Gender Issues

Story by Arlen Blacktiger on SoFurry

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Sex and gender aren't the same thing. One refers to your bodily organs, the other to your identity. Jack struggles with both.


Jack stood in front of the mirror and wiped away the steam to get a look at himself, just as he'd done every morning since he was 12. Beneath the brown fur was a small housecat cat, unremarkable at first glance except for his diminutive size. Born two months premature, he'd never managed to grow taller than five foot tall, and weighed a buck-thirty on a good day. Still, he figured, his upper body looked okay - A little defined but not really muscular per se, with slender shoulders and fur that always looked shiny and well-cared-for even when it wasn't. Well, except for his paws, where grease and oil from his job had created what were effectively permanent dye-jobs.

Trailing his eyes downward, he could feel the trepidation growing as it always did. Even after eighteen years, he still hadn't come completely to terms with his body. Sure, his belly was flat as a washboard, above slightly flared hips that weren't quite big enough to hold his size 28 pants up on their own.

It's what was below that always left the housecat feeling vaguely sick to his stomach, whenever he looked at or so much as thought about it. No matter what the doctors said, no matter what his therapist convinced him to think of or try, it just never felt right. With a sigh, Jack reached over and flipped off the bathroom light. Better to dry off in the dark, he thought to himself as he ran the towel over his fur and reached for the drier, than think on what could have been and never would be.

It didn't help that he'd woken up feeling strange that day; a bit of a headache, and more anxious than usual. Jack was just glad his folks mostly left him alone during the day, or else he felt he might have snapped at them. Which would inevitably have led to feeling guilty later.

A ringing doorbell echoed dimly through the still-steamy bathroom, and Jack jumped, fumbling the fur drier as his stomach flip-flopped again. It was getting worse all the time, and just adding to his confusion, much to his annoyance. Why did he have to be attracted to his very male besty? A shiver of arousal between his legs made the cat cringe and wriggle, hugging his arms around himself as the blower dried fur on his flank.

"'Ey, candyass!" his best friend yelled from downstairs. "Git your nonexistent ass moving, man! We're gonna be late!"

"Yeah!" Jack shouted back, pushing down the wave of heat that rose to his the tips of his still-soggy ears. "I'm coming!"

"God! Cumming again?! Stop whacking it when you're getting ready for work! I'm gonna have to get you a girlfriend just so we're not late as much!" The big wolf was joking loudly, as was his habit, and it was so normal Jack almost felt all right.

The cat winced inside. If only.

Ten seconds after he'd gotten his clothes on, Jack remembered in a panic about the deodorant, and ran back into his bathroom. Spraying on a thick layer of Axe would keep everyone's snouts from picking up what he didn't want them to know.

"Git oudda the way you flower-scented pussy!" Butch growled, playfully, putting his six foot and two hundred forty pound lupine bulk behind the greasy arm that shoved the much slighter feline mechanic away from the engine block they were working on. Laughing, the affectionately titled 'Little Jack' shoved him back. At a foot shorter than Butch and about a hundred pounds lighter, all the skinny brown housecat could do was leave a smudge of engine grease on the big lug's already-filthy coveralls, failing to budge him as the lupe stuffed his arm back down into the recalcitrant pile of machinery.

What with Butch being a former high school football linebacker, one year after graduation, and Jack looking like he'd fit in fine with the cheerleading line if he'd just wear a stuffed bra, the dynamic duo were a clear mismatch. Not that it had ever stopped the two of them. Ever. Not since they'd met in elementary school, back before the size difference had become obvious. Nevertheless, every jab and jibe from 'Big' Butch was answered in kind by skinny little Jack.

Such horsing around wasn't rare at Bob's Engine Shop, a fact most customers either never saw or regarded with a sense of amusement. With so many younger mechanics working there, most saw it as inevitable. Furs were going to mess around, especially furs just out of high school.

Sadly, Bob tended to get pretty grouchy about it. When the big bovine waddled his muscular bulk out of the upstairs office to yell down through the gantries, even Butch winced.

"HOY! Big'n'Little! You fuckin' faggots get back t'work and stop humpin' under the hoods, y'hear?"

The tall, muscular wolf rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue out at Jack, safe in the knowledge their boss would never see it, what with a raised hood in the way. Jack sighed, instead of matching his companion's easy-going faces. The jab hit closer to home there, in the tiny brown cat. Wordlessly, he moved back in to help out under the hood, as they went through the complicated work of fixing an engine that should have been taken out behind the shed and shot as a mercy years ago.

"Goddamnit, I fucking hate him," Jack groused, his already-soft voice lowered to near a whisper, as he grunted and tugged on a part that didn't want to come loose, frozen in place thanks to the dumbshit owner having not changed his oil in a year. Bracing himself, the feline grit his teeth and pulled with all his strength on a piece that should have come loose already, given they'd already unscrewed the bolt. "Sonofabitch!"

"Hey, give the guy a break. The way he calls us faggots all the time, I bet he just...Y'know...Is one himself, maybe. You know? Like, they say all homophobes are fags. Gotta be true, right?"

Butch reached past him without bothering to ask, gripping the part and yanking hard, once, corded muscle standing out as the piece came loose with a crunch of dried-up old motor grease. Jack resisted the urge to sniff at the smelly, musty wolf's chest, and only resisted turning ten shades of scarlet at the closeness by using years of repression and self-imposed shame to his advantage.

A vague tingle from between his legs as Butch patted his shoulder made the cat want to grunt, spit, and be vulgar, just to push off the mental weight that came with such a title. Or curl up in a ball and hide. Maybe run away screaming, he thought to himself.

Still, they made it work. Butch grinned and gave him a meaty thumbs-up, while holding the tiny part up triumphantly.

"Okay, got it. Thanks for the help, dude, couldn't get all this shit done without you."

"Yeah," Jack muttered, but managed a smile, before zipping nimbly to the engine's other side, grabbing onto a loose wrench that had been about to fall. "You couldn't keep your ass screwed on without me."

Butch smirked, not bothering to speak the innuendo. Jack turned red. From upstairs, their boss cut the silence by bellowing.

"Lunchtime! Git outta here b'fore the union comes and hangs me out t'dry you varmints!"

Butch watched his fellow mechanic work, from his incognito spot ensconced in the business office. Their boss was too cheap to pay for a real data entry guy, so the big wolf had to take over when Bob bitched his way home for the day. It wasn't all bad, though. He got to watch the skinny little cat in the oversized coveralls work his way around, grunting and heaving as he moved things, his hips always cocked to one side or the other, tail whipping about in a way that was always fun to watch.

Jack had always been restrained and awkward, but that tail of his never stopped showing what he was really feeling unless he consciously controlled it. Getting to watch it move while the housecat didn't know anyone was looking was always a pleasure. Right then, it was whishing back and forth in a mix of nervous excitement, whose source Butch wasn't sure of.

For years, he'd wondered what that long, sleek tail would look like if he told the cat how he really felt. Not that Jack would be surprised about Butch liking males, of course; they were best friends and shared almost everything. Almost. More that Jack was the type to clam up and turn red as a beet if anyone ever even hinted at hitting on him. So the fact that his best friend was bisexual always seemed to get a rise out of the cat, who would flush red yet not really stop his big, loud, boastful lupe of a friend from blabbering on about his new conquests.

Leaning back from the glowing computer screen, Butch looked away from the object of so many years of fantasy, and let his eyes trail over to the window. Outside, night had fallen, and the town was mostly dark except for distant twinkling lights of hidden suburbia. It was a time of night he always liked; quiet enough to get work done, and the boss had almost always gone home by then. On the downside, it could get damn boring on the rare days when he and Jack weren't on the schedule together.

Luckily, tonight wasn't one of those nights. Likely as not, they'd finish up the remaining work in time to clock out, then sit around at the auto-shop bullshitting and farting around until long into the night. Reaching over, Butch flicked the switch that would change their big neon sign from reading "Ready to Lube Ya Up!" to "See You Tomorrow!"

When he glanced back down through the office windows and out onto the floor, that inconsequential plan evaporated. Jack had climbed up onto the bumper of that big bastard of a rustbucket truck, and bent over at the waist to rummage around its innards. Which had the side effect of putting the nicest boy-ass on display that Buck had seen, even among the running backs and kickers of the high school football squad. One of the coverall snaps was even undone.

And that tail! It was pulled to one side and draped, like a female cat in heat. Buck felt his cock swelling in its sheath just looking at that luscious view, and he reached down, surreptitiously squeezing his bulge with a rumble of pleasure, before resigning himself to a lifetime of just looking.

He wasn't really sure what finally motivated him to take the initiative after all those years of holding back, but he got up with the beginnings of a plan.

Jack was elbow-deep in the engine when he heard Butch coming down from the office. Those metal stairs always creaked just so under the bulky wolf's mass, and Jack normally would have pulled out of the engine just to see what his friend was up to. However, given it was getting late and they were both needing to clock out, he wanted to get that one last part pulled. Grunting, heaving with his small but toned muscles, he bit his lip and let his tail lash to the side again as he struggled in vain to get the gunk-frozen part free.

"Here, little buddy, let me," the big ex-jock rumbled in his baritone way. Jack couldn't help a bit of a shiver, which he hoped the wolf would just take as being slightly cold, which the skinny cat often was.

What he wasn't quite prepared for was Butch stepping up behind him, so close he could smell the wolf's potent male scent and feel the hard-muscled chest against his back, while putting an arm around the cat's shoulder to help him grip.

"You just gotta get a better grip, like that." The wolf had his whole paw cupped, and closed the cat's fingers around the bit of metal for him. Then, with a jerk, the two paws had that chunk of gunk-covered metal pulled free.

The cat's fur had fluffed out, and when Butch's breath ruffled the fur on the back of his neck, Jack felt his chest tighten up like a vice. His crotch seemed to be doing the same, and the cat fought down a sense of panic; this wasn't his normal reaction. He and Butch had play-wrestled a hundred times before, and never once had he gotten so twitterpated about it.

Then the unthinkable happened. Butch grinned his trademark shit-eating grin, deftly unsnapped the one remaining snap on Jack's coveralls, and yanked.

It was a pants-ing. The most juvenile of tricks, that Jack had always managed to evade somehow. But now, his slim hips betrayed him, and thunder exploded in his ears at the sudden terror of knowing that his yanked-down jumpsuit had taken his shorts and underpants right with it.

A rattle of falling denim and the thunder of his terrified heart were the only sounds for what felt like forever, as shock filled the air. Heart hammering a thousand miles a second, Jack buried his face in his paws, and prepared for the yelling he knew was coming. After twelve years of friendship, it was all about to come crumbling down.

"Holy fuck," Butch said, staring at what he saw between his friends legs. "You're...You're a girl?!"

Jack was about to respond, through the growing urge to sob in terror, or vomit all over the messy engine, when paws gently but firmly grabbed his hips. Sucking in a breath of shock, the cat twisted his head and looked back just in time for Butch to duck down too low for him to properly see. Then, the big wolf's paws were moving, spreading Jack's thighs. Warm air blew across his suddenly, confusingly damp feminine lips.

"Twelve years, and I never...Why would you hide it, Jack? Or...Or are you really Jackie or Jacquelyn or...?"

"I...N-no it's j-just Jack...I'm not a different person and I haven't been lying to you I j-just..." the words spilled out in a typhoon of fear, awkwardness, a network of half-lies and part-truths collapsing all around him. "I w-w-was born i-i-i-intersex..."

"Intersex, huh?" Butch had picked up on the nerves, but somehow was smiling for the moment Jack could see his face before it disappeared down again. "Well that's cool, I'm bi."

"I-it's n-no-not that simpl...what?"

Then Jack just groaned, as a long, wet tongue slapped up against his nether lips, sending an explosion of wet, strange sensation curling up his spine that had his toes curling up and his chest coming down until it rested on the engine block.

Butch slurped and lapped with enthusiastic, practiced moves of his long lupine tongue. At long last, he had his best friend right where he wanted him...Her? Hir? The wolf wasn't sure, but didn't really care at that moment either. What he had here was good, and he wasn't about to let the momentum of this little encounter recede to where he knew Jack might suddenly withdraw from it.

Overwhelmed by sensation, the cat lay flat against the engine block, paws wrapped around the greasy mess haphazardly as his mind kept trying to reconcile what was happening, only to be derailed by the longed-after forbidden sensations rolling upward from his tingling pussy. It felt amazing, fascinating, yet so very wrong, to be touched, licked, tasted, slurped, gently penetrated with the tip of a wet and dexterous muscle. His cheeks were spread by strong, dirty male paws, and it felt so right and wrong all at once that the little cat couldn't put enough thoughts together to take action in making it stop.

One part of him cried out in angry embarrassment for his masculinity, as those big calloused paws spread his cheeks so the wolf could slurp him from clit to taint. Another part of him begged for more, for something stiffer, harder, longer, and infinitely more satisfying.

When a thumb pressed gently against his puckered pink tail star, the cat yelped, and almost banged his head on the truck's raised hood as he jerked up from the engine block. Another wet slurp against his dampening nethers and circling stroke of that thumb had him laying back down though, eyes rolling shut as his toes wriggled into a curl in his shoes.

"M... Muh.. B-butch..."

"Hmrfl," the wolf responded, too busy using his tongue and lips for something far more delicious than conversation.

"B-butch.. I think I'm g-gonna...Huhhh..."

The wolf chuckled and slurped against his clit, and Jack let out a yelp as his first-ever orgasm exploded like a fire under his tail. It felt like his gut, his face, his legs, were all wracked with pleasure, as that sloppy wolf tongue met with a deluge of girlcum, leaving Jack yowling like a well-fucked feral female, throwing his head back to call out his pleasure to the steel roof above his head.

Since he was twelve, Jack had felt the same urges every other male of his age did - and he did think of himself as male, deep down. He'd wanted to wrap his paw around his hard cock and stroke out the loads of cum every boy wanted to feel shooting out of their dangling balls. The fact he had neither piece of equipment had left him feeling a strange void, a missing-ness that had kept him from ever exploring his girl-like parts.

His genitals were mostly female, biologically. One testicle that was deeply imbedded in his body, and one ovary the doctors had said would never function. Thanks to the subtle tricks of genetics, though, he had a full vagina and uterus instead of a penis. Emotionally, he thought of himself as male. Now, the complication of getting his pussy eaten out, skillfully, to a toe-tingling lung-emptying orgasm had been thrown into the mixed-up mess of his identity.

By the time his reeling mind was anywhere near back in control, Jack realized he'd been gently pulled down off that messy engine block, and laid out on a thick floor pad. Butch's paws were undoing his shirt, pulling it off over his head, so the wolf could lean down and examine his flat, masculine chest.

Now naked, the brown cat's fur fluffed up, and he closed his eyes, looking away in embarrassment as his paws fiddled and fluttered like lost birds trying to figure out what to do. His eyes flicked open again, when Butch's lips landed on his own, and an explosion of flavor and wetness filled Jack's muzzle as a tongue tasting strangely salty slid into his maw.

Swallowing hard, he felt the dog's saliva sliding down his throat, and couldn't help but feel a great, overwhelming thrill rolling through his body. Jack wrapped his arms as far around the much bigger dog's sides as he could, digging his claws in on reflex as he mewled and moaned into the powerful kiss.

Something hot and wet bounced against his thigh twice before Jack registered what it was. The wolf's cock was big, a lot bigger than Jack had ever guessed, its dripping tip reaching near his navel even as he felt a pair of big lupine balls pressed to the sensitive skin of his still-tingling lips. The cat struggled against his larger friend's kiss and heavy body for a moment, panic tingling up his spine just as orgasm had a scant minute before.

Sensing something was wrong, Butch stopped, letting their lips part as he pushed against the ground to look down at Jack. His smile was bright, wet from their shared spit, and his eyes glimmering with happiness that Jack felt he could almost sink into.

"Want me to slow down, buddy?" he husked out.

Jack stared up at him in disbelief, his voice slipping out squeaky and choked.

"H-how can you b-be okay with this?"

Butch tilted his head, and grinned.

"'Course I'm okay with it. You're my best friend, and turn out to be a cute girl too. What could be wrong with it?"

Jack was too taken aback to respond. Here he was, naked as the day he was born, staring up into the eyes of his best friend, who had now seen the body Jack had always considered defective, and there was none of the judgment or betrayal he'd expected to see.

"A friend I'm gonna fuck now, if that's okay," the wolf growled out with a grin. Jack just stared at him, fighting a war inside about what to do. About his very identity. With tears in his eyes, Jack swallowed, then swallowed again, against choking sobs that were trying to wiggle their way free.

Throwing away almost nineteen years of fear and revulsion wasn't easy...But tossing caution to the wind was. Jack's paws grabbed Butch's shirt and pulled him down, mashing his lips hard against the bigger fur's.

Butch knew just what he was doing, and had lined himself up quickly. Jack gasped softly, sucking for suddenly scant-seeming breath as the wolf used both paws to spread his legs again, pressing both knees down and to the sides. Spread open, the housecat closed his eyes at the electric feeling of hot, pointy wolf cocktip touching and slowly spreading his labia.

The penetration came slowly, gently, as Butch eased himself into that sopping wet home. Jack, for his part, couldn't do much but lie there and gasp, as an explosion of unknown feeling he could only help but think of as pleasant and right curled outward from his penetrated pussy. For the first time in his life, he didn't feel empty down there, like something was missing.

The cock may not have been his own, but it felt good; throbbing, thick, veiny, heavy, and good.

It felt alive, as Butch began to make slow, gently rolling thrusts into the cat's clutching depths. Strange clutching, movement of muscles Jack didn't know he'd possessed, coaxed the wolf onward as he leaned down until Jack's face was almost buried in his thick chest fur.

Deep, steady thrusts had him mewling in helpless arousal, as his deepest parts were stimulated for the first time, molded lovingly around the steely shaft that plumbed his depths. The pain he'd expected had been simply absent, or perhaps buried under the hot, sopping pleasure of a railing he'd been unwittingly waiting for all these years. With Butch pounding down into him, Jack started yelping, mrowling, his back arching up off the floor only to be pressed back down, held in place by the big dominant male.

Then the wolf's knot banged into his pussy, and Jack let out a single, loud yelp, as his insides clutched up in a delicious feeling he'd never experienced before, pulsating rivers of paralyzing pleasure blasting out from his core to leave his limbs shivering and back arching fruitlessly up against the rock-hard wolf above him. He felt smothered, helpless, and ecstatic about it as his body pulsed in a world-rocking orgasm that had his eyes rolling back into his skull.

Sudden pressure's meaning was lost on his addled brain, as something thick, massively so, shoved against his twitching pussy. It slid in with a soft shlurp and locked in place before he could even recognize it was Butch's fat knot. Jack gasped, feeling like he'd been punched in the gut, as the sudden stretching and hard impact of wolf dick on his cervix sent him into another shaking, chirping orgasm before the first had even finished.

An explosion of heat deep inside his body went right along with a sharp pain as Butch instinctively bit the cat's shoulder, a hard mating bite that had little Jack squirming and gasping as his cunt was blasted to over-full with well trapped wolf seed.

"Sh-shit!" he yelped, digging his paws into Butch's sides. The wolf slouched over him, grunting, humping away as his knotted cock just wouldn't stop bursting out streams of hot cum that made Jack's eyes go wide with each palpable ejaculation.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, the wolf let out a deep, lung-emptying breath, and rolled to the side, dragging his feline friend up onto his massive chest. Lying there, panting on the filthy floor of the auto shop, he chuckled.

"Shit...I'm glad you're sterile. Forgot condoms."

Jack grimaced, then shuddered, as the knotted cock stuck in his pussy shifted, and he felt all that cum slosh around.

"S-so you know about...About hermaphrodites?"

"Shit, Jack, I play dumb but I can read, y'know."

The cat nodded, and abruptly passed out, cheek pressed to his lover's chest.

Jack wanted to cry, as he lay there in the gynecologist's chair, halfway to hyperventilating even with his eyes shut to avoid seeing what he could feel going on. The doctor was poking around, peering deep inside his vagina, the speculum keeping him spread open.

Finally done, the doctor sat back in his creaking chair, and leveled Jack a look he wasn't willing to open his eyes and meet. His tone was neutral, carefully so.

"Not all hermaphrodites are sterile, Jack. There've been recorded cases of intersex people becoming pregnant, even carrying to term. Eleven of them in fact, since 1900."

The cat grimaced and folded his arms in around himself, shaking like a leaf. They had let Butch come in with him, and that might have been for the best, he realized. The wolf would be freaking out, and that wouldn't help anything.

"S-so am I?"

"Morning nausea, change in appetite...And the urinalysis confirms it. You're number 12, Jack."

"Oh...Oh god..."

Ten minutes later, he was leaning against Butch's side as they drove home to the wolf's place. Jack's parents hadn't thrown him out or anything when he told them he was dating Butch now. This, though...This, he'd need a few days to think about before telling them.

"So uh..." Butch led off, trying to sound light about it, though his voice was thick with tension.

Jack wasn't letting the big asshole off that easily. He just leaned harder against the wolf's side and stared out the window in a passive-aggressive huff, letting him stew in his own juices.

Sure enough, Butch couldn't avoid speaking when he was uncomfortable, nervous, or just plain concerned. The wolf's ears were pinned back as he spoke.

"S-so are you...Uh...I-I mean are we...?"

"Are we what?" he relented, though with a hard tone.

"Are we...Uh...keeping the kid?"

_Are we a couple_was the undeniable subtext. Jack hunched down in the seat, which pushed him harder up against the wolf's ribs. An arm resting warm around his side made the poor, confused cat sigh and close his eyes.

"I don't...Even know if I should think of myself as a girl."

"Well, then know this. I'm with ya, little buddy. Whatever you need, I'm your guy."

Jack sighed into the warm, slightly male-scented chest.

"Then I guess that's our answer."

"About the baby?"

"I...I don't know. But about...About us."

"I can live with that."