FSE

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This story contains homo/bisexuality (implied more than explicit) and violence, so consider yourself warned.

I know this needs work. Please comment with your thoughts and especially constructive criticism so that I can keep improving my writing.

Thanks for reading!

• Xi

All's Fair - Part 2

I never liked September. It can't decide whether to be warm or cold, so it dawdles around in the middle. Like now, for instance. It was warm, fairly sunny, with just a few clouds and a coolish breeze. Ich. But it has one advantage: they let the inmates out of the asylum for a few hours a week in September. They say the weather's nice. Really let us out, I mean; not the carefully planned trips to this beach or that museum. They let you out into the town. The kind of thing where you can get away on your own.

I've been warned that I have to stay in the group or I'll lose my privileges, but we all know they won't follow through. I make sure it's not cost effective to try to lock me up. So it took me about ten minutes that evening to be alone, dodging cars and running through the streets, almost barking and howling at the moon like a crazy human from the old myths. I like banks especially; they feel honor-bound to hang onto their Greek columns from ages past, and those columns are so much fun to jump on and climb. I have a thing for heights, by the way. I made it up a ten-story building in ten minutes flat, and lay panting on their industrial concrete roof, hidden behind the Corinthian cornice.

Of course, you pay for it when you get down, because they tell you off. And tell you off. And tell you off. They never get any new material, either; it's always about your safety, and responsibility, and not wasting the gifts and priveleges you've been given, and don't you want to make something of yourself? I can't even get out of it completely with my puppydog eyes, although I can cut down on the time I have to serve. Then we went back to the center, and someone got my books, and I had to read something about a little robot, and recap it to a counselor, and tell her all about my day, and make up horrible stresses and things that are bothering me to explain why I got in trouble, before they let me go to sleep in my surgeion-clean room Oi.

Tuesdays I have P.E., though, as I found out the next day. I'm a good runner, and the coach said I could do track and field once the season opened. I went for football in the mean time. The coach wouldn't let me into wrestling after I asked him how much damage was allowed. But football is fine.

I took second place doing laps because the first place runner looked fabulous. He was a wolf, two full feet taller than me and much more heavily built though still lean, with dark grey and russet-gold fur, and a ruff that made me wonder if he had some lion in him somewhere. Damn. He was definitely worth second place. His team trounced mine in football as well. He looked at me a few times during class, too. But afterwards he marched right up to me and said he had a girlfriend. I hadn't known I was being that obvious. I laughed at him, asked him why I should care. Maybe not in those exact words.

He punches well.

Wednesday morning I officially maxed out my euphoria card. My alarm was beeping quietly, and I just lay there and let it. Habit kept me awake, but no more.

Thirty minutes later a forty-something otter came to get me. He was very calm about it, very sympathetic and gentle. His resigned sigh was purely in my imagination. All my handlers were used to this.

I wanted to scream at him, to hit him, cause so much pain that he'd shut up and leave me alone. I didn't. I looked at the cieling, unable to attack, to cry, even to just turn my head.

It took most of an hour to sit up, and more time to drag myself through a shower and a dining room. I left the toast there, and no one argued. The time was built into the schedule, but I was still thirty minutes late to composition. The otter walked me to the door, to make sure I went that far. I don't know if he made some silent signal to the professor when I came in; all I know is that the Royal Marine - I didn't remember his name, and the tag didn't even make me remember my amusement - didn't yell at me or make any comment as I went to my chair. He kept lecturing, which kept everyone else quiet as well. I didn't have the energy to look at them, didn't really care.

As the class wore on I slowly gathered myself into a little pile and pieced it into a manikin shape, so that when we got out I could put up a frail pretense that I was okay, so that the counselor wouldn't keep escorting me everywhere. This time, I noticed gruff, concerned looks from the professor and speculative, concerned looks from a lot of the students - including my seating companion, which slowly trickled into my brain to register the irony. The councilor didn't believe me, but he pretended to leave. That was good enough.

I dragged myself over to my next class - mathematics, today. I pulled through that, but in social psychology afterwards my head sank down onto my arms and I couldn't pick it up. Just after A-lunch ended halfway through the class I whispered a request to go to the nurse, and the tall, kind horse let me out. I dragged myself to an unused corner outside where two buildings had been joined, pressing my back against the brick, pulling my knees up to my chest, and curling my tail around my ankles. I didn't think about much of anything until the bell rang for B-lunch. A few furs passed by my corner on their way to wherever they were going, but they didn't notice me and I didn't care.

I didn't look up when a darker shadow covered me. In some ways I didn't even see it coming, because signals from my body were being discarded before they arrived. When the lion picked me up by the front of my uniform shirt, his claws ripping holes in the thin fabric, I only looked at him without interest. He was saying something, and slowly I tuned in enough to catch the tail end of it.

"...pay for what you did to him, fag."

I didn't really register his fisted paw moving towards my muzzle until later, when I was crumpled in the corner with blood running out into my fur. Before the pain could begin to get through I heard a crack on one side of my chest where he slammed a footpaw into me. That's funny. Sound seemed to be processing much faster than sight or feeling.

He knelt on my chest, pressing his knee into my neck, but before he could do anything there was a sharp impact on my head and suddenly he was gone, and the wolf from physical education was squatting in the gravel a few feet away. Huh. That was weird. I lethargically swam up out of my stupor while trying to figure it out.

"...hear me, mutt? Are you all right?"

Numb, I considered the question, then shrugged and nodded slightly. The motion sent a preliminary spike of pain to my brain, warning that I would be in a world of hurt soon.

He looked relieved for about a second, then he snorted scornfully. "Well, you've got to be the stupidest dog I ever met, mutt. Didn't you even think to block? Come on, let's get you to the nurse." He started to carefully pick me up by one arm, and after a brief pause I remembered to move my legs to help. Not that he needed, strong as he was and given how much smaller I was, and anyway I was really beginning to ache, with shooting pains in my chest and a dull throb in my muzzle. The blood, oddly enough, was what bothered me most; I kept thinking how hard it would be to clean out of my fur.

As I started to stagger off, three quarters supported by the wolf while a growing crowd of furs noticed and gawked, I suddenly remembered something. "You're being awfully nice, after yesterday," I accused.

He snorted again. "No I'm not. Some furs are just too dumb to get by without a nursemaid. Pinch your snout; you're bleeding everywhere."

I tried to obey and staggered into his side, soaking his fur too. On the second try I got things better under control while we walked to the nurse.

She was horrified, but I didn't really care. I think the wolf told her what happened; I didn't bother. She bandaged up my nose, making me breathe through my mouth like I was panting. She looked at my chest too, and I spent the afternoon in the hospital for a cracked rib. There's not much you can do about it; you can't bind them effectively without restricting breathing. The old Labrador in charge of the ward prescribed me some pain meds and told me to take it easy for a few weeks, and my team took me back to the center.

They tried to make me talk about it, but I didn't want them fussing over me. I just wanted them to leave me be, and eventually they did. I lay in bed with the lights out except for the fading twilight through the window, trying not to breathe too deeply. Once I looked at the bottle of pain pills. For several minutes I lay there on my back, watching that bottle.

Suddenly I grabbed it and threw it as hard as I could through the window. My chest exploded in pain. I think I screamed; that and the shattering glass brought everyone back, and it was more hours until they left me in peace again. I think they had someone watching me after that. But I didn't care.

The face of that lion got me out of bed the next morning, made me shout at the coyote sent to watch me until she let me go to school. He'd haunted my dreams, a strangely beautiful presense as the wolf chased him away. I knew he'd hurt me, but I wanted him back.

I found him in the commons between social psychology and art, and I walked straight up to him. I had to stand on tiptoes to reach his muzzle and kiss him, deeply, ignoring how the stretch made my side hurt. He gave me another bloody nose, but no more because a professor came over and gave us both detentions - separately. I missed a couple of minutes of art while I wrapped up my muzzle again, and the collie teaching it chewed me out thoroughly, though with a glint of humor at my cheer. Todd and Becky were in this class too, as well as a couple of female deer on my other side, all of whom were fun to flirt and banter with.

I skipped detention during lunch but decided not to go to my corner again. No real reason; I just decided not to. In the cafeteria I had a peculiar sense of deja vu with everyone flirting with me, but this time I had a little added distinction - not much; such things were fairly common at that school, albeit genrally less severe - from yesterday, and this time I was more tired, in a manner of speaking, and basked in it rather than escaping.

The center made me go back after school and serve the detention I'd missed, so I spent twenty minutes squirming and fidgeting at a desk until the vice-principal they'd unearthed to watch me gave up and let me go. Maybe they hadn't briefed hem properly, though, because no one was waiting to pick me up outside. Not feeling energetic enough for the town, I wandered out into the hills north of it, enjoying the natural not-quite-silence for a few hours. When it got too dark to see I stumbled back to civilization and let the center lecture me for running off.

***

Well that's the second section. I'm worried that I wrote his mood shifts too poorly to draw you in. I'm also really tired of the word 'I' :). Your votes/comments/criticisms are welcome. Thanks!