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The last exam of first semester was finally done that day. Late December darkness - precipitous: the early snowy cast of evening - vacated the chilly windows of the lofty city apartment which Aaron's folks had rented him. A heavy pawload of textbooks and notes had just crowned the perilous mountain on oaken floor when he turned key in lock, slipped quietly in. The fox stared at the toppling academic cumulate, towering capitals of college learning leaning like ruined columns of an Hellenic temple. He felt so oddly lost and helpless, empty, gutted short by the Ionian battle spear of emotional fatigue. > > As he watched, the pile came crashing premonitiously down.

Aaron shook his head, had never tolerated such disorder before; it just wasn't like him, confident and capable to a fault. He would have taken home a perfect grade point average that term, had he travel planned for the holidays. But success had been a gift too dearly bought, price reckoned in uncountable small losses of himself: schoolwork and study and self-denial, more life-traumas in the recent few months than one fur should have to bear in years. And the gift, for which there was no longer a recipient, hardly any giver left.

He crept silently in the uncandled darkness of heart and hopeless home, gothic paws cushioned by final exhaustion, snow-blackened boots creaking over bare polished parquet. His tail dragged on the chilly wooden floor. The fox passed that row of faux ficus which screened the shallow granite fireplace, the gloomy cluster of expensive furniture huddling around a deep and fluffy hearthrug in the gloom. Had there been one more thing he could have done on that afternoon's exam, Aaron would simply not have had the strength to lift a claw. Rice paper at the windows was cold and limp and lifeless - drafty, the way he felt inside. He paused before the galley kitchen, shed his trench coat on the bench near the service door. The fox saw the dark toggle slide off the seat, crumple to pale numb tile. He was simply to tired to go and pick it up.

Aaron found a small salad in the fridge, splashed it with dressing and tart oily sadness, ate standing. He had looked forward to finishing classes for so long, it seemed. But anticipation wasn't turning out at all the way he expected. The ponderous weight of formulas and equations, dates and data memorized by force, sloughed only slowly from his clogged and furry head. Weeks of worry, months of effort and lost sleep were telling. He had even walked home that night through the bracing holiday weather, in an effort to raise his spirits. But to no avail. The heavy mass of strain and heartache drooped his ears, bent his neck: hollowed his chest and breathing, shallowing out air and life together. There was hopeful beer in the lighted icebox, he remembered. If all else failed, Aaron could get drunk.

But that wasn't his plan, not exactly. The fox built a primitive pile of fireplace splittings, careful as any FurScout in the forest, stuffing study notes under for kindling. And grinned at strange appropriation. His cousin Ben had showed him woodcraft, taken him camping with the troop once or twice when they were younger. Aaron liked that, tenting in the wilderness, cooking over stones, sleeping in a fluffy sack under midnight stars. He could have used a vacation, right then. A winter trip someplace. Maybe he'd call up Ben tonight.

It made the fox think of home. And sigh. His dad, widowed when the son was just a kit, had remarried that very summer of college applications and campus visits, died himself only a few weeks into his son's freshman semester. A jealous vixen whom Aaron refused to call step-mother kept Aaron at paw's length by presuming, in her low well-financed way, to buy him off. The trendy digs and spendy furnishings were things furthest from the fox's immaterial heart that vacant winter night. Resistance low and reserves sapped, still recovering from yet another trauma of the hollowing fursonal sort, the fox didn't want to think of that past: of loneliness. Of having nowhere else to be, nowhere else he was wanted. For along with the empty end-of-term feeling, he was growing into what it meant to finally be out on his own.

Aaron wasn't the moody sort. Didn't intend to spend the evening brooding. Ordinarily, he'd have sought out furiends, an exam-week party. Girls. Furiends. The loud and raucus celebration when finals are a thing of the past. But that wasn't what the canid needed, what relaxed him most. What he'd been waiting weeks and months for, as well. He was frankly much too tired to deal with otherfurs. If the fox were going to lose himself in a night of solitary catharsis, he wanted to do it right. The only problem to his weary mind that evening was whether he had the will and energy left to pull it off at all.

He yawned, got to work.

The flames had spent their leaping adolescent vigor, were settling into the serious and respectable career of mature embers when Aaron returned from the kitchen. He'd shoved and dragged and stacked and tugged the heavy suite of furniture to a safe distance, upsetting the tasteful balance left behind by his step-mother's nancing decorator. It reminded the fox of moving day as he had left the room, with ghosts of boxes and cartons and things stacked haphazardly, present disorder somehow less real in the mystical light from the fireplace that bruised and battered night. Several preparations later and his shower was running, a brief hot scrub to loosen the psychic soil, embark the long and arduous odyssey of reclaiming own fur from the inside.

The fox now sat naked on the fuzzy white hearthrug, silhouetted by the unearthly glow of silently immolating coals, as he toweled tail and headfur in the fearful marginless dark. The overflowing granite hearth, a shimmering pile - energy and vigor and life - pushed forth a tremulating brazier of heat. Aaron gingerly offered upon it a kettle of cider, a metal teapot, those liquid oblations grating across brickwork as he sacrificed them to the eager consuming flames. He stowed the fireirons, closed the grate.

And curled up on the deep downy rug like a fox in a storybook. The warmth kneaded his masculine muscles, aching for missed gym workouts which he'd been forced by tyrannous schedule to forego; massaged his damp pelt, crying out for the soft stroking touch of a furiend, the presence of a furiendly heart. It licked at his nose, chilled with winter and sadness, and weeks and months of that pervasive fear so deceptively euphemized as stress. The fire thawed other moisture in his eyes, behind his muzzle, too. And the fox, knowing that in such means lay healing, wept quietly on the wooly hearthrug, shed relieving tears which slipped silently into fur-darkening oblivion on his cheeks, loosening the biting spring-trap of tension long-since closed upon his chest. Aaron welcomed them and embraced them, salve of the soul; his reason and grief, painful thoughts and recollections only a distracting backdrop against what real Feeling means.

The fox was resting, weak and wrung out as the bath towel on the flagstone afront the fireplace, when there came a knock at the door.

"Yah? Who's there?" Aaron always answered the phone, too, unaccountably compliant even in his misery.

"S' me. I - I need to talk to ya."

Zeke. They'd had an incident a few weeks earlier: something dealt with by not dealing, for the most part. Aaron was past anger, that brush-lashing emotion having only augmented the difficulties of school and other crises. The drop-in visit that night had him bare-tailed over a barrel of courtesy, and the fox covered his front with the towel, bounced over to the door, den still in vulpine darkness.

The security chain was on. A lynx's yellow fur appeared discolored and sodden in the filty light which streamed in from the staircase landing. The hood of his anorak was covered with fresh, clean snow.

"Please? Just for a bit..."

Who sounded almost reasonable in the canid's tired, drooping ears. Needy; besieged, though.

Lonely. It repelled Aaron like a shove.

Or perhaps those were his own exhausted feelings transferring over, he supposed with a sigh. Aaron shut his eyes, rested muzzle in privacy against the doorjamb. Still, he wouldn't be rude. Maybe Zeke was in trouble or something, yet as affected as the vulpine's furry self by their previous visit, time spent in unforeseen ways. The fox didn't have answers. His own heart wasn't quite right either, still scourging himself over sins known and unknown. And he was tired - so tired - fighting own battles within. But the murderous solitude of completion had the blood-red canid in its savage jaws, shook the fox like a weak and crippled kit.

His plans for the evening didn't seem as promising, after all, as the prospect of unannounced company.

Even Zeke's.

He closed the door gently, wrapped the towel around hips, fumbled the safety chain off. Switched on unreachable ceiling lights, ancient glass globes stained by dust. Turning while he opened up, Aaron caught sight of Zeke's boots from the corner of one eye as the lynx entered, approved unthinking when he saw the lynx stamp and scuff. The fox withdrew unspeaking to the warmth of the hearthrug, crouched, tended things at the fire.

Ignored Zeke.

The teencat's arctic coat covered most of the door as it carelessly swung from the hook, slippery snow melting slowly onto the mat. Zeke examined his boots, glanced again at the polished wooden floor, decided they were still too wet and took them off. Grey hunting socks patted the waxed oak, matched by college fleece sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up. Fistpaws, shy and chilly, were in the tummy pouch.

A red and green box, ribbon atop. "Got you something," the doubtful lynxboy said, self-consciously.

"Yeah? Thanks." Discomfort, not well suppressed.

The fox was kneeling on the rug with his back to Zeke. He cast around over one shoulder to look, diminished the unintended gracelessness thereby. Or hoped to. It was a surprise, big. The box, as well. And not wholly a nice surprise, either. If the cat was giving Aaron something like that, it wasn't a good sign at all.

Zeke put the present on the floor by a handsome mahogany end table, sensing true that the gift wasn't welcome. Sensing less than a cordial reception for himself, too. Out of place, much as he had felt on his last visit there. But more this time, unwanted in the positive sense. He scratched nose with a paw, looked around. The chairs had been stacked away from the fireplace, he observed; and the sofa, the only open seating. Which brought the cat back to himself, or whatever had been passing for that of late. The dubious lynx wasn't sure he wanted to be sharing furniture with the other straightfur, wasn't sure he wanted to be there at all. Such liberties had gotten them places they'd never imagined going, once before.

"Have a seat." The red canid was on haunches before the hearth, shirtless and adjusting the pale and limp towel about himself for modesty. His face was blank, chest flat, heart impassive. Or so he hoped.

"Yeah, thanks." Nervous. Apparent.

Mutual anticipation of the avoidable.

What could Zeke want? the fox wondered, too preoccupied to be polite, too taken aback by the late intrusion to really care. He'd much rather spend the evening alone. But the present intrusive moment must be an easier thing to get through, he figured, than asking his unexpected visitor to go. For now that the cat was inside the apartment, the canid was having serious second thoughts. Avoiding them, he shunned eye contact.

"Nice fire."

Aaron nodded. Sighed. The spell of his solitary retreat had been broken, and its recapture, all but impossible.

Ashes shifted, like the mood in the room, radiated auras of halogenic uncertainty.

"I been thinkin'..."

Which the fox could have guessed, knew what was coming next. Kicked himself at last for bringing it on.

"I am sorry," Aaron said, sounding like one time too many. It was an apology not yet baked to doneness in the oven of guilt, toothpick of sincerity anything but clean. The anger was back in a flash, he saw that within for the bright certainty of conscience in the wavering flame of the heart. Exasperation etched away at the edges of his tone.

"Me, too. It happened - I'll deal." The clipped cat sounded reasonable, tried. A sweaty-pawed shamefulness of having encouraged the fox that one autumn afternoon, of having admitted eagerness mutual and tawdry, cast the cat's slitted eyes to the floor, tugged them like magnetic marbles towards the consuming, purifying fire. Zeke wondered if he could burn away the nauseous memory like so much smoldering meat.

Aaron nodded. "You need to talk about it?" He knew he was powerless to help, especially the fur with whom it had happened, absolve his partner in crime. Especially when he himself was hurting of the very same thing - the fox only that moment realized it. He needed to talk about it. But the knightly canid delivered the option anyway, on that fair salver of challenge upon which is always presented the offer of comfort between guys: manly restraint. "With me, I mean?"

Perhaps the lynxboy had other issues between them, things Zeke needed to get out and said. Aaron wouldn't be surprised. Admissions to elicit, horror to share with the only other fur would could possibly understand. And the one with whom it hurt most to be.

For both of them.

The lynx looked away.

The canid did not want to confront this. He was simply too tired, too bound up by the same traumatic ties which held the spotted cat gagged and helpless. Which joined them both in mutual guilt, simultudinous loathing. He watched Zeke struggle with it, paws grasping at nothingness, muzzle grinding revelations to unspoken lies. Nor was the fox simply curious, not even of the morbid sort that turns not its eyes from the traffic accidents of souls. Yet something had him in fangs, the temporary partnership of a shared history no matter how sordid and sinful, the entwining of hearts in mated shame.

Aaron felt himself grow suddenly weak and ill under a rush of incomplete memory, the taste of blood and sickness in his muzzle.

"I - I don't know, fox."

For at that moment, Zeke gave up, couldn't get white feline fangs around why he had come. It was plain to him then, golden tail thrashing in wicked frustration on the dead oak floor. The attempted visit had been a huge mistake, as big as the previous one they were both recalling, both trying to forget at the same time. His stare was on the fox when their gazes met again. The cat swallowed, pulled away, leaning back to watch unduluous waves of heat from the fireplace hump false shadows across the ceiling. Pads over his face conspired to conceal embarrassment on his muzzle, the bare and awkward hunting socks growing cold with his anxiety. He thought to tuck his paws under where he sat, realized it would make him look like a nervous little kit.

Aaron half turned towards the fireplace again, shifting black-furred toes from under tail. Rearranged the towel loosely, drew fuzzy knees to his chin. He was feeling quite naked, and only minimally that he wasn't dressed. Zeke had shared an intimate part of the fox that the young vulpine himself had never previously discovered. He craved privacy right then, knew he could not now recover the solitary brood - not ever - trying to forget what precious hurts the spotted lynx had stirred up again. With one toweled paw over vulpine maleness, he rose, switched off the ancient overhead lights, subduing the stark examination lamp of conscience. Hypodermic brightness collapsed like a midnight bonfire into the gently strong and radiant glow of the hearth which drew their gazes now, sent flying sparks of primal introspection into the new dark privacy between furs.

He took to the hearthrug again, Zeke averting modest eyes as the fox's tailbase passed. "Want something to drink?" There were mugs on the tray, other things. "Tea's brewing. And cider." It would ease their distress, warm beverage in hopeful paws, the hot sip of comfort swallowed, sweet healing fluid against the killing cold of history in the heart.

"Yeah, please. Cider's my favorite. I brought wine, too." A paper grocery sack rustled in evidence.

Wine. That was all the fox was sure they needed, sardonic after their sober wresting accident the other day. He poured out. "You hungry?"

Zeke nodded, slurped at the steaming cup. It made a shiver go through him, dislodging epitaph feelings, rolling back the sepulchre stone from catacomb niches in the mind. Granite and nitre, the moss of Nepenthe. Something of the lynx had died their day together, started a cascade of tragedy which had culminated that present afternoon, misfortune breeding misfortune like a Victorian plague. He sniffed at the drink, and its moist superheated fragrance of apples and spice met with dampness of stymied tears, condensed in bitter acid. It was on him so suddenly he didn't have time to prepare.

Aaron noticed. Pretended not to, looked away as the cat cried. It wasn't in the canid to play counselor that night, mutually responsible for the harm they'd caused eachother, and deeply in memory of that unfortunate yiff, himself. It hadn't been an accident so much as accidental, both knew that even at the time. But so much had changed in so few moments, by that uprush of geysered emotions, their orgasmic loss of spooge and self-control. And the fox remembered how it was after, too, the awkward shower together, so wanting to get the experience behind him, clean up the traces; to put out the cat and crawl into bed, hiding himself under shameful sheets still fragrant with the male essence of their sex. He twisted his tail in paws, chastisement for such craven flight even in the dark night of his exhaustion, the desire unto denial beyond evidence even of that intimacy still aglow between those two uncomfortable furs.

Zeke sniffled, licked his wet nose. Stood, nearly tore off the sweatshirt from his ripped and fluffy chest. "Umm, hot in here. From the fire, I mean." He looked away shyly, gravel and tears still in his voice, flexed a bulky yellow shoulder. Losing the hoodie had taken his mind temporarily off the upwelling of remembrance, that swelling oppressiveness of compulsions and feelings and fears baking him mercilessly like heat from the hearth. He felt suddenly less awkward, too, relieved of casual sartorial stiffness otherwise impossible to breach, even as his naked past drew nigh.

The stretching spotted feline watched the soft and furry fox cradle his own small drink, sip daintily from pointed muzzle while taking in the sight of the lynx's flat tummy.

At least we're not crying anymore, he thought. That's something.

"Gotta get back to the gym," Zeke said with a soft, wry grin, poking himself hard in the abs to break the impasse. "Haven't worked it since high school." It was the expression of a small punished boyfur, self-effacing with awkward attraction, who asks his erstwhile chastiser for a snug.

"You look fine, cat," the fox remarked. "I've let myself go these past weeks." Last time Aaron exercised had been the day of the otherfur's visit, he was sure. Perhaps months, rather than weeks.

"Hell, you're in better shape than me." Zeke noted the compact fox's slim hips, trim tailbase. Defined tummy and detailled chest, shoulders like a fuzzy statue. Buff. And turned away from the embarrassing flush of hot corporal realization.

The fire was too close, too. "Uhh, what's to eat?"

Aaron started. He'd been basking in the heat, the obvious gaze of the frank feline over vulpine fur. He supposed the pleasurable latter was just a late effect of the memory of their day together. And hoped he'd get over it all, at least reasonably soon; hoped they both would. Life had been so hard on a fox lately, he sighed, shoulders slumping under the remembered weight of the lonely semester. Nodding acquiescence, he took up his role.

"Well, c'mon over here and I'll show ya." The fox sliced a loaf of French bread, speared a bit on a long bamboo-handled fork. "Just hold it over the fire like so. It toasts up nice in the extreme heat, but fast - watch out. And it gets the fruit taste of the wood, too."

Zeke folded himself to the hearthrug, jeans binding here and there as he scooted close enough to the campfire flames. Aaron watched, then satisfied, set off for the kitchen. He returned with another hibachi fork and an awkward blush, having forgotten his towel when he rose. There the foxboy met with another surprise, too: the tall teen lynx had shed his jeans, sat in flannel boxer shorts before the toasting furnace glow. The white feline underpelt was orange in the light.

"Levi's are too tight." The cat's soft tummy showed marks.

"Mmm," he fox responded, put out yet again. If only the involuntary evening weren't forced with a fur who was nearly a stranger, he might feel more equal to the situation. Aaron didn't want what he felt happening, wasn't up to the challenge of mastering an uninvited guest. If he couldn't be left alone in the uncertainty of that feared and anticipated evening, at least he could expect to avoid a confrontation.

Hoped he could, anyway. Knew they'd have to talk about things sooner or later.

The disgust at craving that very desire, polishing it like a stolen apple in memory, made his dark ears droop, black-tipped tail go flat on the cold wooden floor.

"Umm, yer supposed to dress to match your hostess," the cat offered, testing his welcome. "Host. Or undress. It says that in Heinlein."

"You like RAH? Cool." The fox covered his groin almost prissily, shook his head in disgust.

"Mike the Martian is awesome!" And nudity abounds. Stranger in a Strange Land was heavily censored on first publication.

"Friday's my favorite," Aaron admitted. "The boobs on that vixen on the cover..." He moaned, rolled his eyes. Zeke laughed.

"To Sail Beyond the Sunset. Mama Maureen!"

"Pixel!"

"'I woke up in bed with a fox and a cat. The fox was a stranger; the cat was not.'"

A chill wave of flaming embarrassment came over them both. Aaron nearly burnt his toast.

"Sorry," Zeke offered. In the ensuing eternities he swore he could hear the fox's bread smoking.

"Yeah. We keep saying that, if you notice."

The cat nodded. "I am sorry, fur. It's hard. Like I want to talk about it and all. Like it wants me to talk about it, but..."

Aaron gave in, turned from feigned interest in the snack, hunger forsaken like a lost privacy. "I grok what you mean. It'll have its way sooner or later, you know."

"Prolly so."

He swallowed. "We yiffed," the fox said, in simple narrative. Simple was the last thing it had been. But the shock of his own verbal admission was like a winter snowball to the muzzle, cruel December icicle down the tailbase.

Silence melted the shock only slowly.

"It was my fault," the cat replied, when he finally could. "I broke in, picked your lock. You thought you were wrestling a burglar when you came home and found me asleep." Even as he stood to accountability, Zeke felt his own bloody crime that day still fresh and gruesome and resplendent, too huge and culpable to actually be part of himself.

"It was an accident."

Aaron's statement buckled to apology under the leaden weight of own burgeoning shame. He was losing that naked clawgrip, the touch of adult trying to come to terms with his cowering adolescent self. Any night but this, he thought, and I'd be able to handle things better.

It had been an accident. They both knew that.

Which didn't seem to help. Something was building in the air, something horrid and unspeakable. Still, it was if nothing could stop it, not even refusing to speak.

"I hate you so much, Aaron."

The fox's head drooped in submission, neck stretched long for the axe.

"I can't even find words for it. Why the hell I came here tonight - what the fuck I thought I was doing - I have no idea." The cat got up to go.

"Fur... don't..."

Zeke stood, paced. "You raped me, fox! Admit it!"

Aaron's soxed paws were in the air, then dropped ineffectually to the towel in his lap. "I am so ashamed about it, Zeke; so ashamed it ever happened. I still can't believe it - we did that."

He caught the lynx's glare, held him fast. "Though I won't pretend otherwise, like it didn't happen at all..."

The look on the cat's muzzle was murder.

"But it's not what I even imagined I'd be doing, either, Zeke. Please believe me, cat. Please!" Aaron grasped for it, for truth and stability with dull claws. He wasn't making excuse as much as wanted a closure for himself as well.

Wanted to believe, cleave to his own because.

Wanted to discover that Zeke was right, that the fox himself really was to blame for the uncomfortable events which had transpired with their tie. But he held on, deferred just punishment, chin up and defiant even of himself. Aaron had given up his hard-earned solitary evening for this, decided he wasn't going to be bullied.

"No. Don't believe me, Zeke. I don't care. But I never though it would work out that way." Bitterness turned to masculine resolution, taunted for a reply.

"You wanted it, you fag!" Sour and sullen, embraced and impugned. The incipient memory of his filthy tailhole violation had enflamed the lynx to smoldering rage. The fire in the grate glowed, entrained. Flared.

Neither knew what was coming.

"Fuck you!" The fox fisted his paws.

Zeke smirked. "You did."

---

Aaron rested muzzle between his knees. The whole huge load of guilt had fallen on his furry head then. Their play that late Autumn afternoon had evolved to excitement, an unintended erotic penetration prolonged. And when horror and fear had passed, the worst had been yet to come.

Similar had just happened that very night. Contrarily, provoked.

The spotted cat's maize fur shook yet with oppressed anger. That unexpected rape between furiends one late day had turned about into surpassing pleasure, nonconsentual, his first mating shared with another male. The humiliation of it crushed Zeke's soul afterwards, had brought his teenaged world to a car-crash end. And that same fox who had fucked him had now just popped up bare from the hearthrug and fetched Zeke a punch in the jaw.

"I am so sorry, fur. I don't know what made me do that." Aaron shivered in the nakedness of that shaming loss of self-control, that shuddering fright of what had been let loose from his unclothed soul. The peaceful vulpine had never struck out in anger like that before in his life. His paw ached, just retribution for his breech of civility and begrudging trust.

Zeke shrugged, fangs set. "It is what it is, fox. I've been feeling some pretty confusing things lately, too." His reply wasn't self-exposure exactly, nor acceptance, but understood challenge. If the cat, so tortured by events and the memory thereof, could break down between them in an embarrassing cry, then Aaron, collapsing in actings-out of violence and frustration, must be even the worse off. The fox owed him one now, and the lynx would make that canid beg.

"Well, now that you've got it out of your system..." he continued, breaking off. For Zeke knew, finally, that he should go. Stood again. Beyond a doubt it had been so great a wrongness dropping by that night. The swirl of his own feline turmoil would never be healed there, not even with the one fur to whom the filthy secret of their dirty afternoon was no lewd revelation.

But he had his pride. And Zeke wasn't going to stalk off with slender tail adrag, give into the mutual defeat that their second encounter had irremediably become. He sat tight, waited for Aaron to give in first.

"Please let me make it up to you," the fox begged penitently. He so wanted to slink away to his room, hide under the covers. That planned evening of yiffy release and emotional self-nurture had turned first into home invasion, then a fursonal attack. And finally mindless ravening aggression, hosted between own paws.

That's what his guts said. It was all so out of control that Aaron hardly knew who he was, either.

But the heart embraced a different reality. "Won't you have some food, at least?"

Zeke smirked at the meaningless concession. "A'ight. Whatever." The clawed feline wasn't looking for revenge. Not exactly. But every bit of the openness and vulnerability, the kittenish warmth of need for succor which drove him up the worn and weary staircase of Aaron's apartment had been driven clean away. He couldn't remember what it had felt like to so badly to crave a quiet sharing talk with the small and furry fox.

Aaron hooked the Dutch oven from the coalbank with an andiron. It grated on firebrick as he drew it forth; an Hiroshima of mushrooming steam rose to the ceiling when he removed the lid. Zeke's nose twitched at the enticing, fragrant fallout.

"Have you ever had raclette?"

"Nope. What is it?"

"Watch this..." The fox speared a boiled new potato on a fork, lifted it dripping to a small plate. With fireplace tongs, he retrieved an aluminum pie tin from one edge of the pile of embers. Aaron scooped up a mass of melted white cheese from the metal plate with a fragment of the potato, popped it into his muzzle. Then began to suck air wildly. "Gawd, it's hot!"

The lynx laughed, reached into his paper bag, cracked open the plastic seal of jug wine easily with one large paw. He poured into Aaron's empty cup. The fox quit waving claws at his tongue, gulped the drink. It was eye-poppingly sweet, of questionable and discount vintage. But it cooled his flaming muzz effectively, warmed his peaking ears in the offing.

"Thanks. Oh, wow." He drank another huge swallow. "Well, there it is. The cheese melts, and then you scrape off a bit to eat with your potatoes. It's better than fondue."

Zeke tried. The fromáge Suisse was smooth and oily, rich and sour and edgy. It swam around his fork as he wiped the morsel of spud against the edge of their shared pan.

"I like this!" The cat gulped at wine, too.

Aaron shoved over a boat of tart pickles, marinated violet onions, went back to eating from the common plate. There were more shiny tins of diced cheese ready to-paw for cooking, and the fox swapped them around near the flames when the present supply upon which both furs worked began to cool or diminish.

They ate and chatted, about nothing in particular, warding off one unpleasant memory, sidling carefully closer to another. Aaron shared out the tea in the pot and the cider, keeping their mugs full of one thing or another. His earlier cry, plus the physical release of violence, had left him feeling will-less and empty, needy, more ready to please than was his wont, apprehensive about the sparse comfort-food menu which he'd prepared with only himself in mind.

It felt too much like the earlier guilt, and he didn't want to go back there again, give in and lose his social self to the waning gravity of that barren midnight moon.

"This is really great," Zeke commented, between muzzlefuls. "Were you having some sort of picnic?" Mild jab, at the elite fox's distance. But as soon as he'd said it, the lynx realized that such questioning might be out of place, an uncalled-for intrusion in forests where he had no right to tread. After all, even though they'd yiffed, the furs didn't know eachother even all that well.

"It's just something I like," the fox responded mildly. "Like when it's dark and icy outside and you think Spring will never come." He felt really shy and embarrassed by the poetic words, grinned. Glad he hadn't mentioned that other part, the weeping tonight which had appeared on the agenda. It had been the first time Aaron had gotten to cry since his dad's funeral.

The teencat nodded. "That's a nice thing. The end of the year is a good time for rituals like this."

"Rituals?"

"Yeah. Doing special stuff. And sharing it..."

"... With a furiend," the fox finished into the yawning intermission. He was looking away again, too, divination in the oily patterns on his plate. Knew just why Zeke had had so much trouble with the expression.

Aaron felt closer and more intimate than by rights the two should, after both fuck and fight. But he couldn't sort out the reality from what fur and heart and groin and tail all had loudly to say in his drooping ears.

The lynx just nodded again.

A seacrafty fox knows to tack away from dangerous shoals. "I don't have much of that, rituals. Not planning on going home for the holidays this year, anyway. And this - " he raised both paws, pads-upward and spread, to indicate the overwhelmingly expensive surroundings " - is what I've got instead. First class, but it's not really home."

Then Aaron wondered if he was being ungrateful, or pretentious even, if perhaps he sounded that way in the cat's attentive ears. He didn't know Zeke's means or station, after all.

"You just haven't been here long enough, fur. I bet after a couple more years you'll have traditions and good memories and all that built up. I think it has to work its way into the walls of a place, like whitewash or something. And then it won't seem so..."

Zeke was going to say "empty", but the beautiful, new and costly furnishings which the fox seemed to disdain would have set his own parents back a year's rent. "... lonely here."

Aaron sipped at his wine, warmed and mulled with some of the cider. It was his third cup, and though Zeke had obviously traded quantity over quality in selecting that inexpensive dessert variety, the gallon jug seemed no nearer to empty.

But that didn't matter.

"Does it really seem lonely to you here, Zeke?"

Who nodded, shrugged, wondering if he'd offend.

Lonely. The fox suspected they were both feeling that. "Do you have holiday stuff like that at your house? It's not been real settled at mine - my parents' - the last few years." He wasn't even sure if his new step-mother would be having holidays that season. Unencumbered giving wasn't one of her numbered joys.

"Yeah. Lots of brothers and sisters, real big family. Always so much to do and good things to eat and..." Zeke shook his head, gulped the drink. "Used to be.

"I got told tonight that I'm not welcome there anymore." The outflowing coals in the fireplace seemed to recoil in surprise.

"Dude! I'm so sorry. What happened?" A chill through Aaron purged the last of his sorrowful self-absorbtion. If he'd known that the lynx had been disowned by his folks, the fox would surely have been kinder upon the cat's unforeseen arrival.

"Jamie called 'em and told what I'd said to her." He stewed bitterly in the hate-herbed broth of betrayal. "Couldn't keep the secret inside me anymore. I guess she couldn't live with it, either. But why the fuck she felt it was right to -"

"Wait, Zeke. Who's Jamie?" The fox didn't recognize the name, testament to how little the furs knew of eachother.

"My girlfuriend. Ex, now. I guess that was her way of breaking up with me, don't'cha think?" A wry laugh, drowned like an orphan in the drug of the cat's strong beverage. He tipped back, finished the cup. Refilled.

"What did she tell them? What made her want to break up with you?" The glowing red canid could see from the lynx's trembling muzzle, that his questions flew like cruel arrows straight to the heart. He sniffled sympathy.

Zeke hung his head. "I told her I'm gay, Aaron."

The fox raised surprised brows, kept patient silence. This wasn't something he'd ever have imagined having to deal with. And certainly not that night. It seemed to Aaron that most of what had caused the pain between himself and the lynx was that their shared yiff was mutually distonic, unacceptable and foreign in both their hearts and heads and sexualities. He was positive that the cat was as straight and hetero as himself.

"Are you gay, Zeke?"

"I guess, right? I mean, we did... that stuff. Anyway, it tore me up really bad inside - what we did, not your... you know, penis - and, anyway, I was feeling pretty low and all. And Jamie saw me kinda weepy about it one day. And so she asked. And so I sort of told..."

"Like 'sort of'?"

"I trusted that bitch!" He slammed a paw against the floor, rattled the dishes. "What made her think she had the right to tell my dad that I took it up the tail? It was just once! That fucking cunt!"

Aaron moved the tray to safety, discreetness reinforced when he scooted closer, crouched where it had lain. His shoulder was against Zeke's, comforting, they seated side by side. In the dimming light of the fire he watched the precious sparkle of feline tearfall. "Yer dad got pissed, didn't he?" The fox couldn't bear to think what his own dead father would have done, shared the kitty's peril.

There had been that strange vulpine visit, though, that the foxboy still only half believed in the incredible recall of the unfortunate afternoon. Weren't cats the ones supposed to have nine lives?

Bitter felid scoff. "Damned near crapped himself, he did! And nearly made me, too. He got the shotgun from the closet and..."

The fox could feel the lynxboy shaking with sobs now: fright and horror, the shame and revulsion taking over where once there was a heart. He turned his muzzle modestly away, let paw and tail do what they were going to anyway. His arm found its way around Zeke's shivering shoulders, brush surrounding the feline's flanneled hips. He rested his head on the biggerfur's shoulder, rode the inescapable vortex of their shared and draining fate. Aaron realized he couldn't save the teencat from the dual pains of parental rejection, sore venereal betrayal. He wouldn't try. There wasn't wisdom or healing stored anywhere in his therine soul, predatory vulpine thoughts behind his mask. But the fox allowed soft pelt and the warm fire of male muscle within to do the small things best that they could to ease Zeke's meeping hurt.

The lynx's golden head was between black vulpine ears when his bitter cry had tapered off. The fox licked the cat's pink nose, such gesture automatic in the sweet service of a recalled memory: Aaron's own mom - his real one - doing that to himself as a weeping kit. Zeke licked back. They sheltered together in front of the welcoming fire, homeless of the heart.

Perhaps it wasn't love, but it was the best they'd got.

---

Aaron had returned from the kitchen again, bearing a cheesecake which he had purchased in anticipation of the night, Plan B in case the fragrant warmth and salty taste of firewood and darkness and tea and tears failed to fill his longings, soothe his interior needs. The furs sat nibbling at the sweet dairy confection, sharing an earthen jar of cherries in sauce between. The fox had kicked it up a notch, brought out the virgin bottle of brandy he had smuggled, not quite as unknown as supposed, from his dad's private stash before leaving home that semester. He figured it was as good a use to put the strong, orangey stuff as any he had known.

Zeke loved cheesecake, a quite seldom thing at his working-class house. It had been a treat last for a birthday, his own at sixteen. The rich, heavy creaminess in his muzzle was comforting and satisfying, transporting like the tender graham crust which frizzled on his tongue. It made him think of holidays, of presents, when young meant endless potential and optimistic joy, instead of the unending struggle to secure a spot in a treacherous and crazed world. When the fox had sat down, the cat snuggled close, nuzzling the furry red ear without shame. The jug wine lay finally empty, wafting its scarlet soul to the stars. The drinks were surely helping Zeke's honesty and affection, openness. His courage and pain. And he knew he surely wouldn't have shared all he had done without their kindly, knowing assist.

"Aaron? Tell me honestly. Are... Are you gay?"

The fox's eyes grew, his ears sank slowly. Cheekruffs followed. His muzzle moved to one side, a slow shake never finished. Halting. "I am sorry," he repeated. It would hurt to leave Zeke alone in this; he would almost rather have been queer. Still, he felt he had no choice but the straight truth.

And of that, Aaron was no longer finally sure. "I don't know, Zeke."

"S' OK. It doesn't matter." The cat sank to rest his despondent throat on the hearthrug. "It's all so confusing anyway."

Aaron nodded, petted the cat. "Yeah. Confusing." The fox earnestly wished he could make it better, knew his own self-martyrdom in the urge: crucifixion, not cock-sucking, which makes the boy turn gay.

"You know, that time? When we..." Zeke nailed himself to the word. "When we yiffed. It was crazy and horrible and wicked and all that stuff. But...

"...but it made me feel loved."

"Aww, Zeke..." Aaron shook his head in helpless refusal, had been struggling with the same thing. A tremble erupted right through his voice like tears coming again to his eyes. The weary college canid would have given anything to never have to admit that secret, never to have heard the admission from another. In all the loneliness of self-discipline, the academic rigor and abandonment from home, weeks and weeks of growing hopelessness had welled up in muscles and under fur like a trapped geyser. The harder he worked, the more behind he felt, the more estranged from his body and from his own pelt. Zeke's arrival that tortured night had coincided with the final revelation, and sent the fox's fistpaw flying, the vulpine's last redoubt of defense. Still, and after all, Aaron couldn't bring himself to say what should have come to his own muzzle just then.

"It did, fur. I know that's crazy, but... well, you're the only one I can say it with. To. Even though I shouldn't. But, well, you were there, too, you know."

"When we yiffed." It still felt funny in the fox's muzzle to say, twitched his tail. But in a good way. Liberating, that the dead secret, like the wine bottle, was finally on its way to a better place. Aaron took the last gulp of his drink, shuddered. "When I yiffed you."

Zeke nodnodded, took up the thread. "Right. You were in my tailhole deep, and all knotted and stuff, and I was so hard I was leaking pree over the sheets. And then when you started to fu-" He blushed, knew it was sounding shockingly pornic. A paw discreetly at the gaping front of his underpants told him he was starting a stiff, unaccountable even in strange lewdness impromptu. But the filth, the illicit yiff, the forbiddenness of it all and the salacious memory itself weren't nearly as exciting as that bare and shameless honesty, the revelation to eachother and each to himself, had been.

"Umm, that stuff we did, yeah." For the briefest of flushing moments, the blushing lynx wondered if he weren't falling in love.

"I'm sorry if it hurt you. That I hurt you," Aaron added. "I don't think I realized how much."

Which broke the cat's warm reverie. "Yeah. It did, at the time. Bad."

The fox's fragile ears sank in honest sorrow, crushed beneath mild rebuff.

"I didn't know my tailhole was that way," the drunken lynx continued. "Ya know, sensitive. I can touch it now, and I don't even have to paw off to cum."

Aaron giggled, gave Zeke one eye. "TMI, dude!"

Zeke laughed too.

"But I am sorry," repeated the fox. "And truth's more important now. So I'll admit that... OK, it was pretty hot for me, too." He smirked to himself, readjusted the towel. "I didn't realize a guy can be so tight. All those muscles and stuff..." His soxed paw was on Zeke's furry abdomen, testing the ripples there. Aaron had sworn once that his long and slender vulpine cock could feel them from cat's inside.

"Cut that out, fox! I still like girls!"

"Me, too, fur! I don't wanna do it again or anything. I was just sayin'!"

"OK, but just... just watch it. I know how clingy you f0xx0rs are." He saw Aaron taken aback, retreated. "It's from all that... knotting and tying stuff." The lynx laughed, trying too hard to be severe.

Aaron giggled again. His vulpine cockknot had effectively assured that the teenfurs spent the whole involuntary afternoon in close and continuous company.

But then he sighed.

Clingy. The fox had never thought of himself that way - was he really? Did Zeke honestly think so? That endless stress and dearth of future and certainty and hope over the last horrible semester had taken his vulpine bounce and delight and tossed them away like old study notes into the fire, he didn't doubt. Aaron was simply not in the mood that night to be purposeful and sufficient. Competent. Honor Roll. Grounded and mature.

Perhaps he was feeling clingy, even. Or maybe it was just the booze: the canid didn't drink except at the occasional party, when seldom lately he'd taken time away from schoolwork to attend.

Zeke went on: "Do you think I'm really gay, Aaron? I mean, cause we did it. And it was fun. I still like girls and all, though."

"Can't answer that for you, cat." Solutions weren't the fox's specialty that evening, only more and more difficult questions.

"Oh. I like girls though."

"So you said. Me, too. But so what?" Aaron felt around inquisitively on the small carpet, in his own heart. "What does what we did only once have anything to do with anything else?

"We yiffed. It was an accident.

"Case closed."

"Yeah."

The echo hadn't time to die away.

"It's just confusing, Aaron," the lynx whined. "Like, it seems I should be one thing or the other. Like I should just know, or something."

"What's 'liking girls' anyway?" The fox had found a comfort spot, stretched out in emulation of the cat. Rested his head on the other's soft and furry thigh.

"What do you mean?"

"Just that..." He rolled on his side. "How do you know you 'like girls', and just what does it mean?"

"Well, I..." Zeke had to take a moment to work it out. "I think about 'em during class, or work, or like when I'm bored. Or, like, all the time!"

The boyfurs laughed.

"And I suppose I'll have one for a mate someday. At least I hope I won't be alone."

"But then, everyfur does that, right?" The fox wasn't sure where it was going, figuring on automatic paws, or where he was going with it himself. He rode the strange idea like a bad innertube in a flood, unsure of what else to do, too dizzy to let go.

"Yeah, I guess so. And I think about 'em - their yiffparts and all - like when I'm pawing off."

Aaron snrrked. "Even when yer touching yer sensitive tailhole?"

Zeke glared.

"Sorry, fur. I should catch a smack for that."

The lynx shook his head. "No, like you said: the honesty's more important. But you got a sharp muzzle for a fox.

"And, yeah, when I play with my tailhole... I don't think of girlfurs."

"Guys?" Aaron put in, sick and excited and ashamed and repelled, careful of the furiendly chastening just received. "Me?" He knew exactly where he didn't want this all to go.

The cat's paw was on the fox's as the feline turned away for a moment, spoke to unjudging air. "This is very hard for me, dude. I've never shared stuff about myself - deep stuff, like this is - with anyfur in the world. Not even Jamie (except that one thing). I guess I never expected to say stuff like this to a guy - even if not about a guy. Which it isn't.

"I mean, it is about a guy.

"But I'm not bisexual! I like girls!"

"Me, too. I don't know, Zeke," the young vulpine said, claws seeking ephemeral answers in the vaporous atmosphere. "Don't know what to tell ya. I feel sort of the same way. And it's confusing."

"Yeah, confusing."

Another return.

"The only thing I know to think of," Aaron added, "is that maybe 'liking girls' is something we do, but not who anyfur is."

"Like..." Zeke puzzled it out. "Like whistling when they sashay by, showing off their asses and all, tails? And acting crazy to impress 'em? And having a hard time talking to girlfurs, and expecting to mate with one - and things like talking about their tits and stuff in the locker room and all... Like it's more of a habit than a real thing?" Zeke's one semester of college hadn't been exactly a shining success, but he could follow Aaron's thought to its extensional end.

The philosophical fox shrugged. "I don't know. But it does seem to me that just as who you are and what you do can be very different sometimes, maybe who you think you are is sometimes mostly what you find yourself used to doing at the time."

They rested side by side in the heat of the fire, the warmth of fellowship and tacit acceptance, working out each his own salvation.

"So, like... Maybe I'm not straight at all, Aaron? Is that what yer sayin'?"

"No, I don't mean that. I don't know what I mean." The drunken canid giggled; his deduction seemed almost absurd. "I'm plastered off my ass, cat, from all that wine and booze!" He shoved Zeke on the shoulder, who tilted away, weebled upright to push the fox over in the other direction. They wrestled and laughed, trying soddenly to pin eachother, a tipsy reprise of that day on Aaron's bed when he'd found a strange feline asleep in the nude. The towel fell from vulpine tailbase as they tussled, dropped to the floor, which only caused all the more laughter, a renewed and naked struggle.

They ended up flat, facing, with the fox on top once again. The breath was sherry-sweet in eachother's faces, the firelight kind in their eyes. It was the sort of shock neither boy was ready for.

"Uhh, I gotta pee." Zeke stood, toppling Aaron to the floor.

"Ouch. Well, through my room, and on the left. But then, you already know where it is..." Vulpine smirk, giggle. Their rough and rude sort of masculine honesty was still pleasurable and titillating, an afterglow of self-revelation and sordid admission that had each plump in his sheath.

The lynx laughed. "Last time I made my way to your bathroom, I had a big creamy load of foxspoo up my butt! However shall I find the way?" He simpered campily.

Aaron laughed, tossed the towel as Zeke hurried from the room, hitting only the cat's snapping tail. And giggled himself silly in the wake.

---

The lynx had his boxers down in bedroom dark, located the bathroom and the light switch by touch. Clicked it on. There was a strange fox in the mirror.

"Woah! Sorry dude." Zeke covered himself with surprised paws.

"You OK?" Aaron hollered. "Don't whiz in the laundry hamper."

"Uh, Aaron? Who's this fur in here?"

Vulpine giggle, long distance; it sounded to Zeke as if the familiar fox was back in the kitchen clanging pans. "No one in there but you, cat. And if you gotta barf, don't hurl in the sink, m'kay?"

Zeke queued up to the task, pointed himself at dye-blue water. If he refused to look, perhaps the older fox in the mirror would just go away. The cat watched his splashing stream with feigned interest, got a crazy feeling that the other fur was doing the same. He opened the medicine cabinet with one paw, angling the mirror away from his swaying urination. Which ended with a big sigh, left the lynx urgently wondering just how much he had imbibed, not only from the huge and satisfying piss steaming in the toilet, but from the strange and persistent hallucination afloat in the silvered bathroom glass. The cat flushed, pulled up his flannel drawers, fumbled the soap for a wash.

"Son, shut the door a moment. I want to talk with you."

Zeke's stomach lurched; he thought he might blow cold drunken chunks just as Aaron had remarked. It wasn't his furiend's voice he'd just heard, but that of the fur in the mirror - the lynx was positive! Slowly he turned, closed the bathroom door. The white room had grown utterly arctic. And drawing back, Zeke placed a trembling paw on the frame of the glass. When he'd fastened the medicine cabinet and the mirror squarely faced him again, the gothcat had no reflection.

A tod stood there, mature and sophisticated; tan cord jacket, tweed vest under. Ascot. There was grey around his ears, the sides of his muzzle. The eyes still had that determination of middle age, not yet the venerable and knowing naivete of the old.

The fox looked surprisingly like Aaron.

"Yer, his dad, aren't you?" The chill up the lynx's spine was of double incredulity. Not only would he never have believed what he was seeing, he would hardly have imagined himself get drunk enough to see what he was seeing. "Aaron mentioned you last time."

Last time had been after their first fateful yiff, that unabortable miscarriage of lust and lube and intention; mutual, shocking, non-consentual; the helplessness of misadventure and anal penetration. Panic and horror, its filthy degradation had given over to the ancient lubricious rhythms of hypnotic vulpine mating, to anger and guilt and suicidal shame thereafter. Zeke knew Aaron's dad had passed the way of all flesh, for the teenfox had mentioned the old tod when afterglow and soothing shower that day were done forever, the crushing enormity of their deed sinking in like a sexton's spade. The cat had never actually seen the older canid before.

"Yes, I'm Aaron's papa. And I was here last time, too. When you boys... well, were boys." The greymuzzle smiled. "First college apartment is so much nicer a place for it than a muddy trench in France, mit der Fuhrer's artillery going overhead, I'll give you that."

Zeke scowled at the missed wryness, extended a shaky pawfist. Rubbed at the surface of mirrored glass where the tod's face had appeared. He was suddenly sure he could make the whole thing go away like fog from a steamy soak.

Manet vulpex. "Please, son. This isn't a trick, though you two did the winemakers proud. Vinofurs after my own heart, ye be. I don't have a lot of time, though, and I need you to listen."

"But, yer not real. I'm just seeing things."

"Zachariah, if I showed you what I really am right now, in the place where you are right now, it would put shiny cracks in your fuzzy mind for the rest of your furry life.

"But I don't want that. I need you to do something for me."

Zeke turned on the water, loud. Submerged spotted golden paws, whitest muzzle in the flow,

And sought himself that icy sting, > > Which faithful doth sobriety bring.This was all too weird for words. > > It had to be the wine; Zeke knew he hadn't eaten all day, either - too busy with work, not to mention miscellaneous and sundry yellings and pleadings, emotional betrayals and domestic expulsion. If the spotted feline weren't so wasted that it wasn't funny, perhaps the whole hallucination had been caused by stress of the day. Yeah. Could be that, too, he thought. Just because the image in the mirror knew his given name, the one that no one but his long-deceased Gramma used...

The water cut off suddenly. "Son, I'm in a hurry. Please."

"What the hell do you want!" His cheekruffs dripped on the floor, anger flared in the lynx's eyes.

"Zeke? You OK?" Aaron's quiet voice, from the bedroom. The doorknob rattled. "Fall in or something?"

The feline quivered nauseous at the thought of having been overheard talking to nothing.

"I'm OK, fox. Just a little woozy. All that cheap wine."

He heard Aaron giggle from beyond the door. "S'makin' me yiffy, too. Quit pawing off in there, Zeke!"

The old fox rolled his eyes. "My kit so cannot hold his liquor."

"I'll be out inna sec, Aaron. Just... go on with you."

Zeke thought he heard "pee shy" from beyond the door, turned back to the tod in the mirror. Hissed angrily, "You aren't real. This is all so crazy! Ockham. None of it's happening and I'm not going to..."

... black and red swirling the stink sulfuric acid from high school science class formless weightless sightless skin boiled off in vats of oil screaming steaming plummeting into lakes of lava and the smoke of their eternal torment riseth up forever before the face

the paw on his shoulder is skeletal

A huge, painful breath exploded into Zeke's chest. He was lying on the floor of the bathroom, icy cold and numb as if the blood had been cut off to an arm or leg, but so likewise across his whole body. Crushing agony receded from the region of his heart, while skull on white tile bloomed red, his head detonating into fireworks.

"Sorry, son. You wouldn't pay attention. I can't go there without scaring you babbling, and more than a few seconds here and your poor hypoxic brain tissues wouldn't be good for anything after.

"Zeke, look, about your father..."

"My father? You don't know him! What the fuck are you? And what has he got to do with anything?" The lynx was gasping still for breath, one paw by turn on breast and head, blue rimming the base of each claw which grasped the bathroom basin. Paleness washed over his face. The fright was channeling to anger, male and hot and reflexive and unerring.

And yet part of him reflected back on the tod's portentous words. If this isn't scared-babbling already, Zeke thought, I don't know how I can do worse.

The elder canid retorted: "I do know! At least a thing or two. And he's ours; he's one of us, your dad. I know what he did to you today, Zeke, and he's an intolerant fool. But-" The old tod's professorial demeanor softened, hid his fangs. "I'm not so perfect either. And your own story's the only thing that anyfur's got, in the end. Here. Even me, for all my false pride. And so I've got to stick to telling my own story if I ever want out.

"Just listen: I didn't do so good by my son when I married his step-mom. Love is a goodness, but your sheath isn't an angel. There is no guaranteed virtue in who it points you at - in the particular as well as the general - and I picked a beautiful vixen who was really a raving bitch inside. Now my son's going to pay for that sorry decision of mine for the rest of his life. And it's too late for me to do much about it.

"And Zeke? If you didn't know it, Aaron's having some trouble with things like that right now."

"Sir? What am I supposed to do about it? I - we - hardly know eachother, Aaron and me."

The fox grinned, solicitous. "I'm aware of that, young cat. Leave some of the details to me; it's my excuse for refrigerium - a pass on the weekends, subject to good behavior of course, if you get my meaning."

"I... I don't understand that. Where are...?"

The tod in the mirror shook his head, help up a smoking paw. "No, son. Not like that. And it won't get a final name until I've had this chance.

"Zeke, I want to come to an arrangement with you - uh, do a deal. Your dad -

"Son, I'm sorry, but I don't know any way short of him seeing what I look like now - really look like - face to face and muzzle to muzzle (and if he dies beshitten in his own pants you can ask yourself if maybe that was my fault anyway): Zeke, I don't see any chance of him changing his mind about you. Ever. About you and my offspring... What you furs did."

Zeke hung his head in great shame. He could feel the teeth of that grudging admission, carcharodont disapproval swimming silently below the surface of civility. To have their unfortunate intimate behaviors known to yet one more of the boyfurs' parents was just too much for the cat to bear.

And it was only too true, what Aaron's father actually meant. There was no way the feline's own dad was ever going to relent. He had thrown his favorite son out by the scruff that afternoon, disinherited and disowned him. Slapped the kit's face, rubbed his nose in it and called him a disgrace. Threatened Zeke with a double-barrelled disincentive to return again in the future. Suddenly, life had taken the most extreme practical turn for the young lynx. With his girlfriend gone, too, there was now even fewer options left. Namely, zero. Which remained still a problem to be solved before the dawn would arrive, but Zeke had first come to Aaron that night, dropped by unheralded to patch things up, clear off unfinished business. Soon the harried cat would take the next step required, which had never entirely left his furry head through talk and food and drink and denial.

"Here's the deal, Zeke - son. If you'll give up on your father, I'll be your dad from now on. I'm sorry about him, your tom, but I can't help until maybe someday he wants to be helped. Right now, at least I can do this little for you. And in return, I just want you to take care of my other son for me, for a short while as it seems."

"Sir?"

"In your wallet, in the pocket of your jeans hanging over the arm of the sofa, in the fold without the circular impression of that condom you carry" - the tod snrrked, breaking off. "You know, we didn't have those way-back. Blamed the mademoiselles from Armentierres for the funny rashes, we did, even when us dogfaces had seen nothing better then our buddies' tailsides in the shower and their muzzles in the bedroll after taps. But listen, Zeke: Look where you usually keep that emergency sawbuck, and you'll find my business card. (Yeah, even though that new bitch I married threw out everything in my desk which didn't have dollar signs printed on it just ten minutes after I had closed my eyes!) On the card there's a phone number in Switzerland, and another number that will see to it that you don't have to sling sushi all day to make it through college."

Aaron's dad looked wistful. "Another war, another time. Anyway, that's yours, kit. And if you can do good for my boy - my other boy - then I'll be even more grateful."

Zeke could hardly speak. "Thank you. I will. But... If you don't mind, I'll sweat it out with the teriyaki crowd until I get back in school. And maybe save - you know - that Swiss stuff... for Aaron."

The fox smiled. "Good boy. You're not only strong and self-reliant, you're honest. I knew you were. He'll be in good paws." There was a fading finality at that last, the inevitable clouding of departure.

The lynxteen nodded, looked up. "I'll try, sir." He sighed, despairing suddenly of success. A huge loneliness, as if at the beginnings of all things, had descended upon his shoulders. There had been so many losses that day that Zeke didn't know if he could stand another.

Not even of a dead fox who had offered to adopt him for a son.

When he looked up again, the old tod was gone.

"Bye," Zeke whispered. It actually hurt more than the rejection from his own father that very afternoon.

Then the elder fox stood beside him, on the cold tile floor of the tasteful, understated lavatory.

"Please give this to Aaron, Zachariah." And with that he leaned his grey-fringed muzzle to the lynx.

It was a kiss of the heart, of family. Intimate beyond telling, of that familiarity of one whose fluids made you, whose paws have touched you, whose smell and taste of sweat and tongue is to you as known as your own. A strong kiss, firm and kind and confident, comforting. Font of courage in the young boy's heart, and permissive promise forearming, foretaste of eventual yiff for the teen's. It communicated as a gift, infusing to the heart the embolism of that which is masculine with no trace of feminine in it at all. The kiss of kings; of lovers; of angels. It was a father's kiss, frightening and life-lusty and salty sweet, of tang forbidden in the mouth and yet craved as a mother's breast, so previously unknown to Zeke that tears dripped off his cheeks and pattered audibly to the tile.

The tod's eyes were wide and knowing, one brow raised. "I expect I'll have another one of those for you someday. Many years from now, though. But I do smell and taste on you such things as I suppose that I'll see you and Aaron together for a very long time. There's advantages to being where I am, even if some of us use it all for the wrong reasons.

"And son, one more thing...

"I know what's in your backpack. And I know where you intended sleeping tonight. And that you must not do. For all of my selfishness in following 'nature' when other things were more important - love - I've got a second chance. Follow through with your first plan, son, and you will not."

... black and red swirling sulfuric acid naked formless weightless sightless skin boiled off in vats of burning oil screaming screaming

screaming

screaming

screaming...

---

Zeke jerked the bathroom door open, stumbled into darkness. He was sick and gagging from the hellish stench.

Silhouetted black against the kindly light from out the bedroom door was the unclothed teenfox, angelic, a large shadowed parcel pendant from one paw. "Dude, I found these on the landing. They're yours, aren't they?"

The lynx nodded, paws on knees and tail against the wall, hoped he didn't look as awful in the dim as he felt. Almost slid to the floor in dizzy, sweaty weakness. "Yeah. Mine." Then the coughing was back.

"Zeke, why didn't you tell me? Your dad didn't just throw you out - he threw you out!" Regrettably, Aaron hadn't connected it before that the lynx had stilled lived at home. And from the fox's voice it was obvious that he could hardly imagine a father behaving so to his son.

"Well, I was going to, but..." A lie. Zeke wasn't scrupulous, failed to continue nonetheless. He felt still too upset to put a credible story together on the spot.

"'But -' I know what. You're staying here, cat. I've got this nice place and you're not sleeping on the street - not while I still have a pelt." Zeke opened his muzzle to say something (or to be sick again), but Aaron rode right over him: "And I don't care to hear the excuses, fur, so get your shut-up on, OK?" The fox dropped the backpack and gym bag at the foot of his bed, neatly made, which ended the argument like a knife.

It smelled deliciously and sensuously fragrant in the dark bedroom: theriatric, welcoming, cool. The soft memory of the bed comforter on which he'd once had a nap and a wonderful yiff almost brought a tear of bright new memory to Zeke's eye. "Thanks, fox." He gulped down against lonely feelings, the black outcast taste of bile.

Aaron supposed the lynx really was sick, softened up. Petted, fraternal soxed paw on sienna-spotted gold.

Strange thought, the fox noted: I don't have a brother.

"Why don't you lie down for a bit, fur. You don't look so good, you know. I've got the fire still going, and maybe a few things I need to deal with. So just slip into bed and sleep it off. I'll take the couch later.

"Oh, and Zeke?"

"Yeah?"

"Borrow some shorts from my dresser if you don't have any. Last time you were naked in my bed, things didn't end well."

The lynx looked down. He was nude to his paws.

---

Aaron composed himself quietly before the fireplace once again, tossed on a fresh and dry timber or two. Thought of Ben, a FurScout's careful directions, cautious techniques. The coals had been ending their lives too soon, and contrary to what he had said to Zeke, the teenfox knew he would still be up for a while.

New flame danced to a crackling music.

His expected evening of rest and relaxation had taken its contrite, though revelatory turn, an unexpected catharsis of outrage and grief. The bitter reconciliation, long needed and only half realized, then a cunning freak. Yet it all felt so much like a cry interrupted, the sort of disconnect that would carry over again and again into the sum of days until that debit of emotion was finally and fully paid. With interest - it didn't bear waiting too long; Aaron had the emotional intelligence to realize that. In the brief withdrawal of Zeke unto bathroom needs, the fox's loneliness had returned. While play and sharing had been fun between the furs that night, events had expanded to engulf them both, and by dilution denied the fox of anticipated release.

Aaron still needed to spend some sighing time alone, recapture the lost self, to rest and revisit all of the hurt and sorrow of the semester, the day-to-day procrastination of being that life had so far become. Perhaps then, more than ever. And add to that all the new issues, tears realized and unreal, admissions and things not yet revealed; everything wrapped up in that crazy quilt of the lynx's evening visit had made the weekend depression worse. Despite the serious drinking that the boyfurs had both gotten into, the muscles of Aaron's vulpine spine and tail were still fearsome and tight beneath his pelt. His loss of erstwhile privacy was regrettable too, broodsome, the self-empathic opportunity missed sure never to come again. It felt stolen from him, like a secret continence lost.

But there had been no choice, really, save to let the cat stay for the nonce, once the fox had found the lynx's gear ahint the door when he went for a peek at the falling snow. Thank goodness Zeke's stuff hadn't been swiped: for as nice as the inside of Aaron's apartment was, the neighborhood wasn't the greatest. Of course, just what his floormates would think of the sight of an unclothed fox gathering unexpected luggage from the shared stairwell landing, said vulpine knew not.

And Aaron was now the owner of a new problem or two, other strays that had arrived with the cat. There hadn't been time for the Dean's List fox to begin to question his own sexuality in light of their fateful yiff, as had the leisured lynx. Instead of normal fursonal growth, suppressed it had turned to a cancer within, a malignant mass of fears and uncertainties which kept the canid up late at study every night, worried Aaron sick over tests and exams, draining him of perspective and balance and management of his own precious time. The horrid thing inside his furry chest was painful to touch; it swelled and bled on occasion, those emotional outbursts growing more frequent as he missed the release of exercise at the gym, carings for himself in so many other ways. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd pawed himself to completion.

With Zeke around, there'd be even less chance for such. And for the tears the fox so desperately craved to recover. To be discovered masturbating in his loneliness would be one thing: to be caught crying, even worse.

---

Beyond Aaron's bedroom was a small closet of a space, a narrow room across the back of the apartment, wide with windows to capture the afternoon sun. The solarium would have been perfect for plants, recreational herbology, or more legitimate horticulture. Perhaps a second bedroom, informal. Or just a place for a warm nap of a lazy Saturday afternoon. In the cold of winter darkness, the space seemed extremely forbidding, paws imperiled here and there by piles of unknowable shapes stored unused and out of the way.

Zeke stood at the farthest corner, overlooking the alleyway below. He could see clearly the utility meters, garbage dumpsters, furs of various species clustered around a pimpcar, whoors and dealers and other streets and scenes in illicit transactions of twos and threes. Surely they couldn't see him, the dark room in which he brooded lighted only by reflections: moon above, the snow below. And his own, within.

The cat had been dumped by his girlfuriend for expressing the doubts of his questioning self. Had been disowned by his family for the unforgivable sin of being unlike them. And had just hallucinated a bizarre unreality under the effects of too much booze and too little grip on anything to ever anchor him in a world worth living. Despite the offer of lodgings - or perhaps hastened by it and the effects of dirt-scratch feline pride - Zeke knew the resolution he had laid out for himself was near.

Everything had pushed him beyond where he wanted to be by then, off the ledge of which precipice he had been testing with mental stones all day. At least the cat had spent a nice time that night, got to make things up with the fox. Aaron seemed to be the first real grown-up furiend the lynx had found, despite their once-yiffy misaventure; and there was something appropriate in ending things here, in this way, for Zeke.

He fumbled the .45 in his sweat-slick paw, caught it with the other. How he'd find the courage to use it when came the time, the lynxboy didn't know. But he was certain that without a family to pay for basic things, take care of him in other ways until he had the college degree in paw, that Zeke couldn't get by on tips and stolen sushi from work. He had no skills, no savings, nowhere else to turn. It wasn't silly self-pity, he no angsting adolescent: this was reality. He just couldn't pull himself up with only what he had left, a little wounded pride and a few second-paw shirts in a backpack, even a furiend who offered him a bed for the night.

So the drunken vision in the mirror had promised Zeke money for college? Predictable, his fear-sober cynicism decreed. It was so the thing he needed most, a way to keep the other sort of wolves from the door until he was ready to face the world on its own cruel terms. But of course that's just what an alcoholic hallucination would tempt him with! And the name trick, Zachariah, that was just too trite. But what did the damned fox in the mirror say? Could Zeke pad quietly into the living room, fish in his bluejeans pocket for the wallet, pull out that mystical promised Golden Ticket? Hollow laugh! Just trying - the attempt itself - would be the most self-demeaning thing that the cat had ever done.

His promise didn't scruple. There are no magics, no miracles. Furiends' dead dads don't appear in bathroom mirrors or on the castle parapet. The lynx knew that: of a middle class family that strove for everything they got, cheated when they could. Donated when they had to.

TANSTAAFL, as Heinlein would say: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Sure, Aaron wanted Zeke to stay there. With him.

With him? No. In the fox's apartment, that's all. They weren't even friends at best, really - just that damned yiff which it all kept coming back to, that was the only thing really had between them. It would feel so hollow, living in proximity, no further ever of a relationship to justify the word 'close'. Purposeless, lacking direction. The lynx realized now that he loved Aaron, and that the very realization had been growing inside him since their one fey day of wrestling and restive intromission. But he knew as well that love isn't enough, not even by far. Jamie had proved so, the faithless bitch.

It all hurt.

It hurt so much.

Everything was going against Zeke, as everything always seemed to. Yet calm, deferring. That was the way of the world, he thought with acceptance. That was the nature of the beasts. And you can't go against nature, now can you?

He opened the window, stuck head and shoulders through. Better. The outdoor air was bracing, helped clear the catboy's head. And the more Zeke swam in it, the cooler and more dispassionate his reason, the conclusion pointed only to two things. That there really was no way out but this all along: perhaps his whole life had been destined to bring him to this place and time. And that a bitter and withering loneliness pointed the way like a skeletal paw.

There seemed not to be another fur left on the planet when Zeke placed the muzzle of the pistol into his own.

---

"Shit!" Aaron, strung tight as a violin by the perpetual canon of a semester of study, snapped loudly, fairly levitated as octave from the floor when the gun went off. "Zeke? Are you OK?" Even after living there for months, the fox couldn't get used to that neighborhood. There was a frantic fleeing squeal of tires from the alley behind.

"Umm, yeah. Somefur got capped, I think. Deal gone bad." The trembling lynx slammed the window on his lie, bolted it tight. Rich blonde headfur white with snowfall, he shivered in his pelt. The moon was so bright that he actually saw the trash dumpster dimple when the dropped weapon discharged in its belly. Zeke was still shaking too badly to go downstairs after it. His ears rang like a klaxxon.

Had that been the old tod standing down there in the snow?

"Well, never mind then. We're safe up here." Aaron hoped it was so, anyway. Planned to get an alarm for the place as soon as he could - like maybe tomorrow! "Just go back to sleep, kitty."

But Zeke appeared in the archway behind the fox. Who didn't turn, being not only naked where he sat on the hearthrug with his back to the cat, but out of his sheath with tension and late phantasy, though now flaccid for the startlement. Before the fox could object, wipe moist paw on his bare leg, the lynxboy padded quietly over, knelt behind him. Put an arm around the vulpine's neck, kissed his headfur gently. "Thank you for letting me stay here, Aaron."

"Uhh, no prob, dude. Just go back to bed and we'll work it all out in the morning." Aaron shivered, grew nervous, so close to being exposed in erstwhile wank, so aroused and being touched - and kissed - so intimately by another male.

But the willful feline had ideas of his own. "I learned something tonight, Aaron." He could tell the fox had been busy; he could whiff the pree. Knowing the source of his furiend's fidgeting dismay almost made the lynx laugh.

"What?" His ebbing erection frustrated the red canid, made him hoarse and shrill.

"This." Zeke sat suddenly behind Aaron on the floor, straddling the fox's hindquarters, the fluffy vulpine tail. The cat's footpaws in fuzzy grey hunting socks framed the fox's bare ones, his torso close behind the otherfur's back. The lynx got one paw on Aaron's tummy, the other arm around his chest.

"I learned that nature isn't an angel, fox. And there's no virtue in who your preferences and orientation steers you to. Or your sheath. No point in congratulating yourself if you turn out to like somefur of a different gender - it's no achievement of yours, one way or the other. And no reason not to love, if you don't."

"Zeke?"

"And this: If you want to love someone, what sex they are doesn't matter, because nature might be important, but nature isn't love.

"Zeke?"

"Aaron, if someone loves me, even my own orientation doesn't matter, and it's selfish of me to refuse - I didn't know that before. And if you're supposed to love someone, but you don't, gender and orientation aren't any an excuse at all."

"Wow..." Aaron had found himself holding onto Zeke's arms, first tightly in private defense of own exposed sheath from accidental yiffy reveal, then snugly and warmly as the new realization spread over his heart and fur. Not only was their love before OK, but if love itself is a good, then their love was necessary. He shivered, wetting the lynxboy's paws with tears as it all came together in his head. Which warm cat huggled him snugly from behind, rocking gently.

The fox relaxed into it, mrrred softly while he was petted and stroked. "I have thought about this every day," he whispered, between sobs. "I dreamed about even being able to feel loved like this again."

Zeke kissed his ears. "Me, too. I just - I couldn't get through to it. It took some help."

"I'm glad we talked about it, cat. I know it helped me out. Even if... even if I hit you. I'm really, really sorry about that."

"Shh, fur. No more now." Zeke smiled, knew the secret visit from his new dad would remain a mystery to Aaron forever. "That stuff didn't matter anyway. Not tonight. Not last time, either." He turned the smaller fox sideways (who covered bare sheath with both paws), half-facing him, and said, "Aaron, this... the bad things between us aren't ever going to go away. Not unless we become furiends like we were meant to."

"Meant to? What are you talking about?"

Zeke shook his head. "I don't know just what I'm talking about. But we have to. To be furiends. I think that's what's supposed to happen."

Aaron nodded, lifted Zeke's furry leg to himself, rested soft vulpine chin on the spotted yellow knee. It was then he noticed that the lynx hadn't yet found something to wear. And let paw fall from his own modesty, massaged the cat's thigh with firm trust and moist pads.

The lynx purred, sniffied, snuggled the smaller foxboy. "You feel really tense and tight. Was school that bad?"

"Awful. I so screwed myself by signing up for too much, the course load. Exams were a nightmare. And I've been keeping all that... other stuff trapped inside."

Zeke felt rather grateful that he had suspended his own academic work that semester, involuntary or not.

"And I think I rate my school abilities higher than they really are. It's been a harrowing time, having to work so hard. And nearly failing, too." The academic grades hadn't been all that close a thing. But the overachieving teen vulpine always saw it dramatically so.

Zeke held the fox away, like a favorite plush unpleasingly stiff. "I'll rub your back. Think that'll help?"

The fox nodded, "OK." Looked about, here and there.

"On the hearthrug, on your belly. Lemme start with your shoulders, where it seems to be worst."

Aaron stretched out, Zeke's gaze on his trim bottom as warming as the fire - he covered with tense yet fluffy tail. The lynx began at the knotted vulpine neck, causing the fox to yip in pain, bite the carpet below for relief. The cat's huge paws were an irresistible force on the unyielding muscles of Aaron's compact body, like truth and admission to their most sordid of secrets. The fox wept anew as the emotional layers embedding subcutaneous fear were skinned away as with a knife.

Zeke dripped tears with him, not knowing quite why. To the jockboy lynx, sympathy was a new and strange thing.

He supposed he was thinking of that fundamentalist feline father, how he'd never see him again. The rest of his birth family. How maybe Zeke had accepted an adoption - his own - and the fox (unknowingly) was now his incestuous brother. But it felt so much to the lynx like Aaron really was like a brother. Or maybe something even more. And it didn't feel like incest at all.

Aaron murred deeply, exhausted beyond the will to moderate himself, when Zeke had finished with the stress of the canine spine. He lay now spread over the carpet in furry-red vulpine tatters, nerveless with laxity and the contentment of touch. The lynx didn't pause at shame; his paws on the fox's tight cherry rump were purposeful and implacable, overwhelming, and the fox shivered as the knots there were crushed to psychic syrup in his blood.

Short vulpine legs were massaged in tandem, the intimate places between treated to casual caress. And the long and fluffy tail worshipped as ever it must be. Zeke was surprised how much he remembered of his preempted education, techniques of sports medicine and knowledge of physiology recalled by paws and eyes as he worked Aaron over. But this time it was all different.

It felt so good to be doing this, healing the fox so.

So excellent to touch, to connect between them.

To connect Aaron to what Zeke had found, taught to him that night by a tod in the mirror between worlds.

The lynx put everything he had into each stroke, each biting squeeze of claws on connective tissues which made the fox shudder and moan with endorphines of delight. The sweet and soft vulpine footpaws were lavished with loving attention, nurturing licks to pads and between toes. Zeke loved his own grooming, shared himself out like the wine in the intimate gift of love.

He lifted the smaller fur, turning him bodily over on the hearthrug. Only to find that Aaron was erect. The slender foxy penis, shining in the glow of new fire, drizzled winter precome on the vulpine's bare white belly, into the pooling navel.

"I'm almost embarrassed," the yiffy fur whispered, paw going to shield his pudenda from view. "It just felt so good and all. I'm sorry, I should have said something before you flipped me." He milked at his exposed length weakly, trying to get it to succumb to reason and good sense and modesty.

Zeke smiled. "Aaron, it's beautiful, OK? I mean, that you can have that - have the feeling." From me, he added, heard only by angels.

"But... I'm afraid of what went between us before. And I do still feel so ashamed."

"Well, gimme your wrist and you'll see that I'm not ashamed." Here he lifted Aaron's fist to his own lynxness, quite large and tumescent and stiff, buried in the feline fur of his tummy. "I'm not ashamed of what we're doing now. Not anymore.

"Even if yer not a girl."

He felt the fox's pads tremble, one vulpine paw explore, with tremulous curiosity and halting intention, around the girth of his own intimate member.

"Aaron, I know we're both guys and all, but just being here, being with you and touching your fur and feeling the hardness of your... body... under it... This is better than anything."

The fox nodded, sighed as if to himself. Opened eyes, blind and bleary in the sudden light of the gentle fire. He sought truth, heart open and dilated as pupils in the dark. Found a furry catface, glowing green eyes ready to give.

"Zeke... will you be my furiend?"

The smiling feline sniffled, wiped a tear. "I think I'll always be your furiend, Aaron. And like, it's as if it's not just up to me, either." Leaning down, he rubbed muzzles side by side with the fox. Whose cheeks, he noted, were equally not dry.

The massage continued. Aaron felt every bit of pain and the memory thereof squeezed from muscles like clots of psychic goo. He could feel the lynx moving above him, crouching this way and that, smell the cat's body, his physical efforts as Zeke worked, the masculine scent from between furry thighs when that aroused feline straddled a fox under the arms. The soft warm fur and strong male touch was like floating on clouds, leaving behind one twisted and crippled self to find another free and light and careless. The lynxboy's weight on the fox's groin as Aaron's chest was cracked free of the cast of worry caused him to moan loudly, yiff slightly upwards against the rolfing cat's pure furry taint.

Zeke continued, pressing here and there with paws, and bearing down on Aaron's erection with the moist underneath of his groin, until the fox could hardly stand it. His own feline penis was leaking out bright threads of presemen which twingled in the glow from the fireplace like whiskers on his short muzzle. Prostatic wetness smeared over the cat's pads as the lynx rubbed the pleasurable vulpine belly below him into a helpless visceral pudding.

By the time Zeke had reached ankles, venerated the sensitive tail again, Aaron was as relaxed as ever he had been in his entire life. The fox's footpaws were lifted, felt something soft and warm envelope them.

The lynx grinned, gazing down at helpless prey. His own grey hunting socks, though not the freshest of things by that time of evening, insulated the fox's toasty toes. Zeke nuzzled, massaged the pads through the fuzzy fabric, heard the soft vulpine mrrr.

He crouched low, slipped arms under raised canid thighs, around the furry behind. Aaron's penis was long and slender, purpley-red and bobbing gently in that beautiful throbbing excitation, parasympathetic defense of the final relaxed self. Zeke examined its wonderful length, the arousing curves and flares, the erotic ridges of that turgid vulpine member. It was another first for him, too, a paw upon his imagination as he explored. For although the boys had shared themselves one troubling afternoon, the lynx had never seen the fox's erect maleness exposed.

It was not something that jockplay in steamy high school showers had prepared him for.

"Your knot is awesome, fur!"

Aaron groaned, raised his head. "Am I that far gone? I didn't mean it. Really, I didn't."

Zeke smirked, let his tongue out. It circled the turgid base of the fox's swollen yiffer.

Aaron gasped and his furry asscheeks flexed in the cat's paws when the lynxboy took him to the sheath. The feline's short muzzle was hot and wet around him, the surface of the talented tongue rough and slickly rasping. Aaron cried out, holding Zeke's ears, thrust spastically from the groin.

The cat sucked his first foxcock - his first maleness - savoring its taste and texture, the sweet-slimy ooze from its twitching tip. Small whimpers and trembling yips issued joy from canid lips, and Zeke could feel himself stiffen further in response. When the foxy length slid down his eager throat, the lynx nearly climaxed on the carpet.

"Zeke! Gawd! Mate me! Please! Do it!"

"Aww, Aaron, I just want to get you off. It's sorta fun to see you yiffing like this." He giggled, surprised at the incongruity, his own masculinity unthreatened by the deep and oral act.

"Please, Zeke. Under my tail. I've got to have it!"

The cat rubbed the straightfox's soft belly, concerned. "Are you OK, buddy? What's up with that?"

"Zeke... I - I don't understand, but I need it! Buttyiff me! Please!" The desperation in the canid's voice was intense.

The lynx sat back on haunches, penis slick with pree, the fur on his scrotum matted and moist. "Aaron, I don't think I can. I'm kinda big and all." The wrist-like thickness of his feline phallus was rigid, and corded visibly along its awesome length.

The fox licked his muzzle, thrashed in the struggle, the life and death choice between. "I have to have it, Zeke! I have to!! I did you that way last time. And now we have to make it right."

"But, buddy..."

"I've known it for a while, fur. I've got to pay it back."

"No, Aaron! You don't owe me this!"

"Zeke, I owe me this. Please help. Yiff me. Pay it back with me."

The lynx nodded, scooted close, raised the fox's fuzzy buttocks onto his own spotted, beefy thighs. The cat's prick between was straining and ready, twitching eagerly in fluidic pulse.

He cast about for lube. One of the oily tins of raclette, melted gourmet cheese nibbled and savored in their cautious quest for coition of another kind, was close to paw on the hearth. Now it would ease the way again. The warm grease pooling in the pan was a nut-raising experience as Zeke masturbated it onto his swollen cock. He bit his lip with fangs, fighting to hold off, fisted himself to Aaron's opening, leaned in close.

And brought his golden freckled muzzle next to the red canid's, licked earfur. "You've shared my heart with me," he whispered. "I'll give you anything you want."

Aaron sobbed with the force of incomprehensible need, the flame unquenchable in his howling foxness and testicles, the hidden prostate between. "Yiff me hard, then, please. Make it hurt. I've caused you so much pain, and that's all I've been thinking about for months." He sobbed, caught the cat's gaze. "Slam me, Zeke! Root it! I've got to pay this out!"

The cat knew he was too thick. Knew it would hurt, shook his head. Feline penile spines are not easily accommodated even by the initiate. "No, Aaron, I want this to be special. I want this to be something between us, fur. I don't want to hur-"

Of the look in the fox's eyes, the disappointment was the worst. Not being understood, being doubted nonetheless; it didn't even compare.

A soulless betrayal.

Emptiness would have been easier for the lynx to bear. Maybe even hate.

Zeke steeled himself, heart and hard-on adamant. If that's what the fox wanted, that's what his tailhole would get. "I won't pay you back. But let's pay it forward. Together."

Aaron's tongue was soft on Zeke's salty cheek. "Thank you," he whispered. His heart felt finally home.

Their eyes were locked tight as Zeke took Aaron. And the fox's world exploded into writhing shards of agony.

Zeke held the paralyzed, twisted fox, looked deeply into his tortured soul. Saw the father's guilt in wide fearful eyes, the limp son's unmoving body arched against the cat's own to pay a forfeit. Zeke kissed Aaron's slack unbreathing muzzle, the trembling tongue hanging into furry vulpine ear. He felt his furiend shivering beneath him struggle with the pain, ride the psychic lightning streaming from the lynx's embedded prick, burst asunder in glorious waves of hypererotic energy. The tight canid tailhole squeezed bliss onto the cat's greasy penis, and he felt himself flowing copiously in electrolytic spurts of precome, conducting into the slick contact of intimate foxy pleasure. But mostly he watched his furiend take him, accept him, giving all to give himself so to whatever debt they satisfied.

And Zeke suddenly knew he wasn't doing this for Dad's money.

And he wasn't doing it for a cum.

That love isn't a mystical thing. Or like a family. Or a magical feeling either.

Love was under him, in his arms, its tail between his knees and legs, around his length and beneath his fuzzy sac. His own stong paw, squishing, full of melted dairy goodness, masturbated the absent fox's firm and burning member - and that was love, too. Zeke was alone, shameless in the petit privacy, humping forcefully, cast himself back whole into those haunting twin mirrors of rabid vulpine love.

Aaron's hips began to hunch, and he cried out in a great sob of lust. The slender foxy penis throbbed, writhed in Zeke's fisted paw as they fucked, began to spooge like a yiffy firehose. It covered their faces and muzzles like whipped cream on a phallic sundae. The lynx grimaced while spasms of the vulpine prostate gripped and caressed his hilted cock, Aaron's eyes touched his very soul. With a roar and a groan he showed fangs in the firelight, overflowing the fox's tailhole with steaming feline cum.

---

Zeke carried Aaron to bed, where they lay gently together, learning eachother's muzzles from the inside. He delivered the fox their father's present, tongue slick with lapped semen from their fur, quick and heavy and strong and sweet with hormones and shared needs. They had love again - not made love: love is not made on this side of the mirror, darkly. Only shared, like their hearts, like the thick and creamy fluids that make each male who they are, all who through posterity each would ever become.

And as the fox whistled softly, cradled, his muzzle nuzzling the breast of Sleep, the lynx found his way back to the fireplace. It was dead, as so many other things in his young life, for good or for ill. He hesitated when he found his jeans. The leather wallet was strangely warm in paws. But he knew what he had to do, which way faith's thorny path led.

There wasn't much left in the billfold: driver's license, I.D. He took those, left the rubber. Grinned, figured he'd not be in need of contraception for the foreseeable future. No cash - he'd used the hidden twenty on the bottle of wine, the holiday gift for Aaron. Zeke had planned on spending the night on a bed of stone, the coroner's marble slab, room tariff paid in .45 caliber, no change expected. There wasn't anything left that he couldn't take with him.

It had all worked out so different, he thought. And the price he was to pay now, looking out for the sweet foxlove snoozing just beyond the archway, would be a joy in the sinless remission.

He tiptoed past the sleeping canid, whose paws churned with his dreaming, who tented the covers with perpetual erotic indulgence. The solarium window sash squealed as Zeke lifted. And his wallet, unopened, joined the unneeded pistol, fate chosen against for causes of greater things, in the trashbin at the foot of the stairs.