FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

A revamp of Walk With Me, Not So Close. Different characters, different setting.

Warning: Gay stuff is imminent later on during the series. I hope you like gay stuff.

It's short because I want to know how well it would be received. I might write more. I might not.

---

Do you know what it feels like to be rain? Kept in a cloud, safe for so long. And suddenly you're falling, pieces of you being broken off bit by bit and scattered to the wind. You don't know how. You don't know why. You just know that no one will be there to catch you, and that you are going to be the one who has to pick up all your pieces. Assuming you survive the impact.

Sometimes you're falling for years before you hit the ground, and you don't even know it until the last five feet come rushing at you from out of nowhere.

_ _

"Tell me about yourself," he said.

"My name is Axio Zanfis. I am 19 years old. I am 6'5" tall. I'm a black lion. I'm a loner, but not by choice."

"Would you care to elaborate?"

"I don't want to talk about that."

He wrote that down.

"Tell me about how other people see you." He resettled his glasses and looks at me, pencil poised.

I took a deep breath. "People say I have a chronic bad attitude, coupled with an affinity for holding grudges. They're right. If asked at any given time how I'm feeling, I automatically respond with "tired." Some people have asked me what it is that I'm tired about. I try my best to explain. I'm tired of life. I'm tired of love. I'm tired of loss. I'm tired of all those things that great musicians, writers, and artists harness and control to make beautiful masterpieces that speak to us. I'm tired of this pain in my soul and this hole in my heart. This tightness in my chest. This feeling of always being alone, yet being incapable of letting anyone in. Some people have said that I just haven't tried hard enough, and then we would spend the rest of the evening locked in passionate embraces at their suggestion, indulging in the pleasures of the flesh. It feels good, but it's always heartache when morning arrives. The same old heartache of something missed." He was about to say something but I continued on, cutting him off.

"And it's not like I don't have a reason for all this. I'd challenge you to be emotionally stable when your first love, whom you've been dating for three years, suddenly turns straight, dumps you, and then starts going out with that bitch he's been cheating on you with for one and a half years."

I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. I just said a lot of words. Personal words. It hurt.

He sat for a while, waiting to see if I would continue speaking before beginning to speak himself.

"Would you attribute this to being a loner?"

Seriously. My eyebrow twitched slightly. "No. That's completely different." I said. "And I also recall saying that I didn't want to talk about that."

"I notice you scowl a lot."

"Yes," I said, scowling.

He looked at me again. "Tell me more about this 'first love' of yours."

"It's going to hurt if I do."

"Sometimes pain is part of the healing process, and must be endured before one is to start feeling less of it."

I stared at him. He crossed his legs and folded his hands on one of his knees, ready to listen.

I stayed silent for a while.

"We met on the first day of freshman year in high school, five years ago. He called it 'love at first sight' when he saw me, and demanded that I allow him to shower me with his affection. I couldn't say no to this wolf, kneeling before me with my hand in his paw, asking my permission to love me. We made love on the second week of our relationship, and went on many dates. We were 'the couple' of our class. We were voted cutest couple. Most likely to get married. Brightest future together. I loved it."

"How did he treat you behind closed doors?"

I swallowed again, holding back emotions. "He treated me like a prince. He courted me. He gave me all his affection, just like he demanded I let him. I loved him. He was perfect. Handsome. Tall. Strong. Passionate. Empathetic. Hung like a horse." My tail slowly lashed the ground once, thinking about all those times we had fucked. Anguish and resentment smoldered silently inside me.

"How was he at making love to you?"

I looked up at him, scowling again. "How the hell is that important."

"We don't have to talk about it if it's too painful."

My eyebrow twitched again. "It's not too painful. It was never painful. He was a gentle giant, and he held me close and always asked if he was hurting me. The feeling of his arms around me, of my body pressed against his as we made love, was my favorite. I felt so safe."

This got his attention. "Was feeling safe something you didn't usually experience?"

I scoffed, the emotions I was trying to hold back were slowly seeping through. "As someone who was bullied their entire life? As someone who, from the beginning of second grade to the end of sixth, cried often and begged his father to not make him go to school, because of all the monsters that would make him want to kill himself by the end of the day!?" I was shouting, my voice having risen gradually. "As someone who, at eleven years old, had to threaten someone's life with the appearance of full intent and dedication, just to make the bullying stop!" The anguish and resentment flared violently. "As someone who was taken to court for a restraining order, yet upon examination of the evidence, was found to have gone to parents, faculty, and those students themselves, without any action having been taken to stop that torture..." My voice lowered again, tears slowly welling forth from my eyes. "The court found that I acted as if I had no choice, because there were no other choices left. The person who had been orchestrating the entire hate crime ended up being restrained from me, instead of the other way around. The bullying stopped, but I still never had any friends. No. I never felt safe. Not at school."

He remained impassive. "And so when this opportunity arose where someone wanted to give you the opposite of pain, you jumped on it immediately, wanting to feel something you'd lacked for most of your early school years."

I was struggling to hold back the tears. The tightening of my chest and the pain combined demanded that I let them go, that I expose myself completely to this person. I conceded, but not of my own will. "... I guess."

"Were you ever bullied for being gay?"

I swallowed, wiping the tears away. "On the day that I threatened her, the girl that had been bullying me made a joke that I wanted to kiss another boy -- who had also bullied me quite a bit -- in my dreams. I was still under the belief that my parents had given me... that being gay was wrong, and I just snapped. I took some fishing line that we were using to do arts and crafts with, and came up behind her with the most angry snarl on my face. Someone sitting in her four-person group screamed for her to look out, and when she turned around I put the fishing line up to my neck and growled 'if you don't stop, this is going to be you'. She was terrified. Some sick part of me was thrilled that she was finally the one scared of me. I had only wanted to scare her, though, to let her know that I wasn't going to just sit around and let her kick me around anymore. It worked, but any hope I had of getting friends was completely annihilated. Throughout middle school, in seventh and eighth grade, people would make fun of me once, and then one of their friends would go and whisper something in their ear. They'd stop after that. I found out I was gay during the second half of eighth grade."

My therapist looked at me. At my tears. I scowled.

"I'll never forgive them for what they did."

"You'll have to."

Anger flashed behind my eyes, and I stood up. I dug my wallet out of my pocket and threw what I owed him into the air. "No. I don't. We're done for today."

I stormed out of his office, stopping at the receptionist to make my next appointment. I probably scared her. A big, tall, black thundercloud of leonine rage, with a deep, resonant growl roiling about within my chest. I'd have been scared too if I were a five foot tall rabbit receptionist being confronted by this force. I made my appointment and left.

I live in Forest Grove, Oregon. It's about two fifths of the way between Portland and the coast. I go to college here, at Pacific University. I'm a creative writing major.

I got in my car and drove home, rubbing the tears out of my eyes and trying to make sure that no one would be able to tell that I had been crying.

Deep down I'm a softie. Deep down I'm a happy lion, with a heart that has enough room for everyone. But that is very. Very. Deep. Down. The years of pain have buried that part of me. I am not the way I am because I wish to be this way. I am the way I am because that is how my life has shaped me to be.

I'm a big cat. Naturally large, inherently muscular and fit. I don't work out, however I am still tone like most people. I have a little bit of bulk on the average person, though, and to call me a 'twink' would be a somewhat gross misuse of the word.

My roommate is named Andrew. He's an armadillo. He's around 5'8" and he's thick. He plays I-don't-know-what position on the football team and he's a relatively quiet guy. He's majoring in either Biology or Chemistry, and he's a much better student than I am. He's normally gone for most of the day.

He's here now, though, and as I walk into our room and flop down onto my bed, he gives me a casual "Hey." I groan back to him and sit up, sighing.

"So," he starts. "How was it?"

I rubbed one of my eyes, hoping they're not too red or puffy. "What, the therapy appointment? It was fine. Nothing special."

He nodded and went back to his work. He's in Organic Chemistry, and I've heard from many people that it's terrifyingly difficult. I take their word for it.

He spoke up again. "Are you coming to the game tonight?"

I looked up from my phone, having been checking my Skype. "Huh? Oh. No, I wasn't thinking about going. Too many people screaming. Too many people drinking. Too loud."

I couldn't see his face because he was turned away from me. "I think you should come. There's someone I think you should meet."

I cocked an eyebrow, tail coiling. "Oh really."

He nodded, continuing to not only talk with me, but do Organic Chemistry simultaneously. "Yeah. Someone from the team wants to meet you. I kind of maybe told them about you, and I uh... Might have let it slip that you're gay."

I groaned, slapping a paw to my face and falling backwards onto my bed again. "Great. Some jock who wants to beat up the gay kid. Classic."

Andrew put his pencil down, turning around in his chair to face me. "No, it's not like that. He's nice."

I threw my hands up into the air in exasperation. "Great. Some jock love story where everything turns out wonderful as he sweeps me off my feet."

Andrew scowled, stealing my trademarked look for a moment. "Not like you'd let him, mister I-am-as-dark-and-mysterious-as-my-fur-color-at-night."

I let out a single laugh. "Damn right I wouldn't."

Andrew turned back around. "Ugh... I don't know why I tried. One of these days being so prickly is going to bite you in the ass."

The amount of words that came from Andrew's mouth over the last five minutes had me thinking that maybe he was being serious. I decided to be serious back at him. "Getting bit in the ass won't hurt as much as being dumped on the floor once he's done with me."

Andrew waved dismissively at me without turning around. "Whatever."

I furrowed my brow and got up, off my bed, scooping up my backpack. "I'm going out. I'll see you when you get back from the game." I turned to go out the door.

Andrew called from his desk, "You know, you'd probably feel a lot better if you stopped being such a bruised cunt and just let everything go."

My mane fluffed out and my tail lashed once, making a loud thump against the floor. I didn't turn around as I opened the door. "Fuck you."