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Two

Sho hastily started tearing his latest failed lockpick into little shreds, scattering the pieces around as much as he could with his limited movement. Even on carpet, the humans clomped around in their shoes loudly enough that he could hear them crossing the basement floor easily, and when the storage room's door swung open, he made himself stare defiantly at the four college students that filed in, crowding the oversized closet to get a look at the two rabbits.

Well, Sho was as defiant as he could be, anyway, stuffed in an undersized cage and pinned between his brother and the wire mesh. Xu's ears were trying to swivel back toward the doorway, but he wasn't able to see the humans until the four of them were looming right over the cage.

"What'd I tell you?" Jeffreys said, grinning. "Aren't they adorable?"

Sho just scowled past his brother's face at the humans' feet, but Xu tried to twist around to glare up at their faces. "Jeffreys, get me out of here, dammit. This is kidnapping!"

Not one of the humans paid the rabbit's protests any mind. "Man, you weren't joking," one of them said. "She's all decked out like a blue Spiderbunny." He had blond hair, and was a little scrawnier than the others, which was to say he might have been a tennis player instead of a football lineman.

"Did she really try to take you and Bakers on at the same time?" another asked. He had reddish brown hair, and was tall enough to be a basketball player, if he weren't just as thick.

"Yeah, and Patrick, too," Jeffreys said, grinning. "And she tried to fight her boyfriend, there, if you want to count him. She's crazy. Probably could have taken us, too, but just because we were laughing so hard."

The last human, a dark skinned man who probably used every single weight in that storage room at once when he lifted, shook his hairless head. "I don't think I've ever seen Pat laugh before."

For just a second, all of the humans looked uneasy, but then Jeffreys grinned and said, "Okay, maybe not Patrick, but I bet he was cracking up inside. It was fuckin' hilarious."

"So, how long are we keeping them?" Blondy asked, and Jeffreys shrugged.

"Dunno. We had to change the plan. At least for the night, though."

Baldy was grinning now, too. "Think they'd like to watch the game with us?"

Jeffreys looked down at them, rubbing the back of his neck while considering the rabbits doubtfully. "Well... Can't see the harm in it, I guess. You wanna catch the rest of the game, Xu? First quarter just ended, and we're down a field goal."

"Fuck off, Jeffreys," Xumaada snapped, trying to thrash around and knocking Sho painfully back against the other side of the cage. "Get me out of here right now. My roommates know exactly where I went today, and if I'm not back at my dorm soon, they'll have cops crawling all over this place."

Jeffreys leaned in close to the cage, looming over the rabbits and lifting an eyebrow. "Are any of your roommates bunnies, too?"

"What? No. What does--"

"Then they don't give two shits about you, critter." Despite himself, Sho felt his ears flatten against his back with a snarl. As far as racial slurs went, "critter" was about as bad as it got, but Jeffreys didn't look like he'd said anything at all offensive. "Come on, guys, I don't think Xu wants to see the game after all."

"What about Bunnygirl?" one of them asked. Sho wasn't sure who, but the tall redhead was already crouching next to the cage behind Xu.

"Come on, Jeffreys, don't be a dick. Listen, Xu, was it? You can stay in this closet all night if you want to, but if you stay quiet, we'll bring the carrier out to the den, and you can at least have a little entertainment. It's your choice. And Bunnygirl?"

"Don't bother," Jeffreys cut in. "She's not a talker."

"Yeah, well...just nod if you want us to set you two in the den." Sho glared daggers up at the tall human's face. He was imagining that red-brown hair spontaneously combusting. With an indignant grimace, Red stood back up and shrugged. "Your loss, bunnies."

"Wait..." Xu mumbled, and Sho blinked at the other rabbit. Xu let out a thin, frustrated growl, but then said, "Fine. The den's gotta be better than in here."

If he could have lifted his leg high enough, Sho would have kneed his brother in the crotch. He couldn't try to pick the lock with the humans in the same room! How were they going to get out of that cage if their kidnappers were all around them?

Jeffreys was back, kneeling right over them and pointing a finger down at Xumaada's face. "You can't make a peep, or we'll tase you again before throwing you back in here. Just pretend you're a feral bunny. Wiggle your nose, keep being cute, but I better not hear one complaint, got it?"

"Oh, give it a rest, man," the black weightlifter said, shoving Jeffreys to one side. He hefted the cage off the floor without so much as a grunt for the rabbits' combined weight, but then he was pointing a finger at them, too. "Just stay quiet, okay, bunnies?"

Sho was breathing deeply through his nose. He thought his eyes must have been bloodshot, as tense as he was. He wished he had brought a gun with him, even though he'd never shot one before. These humans all needed a good killing.

The rabbits were swung back and forth with Baldy's steps, and they found Bakers already sitting on one of the sofas in the den next to, surprisingly, an anthro cougar. Both of them had their eyes glued to the huge flat screen, and Bakers didn't look around when he told the others, "We're eleven yards from a touchdown, third and goal. Got pushed back from the five on second down."

That was all just gibberish to Sho, but it certainly got the other humans excited. Baldy practically dropped the pet carrier next to another sofa as he threw himself down, Jeffreys and the other two all rushing to take their seats, too. Their eyes were so glued to the television, Sho began to think he might be able to get away with picking the lock then and there, after all. That is, if he and Xu hadn't both had the wind knocked out of them from their cage thumping onto the carpet.

Sho didn't know whether to be relieved or taken aback by how thoroughly he and his brother were ignored. Even worse, though, was Xumaada himself. The gray-splotched rabbit was frowning at first, but as soon as the home team drove down to the second yard line, Xu started watching the TV as avidly as the frat men, and when they went for it and got the touch down...

"Yeah! That's what I'm talkin' about!" An attempted fist pump knocked against the back of Sho's head, and though Xu gave him a halfhearted apology, Sho's brother was back to staring at the television again as soon as their team lined up for the extra point. He was practically pressing his face against the cage's wire mesh door.

Jocks. They might as well have all shared the same brain.

"Thought we told you to be quiet," Jeffreys said, after Xumaada cheered along with the rest of them when the extra point was good.

"Oh, let him celebrate," Baldy spoke up. "That put us in the lead!"

"At least he's rootin' for the right team," one of the others added. Sho thought that was Blondy, but he wasn't sure.

And that was that. From then on, when Xu cheered or groaned or heckled the coaches on the screen, their captors just joined right in, and even when they disagreed...

"Come on, Bryant!" Bakers shouted at the screen. "Who the hell are you throwing at?"

Jeffreys snorted a laugh. "The bull's arm is a cannon, but he might as well be blind, for all he can aim. What else can you expect from a beast?"

"Hey!" That was the mountain lion sitting next to Bakers.

"Nah, species has nothing to do with it," Xumaada said, sounding completely unoffended. "My quarterback in high school was a horse, and he could thread a needle the size of a bottlecap. No joke, we actually set up bottles up in the end zone, and he pegged four out of five from forty yards away."

"Whatever you say, bunny boy," Jeffreys said, chuckling. He sounded a little drunk. "Whatever you say."

"I believe him." That sounded like Red. "I watched the high school state championship game last year, and that stallion never missed. About as good an aim as I ever saw."

Xu just grinned. "It had to be, when his best receiver was three feet tall." And though that got a chorus of jeers and taunts, it actually sounded good natured, and Xu was looking more and more comfortable in the crazy situation, cage or no cage.

Sho wanted to barf, right in his brother's stupid, grinning face.

Half time rolled around, and not for the first time, the cougar said, "Hey Jacob, beer me."

"Sure thing." Blondy's name was Jacob, evidently. "Anyone else?"

Sho was the only one in the room who didn't ask for a beer, then, and when Baldy just leaned over the arm of his couch to look down at the trapped rabbits, Xu twisted where he lay to meet the big man's eyes. "Come on, man, I'm thirsty here."

"Yeah, and you're fresh out of high school, too," Baldy said, folding his beefy arms. "We could get in trouble, giving you alcohol."

Xu tried to twist around even more to face him, bumping up against Sho from every angle while the masked rabbit just lay there and seethed. "Yeah, something tells me you're not too worried about legal repercussions," he said with a snerk.

"Got us dead to rights there," Jeffreys grunted, standing up to loom over their cage. Jeffreys was definitely the most talkative of the bunch, and the loudest, but he made a show of squinting down at them thoughtfully for half a minute. The cat carrier was all metal mesh aside from the back wall against their feet and the floor beneath them, and a strip of plastic that connected the back wall to the handle in roof's middle. Jeffreys had no trouble watching them both. "All right. If you're thirsty, you're thirsty. But a beer is gonna cost ya."

Xu shrugged, smirking up at the human. "My wallet's in my backpack."

"Yeah, we found that already. But I'm not talking about money." Xu just returned his gaze expectantly, and Sho found himself looking up at the college student, too. He didn't like the way Jeffreys was grinning down at them. "I'm talking entertainment. Half time commercials suck, and we've got fifteen minutes before third quarter starts."

The human didn't say anything else, and eventually Xu broke down and asked, "What do you want me to do? Gotta warn you, I've got a lousy singing voice." It was all Sho could do not to snort a laugh. "Lousy" was an understatement.

"Yeah, that's not what I had in mind," Jeffreys said, his grin growing wider.

"Then what?"

"You want a drink?" The human's eyes flicked over to Sho's face. "All you've gotta do is kiss your girlfriend there."

"What?" Xu's eyes flashed to Sho's face, too, and if Sho's ears hadn't already been pinned behind him, he would have laid them back. He already was baring his teeth, but of course his mask hid that.

"I knew it," one of the other humans said, and Baldy was nodding his agreement.

"Soon as the commercials roll, his head always goes to the same place."

Xu shook his head, the look in Sho's eyes enough to make him wary. "I don't think she wants to be a part of the deal." Another understatement.

Jeffreys started tapping his shoe on the carpet, chuckling. "Oh, she'll get over it. Come on, bun bun. One kiss for a beer, that's a bargain."

With a sigh, Xumaada looked up at the frat boy's leer again, and when Sho glanced upward, too, he found all of the other humans leaning in, and even the cougar was watching. Then Sho looked down again, and his brother was staring back at him. Xu shrugged. Then he started leaning in.

Sho wedged his arm between him and pushed hard against his brother's chest, knocking both of their backs against the wire walls behind them with a metallic clang. Jeffrey's let out a loud guffaw.

"Come on," Xu whispered. "You've gotta be thirsty, too." He tried to lean in again, but Sho kept his arm where it was, pushing the other rabbit back firmly. Xumaada tilted his head with an aggravated huff, lifting an eyebrow ever so slightly with a very familiar expression, one that was meant to make whoever he was looking at feel stupid for not seeing something obvious.

And then Sho did see it, and his arm faltered. Glancing up at the gathered humans again, he slowly forced himself to slip his arm underneath his brother's side again.

They couldn't get a beer bottle into the cage without opening the door.

Goddammit.

Gritting his teeth, Sho closed his eyes, grateful that his mask was hiding his snarl. He held his face still, but made no move toward the other rabbit. He could feel Xu's breath on the elastic fabric between them, and then Sho's eyes shot open at a light, soft pressure against the front of his muzzle. He and his brother locked gazes, and Xu shrugged apologetically, but he didn't pull back.

There was a chorus of deep-voiced awwwws around them, and Sho made himself squeeze his eyes shut again. "Just look at that," Jeffreys laughed. "Their noses are all twitching and everything!"

That was enough. Sho pushed his brother back again, not quite as roughly this time, and turned his face toward the newspapers underneath them, his face burning with a fierce blush.

Then Jeffreys said, "All right, now grab her butt."

Xu rolled his eyes. "Come on, Jeffreys, a deal is a deal."

"Just a little squeeze."

Sho pressed his hips back as much as he could in the tight confines, but stopped when he felt how much the thin metal bars were pressing against his backside and heard a snicker from behind him. His soft rump flesh had been squishing a little too visibly against that meshwork. But when he felt Xu's arm start to drift just a tiny bit down his side, Sho shoved his forearm under his brother's chin and pressed Xumaada's head up against the front corner, pressing firmly against the other rabbit's throat. Xu's arms both tried to move away from Sho's body in a yielding posture, and the entire room broke out into laughter.

"All right," one of the humans said. Sho didn't care which one. "That was worth a beer."

Sho held his brother there for a second longer, then relented, letting Xu gasp in a harsh breath. Gripping his gloved fingers through the wires behind the other rabbit, Sho turned his head to the side and glared at a spot on the newspaper in front of him, trying to pretend no one else was there to see how embarrassed he was. He was breathing a little heavily, himself, chest heaving against Xumaada's body. Now was not the time to have an anxiety attack.

There was the sound of a bottle cap opening, then Jeffreys was crouching in front of their cage with the lock's key in his hand. That got Sho's attention, but Bakers put an end to any escape attempt.

"Hold up Jeffreys," the other human said.

Jeffreys looked up at him with a shrug. "Hey, I gave my word."

"Yeah, but you don't need to give him the whole bottle. Here." Bakers handed Jeffreys a plastic funnel, and inside his head, Sho began cussing up a storm. They were frat boys. Of course they had beer funnels.

The mountain lion snickered from where he lounged on one of the couches. "Yeah, I doubt he's got room in there to even tip it back without spilling it all over the place."

"Good point." Jeffreys took the funnel and threaded the plastic straw at its end through one of the holes in the top of the cage. "Ready, bunny boy?"

With a sigh and another shrug, and one last awkward rub at his throat, Xu caught the straw between his lips.

"Careful, now," Jacob piped up. "Remember your critter math."

"Dude..." Xu muttered around the straw, but the blond human didn't pay him any attention.

"Bunnies are about half our height, so that makes them around an eighth of our weight, right?" he told Jeffreys. "So in bunny numbers, that bottle is eight beers. Don't want him throwing up all over his girlfriend."

Jeffreys started pouring into the funnel, and Xu's eyes went wide as he began gulping as fast as he could. "I know that," the human said, only pouring out maybe a quarter of the bottle into the funnel. "We'll say a kiss is worth a few ounces, then." It was still all Xu could do to chug it all down without choking, and he coughed with a splutter that flung droplets of beer against Sho's cringing face when he was done.

Then Jeffreys was repositioning the funnel above Sho's head, instead. "Mask off if you're thirsty, Bunnygirl. You kissed him, too, after all."

Sho scowled up at him, awkwardly freed his upper arm, and pressed his middle finger against the top of the cage.

Jeffreys just laughed again, pulling the funnel and its dripping straw away. "Suit yourself. Told you guys she was crazy."

Xu let out a hiccup, and everyone but Sho laughed again. It wasn't long before halftime ended, and then every last one of the idiots was hypnotized by the TV. Sho tried to use the next ninety minutes to plan an escape, but there was still nothing at all he could do while everyone else could see him.

At least the stupid game didn't run into overtime. Their team pulled out all the stops in the second half, and wound up winning by a margin of thirteen points.

"All right, guys, let me out for a sec," Xu said, his speech just a little slurred. "I have to go to the bathroom."

"That's what the newspaper's for," Jeffreys said, chuckling.

Sho gave his brother a very clear oh-hell-no look, but Xu wasn't paying attention. The other rabbit just squirmed in place. "That's disgusting, man. Besides, I have to do more than just take a piss." Sho added a little more hell into his oh-hell-no face.

"You're just gonna have to hold it, then." The other humans were still talking and joking with postgame energy, but Jeffreys grabbed the pet carrier's handle and lifted the two rabbits off the ground, heading back toward the storage closet.

"Come on, Jeffreys," Xu pressed, bracing himself against the cage's swinging while trying to meet the human's eyes. "I know what this is, man. I know it's all just hazing. But no one wants the basement to smell like an outhouse. Everyone loses, then."

Jeffreys was grinning down at them again, holding their cage off the floor and shaking his head, but what he said was, "You're right, little man. No one wants that, at all. So if you wind up shitting yourself, you can just count yourself out of the club, got it? If you're Mu Delta Rho material, you can hold it for a night." He was laughing enough that he might as well have called Xu an idiot. The human set their cage down and shut the storage room's door behind him, but once again left the light on, so Sho and Xu were back to staring at each other after he left.

"It was worth a shot," Xumaada whispered, and there wasn't much slur to his voice at all.

Sho glared at him incredulously. Hazing? That's what he thought this was? Hazing? The humans had tased them!

"This isn't really just hazing," Xu murmured conspiratorially, as if Sho's expression had spoken out loud. He took a deep breath, shaking his head. "I know you know that, but I want you to know that I know, too." Well, maybe there was a little bit of drunken slur in his speech, still.

Sho kept right on glaring. How much time had his brother just wasted? Three hours? Four? All to watch some stupid football game, when who knew what the criminal frat boys intended to do to the two rabbits the next day? When Sho tore another scrap of newspaper out from under Xumaada's ear, he might have been a little harsher about it than he needed to.

At least one good thing had come out of all that wasted time. Setting his jaw, Sho rolled the scrap of paper up and began shaping the end of it, folding and creasing carefully. He had gotten a good look at the cage's key before Bakers had stopped Jeffreys from unlocking the barred door. He thought his paper lockpick was a close approximation.

Xu had the nerve to grin at him when he saw what he was doing. "Good. You were paying attention, too." Yeah. Because that had been Xu's plan all along. God, Sho wanted to punch the other rabbit so bad...

He worked the paper key into the lock, carefully nudging it further and further inside, until it was in all the way, and then, holding his breath, he turned it...

The paper twisted. Just like all the other times, it twisted, and when Sho wrenched it around even more, it began to tear, so he hastily pulled it back out again before the end ripped off entirely and jammed the lock shut forever. He was panting through his nose again, chest heaving, almost hyperventilating with frustration.

"Easy," Xu said, giving his waist an awkward pat. "Just...keep trying, right?"

Once he got his breathing back under control, that's exactly what he did. And he kept on trying, shaping one origami key after another, and every single one had exactly as much success. It was a good thing there were so many newspapers layered underneath them. Sho thought he went through an entire weekend's worth, and he was still folding and creasing away well after his brother shut his eyes and began snoring quietly. He tore each paper key into little shreds after they were twisted and worn beyond use, and by the time Sho gave up, it looked like a confetti cannon had gone off in the cage.

It was quiet in the den outside. The frat boys had all stopped partying and gone to bed. All Sho could hear was his brother's quiet breathing, the smell of booze faint on the gusts of air that teased across his mask. Sho hadn't moved his paws for a good ten minutes or so, but maybe one more try would do it...?

But before he knew what was happening, his eyes were drifting shut, too.