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"When we spoke before, you mentioned that some bad stuff happened last year. Would you tell me what happened?" Tristan tried to keep his voice even and his body relaxed, just to make the boy feel more comfortable, but if the reports on this young man were correct, there was something nasty lying beneath the surface, and he needed to be ready for it.

Kris, who was once again slumped into one of the comfortable chairs in the wolf's office, frowned thoughtfully. "Do you really need me to tell you? Isn't it all written down in my file some place?"

The wolf leaned back and folded his hands over the note pad. "Yes. There are reports about occurrences that happened. But that doesn't tell me what you feel about all this, or how it affected you. I want to hear what happened in your own words." He waited with his ears pointed toward the boy and his tail swaying gently behind his chair. His whole posture was one of patient expectation, something that the boy would recognize on a subliminal level but not likely on a conscious one.

For a few more moments, the raccoon fidgeted playing with the strings on his backpack before he finally started talking. "You won't tell anyone, right?" He waited for the wolf to nod in agreement before he sighed heavily and closed his eyes. "It started at the end of school, the year before last. I told you how I met Sean when I was seven... well, we've been friends since then. We were at the skate park and he dared me to shoot the cradle." He paused for a moment and looked at the much older wolf. "Do you know what a cradle is?"

The old wolf couldn't stop himself from chuckling at the impertinence of the question. "I assume its the concrete trough that you roll around in, but I might be mistaken." He picked up his pen and paper. "I am, however, willing to learn. So: What, exactly, is a cradle?"

With a grin, the raccoon sat forward and started to explain. "The concrete trough, as you called it, is a halfpipe. The cradle is that big half-sphere that you see in some of the larger parks. Anyway, I was running down the pipe, gathering up speed, and he yelled out, 'Dare you to shoot the cradle!' I couldn't do anything else then. He'd dared me, you see." He waited till the wolf nodded, then went on. "It was scary at first, but once I was lined up, it was like something in my brain shut off the fear, and I was totally focused on what I was doing. I shot up and around perfectly, then I was airborne, holding onto my board upside down, and before I knew it, I had flipped and landed on my wheels, heading away from the cradle." He sat for a moment with his eyes closed as if savoring the sensation of flying and making a successful landing.

After a few moments of this silence, the wolf spoke softly, impressed. "That sounds like an incredible experience."

The boy nodded and smiled at him canting his head. "You can say that again. If I'd messed up the landing, I could have broken my neck." He paused for dramatic effect (that's what Mr. Mitsuda would have called it), then went on. "Sean came running toward me when I finally stopped, and before we knew what we were doing, I'd kissed him." He blushed and bit his lower lip, but when the wolf just nodded slowly, he went on. "It was a quick kiss, just a peck really, and I started to apologize to him, but before I could get the words out of my mouth, he grabbed my face and kissed me again. This time it was... a lot more than just a peck."

The boy seemed to be waiting for some kind of comment from him, so Tristan arched an eyebrow and asked, "Did you like it? The kissing?" He kept his face as non-judgmental as possible, waiting for the boy to work his way through the feelings that he'd obviously been holding back since that kiss.

Kris seemed to really think about it for a few minutes. When he did finally answer the question, he seemed almost startled by it. "Yes... and at the same time, no. I mean, I liked the kissing, that was awesome, and I liked the way he tasted on my tongue." A slight blush, and he folded his ears back into his mop of dark gray curls, "But later, he got all pushy and wanted to kiss me and touch me in ways that I wasn't ready for... That's how Dad found out!" He shuddered and fell silent for a few moments.

From the boy's reactions, and things he'd read, Tristan put two and two together in his head and softly asked, "Your Dad didn't like you kissing Sean, did he?" He placed a consoling forepaw on the boy's arm and waited until he was ready to go on again. It was like watching someone peel a scab off a badly healed wound.

"Sean was at our place. He was always at our place, since his parents... well, I only went over there once, and I don't think his parents knew I was there, or that I spent the night. They are kind of distant and don't pay much attention to him, you know?" He again waited until Tristan nodded before he went on. Once more, the wolf could almost see things as they unfolded.

* * * * *

"Damn, Kris, you suck!" The cougar grumbled good naturedly as he set down controller. "That's the fifth time in a row you've beaten me. I need a break." He stood up and headed toward the bathroom, passing Clawdia who was bringing in a bowl of chips and some drinks for the two of them.

"Now Sean, you know I don't like that kind of language," was her soft admonition, but she was smiling as she said it and didn't seem too upset by the use of such harsh language. "Kris, it sounds like you've been on a winning streak." She set the bowl and glasses down on the coffee table before bending over to kiss the raccoon on the forehead. "Just remember not to gloat; it's not becoming."

"Mom!" the boy protested. "Come on, I'm too old for that." He looked around her toward the hall, where the bathroom door was just visible.

"Ah! Alright, I see how it is. I won't embarrass you in front of Sean." She grinned at him as she went back toward the kitchen.

When Sean came back, he flopped down beside Kris bonelessly. "Make you a bet. If I win this next one, you have to kiss me!" His eyes sparkled with mischief, and he grinned a challenge that made it hard for Kris to refuse the bet.

Still, he didn't want to make Sean feel bad. "You sure about that? You've lost the last five..." But the cougar gave him a dirty look, so he shrugged and said, "All right... but you asked for it!" They both reached for their controllers. Kris picked Ironman, the same character he'd beaten Sean with the last five rounds, and waited expecting the cat to go for Phoenix Wright again. "HEY!" But Sean picked another character all together, one Kris hadn't played against before, called Deadpool.

"What? I never said I'd do it with the same character." The cougar's eyes danced merrily as he looked at his taller companion. "Want to renege and just kiss me now?" He even half turned toward Kris, as if getting ready for the kiss he was expecting.

The raccoon snorted and shook his head. "Oh no, you don't win that easily!" He hit the button to start the combat and tried to focus on his best moves. What he wasn't expecting was that Sean had been spending hours on end playing Deadpool against the computer, so he knew the character and his moves inside and out. It took less than a minute for him to royally thrash Ironman/Kris.

While Kris had been rather polite about beating Sean, the cougar had no inhibitions regarding propriety and jumped up bouncing on his toes and yelling. "Take that!" He spun around to face Kris and licked his lips. "Pay up, 'Coonface."

"I don't know,Sean, that hardly seemed like a fair fight to me..." Kris hedged. He liked kissing Sean, but this would be the first time they'd kissed in his house, with his mother in the next room.

Sean growled and launched himself at the taller raccoon, straddling his legs and pinning his arms against his chest. "A bet's a bet, 'Coonface! Not my fault if you didn't say it had to be the same characters." His face was only inches away from Kris at this point. "Don't tell me you've decided you don't like kissing..." His voice dropped to that low growly sound that made the fur on the back of Kris' neck stand up.

"I-it's not that..." Kris looked toward the kitchen pointedly, hoping that Sean would understand but the cat didn't let him go. "I don't know what Mom or Dad will think..." But his resistance to his best friend was fast fading as the feline leaned in and gently ran his rough tongue over the raccoon's protesting lips. "Sean, I..." Kris managed to whisper before the other boy's lips were on his, and all he could do was utter a soft muffled whimper.

This kiss, like their last few, started out slow, with just their lips touching, but after a few moments, Sean let the raccoon's hands go and slid his fingers into Kris' loose curls. Their heads tilted in opposite directions, and what had started as payment for a bet turned into the beginnings of a make-out session. They were too inexperienced to do more than fumble at each other, petting and stroking what fur they could reach as the kissing grew more intimate. Kris locked his arms around Sean's body, his hands resting on the cougar's back, while Sean kept control of the raccoon's head by balling his paws into fists within those gorgeous curls.

Both boys had forgotten where they were, when a deep male voice snapped, "What the hell is going on here!" Startled, they jumped apart a little and turned toward the front door, which was standing open, framing the imposing figure of Edmond.

* * * * *

Tristan watched as the boy paused and mentally edited what he was about to say. He made a quiet note of it on his pad but let the boy go on.

"Dad wasn't happy. He told Sean to leave and never come back. Then he sent me to my room and made me stay there." A frown appeared between the boy's eyebrows. "I could hear him and Mom arguing about it. Mom said we were 'just boys experimenting,' but Dad was... He said it was unnatural, and that I needed to be kept away from bad influences like that." He hunched in on himself a little and chewed on his lower lip.

The wolf frowned slightly, "That sounds like a lot for you to handle, Kris." The true sympathy in his voice seemed to touch the boy, but it still wasn't enough to let him open up completely.

Kris shrugged a little and leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs out till his toes almost brushed Tristan's feet. "It wasn't so bad really; they didn't really fight in front of me, and I don't think they knew I could hear them when they did fight." He picked at his backpack again feigning total engrossment in the task, but Tristan caught him looking out the corner of his eye to see his reaction.

He made a few notes on his pad of paper then looked up at the boy. "How did this lead up to the problems at school?" He was careful to keep the disgust he felt for the Edmond out of his eyes and keep his face showing only his concern for the boy at this point. If he was right, the boy's father was a homophobe, and it seemed at this point in time Kris was exploring his sexuality.

"Well you see, Duke didn't like the way that Dad was handling things, so he suggested that Dad take me down to the gym. It wasn't too bad at first, but then Audio was being a jerk, and I hit him cause he turned the hot water off when I was taking a shower..." He sighed deeply and refused to meet the wolf's eyes. "I shouldn't have hit him. But I just got so angry..." A head shake, and he went on. "Dad said, if I was going to pick on guys smaller than me, he'd show me what it felt like. He put me in the MMA training ring with anyone who wanted to try me. Then he told them all that I was picking on guys smaller than me, and... well, it went badly. I didn't know a thing about fighting, and these guys were all way better than me." He easily glossed over several pages of medical reports of small injuries suffered over several weeks that the nurse had handed to Tristan when he'd gone to see her about the boy. "Some of the teachers here and the Foxworthys got together and came to the gym, I guess one of the guys told them what had been happening." He shrugged and left it at that.

Tristan added a few more notes to remind himself of the boy's attempt to hide the gritty details, then asked, "Which teachers?" He watched the raccoon without seeming to watch him trying to figure out what he thought of his rescuers.

This time Kris looked at him. "Are you going to get them in trouble for helping me?" There was a challenge in his eyes that made the wolf pleased, in a way; he might have been beaten several times, but he wasn't a quitter, this one, nor likely to give his friends up easily.

Tristan raised an eyebrow curiously, "Why would I do that? It sounds like they pulled you out of a sticky situation. No reason to get them in trouble for it." His patience was sorely tested as he waited the boy out, letting him work through in his own mind how much he could trust the old wolf he'd just met.

Finally, his patience was rewarded. "I guess it's alright to tell you then. It was Mr. Mitsuda and Coach O'Brien." There was something in the boy's inflection when he mentioned his Coach -- a little bit of hero worship perhaps?

Another note on an already full page, and he flipped the paper over before looking directly at the boy. "Well, our time is up for today, unless there is something else you'd like to talk about..." He left the word hanging in the air between them, giving the boy a chance to volunteer anything he felt he needed to get off his chest.

Kris didn't take him up on the opening. Lifting his backpack from the floor, he stood and held out his hand toward the wolf. "I should get home. Dad doesn't like it when I'm too late getting back."

Tristan stood and shook the boy's hand. "When would you like to come back? Say in a week? I'd like to make it a regular visit if that's alright with you."

"I guess that'll work." The boy dropped his hand, grabbed his skateboard and was out of the office before Tristan could say anything else.