Navigating the Labyrinth: Part II - In Search of Words

Story by Rufus01 on SoFurry

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#3 of Victor & Miles

Wow, so yea, it's been forever since I've submitted some writing. Even though I write for free, I hate making my commissioners wait. It's been one hell of a year. Truth be told I've been sitting on these stories for months now. They've all been in near completion for a long time, but coming up with the ideas to fill in the last gaps, and then finding time for my mate and I to collaborate on editing is a huge challenge.

The story you're about to read was probably the most difficult of this series to write. This story had to serve a number of purposes. It had to reboot a series which has been sleeping for six months. It had to introduce new characters and new temptations, and develop them to a certain degree. It had to further Victor and Miles relationship to a meaningful degree, and give some clues to where things might be going. Then it had to have plot. So yea, this was a huge challenge. I had to throw out three other false starts before I settled on this one.

Part two here is a divergence of my usual style. To accomplish all that needed to be achieved in this chapter; I decided to experiment on a form of non-linear narrative. I've wanted to play with non-linear narrative and memory for a while now. I decided to give it a shot in this one, well aware of the risks I am taking. I know it's not a style best suited for porn, but I also felt compelled to show more of the protagonist, his thinking, and his growth. So this is more of an intermediary chapter, showing more of how he feels about sex, than the more graphic in-out elements of it. I'll keep my fingers crossed that works and that some of you enjoy it. Stay tuned for part three, which is a more traditional piece, which will be up tomorrow.

If you're interested in stories, I am currently taking commissions, feel free to send me a note.


Navigating the Labyrinth

Part II - In Search of Words

By: Rufus Quentin

For: Vickfox

Victor always had a hard time describing the moments after sex. That is whenever he and Miles didn't have to rush in anticipation of a roommate's return or quickly abscond from their impromptu hiding place as soon as fluids traded place. He tried writing it down once or twice, but the words always seemed too pornographic, or too cliché to be worth keeping, and too often both simultaneously. Only in the moment did the experience feel most authentic, too unreal to be real and yet too physical to be one of the figment fantasies that pop in and out of existence like some Higgs boson, or such unstable elementary particle that only leave complex scatter of clues to hint that they ever existed. Needless to say he liked the feeling he didn't have a word for, the feeling of being observed at his most vulnerable and observing that vulnerability on another, the satisfaction of having been used to attain someone else's satisfaction, and the physical strain and light headedness not unlike at the end of sixteen laps or so when the electric trembling of exhausted muscles rattled him to his fingertips.

The moment, if it could be called a moment, became somewhat of a search, something willed about by the dropping of hints and manipulation of manipulateables.The search never seemed to end with the exhaustion of his body and the not in-and-of-itself undesirable tingle creeping all the way into his mind's tendrils. He found himself lying naked beside Miles on another Friday night, marked inside and out with cum, experiencing that subtle burn of tiredness in search of a word, in search of language capable of locking up the carousel of signs proceeding past the periphery of his senses. In the disconnected wanderings of his thoughts he more or less consciously made an effort to reduce to letters the contentedness, the euphoria, the afterimages of pain and shame for when memory did not suffice.

He could still count the number of times he and Miles slept together, although he wasn't quite sure he could call it that since it only literally resulted in sleeping twice. He knew it would be a matter of time if everything held its course when he would lose count, provided his numerically oriented mind would allow it. He didn't want the feeling to go away with repetition. He didn't want the fact that he slept with a guy on a regular basis to become routine and lose part of its strangeness. The idea that recently became reality still possessed certain weirdness, a little taboo that complicated matters sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

He really didn't have an answer when his mother asked him why he sounded so upbeat during one of her weekly calls. Nor did he really know how to address his brother's e-mailed inquiries to number and nature of his lays. The familiar voices, the same repetitive stories, and the scents of his home that seemed to come through the receiver took him back to when he still believed that what he was doing with Miles was impossible. Once or twice he hung up from those calls with the intent to call Miles and break things, whatever they were, off.

In the moments of rest after sex he found his tongue practicing various formulations without giving them voice, to find a way of telling home he found an avenue of happiness. He believed he needed to find only the right words and a form would follow, and that a form, correctly spoken, could negate all prejudice. On the other hand he found a certain pleasure in keeping the knowledge secret that between five and ten minutes earlier he had the fox on top of him cycling through the desperate and selfish thrusts he knew from experience meant imminent climax. For not the first time Miles begged him to let him tie via a huffed and assertive sounding plea into his demurely backswept ears. In the seconds it took for him to search for a cute way to say no he almost let himself be knotted, taking the steady impact of the formidable-seeming bulge against his already sore and distressed tail-hole and wondering what it felt like for it to slip the short distance inside and what it would mean during the moments after. Sure it would have brought a few seconds of pain, sure it would have meant certain social implications, but the first would have subsided, and news of the second needn't travel beyond his dorm room. He kind of regretted saying no again, although at the same time he was relieved that he did. If he could arrange a next time before winter break, maybe it would happen then, he thought.

Yet that line of thinking became a familiar one which ran its course every now and then but always resulted in the same, a mumbled and grammatically unsound excuse a second or two before no answer meant yes. Sometimes he wondered if he made himself too available or too easy, and if their friendship ran the risk of becoming one based on the occasional negotiation of sex. A tie, no matter how intriguing it sounded, without any other pretext than fun, would only trivialize mateship, he convinced himself. Plus in the occasional moment of shame and self-doubt, having a boundary gave him something virginal about himself to hold onto, even if only a psychological security against the moments he felt overwhelmed, but with each passing week he needed that security less and less.

Part of what he enjoyed about the time after sex was the inability to concentrate. He could stare at the TV or the ceiling without having to exist in the moment. Sometimes it felt as if he existed in multiple times at once, as if the entire span of his waking period stretched before him and included him, as if he could walk into any moment and seize the memory like something physical. He recalled his morning ritual, the search for the black moleskin in which every facet of his life stood written in enviable concision. Dazed and half-asleep he would shuffle through the layers of loose-leaf and debris around his bed and on his desk. No matter what care he took to lay it someplace obvious, his mornings began with a search. He remembered going through backpack's pockets, producing not the moleskin, but the zip-lock bag full of flat packets, the condoms Miles gave him. Bringing them out into the pale-gray light and letting his synapses slowly compute what in fact he held, resulted in the fur of his spine bristle in anticipation of a shiver. He held a packet of reminders of all the risks he began to take. He felt the slight soreness in his tail-hole, the soreness he and Miles never really let subside since their first time a few short weeks ago. A warm rush of anxiety reddened his cheeks and ears, and produced that other weird sensation he didn't know how to describe, the primal sensations of fear, guilt, and shame all at once that very much belonged to the present.

He stared at the bag of jagged edged metallic squares with round blisters, opened it and retrieved one. He let his finger-pad trace the saw-tooth edge and remembered how when he was younger, condoms felt mysterious, a strange gateway to a realm every hormone in his body commanded him to enter, even though at the time he didn't know how they worked or how to even put one on. He remembered finding one in the wallet of his father, back when he was barely old enough to know what it was and what it meant. Back then he considered stealing it for one of those highly unlikely just-in-case moments, but its expiration date preceded his birth date and he knew it would turn to dust if he even tried to open it. His dad probably kept it as a talisman; some weird fertility symbol from some period in his life Victor knew nothing of and cared to know nothing about. It felt uncanny, almost repulsive, to discover that his dad had a sexual side, but it made him feel like more of a person and not just some half-distant authority figure. Now he held onto about a month's supply and he didn't know what to do with them.

Yet again they forewent a condom, even though he slipped one into his wallet for the now likely just-in-case moment. Earlier he considered asking him to wear it as Miles withdrew his tongue from his tail-hole and reached for the lube, but he kept quiet, silently peering over his shoulder trying not to let his anticipation show too much while Miles painted the bare patch beneath his tail in cool slickness. Once again he nodded when Miles asked him if he was ready, and again the words that left his muzzle while Miles' slender fox-cock slipped past his ring into the bare warmth of his passage hardly sounded like protest. After that, all apprehension vanished and the race to attain that rewarding rush of cum began.

Over the past few sessions he learned what Miles liked, the most sensitive parts of his cock, and a few other tricks that made him appear more active, even on bottom. He even learned how to delay the inevitable, something Miles rarely took his time with. He just needed to exaggerate his eagerness, like push back into the thrusts with as much force as he received them, clutch a paw or bushel of fur, or whisper something dirty pertaining to knocking-up or a simple form of encouragement not unlike "harder." Recently Miles started asking to tie, usually in the last seconds as he got close. The question had a way of triggering the warmth of a blush hidden in his ears and cheeks, a response not to the question itself, but to the fact that he often considered letting him.

Since they lost their virginity to each other, as he assumed, he experienced Miles' developing forms. Not just postures, but a whole confidence and style, evidenced in every meeting where circumstances permitted penetration, no matter how brief. As the number of those meetings, or fucks, or whatever they were grew, the forms and variations thereof left him feeling a slightly different catalogue of emotions during and afterwards. Sometimes Miles would keep going as he came until well after his climax had implanted itself within him, others he would just thrust deep let the throbs carry his semen as deep as his jets would allow. Once or twice he held him tight to the point where claws pressed their way down to the flesh, and in a rare instance he appeared distant and barely connected to the present, not even offing a bit of reach-around. No matter how he finished, Miles always left him with the subtle rush of warmth and the not unpleasant soreness.

In the beginning he agreed to "bottom" for Miles because he just wanted to be with him and figured it was the easiest way to get him interested. One of the things he learned about himself was that he liked it. The worst of the fears and anxieties vanished by their third or fourth time and it simply became his role. Though he never agreed to it openly, he liked the fullness, the feeling of having Miles on top of him panting and exhibiting his most primal characteristics, and not least the little trace of substance that felt like an expression of ownership. He felt closest to Miles during those final moments, during the rising crescendo of movement, during the most forceful thrusts committing to an immediate release, and the row of exhalations as everything began to wane. The moment Miles left him bred and blushing, sighing with shame and elation, and receptive to the warm seep of sperm within the most intimate part of his body became a moment worth chasing. He enjoyed that feeling, even after the phantom internal slickness that stayed with him after Miles pulled out faded from one day to the next.

Even though he grew up under the general assumption that the only thing worse than being gay, was being the gay one taking it, he couldn't shake an illicit satisfaction that seemed to stem from a regular source of sex. When he walked around campus, he stood taller. When he talked to people, he talked clearer. When he sat by himself, he didn't feel so alone. He wondered if he should credit having lost his virginity, as if that bizarre social construct had in fact possessed some sort of materiality and that with its loss, he became somehow lighter and more relieved of some toxic element of himself. Or perhaps, and most realistically, he just grew a bit over time. It still felt as though some metamorphosis took place the previous three weeks, and that he somehow purged some of his undesirable traits and become a little closer to the fox he wanted to be.

He started burning the candle at both ends, so to speak. He attended parties without complaint. He met new people and didn't need Miles to begin or mediate the conversations. He was friends with Beth now, and even met her strange girlfriend, Lauren. He became a bit more assertive with Miles too, manipulating, orchestrating, and taking on an active role down to explicit frankness as to his intentions. Sometimes it also meant shooing a roommate out of town for the weekend, or disappointing someone else, someone like Lauren. She, arguably enough, became the first on campus to enter into his regular circle of friends without Miles' direct assistance. At least he talked to her and told his jokes, he made her laugh. Conversations seemed to flow even as topics shifted beyond gaming and the usual pleasantries.

He somehow forged a rapport, if not a friendship, with Lauren independently. She paid for part of her tuition working on a student salary in the rec-center four nights a week. They met at the beginning of the semester, back when he decided to start exercising to keep the freshmen fifteen from developing into the sophomore forty-five. She worked at the reception back then. He remembered how she took his ID, giggled at it, and commented on his somewhat awkward likeness. He told a joke. She laughed and asked him where he was from. By the time he passed on into the chlorinated air of the gym, he wasn't quite sure if he had been flirted with, or if he had been just another recipient of the same small-talk afforded every other guy to pass by.

He saw her again and pretty much every time he went. She remembered his name and all the things he told her. She even offered to train him when one of her appointments turned up no-show. He learned she even played Warcraft. From there the ice broke and he became the veritable wellspring of chatter, sharing experiences, tricks, and speculating over the coming expansion. She wasn't the kind of woman he would ever approach, not because he didn't find her beautiful, but because he automatically considered her out of his league. She didn't have the looks you would find on the cover of a magazine, but rather an unconventional attractiveness, a tom-boyishness he tended to prefer in women. This regard for her, coupled with his shyness, delayed any serious interest in Lauren. As his rapport with her matured, he already began to develop eyes for Miles, and she stayed what she was.

She nearly slipped from his thoughts, especially during the last weeks of the semester when the stress of balancing his studies and his relationship began to take its toll. That was why it struck him when he saw Lauren that morning on his way from his biology lecture hall. He felt dour for having directed at him the professor's reproach for being late, and for blanking on the last three questions of the quiz, one he definitely needed to ace to keep himself in "A" range. He first saw Beth on the way to the commons and considered avoiding her, feeling too down to want any sort of attention, but she recognized him, waved, and slowed. An oddly familiar collie accompanied her, one whose gender appeared vague from a distance. Only on approach did he recognize the irregular array of spots dotting the steel blue and white of her face, the muzzle that easily produced a smile that could pass for genuine. It felt strange to see her out of context, away from the chlorine-scented gym and unflattering uniform and into even more unflattering men's jeans and a tattered denim jacket patched in a comprehensive history of 1977 London punk.

Beth greeted him and introduced Lauren as her better half, a little fact that took him by surprise for a number of reasons. He never once placed Lauren as a lesbian, but when he took into account her short head fur tussled into something resembling a mohawk, her attire consisting exclusively out of men's clothes, and a carefully crafted alternative image, all the factors fell into place with an obviousness he chided himself for not noticing. He felt disappointed, but could not isolate the exact source, nor could he explain to himself why. She said hello. He returned the greeting. Then she chided him for having become scarce with an assertive vehemence that made his ears droop. It took him by surprise to bear witness to, let alone receive a lecture from her, when he only ever saw her smile. Yet their rapport quickly resurfaced and leapt from topic to topic in confusion inducing non-linearity. Beth stood idly by as he, the reserved one, let the words flow like water down a little stream.

Beth could only edge in the quick inquiry of how he and Miles got along. The question eroded a bit of his confidence. It was still a formulation new to him, one that possessed a strange dissonance he was still far from used to. The question also outed him to Lauren, something he felt a great deal of regret towards, though he didn't know why. She would obviously support him for it, perhaps like him a bit more, but it seemed as if he could almost hear the deadbolt lock on the door that slammed shut the moment Beth introduced her. He didn't know why it bothered him either. As he dissected the uncanny feeling on the way back to his dorm and sorted its elements in piles of jealousy and disappointment, he could only attribute it to some species or gender specific drive, or perhaps just the faintest suggestion of greener grass.

It also felt strange to talk about Miles. The pronoun "we" seemed awkward coming out of his muzzle. He reported no news as good news, keeping the details brief. She nodded with a hum, listening with full attention, but adding nothing beyond the advice to remain patient. Before the feline and her companion parted ways, Beth invited him to her room for a game night. Part of him wanted to accept immediately, the other contemplated the interference it could bring into his rubric of plans involving a certain other fox. He nodded before he could show hesitation. Both the women smiled, then to each other. She asked him to let Miles know too.

That invitation became the burden of the day, even as the door to his room shut behind him and he nested himself in front of his computer, trying to right click his way into a blissful state of distraction. It seemed he had a choice. He delayed making it until the last possible moment. After a few hours of zoning in and out of awareness, doing mundane kill quests in Arathi Highlands while letting flutter in and out of his thoughts the more explicit fantasies within which Miles played a more than significant role, he finally got a text from him. It surprised him that so many hours passed. He stood at the door before he even logged out.

Miles wore a thick jacket now that the weather became colder. His ears were tucked cutely under a knit cap. Miles smiled, beaming some subcutaneous arrangement intended for more than just friends, the kind that made him want to pounce the fox then and there. He quickly pulled Miles in, let the door click shut, let a somewhat awkward moment pass in which they silently swayed where they stood until he ventured a kiss. He felt Miles' body stiffen at first, as it usually did at the onset of kiss, before he invariably relaxed and his paws found just the right places upon him. With each time he noticed that interval of tension decrease. He wanted to kiss Miles until his lips became sore. He wanted to strip for him and to be seen naked. He wanted to feel his intimate fur. In that moment he would consent to anything, down to Miles' most illicit wishes. After a moment where it all felt attainable, Miles broke the kiss and informed him of a change in plans. They would go to the lesbians.

It hurt to pick up his jacket, to find his boots, to power down his computer and lock the door to his dorm room he managed to secure as private for the night. He didn't have much to say on the way down the stairs and into the cold night, nor on the way down the street, past houses already garlanded in Christmas decorations. Only the ten-thousand thoughts sprung through his head like atoms in a chain reaction. At the woods he slowed down and came to a stop, darting a paw to grab Miles by the sleeve. He smiled and let his whiskers bristle. A visible exhalation left his nose.

He darted off into the forest, dragging Miles with him. He raced and Miles stumbled. Desiccated leaves rustled beneath them. Ice crunched under their boots. They ran between the trees, swatting away leafless twigs. It became a chase in no particular direction. They left behind them a crooked path of disturbed ground. He let himself be caught at the base of the largest tree, a place where the light barely reached them, where swaying branches shielded them. He found a kiss, and then another, then the depth and intensity he badly wanted. Miles held him the way he liked it and let his paws find new places on his body to claim. He kept the images like still photographs, recalling only the action, the movement, and the panting. He remembered how their whiskers fenced, and how their tongues fought between their muzzles. He remembered the vapors, the scents of his lover, and the taste of his breath. They needed no words to agree.

He remembered the clink of the belt buckle and the little rattle of brass and the rasp of the zipper experience taught him to bring down without catching. He remembered the blues and grays of clothing blur in haste and impatience and the success of coaxing visible a white flash of pubic fuzz from behind a no longer immovable seeming band of elastic. He allowed his muzzle to brush the softness of sheath and his nostrils to breathe warmth into Miles' fur, refusing to let him feel the cold. He let his whiskers reacquaint themselves with male aspects, brushing intimacy in search of the scents of his lover. He remembered the moment his tongue-tip tasted the slit of his fox's sheath, where many dozen brief licks soon found their place. He understood that with the rest of Miles' paw behind his ears he entered into a silent agreement holding him to finish what he began.

He knew exactly how nervous Miles felt without needing to cast a diminutive look upward. He felt it too, even as his fingers massaged the base of Miles' sheath and the familiar emerging firmness. It felt as if uncountable pairs of eyes peered through the crossed leafless branch work, threatening to expose him at his most vulnerable. He had to trust that only Miles' watched him between quick over-the-shoulder glances. He performed so that Miles could see him curl his tongue around the smooth skinned maleness and lap delicately at the crest of vulpine cock. He heard the blissful sigh as his lips wrapped around that growing arousal and his tongue cradled it with the occasional flick around its ridges and tip.

When he considered the strange path to the present, he couldn't remember the intermediate moments, just the blur of minutes and movement merging time and space in some surreal montage reconstructable only in the imagined sparks of recollection without any clear linearity. He saw an image of himself sliding his muzzle up and down Miles' erect length, twisting, angling, willing his tongue along the smooth venous shaft. He recalled the softness of Miles' sack and pubic fuzz passing beneath his paw-pads and intimate scents and tastes that had a way of triggering the recent memories of what so drastically changed him. He urged himself to continue, short of breath and sore, constantly seeking out new angles and techniques, forcing his tired tongue to perform new flourishes around cock-tip and developing knot.

Soon it became a match of accommodation. His own contributions and creativity became subordinate to Miles' quick and needy bucks straining his muzzle to the brink of his ability. He felt the weight of the paw against his back-swept ears and the forceful bump of knot against his lips. It in the prolonged minutes of stress and strain he found no objection, no complaint worth voicing. He liked the moments between coaxing Miles into play and losing control to what he started. He liked the pressure of Miles' anxious and rushed non-verbal commands and the sound of the gasps that left Miles' parted lips in vaporous clouds. In those moments the burdens, the external concerns, the wrongness all seemed furthest from his thoughts.

He could read the signs of Miles drawing close and anticipate his needs and shifting focal points, but at the same time he realized that he had never taken it that far before. They long since crossed the point where he usually stopped and raised tail either by his own volition, or by Miles' request. He recalled the choice of continuing or quitting and turning up tail, and wondered if and how another decision would have impacted the present. He recalled a moment of fear as he felt Miles' cock throb in ever increasing frequency, as the taste of fox-pre spread through his muzzle, and as he realized Miles had no intention of ceasing. In the moment he recalled the distracting simultaneous tasks, the guarding of Miles' smooth length from tooth and fang, the guidance of his sensitive tip between cradled tongue and palate, and senses overloaded by tastes and scents. He remembered the details and dimensions of Miles' knot as he held it in his paw, how it grew and pulsed against his paw-pads. He remembered the throbs and the direct taste of pre he never before found in such quantity.

The final moments became an indistinct sequence of actions, not movements. Miles bucked forward, leaving the last actions to him. The force on the back of his head became great. Miles' knot pressed past his lips. His fingers desperately pushed back sheath to wrap around the very base of his cock, and his tongue and lips did all they could to make real his intentions. He recalled the wait following the cessation of moment, the moment in time not measured in intervals, and the suspense as he tried dearly to keep his fangs off the cock filling his muzzle down to the throat.

Miles buckled over, releasing a cloud of breath that enveloped them both. A restrained call of elation broke the quiet and caused an echo unlike the sound of any wildlife. With his whiskers interlacing with pubic fur, his muzzle enveloped in the heat of sex, and his ear tips burning under the bite of cold, he felt the throbs swell against his lips, tongue, and palate. The throbs proceeded jets of considerable force and gave way to the sensation of certain warmth accumulating at the back of his throat. That viscosity spread as the pulses reached their apex and waned, eventually reaching his tongue and eliminating all curiosity with the direct and undeniable taste of cum.

He sensed the passage of time through the warm waves of breath washing over his scalp and the whips of mist before his eyes. He kept a tight seal around Miles' cock even after his climax tapered to a trickle, he didn't dare to move or let a drop of mixed fluids escape. Only then did he recognize his lungs' call for air and begin to wonder what to do with the muzzle full of semen. In his fantasies he always swallowed, but in the moment he began to doubt if he should. As his tongue stirred the solution of pre, sperm, and saliva he scrambled to recall any guiding code or etiquette, but he swallowed more out of reflex than anything, feeling thick cum coating his throat. With the barrier broken he swallowed the rest with complete willingness, experiencing a level of illicit satisfaction that frightened him.

When he pulled free, he didn't want to look up. He watched the waves of mist escape his muzzle as he satiated his need for air, stirring the remainder of semen around his muzzle between breaths, and letting Miles' flavors decode. As he watched Miles hastily stow his arousal back inside his boxers, wincing as he coaxed the semi-firm state into a comfortable enough position, the bitterness, the acridity, and the salinity of semen coating his tongue made it impossible to smell or taste anything else. He tried to recall the exact taste, flicking his tongue around his fangs as he did back then in search of a trace, but all he found was a faulty reconstruction of sensory information and details frustratingly eluding him.

He got to his feet and brushed the ice from his knees, feeling unsure of whether he liked the taste, or if he should like it, or if it disgusted him. They nervously looked all directions as Miles jingled his belt back together. A zip pulled them back into the realm of innocence. Only the rapidly fading taste and a cold spot of pre pressing against his peaking cock-tip evidenced the fact that he just gave his first successful blow-job.

They exchanged no words on their way back to the path. Even the trip to the lesbians passed mostly silent. He burnt to say something to Miles. At the time being, anything would have sufficed. His limbs felt ready to pounce and restrain him and bathe him in licks. Of all the things in the world he wanted to do, he wanted to kiss him. It pained him that they left their pseudo-secret place without doing so. The next opportunity seemed like a century away. Only as they turned onto the block of Lambda house, did he ask, "how was it?"

"Shush," said Miles, turning a glance his way.

"Please," he said.

All Miles did was sway into him in his usual irreverent manner, bumping him onto the lawn of someone's house. The playfulness, the wordless message of the gesture didn't amuse him that time. While he took it as the best thank you Miles could offer, he wanted it to mean "I love you," but he knew he would deceive himself if he assumed as much.

He sat down between Lauren and Allen around the table at Lambda. Analog gaming took some getting used to, but he could roll along with it, and even win a few rounds. He managed to speak with Lauren between turns, and slip to her some of the less explicit details of his life. She asked him too many questions to count and seemed to take a genuine interest in his relationship. She even invited him out for a cigarette, which de declined, but followed anyway. In the cold and in the fumes of breath and tobacco she asked him how old he and Miles were. When he answered she smiled.

"Oh, wow. You've got nothing to worry about, hun." She said, exhaling smoke. "You guys have been active for what? A month? Six weeks? And you're each other's firsts? He's practically a cub, just like you. He doesn't know better. You can't expect a mature relationship from a nineteen-year-old. You'll be lucky if someone matures in their late twenties. I've dated a guy who's license said twenty-seven, coulda' sworn he was sixteen. Complete dork. All teenagers are dorks, no offence."

"None taken, but how old are you?" he asked.

"Twenty-one. FYI you don't ask women these things."

"You're not much older than me."

"I'm not saying I'm that much more mature than you, but I did get an earlier start than you and a lot can happen in two years."

"You dated a guy before? I thought you were with Beth?"

"I am. Moved in with her three months ago. Met her right here at the beginning of the semester. Came by with my U-haul the very next day."

"I'm confused."

"Oh I get it. Look, my sexuality is like a... dartboard, wait, a... I can't think of a good metaphor. It's complicated. Let's just leave it like that. Beth is probably the person I've been closest too on an emotional level.

"I think I know what you mean. Mine's weird too. I'm not sure what I am. Before Miles I always thought I was straight and those feelings just don't go away. But now, ya. I've got something for Miles, you know? But for him this is all an experiment, and I'm not sure where it's going. Sometimes I feel he loves me, other times I feel like a sex-doll."

"Like I said, he'll learn. It takes time, maybe a long time, and the best you can do is keep talking and teach him what you want. Even if that means training."

"That's what I've been doing."

"Keep at it, and don't sweat it. I don't want to play down what it means to have a first. The first is a big one. It can really determine who you are as an adult, but keep an open mind and you'll figure out what you are. Meanwhile, you have a lot of friends here, and a new round of a game that's waiting for us," said Lauren before tossing her cigarette out onto the snow.

After a few more rounds he managed to lure Miles home early with a whisper promising a tie. Though he reneged on that promise, it succeeded in bringing the fox to bed. Once again he lay there slowly breathing the sex-scented air, unsure of where their relationship was or where he even wanted it to go. He wondered if Miles had the same thoughts, but his expression looked far too neutral, too engrossed in late night cartoons to confess anything worthwhile. Part of what the moment of rest after sex affords, he thought as the fragmented images replayed themselves in an ever less authentic cycle, is the ability to work the then broken and unprocessed thoughts into something more coherent. Perhaps it afforded a deeper understanding of oneself and one's choices, or at least it gave the impression of such.

A sideways glance spied Miles' spent pink cock contrasting with the stark white of his belly-fur. Miles' still swollen knot prevented its retreat back into his sheath. It had nothing to do but lay there in the slow process of recovery, coated in a slick sheen of cum, lube, and pre. Part of him wanted to doubt that he had that cock inside him, and that allowed Miles to ride him and to cum inside him for the umpteenth time. The sensations, not least the phantom internal slickness as well as his lubed up and sore tail-hole were real, part of an ever growing catalogue of facts. A feint veil of disbelief cloaked everything he saw, and made it hard to believe the present. The five weeks since their first night seemed like a long time, but as he lay there he realized it wasn't. Two months ago, he would have considered this impossible. Six months ago back in the heat of summer as he floated in his parent's pool, the reality of being with a guy, while at the back of his head, wouldn't have made it on the radar. Time goes fast, he thought to himself, before reaching over to apply a stroke to Miles' slick length. The fox didn't seem to mind, looking down and then back at the screen. Only when he leaned over and let Miles' flaccid fox-cock disappear between his lips, did he wrestle his attention away from the tube.

Navigating the Labyrinth: Part II - In search of Words © Rufus Quentin

Characters © Vickfox