FSE

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"I lost my job."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

Helix's tail twitched. Nym stood a good distance behind him, looking past his arching shoulders. As it turned out his friend, Aleks, was some sort of fluffy chipmunk. His eyes were watery and beneath his fur on his cheeks, the very faintest twinge of a blush bloomed. His eyes surveyed Helix sadly, tears beginning to form in the slanted ovular corners.

"You'd think they'd have more use for me."

"What'd you work as?" Nym piped up.

Aleks glowered at him. "Stocking items."

Nym refrained from laughing. The guy was what, four foot seven? He held his composure. The chipmunk-whatever tapped his dark fingers against his desk, huffing. The fur on his cheeks rustled.

"So, if you need money I am not who you should go for."

"No, we just need some clothes." Helix explained for the third time that morning.

"Ok, but why?"

Helix sighed. "Do we look properly clothed?"

Aleks squinted at them.

"No, not really come to think of it."

Helix's tail began to move impatiently, in languid swishing motions. Nym fiddled with the chunky plastic buttons on his shirt.

Aleks swung his feet off the chair and started moving towards a door situated several feet behind him. Nym turned to Helix confidentially, his nose twitching slightly as he spoke. "So why exactly are we asking a little chipmunk for clothes?"

"Oh god he's not..."

"A chipmunk!" Aleks yelped, turning around. He had a plastic bag in his hands. Fuming, he trundled back over to them and dumped the clothes on the ground. His short, black furred fingers flew through the pile. He picked up a summer dress, printed with yellow flowers on a pastel pink backdrop. He gave it a smirk and a shake before promptly stuffing it back into the pile. "God, I'm not a chipmunk. I'm a quokka. Not some chipmunk with bloated cheeks like I had surgery... What's that surgery that They have? You know, where those teeth get removed..."

"Molar surgery?" Helix offered.

"Wisdom tooth removal." Nym quipped. Helix gave him a twisted eyebrow. "I read."

Helix shrugged and turned back to the quokka, who had begun to get to a pile of jeans. He picked up a large pair with buttons in the back for situating a tail. He tossed this, along with a white tank top and simple velcro wristwatch, at Helix.

"Thanks." Helix took it to the bathroom.

Aleks sniffed and rubbed at his watery eyes.

"You're so thin and small. Wiry."

"Yeah, thanks?" Nym managed with a wrangled smile.

"Uh-huh... Oh, here we go." He pulled out a pair of sweats and a hoodie, both a rainy-afternoon shade of grey. He handed them to the fox who waited patiently for Helix to finish. His tail swished around behind him, upsetting a thin layer of dust.

Aleks' fingers went back to his eyes and rubbed vigorously. "Damn allergies."

"Might wanna clean some time."

"No, really?"

"Well, why don't you."

"Wouldn't you like to know."

"I would, that's why I'm asking."

Aleks surveyed him slowly. "Ok, you lose your job. Then, consider, would you want to clean up a house? Or, worse, pay for one of Them to come by with their smelly hair and indecipherable accents to clean up your house for you while you sit by and watch like a child? No thank you! I'd prefer to rot in my own pile of dead skin and fur." Nym lowered his head slightly. Aleks paused for a moment, his small chest rising and falling. The paunch at his belly did likewise. "Except, well, with Helix here you can't really complain."

"What do you mean?"

"You're gonna be spending quite a while with him." The quokka turned to him. And for once his tone wasn't condescending or aggravated. It was simple, cut like glass. "He's had it rough. Be gentle, ok? He took you on and he'll stick to you until the sun explodes, unless you decide against it. That'd be a mistake." He turned, giving a wry chuckle.

"I see. You've known him for how long?"

"Not long. Couple months, give or take. But he's something."

The door croaked open and Helix stepped out, thus ending their conversation like a breeze to a wisp of smoke. He wore the clothes quite nicely. Nym did what he could not to star, but his twitching ears gave his sudden attention away.

The white tank top stretched across Helix's muscles. The dried blood and dirt had been washed from his face and paws. His fur was soft, smooth, intricate in its design and flawless. The scars the crisscrossed his body protruded vaguely from under his shirt. The jeans proved to be a tight fit against the circular, thick muscles at his thighs and calves. The wrist watch strapped to his wrist gave him a casual air. Aleks knew what he was doing. Helix noticed Nym's suddenly peaked attention. His ear flicked towards him, his whiskers twitching it seemed.

"Get dressed."

"Uh, yeah, ok." Nym brushed past him, his tail touching his thigh.

"Throw the prison stuff in the trash. I'm going to get a backpack then we go. Can't stay much longer."

"Like fuzz on a peach." Aleks piped up.

"What?" Nym threw a glance over his shoulder.

Aleks and Helix exchanged a look that gave away how much of an inside joke that... Whatever it was, had to to be. Nym changed quickly, hearing muttered conversations through the door. He pulled the sweats on easily. They accommodated for his tail.

He glanced at the mirror and felt his heart sink.

With his prison shirt off and his chest fully exposed, he saw the insignia burned just below his ribs on the right. The broken circle with the smaller, oblong oval inside. Nym touched it. It had burned his fur and dug straight into his skin. Now it was merely a bump that felt nothing. Nym pulled on the hoodie, which had a t-shirt tucked inside.

He left. A quick good-bye was exchanged between them and the quokka. Helix then, grabbed Nym by the shoulder with sure fingers, pulled him through the back door and into an alleyway. A female voice high above was tittering with laughter. Somewhere else a male voice was barking into a phone. The alley was thin and smelled of old food. Cars whooshed past, buffeting air. Helix looked around.

"The police have probably sent out a notice to keep tabs on us." Nym said. "They might still be tending to that vixen, though. So I hope that'll give us some time."

"We're wanted criminals."

"But not that dangerous to the public." Nym countered.

Helix nodded. "No. I know I'm not, I doubt you are..." Helix's milk-grey eyes swept over Nym. "You look like a teenager going through something."

"You look like a guy heading to the gym. Not to work out but to take pictures of his muscles."

Helix cracked a smile. His scar moved along with it. Nym couldn't help but return the expression.

"Jokes aside, we should probably get going."

"Yeah but where? We don't exactly have a car. And, as far as I'm concerned, I grew out of running on all fours by the time I hit nine years old."

"Nine?"

"Late bloomer."

"More like awkward kid. I'm sorry for your parents."

"They are too."

Helix sensed something in that topic. Something hard and painful, like a splinter lodged too deep. He moved away from the topic deftly, heading in the direction opposite the traffic. The other side was a lot for a storage unit, quite out in the open. Nym followed behind.

They approached the end of the lot easily, passing the empty pavement. The sky had begun to grey. A flock of crows, the small kind, perched on the wire fence. At Helix's approached foot steps they cawed in unison and burst into the sky, upwards like splattering ink. Helix watched them leave, feeling a cold, unpleasant breeze brush past his muzzle. Nym shivered next to him.

"The weather turned sour."

"That's not too much of a problem. Rain is a good disguise."

Helix approached the fence and pushed it open. A red DO NOT TRESPASS sign was on the ground, dented and rusted at the fringes. Nym manoeuvred around it. He pushed the little back Aleks had given him to the opposite shoulder.

"It's just rust."

"Rust is dangerous."

"What, aren't you vaccinated?"

"The doctor at..." Nym paused. "I am, yeah. I just hadn't been before."

"And you didn't get sick?"

"No."

"I see." Helix muttered. And, maybe Nym was beginning to get dizzy from how much was going on around him, but he could have sworn the big cat began to purr.

Nym reached out and placed his paw on the small of Helix's back. Yes, Nym felt it. A gentle rumble was pulsing through the cat. He felt the tips of his claws vibrate. They stood their, half in and half out of the area, Helix already a paw step into the dry, sharp grass. His tail was relaxed. And he was purring. Nym felt like he was gawking. But the moment felt too delicate to let go of.

Eventually he did anyway. He let his paw fall away. Helix's purr had strengthened then, but had steadily decreased.

He turned to look at Nym.

"What made you so happy?"

Helix stared at him. His expression, gnarled by the scar but still somehow magnificent in its fullest, gave nothing away. His eyes bore into Nym's.

"Freedom. Opportunity. Open cage."

"That's not an answer."

"It is an answer. Just not the one you wanted."

"It's--I..." Nym trailed off hopelessly. Helix gave him a good natured brush of his paw and walked forwards, knee-deep in grass. Drifting grey light seeped through the grass. Pollen fluttered in the breeze.

"You what?"

"Nothing. You're just a mystery."

"You'd like to crack me open?"

They began to walk through the grass. The sound of it, along with distant rolling thunder, comforted Nym in an odd way. They began heading along the direction of a highway. Several hikers in front of them past, two lions. One with an impressive red mane rapped around his head. His paw was in a lioness', the two had backpacks and were laughing at something one said. Their tails brushed along the paths. A row of suburban houses lined the other side of the field. Children's voices caught on the wind. Nym and Helix walked side by side, eventually reaching a dirt path.

"I don't want to crack you open. That wouldn't be fair. You have to learn about me too if this is going to work." Nym responded casually.

"If what is going to work?"

"This partners in crime running from the cops through a hiking field in suburbia-meets city along with--" He stopped. Helix was purring again. Nym felt the insides of his ear flush. "I mean, look, if we're going to share some shady motel room with hookers banging on the walls at one am we might as well get chummy."

"Chummy is a nice word."

"Amicable? Friendly? Buddies?"

"Thank you, Thesaurus, but I don't recall asking for your input."

"Too bad. I'm here, in all my glory."

Helix almost said something, but thought better of it.

"I guess there's a lot about me you'd like to know."

"I guess so."

"Where do you even want to start?"

"Start? What is this, twenty questions?"

"No. How about we..." but Helix had to stop. Fat drops of rain began falling on them. Thunder burst like a capillary across the sky, bleeding electric light. Helix saw it and frowned. "How about we hurry."

"I'm all for it."

So they set out in a sprint. The rain picked up pace, the wind slanting it. It splattered across their faces and clothes, soaking their fur and fabrics alike. The wind howled. The sky turned uglier and darker and meaner. The grass whipped at their feet. The lions at the front were howling with laughter, covering their heads with their packs and scampering off to suburbia.

"I'd rather rain than cops!" Nym hissed.

"I agree."

After some running, during which the downpour only got heavier, they reached a street. It ran parallel among several shops. Nym looked down one end while Helix's chest rose and fell, his eyes focused on some spot in the distance. Nym met his gaze.

The sun was pushing between several clouds, dripping yellow and orange between the rainclouds. The sky beneath was a warm pink.

"Gorgeous. Do we kiss in the rain now?" Nym asked.

Helix scoffed. "You wish."

I do. But Nym didn't say it. He berated his own mind for even thinking of such a thing. He looked away, shaking off the awkwardness of his statement by pointing out a diner.

"We could eat."

"And be seen in public?"

"What the hell do you actually want to do? You haven't given me a plan or plot or, hell, even a rhythm to dance to buddy!" Nym yelped in frustration. As if in answer, the thunder grumbled fiercely. Helix looked down at Nym, grinning. Droplets clung to his whiskers.

"There's a whole wide world out there for people like us." Helix said.

"And why didn't you tell me? Was it a test?"

"Kind of." Helix stepped under a tree. A car flew past. Nym half-expected a comical slosh of dirty water to come over him. It didn't. He moved next to Helix, happy for the temporary shelter. He ran his paws over his head, trying to push off as much water as he could. He gazed at Helix.

"Well?"

"You're still sticking around."

"No, we're sticking together."

"That's what I said."

"No... Not at all." Nym said, smiling despite himself. The weight of his situation hadn't hit him yet. It wouldn't for exactly seven more hours, when night hit. For now, he was quite content pouring his energy into watching the rain.