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Six

The showers were always a challenge, not to mention going to the bathroom--Val didn't even want to think about the balancing act of taking a dump--but the rest of college life wasn't nearly so bad. He enjoyed all his classes, he had fun hanging out with Darnell, and he began making more friends as the days went on, too.

There was Anna, a human girl that he shared a calculus course with, who had taken an interest in Val with a bubbly, chipper enthusiasm that had been irritating and even a little bit unnerving, at first. But she wasn't all bad, and after the stoat let himself get talked into sharing lunch with her and her boyfriend, he realized that her curiosity was innocent enough. She just didn't have very many social boundaries, and didn't shy away from asking about anything.

There was Rashida, a tauric fennec, who had actually tried to convince Val to ride around on his back. Rashida was four feet tall in his anthro half, and his feral back stood a couple feet off the ground. He'd said that he had other taur friends who always complained about people asking to ride them, but since Rashida was on the small side, he'd never once been pestered like that, and he kind of missed it. Val had politely declined. He already drew enough stares as it was. But Rashida still met up with Val and Darnell at their dorm's cafeteria from time to time, even though the fennectaur lived off campus and commuted every day.

And then there was Toni.

Toni was a rare hybrid/human mix, a neko, as they'd come to be called. Neko was just Japanese for "cat," but the word had some ancient anime connotations, and these days referred to anyone who looked like a human with a tail and animal ears. Toni was a rabbit neko.

That in itself made Val flustered to be around her. He'd always had a thing for rabbits, even though Aunt Jane hated them, for some reason. He thought it was because she'd caught him when he was twelve, looking at a hybrid rabbit in a swimsuit magazine. Jane had told him once that if rabbit hybrids didn't make a point not to live down to their social stigmas and stereotypes, then they had no one to blame but themselves. He'd had no clue at the time what his aunt had meant. Val had an idea now, of course. Rabbits were the most common of the hybrid species, by a landslide. One of his next door neighbors in the dormitory was a rabbit, though that one didn't affect him quite as much as Toni.

Because a rabbit neko? That was unheard of. He didn't know if there had ever been one before. And Toni was...well, she was just cool! She had no confidence issues, she listened to old, twentieth century rock and roll, she wore casual punk leathers over pink and purple shirts, and...well...

He was sitting across a fast food restaurant table from her, now. Or, well, he was sitting on the table, but on the other side, with Rashida standing at a corner. But Toni was waving to them both with a french fry to denote the importance of what she was saying.

"I'm telling you, Gandhi had it wrong. You can't shake the world gently, guys. The people who are fine just sitting back and rolling with the punches, they're the ones who have the right mindset to actually get peace done, yeah, but the other ones, the people who enter into politics and wind up making the laws because they want to have power over other people, they won't sit back and roll with anything. If you want to shake things up, you have to take the world by the shoulders and throttle it, you know?"

Yeah. That was Toni.

Val just smiled and nodded his agreement, even though he didn't really have any idea what she was talking about. She was Anna's calculus tutor, which was how Val had met her. Toni was a sophomore, but already three years ahead of the stoat in mathematics courses. Sometimes she said something philosophical like that Gandhi stuff, but she'd never taken a philosophy course before. She made sure he knew it, too, the one time he'd dared text her to ask.

"Maybe," Rashida conceded messily around a mouthful of cheeseburger. "But me, I don't care about shaking up anything. The world's pretty good right now, if you ask me."

Toni scoffed. "Not even all of V.U. is good right now, though this is a better place than most. And Vanguard isn't the world. One way or another, we're in for a wakeup call. Shake or be shaken, foxy, that's gonna be the way of it. What do you think, Val?"

Val had his cell phone on the table beside him. He'd rigged up a few straps to its plastic case so he could carry it around on his back wherever he went, though riding his bike was more cumbersome now than he liked. "Next time I see a congressman, I'll tackle him for you," he typed to their group chat, and they both laughed after their phones beeped at them.

"Oh, gods," Toni said. "Post the video to the webs, man."

He probably liked Toni more than he should have after spending just a few hours with her, but she seemed to like him, too.

Which is why Val found himself keeping his distance from her.

There was something he'd figured out in his pre-teen years, long after learning how terrible public bathrooms were. Aunt Jane had never talked to him about it--she didn't like talking about anything related to the subject, and Val really didn't, either--but he'd connected the dots on his own. Val would never be able to be in a romantic relationship. The mechanics, they just didn't favor someone his size. He could have as many friends as he wanted, but certain things inevitably came to pass where romance was involved, and, well...

It was basic mathematics. Val wasn't quite a foot tall. An average human male was endowed with a manhood a little less than one twelfth of their height, roughly an inch per foot, and hybrids were generally slightly larger than that. Val was fairly average for hybrid ratios.

He'd never be able to satisfy a woman romantically. Like most hybrids, he was bisexual, but the challenges were just as insurmountable with another guy, for equally obvious reasons.

So a long time ago, Val had resigned himself to only having friends, not boyfriends or girlfriends. And he was fine with that! Even now, even knowing Toni, he'd rather have her as a friend than go through the awkwardness of trying something that he already knew wouldn't work. But she was beautiful, and smart, and the more time he spent around her, the more he wondered...

"Ey!" she chirped. "What are you staring at, weasel boy?"

Val just shook his head and turned his attention back to eating a french fry as long as his arm. He noticed her blushing afterward, though, which made their table start smelling like strawberries. It was nice to be able to bring a blush to someone else's face for a change.

Seven

The showers again.

Two weeks into college life, and Val still had to ask other guys to reach the shower knob for him. He'd bought a step stool and had it delivered, and one time earlier that week had dragged it into the males' shower room with him. But it was so cumbersome and awkward to do that while trying to keep a wash cloth covering his hips, he'd left it in the stall after he was done, thinking to just keep it in there for next time.

He should have known it would be missing within an hour.

So he'd tried to time his showers when a few other guys would be in there, but not a crowd. And most definitely not the cheetah from that first morning.

Today, though, at 6:45 a.m., that cheetah was the only one in there.

Val almost turned back around. He could wait and try again in an hour. The cheetah's back was to the shower room door, so he hadn't noticed the little stoat yet.

But no. Val took a deep, steadying breath. He wasn't about to let a lecherous cat chase him from anywhere. Even if it did mean asking that cat, once again, to help him out.

He padded into the stall next to the cheetah, just like before. Just like before, he knocked his knuckles on the metal stall wall a couple times.

There was a pause, then the cheetah turned off his shower. "Little ferret, is that you?"

Val was a stoat, not a ferret, but he wasn't in a position to correct the feline.

The cheetah's curtain swept open, and in he walked, naked as you please, the pink tip of his member twitching in its sopping wet sheath at the sight of Val. "Hey, I was hoping to see you in here again sometime. Same as last time?"

Careful not to make eye contact--or eye-to-scrotum contact--Val nodded.

"All right, little guy." The cheetah turned on Val's shower, but this time he lingered for a moment, the water splashing over his legs. "You know," he said with a smirk, "we could just share the stall. It would save water."

Gulping, Val tried to get that mental image out of his head. He tried not to look too mortified when he shook his head.

"Heh, all right. Remember, if it's too hot or cold or something, just let me know." Once again he left with lifted tail, not pressing the matter, and Val waited until the cat was gone before closing his curtain, for what little good it did, and dropping his wash cloth.

He didn't get far into the shower, though. It took a minute for the water to heat up, but when it did, he found that it was even hotter than the last time the cheetah had turned it on for him. Hot enough to hurt a little. But it wouldn't do permanent damage, so he grit his teeth and stood under the nearly scalding flow.

"I'm just kind of enjoying the water for now," the cheetah told him from the other stall. A moment later, that spotted face appeared over their shared barrier, smirking down at the naked stoat. "I'm Faraji, by the way. Don't think I introduced myself last time. You're Val, right?"

Val nodded.

"And you can't talk?"

A shrug. The stoat reached for his shampoo bottle by his feet.

"Yeah, that's what people have been saying. You're sort of a celebrity, you know that?"

Another shrug. The other students did tend to pay him a lot more attention than he deserved.

"Must be rough, being mute."

It must be rough being unable to shut up, Val thought.

"That and being so small. Man, you're got some guts, you know that? Coming to a public college. Especially with everything that's been going on in the news lately."

Val hadn't been paying much attention to the news for a few weeks. He'd been consumed with the excitement of packing up for university life, then settling into it. So he tilted his head, blinking up at the cheetah questioningly, then shaking his head and wincing as shampoo got in his eyes.

"Ah, my bad." The cheetah's face disappeared, but a moment later it showed up again at floor level as the other student lay right down in his stall, rolled onto his side with his own shower spraying all over him. That put his crotch back on display, too, and Val noticed a little more of his shaft was lipsticking free. "There. No more water in the eyes. But you really don't know? About the killings?"

This sounded suspiciously like hazing, but Val played along, shaking his head.

"Man, yeah. It's getting crazy out there. Lots more vore murders popping up all over the place. Damn psychos are making us carnivores look bad. But yeah, you just be careful, okay? Try to stay around people you trust. Someone as small as you might make for a tempting target."

Val slowed down his scrubbing over his upper arms, giving the cheetah a sideways glance.

"I'm not going to eat you, jeez," Faraji said, rolling his eyes. "Like I said, it makes good people look bad, just because we have pointy teeth. We're in the same boat, there. Anyway, I didn't mean to scare you. It's all over the news, so I figured you'd heard."

He just lay there watching Val bathe, making the stoat terribly uncomfortable. It got even worse when the cat bluntly asked, "So, you gay?"

Val blinked at him and made a face, but Faraji just giggled.

"I noticed you checking me out, both today and last time. It's okay. I think you're pretty cute, too." That brought some heat to Val's ears. And his scent...well, he'd been smelling of bacon ever since seeing the cheetah. The feline just made Val embarrassed no matter what he did. "Well, okay, more adorable than cute. Let's be honest, here." Faraji chuckled again when the stoat glanced to one side. "I'm bi, myself. And a guy that looks like a girl like you do? Mm." More and more bacon. Sure, Val had some hips on him. He was close to both the same size and shape as a Barbi doll. One of those ancient, anorexic ones, though Val was completely healthy. It was a common enough body type among smaller anthros, male or female. "Always wished I had a few more curves, myself," Faraji went on, though his ass was plenty ample.

Val gave his head a shake. Where had that thought come from?

"Hey, you okay? I'm not making you uncomfortable, am I? You keep wincing." The cheetah shifted a little, stretching a foot toward the stoat, then wincing himself when his hind paw fell under Val's shower water.

"Shit!" Faraji yelped, scrabbling back up and turning off his shower. "That is way too hot! I'm sorry, man." He slid around their barrier, flinging aside one curtain after the other, and turned Val's shower to a cooler setting. "Damn, that hurt. Why didn't you say something?"

Because I thought you turned it that hot on purpose, just so that I had to ask for your help again. But Val didn't have his phone to type that out. He just stood there with his arm around himself, looking up at the five-foot giant, and Faraji eventually realized what he'd said wrong.

"Oh. Right. Sorry." They just stared at each other for another awkward moment.

The cheetah tilted his head, and when Val realized the taller male was looking down at the stoat's pink dot peeking from his sheath, he hastily covered his crotch with his paws. Faraji's member was far enough unsheathed now to flop forward in front of his plump sack, and Val gulped when he noticed that.

Unfortunately, Faraji noticed Val noticing that.

The cheetah's smirk came back, and he glanced back toward the shower room door before closing the stall's curtain. It hardly trapped Val in there with him when the stoat could just run to any other stall without ducking, or under the curtain itself, but it did make the shower seem more enclosed.

As if unaware of the curtain's purpose, Faraji sat down in front of Val, plopping his spotted, plenty-ample butt in clear view of anyone who might walk in. He spread his long legs wide, to either side of the stoat, and leaned back with his hand paws behind his hips.

That easily, Val was sporting a full, one-and-a-half inch erection.

The cheetah licked his lips. "You don't need to say a word," he told Val. "Your body's talking plenty."

Just...just run! Get back to your room and lock the door, he'll get the message, then. Val didn't run, though. He just stood there with his tiny shampoo bottle in one hand and shivered under the cheetah's grin.

"And that bacon smell... That's coming from you, isn't it?" Gulping, Val nodded. "You smell like frying bacon and a campfire and...something else. Baking...pumpkins? Just what kind of shampoo is that?"

Dipping his muzzle and closing his eyes, Val held the bottle out toward the cheetah, who plucked it up between two fingers. Bacon and pumpkin pie, the stoat could handle. He was always embarrassed around the cheetah, and yeah, the cat was a blend of pretty and handsome, and he was naked, so sure, Val was aroused right then. But burning cedar wood? Why...?

Why was the stoat so afraid of this cat?

Burning cedar was the one aroma he'd promised himself he wouldn't give off while at college. He didn't want to be afraid of anything. But it was rolling off him in waves, right now, enough that the shower water could barely dampen it.

"Honey citrus?" Faraji asked, squirting a dollop of shampoo on his finger pad. He narrowed one eye. "That's not what I'm smelling. Weird." He tilted his head, then shrugged. One of his legs tucked in, and for some reason the next thing he did was squirt some shampoo all over his feline foot, rubbing it into the pads and between them until it was a ball of foam. "Well, whatever you've been up to, it's nothing a little scrubbing can't get out of your fur."

Yeah, if you don't waste all my shampoo on your foot! Wait, what's he doing?

The cheetah's sudsy hind paw was heading straight for Val. Faraji gave the stoat enough time to move out of the way, but Val was so confused, he just kept standing there, letting those warm, rough pads bump right against his chest. He took a step back, but the cheetah's foot followed, and Faraji kept it against the little stoat's torso all the way until Val was backed up against the tiled wall. Then he casually pressed his paw so hard against the tiny male's chest, Val had trouble drawing breath.

"If you want me to stop," Faraji told him, "just kick me."

Val braced his paws against the cheetah's middle two toes, but he couldn't push them away, and he couldn't stop them from slipping up and pinning his whole head between them. Shampoo suds surrounded him, making Faraji's toe pads squeak against the shower wall tiles as they squeezed around the gasping stoat's face.

Burning cedar and pumpkin pie scent rolled off Val in waves, but the bacon in the wet air was gone, now. He was too frightened to feel embarrassed, though for some reason he was even more turned on now than before. No one had ever shown any attention to him like this before. Should he be flattered? He caught a trace of coffee scent somewhere below the aroma of smothering wet cat foot, but coffee meant he felt confused, not flattered.

Humming to himself, Faraji poured more shampoo on his other foot. "Man, you must be really excited," he chuckled. "I can feel your heart racing." That second foot slowly crept closer and closer. "But I'm excited, too, little guy. I've never even dreamed about fucking someone so small."

That foot started homing in on Val's exposed lap, and at the last moment, he gave it a firm kick with one leg, his fight or flight instinct finally triggering at that word. Fucking? He knew, of course, that the cheetah just meant playing around sexually in any manner, not literally fucking the stoat, but that didn't matter. Playing around sexually was too much for Val right then, too. He didn't even know this cat!

Faraji paused, blinking and tilting his head as if not sure he'd actually felt that kick, so Val kicked him again, harder this time. It wasn't enough to hurt the big feline, of course, but it got Faraji to lower both of his feline hind paws back to the floor, freeing Val up to clutch at his chest and gasp for air.

"I, uh..." Faraji kept his legs spread, his rising arousal shining under the shower water. "You...want to stop?"

Val nodded and frantically ran for his washcloth. It was mostly dry where he'd left it, and he slung it around his waist at the same time as running for the shower room door in a mad panic. This door, too, had a lower handle installed just for him, and he shoved himself against it, ignoring the cheetah's, "Hey, wait!" and dashing out to the hall. He ran straight for his room, forgetting all about his bottle of shampoo, and threw himself against that door, as well.

After squeezing inside, he pushed the door shut and braced his back against it, gasping for air.

"Woah! You okay, Val?" Darnell asked from his bed, where he was sitting and reading a textbook in one hand. The book was big enough that Val could have sprawled out on it while it was shut, with room to spare. It didn't take long for the stoat's burning cedar to sift through the air, and the giraffe got hastily to his feet, though not fast enough to bang his head on the ceiling. "You smell like a fireplace! What happened?" It hadn't taken the giraffe long to ask Val about his various aromas, and Val had shared a list of what most of them meant. All except pumpkin pie, and a couple others.

The stoat gulped and shook his head. Closing his eyes, he tried to get himself under control. He was still hard as a twig under his washcloth, and soaking wet, the short carpet under his feet getting drenched. Keeping one hand on the cloth at his waist, he moved the other to the side of his head, stopping himself before he could grasp at his small ear, an old habit when he was distressed.

"Hey, bud, you've gotta talk to me here. You're starting to scare me." Darnell fetched the stoat's phone and set it next to the smaller student.

Val looked up at his towering roommate, seeing the concern and worry in the giraffe's eyes, and that helped to snap him out of his panic. He paced back and forth for a couple seconds to try to work off a little more of his nervous energy, then wiped his hand dry on his wash cloth towel and knelt next to his phone. "It's nothing," he texted. "Just a misunderstanding with someone in the showers."

"A misunderstanding..." Darnell read from his own phone. His expression darkened. "Who was it?" And when his expression darkened, it darkened. Val had never seen the giraffe look like that. It was scary in its own right, but in this circumstance, it made him feel safer than he could remember feeling before.

He took a deep breath, and finally let himself really believe that nothing was going to hurt him. He looked up at Darnell's murderous glower, smiled self-consciously, then texted, "It doesn't matter." Darnell looked like he was about to argue, but the stoat was already patting out his next message: "He just thought I wanted something that I didn't, and I told him so."

The giraffe read that, but his expression didn't soften. He chewed it over for a second, then asked, "You sure that's all it was?"

Val nodded up at him. Bacon was back in the air. "I think I might have overreacted," he texted.

"Yeah, well..." The giraffe finally stopped glaring, though his frown remained. "Something like this ever happens again, you tell me who did it, alright? Promise?"

Val nodded again, then grimaced down at the soggy carpet.

Darnell chuckled, then turned around so he was facing the wall, his bed sagging under his weight as he awkwardly sat cross-legged and picked his book back up. "Go ahead and dry off, bud."

Rolling his eyes, Val sent his next text without giving it much thought. "You don't have to turn away." It was true. Thanks to the showers, the ferret had seen plenty of other guys naked in his two weeks at V.U., and plenty of guys had seen him, too. Not Darnell, granted, since the giraffe tended to shower in the evenings, but this was the sort of thing that Val was going to have to get used to, as sheltered as he'd been growing up and as casual as folks seemed to be about this sort of thing and--

"Really?"

--And oh god Darnell was actually turning back around and Val was drying his face and his lower body was totally naked!

The stoat and the giraffe caught each other's gazes and Val froze on the spot, like a deer in the headlights. He stood in profile to the giraffe, and could only thank the heavens that his arousal had gone down.

Darnell chuckled, then faced the wall again. "It's okay, man. Roommates have to respect each other's privacy, right?"

Right.

But Darnell had just seen him without a stitch of clothes. The giraffe had tried to be quick and subtle about it, but Val had noticed the larger male's eyes take in the shape of the stoat's body before they'd caught on his face.

And, heat rising to his ears, Val realized that he was...actually kind of glad Darnell had.

So much bacon. So, so much bacon. And surprisingly, a touch of vanilla. Affection.

A while later, after Val had gotten dressed in a loose tee-shirt and shorts and they'd both been studying for a time, the stoat looked at his phone where it sat next to him on his bed, Darnell's hooves stretched out a little ways past it. He glanced over toward the giraffe's face, thinking on something the taller student had said. Roommates had to respect each other's privacy.

"Hey, Darnell?" he texted.

The giraffe's phone chimed, and he picked it up. "Hmm? What's up?"

"That first night here..." Val hesitated before typing the rest, but he figured it'd be best to just get it over with. "I kinda saw you naked."

"That first night?" the giraffe repeated, tilting his head, then, "Oh! When we put the beds together. You could see that?"

"I have, like, perfect night vision, dude," the stoat texted.

Darnell chuckled, rubbing awkwardly at his neck. "Oh. Well, I guess that's good to keep in mind, huh?"

"I didn't mean to invade your privacy."

The giraffe shook his head after reading that, smiling. "Hey, no harm done. I'm the one who sleeps in the buff. Getting up like that... Eh, I should have thought about it first."

No harm done. Thank goodness. Val didn't want things to get weird between him and Darnell, but up until then, he hadn't realized how much that secret had been eating at him. He felt lighter, now.

Half an hour later, the stoat's phone chirped. It was a text from Darnell. The giraffe did that sometimes for fun, even when they were right next to each other. Val hit the view button.

"Did you like what you saw?"

The stoat's little ears tucked back, and frying bacon wafted around him again. Gulping, he had to force himself to text back, "Yeah. A lot."

When he looked over again, Darnell was smiling right back at him, a tinge of a blush in the giraffe's big ears. What he texted, though, was, "Good. I liked what I saw, too."

It turned out bacon and vanilla scents blended together kind of nicely.

It was a warm September night when they turned in, and both of them only covered themselves with a single sheet. As always, Darnell waited until the sheet was over him before he took off his shirt and pants. But that night, as they both settled in, the twelve-foot freshman seemed to doze off first. He seemed to. And in his apparent sleep, his heavy arm dragged to one side and carried the bedsheet with it, just enough to accidentally pull the edge closest to Val up halfway over the giraffe's body, partially revealing one basketball-sized testicle perched over Darnell's muscular thigh.

When the smell of bacon once more filled the dorm room, the "sleeping" giraffe's muzzle curled in a little smile.

Blushing, Val rolled over to face the other way, falling asleep with that image burned in his mind.

The following morning, waking while lying still on his side an hour before dawn, Val heard snoring coming from behind him. He was sure the giraffe really was asleep this time. So, feeling sinfully ornery, the stoat pulled his own sheet forward, letting it creep partway up his back until it was draped on top of his side and hip, but not down far enough to cover much of anything. With some effort and deep breathing, he went back to sleep, his first class not for an hour after Darnell would wake up and leave. He'd started sleeping naked, as well, just to see what it felt like, and the stoat's rump was laid bare, the curve of his hip in that position a drastic arch past his scrawny waist. As he fell asleep again, his tail fell limply to the pillow he lay on, exposing his entire cleft.

Bacon and mischievous permanent marker weren't the best blend, but fortunately they faded by the time Darnell woke.

Eight

Val was a complete and total stranger to flirting, but a few days later, he and Darnell had managed to "accidentally" show each other just about every inch of their bodies. That's as far as it ever went, and Val knew they were just playing. Darnell was a good friend, and all that casual teasing made the stoat almost forget about what had happened with Faraji in that shower.

He sat now sharing lunch once again with Rashida, Anna, and Toni at their favorite burger joint. Darnell had just left, late for his twelve o'clock yoga course. Or maybe he'd left just to get away from the others teasing him about it. It was all part of the giraffe's physical training curriculum, but that mental image... Well, at first it had made Val silently laugh like crazy, but now it actually had him shifting his legs where he sat on the tabletop, nibbling on one of Rashida's chicken nuggets.

One good thing about being so small, he didn't feel guilty at all about mooching.

"So I told him the labwork wasn't the problem, it was all the mindless copying the night before," Toni was saying. "'Hand-write the instructions for the next day's lab letter for letter, twice, and bring the copies in to each lab for inspection. Hand-write them! Like this is the stone age!"

Anna shrugged, speaking around three french fries that she'd shoved in her mouth at once after scooping out a huge dollop of ketchup. "Werll, it'sh one wayr to make sure you..." She swallowed. "...really know what not to do."

"It's asinine!" Toni thumped the side of her fist on the table, making Val bounce to one side. "Do you know how much I was looking forward to this physics class? There shouldn't be any weed-out courses by your sophomore year."

"There shouldn't be any weed-out courses, period," Rashida interjected, and the rabbit neko pointed a finger at the tauric fennec.

"Exactly! They're just encouraging good students to drop out because they're fed up with all the bureaucratic bullshit that goes on in this place."

Val had been working on a text with his foot, since both hands were greasy from his food. He finally sent, "They probably just want to make sure students won't quit when things start getting tough. Training us for life after school, right?"

The other three read the text, then Toni jabbed her finger toward the silent stoat. "Shut up, voice of reason." He grinned at her, though, and she couldn't quite hide a smile with a grimace. She liked to be challenged. "That's just the excuse the faculty uses. It's still a terrible business model. They're losing money and making themselves look bad every time a student drops out. Anyway. Guh. Psychology awaits." Toni complained a lot about her psychology course, too, calling it pseudo science, but she was acing it along with all her other classes.

The bunny girl got to her feet, taking her tray with her. "See you guys tomorrow?"

"Same time, same place!" Anna assured her, then stuffed more fries in her mouth. "Erctuerly, geurs, Er'm gornna herve ter gur, too." She gulped. "Wanna hit the gym before Art History."

The fennec chuckled. "You're not gonna finish lunch first?"

"I'll eat it on the way. Oh! But I almost forgot!" She leaned in close to Val, holding a hand up between herself and the tauric fox and whispering plenty loud enough for everyone nearby to hear, "You should ask Rashida out sometime. He has totally been crushing on you." And then she was off.

Rashida's jaw dropped, and he stared at the human girl's back as she left out the restaurant's side door. "I told you that in confidence!" he called after her, then whipped his head around to stare at the stoat on the table, looking like he was about to start smelling like bacon.

Well, the stoat could manage enough bacon scent for the both of them. Val felt like some switch in his brain had malfunctioned. He couldn't _possibly_have heard Anna right, could he?

"So..." Rashida began lamely, drawing a circle on the tabletop with a french fry. "Sure is nice weather we've been having lately, isn't it?"

His ears heating up, Val changed text channels to send to just Rashida and not the group. "That was just Anna being Anna, right?"

"Oh yeah! Of course. Anna will always be Anna." The fennec took a long gulp of his soda through the straw, then added in a more sheepish voice, "It might...also be sorta true."

Val just looked at his friend's big-eared, embarrassed face, sending out hints of bacon and cedar--not burning, thank god. He was nervous, but that was natural enough, wasn't it? "Really?" he finally texted, unable to think of anything else to send.

"Well, yeah. I guess so. I mean, you're cute, and you're smart, and interesting, and... Damn, I sound like I'm trying to flatter you." Well, Val smelled like lemons now, so it was working. "Look, you know it's Saturday, right?"

The stoat nodded.

"And you remember that Saturday's the one day I don't have classes?"

Another nod.

"And that it takes me forty-five minutes to drive to campus...?" Rashida rubbed at the back of his neck, looking off to one side before turning back to the stoat. "Well, let's just say I don't drive all this way for the Shake Shack's awesome grilling."

They both took another sip of their drinks, and Val glanced away while chewing on the end of a french fry, his mind racing. "I just never thought anyone would ever have a crush on me," he finally texted.

"You're kidding, right?" Val just shrugged, so Rashida went on. "Look, maybe all the smells have something to do with it. I, uh, kinda have a thing for food, and you always smell like the best ones, whatever mood you're in. But even without that, like I said, you're fun to be around and you're hella sexy."

Val gusted out a silent laugh, wiping a paw on a napkin to text more fluently. "NOW you're flattering me."

"No, I mean it!"

The stoat leveled an incredulous stare at the fennec before sighing and tapping out. "You don't have to lay it on so thick. I'm cute and I'm adorable, sure, but I'm never sexy. That'd be like finding an action figure attractive." There was a knot in his gut when he pressed Send. That wasn't the sort of thing he liked admitting out loud, but it was the simple truth.

Rashida blinked at the message, then asked, "Dude, have you seen yourself in those pants?" Val just rolled his eyes, but the fennec shook his head insistently. "I'm just saying, you turn heads, Val."

The stoat crossed his legs, certain at this point that Rashida was making fun of him to deflect some of the fennec's own embarrassment. Yeah, Val turned heads, but that was because no one in the world was as small as he was. He got his pants from a dress-up doll catalogue, and if those dolls weren't quite as rounded in some places as he was, that didn't mean he was walking around all seductive in poorly fitting khakis.

The fox glanced away again, hesitating and taking a deep breath before saying, "Look. Hop down on that chair for a sec."

Val gave his friend a sideways glance, but eventually did as he was asked, dropping himself down to the seat a foot and change above the ground. From there he had a clear view under the table, and could see the tauric fox's forelegs. Or rather, the skirt of Rashida's tauric shawl, a colorful sheet that most taurs wore over their feral halves. Rashida's reached the floor on every side, but to Val's surprise, the fox glanced around to make sure no one was looking their way, then lifted a forepaw off the ground, hooking the front of his shawl along with it. He lifted it high enough for Val to see all the way under his sandy-colored underbelly.

Rashida didn't wear anything else aside from the shawl. His vulpine scrotum was on full display, resting plump and snug and frankly huge on the tile floor, and in front of it... The top half of his glistening red cock was pointing at an upward angle. It looked like only half, at least, but there were already more than three inches exposed.

Val looked up at the fennec in shock when Rashida lowered his foreleg back down and leaned around the table to see him. "That happens every time I'm around you," Rashida told him. "Every single time since we met."

Ohhkay... So, Rashida actually did find Val attractive. Or maybe the fox just had a weird aroma fetish. That would sort of make sense, since the fennec had such a strong nose, and he'd pretty much admitted it already...

The stoat swung himself back up to the tabletop, and both males stared at each other for a few moments.

"This...is gonna make things weird between us, isn't it?" Rashida asked glumly, but Val hastily shook his head and returned to his phone.

"No, of course not! It's just, I sort of have a crush on Toni, is all."

Rashida snickered. "Yeah, I can tell. Don't think she's noticed yet, though." He paused to down a chicken nugget, and unlike Anna, had the courtesy to chew. "You, uh, do know she has a boyfriend, though, right?"

Val felt himself wilt a little, sending out wisps of tulip and rose. He got ahold of himself before he could make the fast food joint smell like a florist's. But he hadn't known that. He wasn't sure why it should make him feel depressed. He was still content to only have friends in life, without all the romance and drama. But still...

"Oh," Rashida said, catching his expression and the faint hints of sadness and disappointment in the air. "Yeah, some musician guy. Plays trombone in the marching band. Sorry, man. I thought you knew."

Val just shrugged, smiled, and waved it off. Yeah, he was disappointed, but he'd get over it. Nothing was different, really. He'd still just silently enjoy Toni's company, and be as good a friend as he could. He took a deep breath and another bite of fry.

"Anyway, I'm not in the market for a boyfriend or anything," the fennec went on. "Life's too short, you know, and I don't plan on going steady with anyone while I'm still in school. Too much fun to be had!" Val nodded, and the tension between them seemed to fade. "So long as you keep hanging out with me, I'll be happy. So smell like strawberries and eat that nugget."

Val grinned. Just this once, he decided he'd be obedient.

Later that evening, though, he was looking at his reflection in his dorm's bathroom mirror. He'd clambered up to the sink's top using a few handholds on the door to the maintenance supplies underneath it. No one else was in the bathroom with him, so he turned himself sideways and glanced down over his hip and leg.

His shirt was fairly loose, so he bunched it up at the stomach and pulled it flat against the small of his back. He made himself lift his tail, looking himself up and down again, blushing at how thick he looked under the tail compared to his scrawny waist. Yeah, he was curvy and feminine. Most smaller anthros were. But there was still no way someone could see a person shorter than a foot tall and say "Dayum!" instead of "D'aww!"

He thought about Faraji and all that embarrassment in the shower room a few days back.

Flicking his ears and chewing on his lower lip, Val hooked his thumb under his khakis' waistband and slowly lowered them over his flank, exposing the pristine white curve of one soft cheek. That's when the bathroom door opened and two guys swept in, and--

Bacon!

_--_and Val leapt into the sink's bed, snapping his pants back up and trying to keep his feet dry while pretending to wash his hands.