit here." She rolled her Rs in her throat in a very French sort of way.

"Natasha, I..." Mr. Dvorczak sighed and made notes on his paper. "All right. Fine." To Sierra, standing awkwardly in front of the rows of small wooden desks, he said, "Go ahead and sit next to Natasha."

Sierra made his way through the desks to the third row, where Natasha stared at him with a fixed, hungry smile. He tripped on his way, this time over an outstretched foot that had been pulled back when he looked down for it. The wolf to whom it belonged stared straight ahead, snickering, his tail tip flicking.

The snow leopard hurried to his desk and slid into it. He curled his tail around the base and folded his arms in as tightly as he could, wedging his long legs under the desk. It was hard to imagine how his first appearance in his new classroom could have gone much worse without his pants actually falling down in front of everyone.

"I'm Natasha," Natasha hissed to him over the last few announcements. Sierra had been trying to listen to them, which was difficult with the tripping and seat-changing, and also because he'd missed the first few, and also because they were in French.

"Sierra," he said back under his breath, aware of Mr. Dvorczak's large black ears at the front of the room.

"Are you taking French, Italian, or German? I'm taking German because I already speak French. I came here from Lutèce, but I lived in Crystal City until I was ten."

"Mmm," Sierra said. "I'm taking French."

"Oh. Well, it's okay. We'll have other classes together." Her ears perked. "And I can help you with your French! Maybe you can help me with math. Are you any good at math?"

Sierra nodded. "I'm okay," he said.

"I can't believe there's another snow leopard here. Paula was hoping you were a hedgehog. Can you imagine that?"

The bell rang and everyone grabbed their books and got up. He turned around to look at the hedgehog as he stood.

In the back row, still seated, a rangy coyote was leaning back in his chair, paws behind his head. His arms and legs looked even thinner than Sierra's, and below his large tan ears, his amber-brown eyes were staring right at Sierra. Paula the hedgehog had already gathered her books; she walked along the windows not looking at Sierra or Natasha at all.

Sierra found himself wondering whether the coyote would be as tall as he was if they stood side by side. The careless ease with which he occupied the chair and then stood, collecting his books under one arm, reminded Sierra of Rey. Except for the tail, of course; the coyote's bushy brown tail swished slowly, where Rey's had coiled and flicked, when he hadn't had it looped over one arm.

Natasha tugged at his sleeve. "Don't pay any attention to that coyote," she said in a low voice. "Everyone who hangs out with him gets in trouble. And don't ever get the milk here if you're used to milk from the States. It's terrible."

"Okay." Sierra tore his eyes away and walked with Natasha to the front of the room, and out to math class. Maybe having a friend who spoke French wouldn't be all that bad. Besides which, if he sent his parents pictures of the two of them together, it would go a long way. And she was pretty cute, too. "What do you guys do for fun around here after school?"

"You're not eighteen yet, are you?"

"Last month."

"Oh!" She brightened. "Then you can get us drinks."

"I can't get you drinks," Sierra said. "It's illegal." He controlled the little flutter in his stomach.

Natasha snorted. "There's no drinking age here. Mostly the bartenders don't check, but there are a lot of tourists from the States so sometimes they do. You don't have a girlfriend yet, do you?"

"Er." Sierra told the truth, if not the whole truth. And perhaps it was the whole truth; Rey hadn't written him in ages. Not that he would know where to find Sierra now. And if Natasha was offering to be his girlfriend...images flashed through his head: holding her paw, a picture at a dance, introducing her to his parents. "No."

Her smile stretched even wider, and she looked ahead to where two of the arctic foxes were walking holding paws. "There's a big dance at the Embassy and the students here usually get invited. It's quite the affair. But that's in the spring. Until then...some of us like to go up to the lodge. We could even go down by the lake."

"Does anyone ski?"

"Some of the kids have year passes, and they run up as soon as school gets out at three." She wrinkled her nose. "It's like an obsession with them. Do you ski?"

He shook his head slowly. "No."

"Good. Oh!" She spotted the Valhalla sticker on his notebook. "Valhalla's coming to play here in the spring. My God, I can't wait. Do you like them?"

"Oh, yeah. I have all their albums." Over his parents' protests, though if they'd listened to the lyrics of his favorite song, "Carousel," they might have understood better why he listened to it over and over. And they might not have let him. "Do you have tickets?"

She grimaced. "They go on sale in two months. I hope Daddy gets me tickets. The music is pretty terrible, and this place is boring."

"It could be worse. Believe me." He said it just the way his parents had said it to him.

She either didn't hear him or didn't care to ask further, which was fine with him. "But we'll be able to go to the dance together. Oh, this is going to be a wonderful year!"

Something brushed Sierra's leg. The coyote walked quickly past him, tail swinging back and forth. Sierra's whiskers twitched, and he caught the faintest whiff of the coyote's musky scent, with a light spicy fragrance atop it. "So what's his deal?" he asked Natasha.

She grimaced. "He's a loser. Just ignore him, and if he offers you anything, just say no."

Sierra nodded, but even as Natasha kept talking, his eyes followed the black-tipped bushy tail down the hallway.

2012

Bret slid paws down Sierra's rear. He said, "Mmm. Been waiting to do that all night. You've got a great ass."

"You too," Sierra said, mirroring the movement and squeezing the pine marten's nice, rounded rear in return.

"You like your tail stroked or no?"

"Uh. Yeah." And no sooner had he said it than Bret's little paws were sliding down, the marten pressing closer against him to get farther down the tail. Sierra caught a moan in his throat.

It had been a while. Kiran had left three weeks ago, and sure, Sierra had jerked off in that time, but he'd been busy selling his furniture and closing out his job and so there'd been no time to go look up one of his friends-with-benefits ("one of" being somewhat generous, as the list was currently down to one, who lived in another city). The feel of another body pressed to his pumped heat to his hard shaft; the smell of arousal waiting for him to release it sharpened his desire; the excitement of meeting someone new quickened his breath, set his heart to racing.

Fingers fumbled; belts came undone. Shirt buttons popped hastily open and fabric fell to the ground. On Sierra's king-sized bed, they confirmed each other's experience with the easy removal of each other's boxers and the casual acceptance of nakedness. They grinned and explored the areas of fur previously hidden, to a soundtrack of 'mmms' and 'aahs,' of anticipatory, quickening breaths.

When Bret's paw had settled on Sierra's sheath, the pine marten said, "I'm usually on top."

"Me too." It was an easier answer that saying he didn't feel like having the pine marten inside him, that he just wanted to hold someone and feel that someone's body shudder with release, and to feel his own release, and share the warmth afterwards.

"There's always mouths."

"Mouths are fine," Sierra said, and it wasn't sixty seconds later that the pine marten had pushed him back on the bed, coaxed his shaft out of its sheath, and dropped his muzzle down onto it. His tongue flicked along it as his lips drew up and down, and Sierra closed his eyes.

It took him a little while to come, as it usually did his first time with a new person. But it also had that tinge of excitement, that first time he was opening himself up to someone, the jerks and spasms of his body, the gruff pants that turned into a teeth-clenched moan, the tightening of his legs around Bret's chest as the pine marten gulped and sucked, his lips tight around Sierra's trembling shaft. And with the release of sexual energy came the release of sexual tension, and a moment of nervousness: now he was just in a room with a horny stranger.

He relaxed; the moment passed, and it was okay. Bret wasn't a complete stranger; they were united, at least for tonight, with a single purpose. The pine marten licked his lips and looked at Sierra with an expectant gleam in his eye, and Sierra propped the back of his head up with pillows and said, "C'mon up here and kneel."

Bret scrambled eagerly up the snow leopard's chest, and Sierra wrapped a paw around his thick erection, glistening with pre around the tip. Holding the base delicately between two fingers, Sierra lapped up the underside of the shaft, getting a sharp taste of musk. Bret arched his back and made a happy squeaky noise, and when Sierra licked up again, Bret made the noise again. Sierra twitched his tail, grinning, and did his best to hear that adorable noise again.

He planted his paws on the marten's rear, and opened his muzzle to take the thick shaft all the way in. Bret's hips went willingly back and forth, his shaft hot and slick through Sierra's lips.

He did have a nice cock, and a nice body, so Sierra didn't really mind that it took him a while to work up from a slow, lazy thrusting to more excited and jerky movements. He leaked a lot, but the taste wasn't objectionable, and Sierra's jaw wasn't close to being tired yet. He closed his lips around the skin, explored the surface with his tongue, and perked his ears to the increasingly high-pitched sounds.

It all culminated in a long series of rapid-fire squeaks and thrusts, Bret's paws on Sierra's head as his body tensed and shuddered, and then a loud cry from the pine marten. "Uhh...yeah...yeah...yeah!" His hips shoved all the way forward, his cock thrust against Sierra's tongue, and the snow leopard felt and tasted the hot splash of musky seed.

He held the marten's rear and closed his eyes, feeling the warm shudders of the other atop him subside, moans sliding down into breathy pants. Bret's tail flicked back and forth over Sierra's sheath, and then the marten's whole body sagged. He slid out of Sierra's muzzle, slid down his chest, and wrapped his arms around the snow leopard's neck. "Mmm. Nice," he said.

Sierra hugged him back, eyes still closed. Bret's head rested on his shoulder, his breath warm on Sierra's neck. That was nice, too. Even the last month or so they were together, Kiran hadn't been very snuggly. They'd shared a bed, because neither of them wanted to take the symbolic step of sleeping alone on the futon, and anyway, the futon had been one of the first things sold.

But long after Bret's breathing had dropped into an even rhythm, Sierra remained awake. They'd shared a rich meal at the lodge restaurant (on Sierra's tab), but the food wasn't keeping him up. His tail twitched restlessly, and finally the room felt stuffy enough that he rose, put on pants, and quietly went outside into the cool air.

It had been a nice night. Bret had been the perfect dinner companion: happy to talk about movies and books, popular music or video games, as uninterested as Sierra was in anything personal that had happened prior to that night. They'd made pleasant, famliar small talk throughout the dinner, confirming only that they were both unattached and still eager to get back to Sierra's room for the real purpose of the date.

Bret had hurried Sierra back along the path, complaining of the cold air on his thin fur though they both knew the real reason for his haste. Now the snow leopard enjoyed the cold air on his bare chest as he walked out of the Aspen Lodge and onto one of the flat river-stone paths between it and another building. The stars winked overhead in the spaces between the clouds, and on the mountainside, the lights of snowcats darted to and fro, as if some stars had fallen and were tumbling down the mountain.

Run! They'll get us!

His muzzle wrinkled into a half-smile at the memory, and then a grimace. He resisted the urge to dash away.

Shadows stirred, movement on one of the balconies in the opposite building, second floor. A large shadow, lots of weight. Bear or tiger, maybe a wolf, carrying a spare tire. A second person was there, too, much lighter on his or her--her, he guessed--feet.

"Come back inside," a gruff voice, said, the bear-tiger-wolf.

Sierra, still basking in his post-coital glow, grinned at the pre-coital pair. He couldn't catch their scents, not in the dry air out here with the breeze blowing up the mountain, but the tone in the deep voice said volumes.

Then it said, "Too exposed out here."

Sierra frowned--that didn't sound pre-coital--as a light voice laughed in reply. "Oh, who's going to see us?"

And that voice wasn't female. No, it wasn't female, and he knew that voice, knew the confident, cocky swagger to it.

"Get in," the bear-tiger-wolf said. The balcony creaked with footsteps, then the glass door slid closed.

Sierra couldn't move, could hardly breathe. He'd been thinking of the voice because of the snowcats, from that time. That was all it was. He'd thought he'd recognized that voice in the past and been wrong.

But even as those thoughts crossed his mind, he was striding, then running for the door, the bright-lit arch of stone in the dark wall. He yanked it open and ran inside, up the stairs, and then stopped in the hallway. The balcony had been--opposite this room? Or this one? He stared at the rooms, and then put his ear to each door, looking up and down the hall first to make sure he was alone.

No sound came from either. Had he been mistaken? Or were the two being quiet?

He ran outside again, made out the balcony in the darkness, and then hurried back inside the building, where he met two ladies descending the stairs. Their eyes widened when they saw him, and only then did he remember that he was running around without a shirt. He gave them what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

On the second floor, he still couldn't tell for sure which room matched up to which balcony. He kept looking up and down the hall in case someone else came back, and the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced he'd been mistaken. It had been the memory and the light male voice, that was all.

So he padded back to his room. Bret didn't wake as Sierra came in and took off his pants, and slid in next to him. Bret fit nicely into his arms, even rolling into the embrace. He curled one paw over the pine marten's shoulder and breathed, lifting the lighter marten and lowering him again. He closed his eyes.

Who's going to see us?

He was imagining things. He had to be.