FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Please do not read if you are under 18! The following contains mature content not suited for general audiences. You have been warned.

Grace delivers a speech that hits a bit too close to home for Jonah.

TRIGGER WARNING! Contains: PTSD, rape (flashbacks), stress, anxiety, overwhelm, consent play (mentioned), discussion of kinks, discussion of safewords, manipulation, Stockholm syndrome, panic attacks

Jonah, Grace, Flynn, etc. are characters made by me, based off of characters in the Pokémon universe owned by GameFreak and Nintendo. I do not claim rights to characters such as Jolteon, Glaceon, Flareon, etc.

By PseudonymousUmbreon. If you wish to use or reference my work and/or my characters, please contact me first.

*****

Only Falling Apart

Coevolution Ch.12

The life of a student athlete in college is far from easy. In order to maintain the necessary academic status to play, you had to keep up with all your classes religiously. In order to keep up your attendance with sports practices, you had to miss classes. It's a vicious cycle where one life constantly preys off of the other and you make quick friends and enemies with all of the sacrifices you have to juggle on a week-by-week basis.

Frankly, Jonah found the whole thing rather exhausting. But, it kept his mind busy, especially after...

Well, there was no use dwelling on that right now. He had a "health and wellness" presentation to not pay attention to to make up for a missed class. And then a reflection to bullshit his way through.

The room was predictably very sparsely populated. A trio of Eeveelutions sat in the front row, talking very animatedly with an Alakazam sitting facing the audience. Their hands and paws were all flying--it was a mystery that no one was getting slapped in the face. A few other miscellaneous Pokémon dotted the audience; a pair of fire-types chatted with each other and tapped away at their laptops, and a single Buizel sat alone toward the back, scrolling through something on her phone. Jonah chose a spot in the back row that he hoped wasn't too close to her.

Jonah pulled out his own phone and considered opening the notes app so that he could jot down some main points from the presentation. Not that he'd actually write anything down in the end. But... he still wanted to be a semi-decent student.

A tap on the shoulder alerted Jonah to a presence behind him--two presences, actually. His roommate, Flynn, smirked down at him, grasping the paw of their boyfriend, Val.

"Didn't expect to see you here, dude," Flynn said, sliding into the seat next to him. Val followed close behind, with a hint of concern in his eyes.

Jonah shrugged. "I needed a makeup credit for Health and Wellness. I just kinda signed up."

Val blinked. "You do know what this meeting is about, right Jo?"

"Like I said, I just kinda signed up. It was like, one of the only ones that fit into my schedule. I don't really care what they're talkin' about, just need the credit."

"I think you might want to--"

"Umbre is here," Flynn interrupted, staring directly at the Eeveelutions in the front row. The Umbreon, Leafeon, and Espeon were now signing between each other. The Alakazam was nowhere to be seen.

Come to think of it, the Umbreon did look familiar. Jonah remembered an altercation at the dorm from a few months ago--so the flying hands was sign language, then. Jonah had no clue there were other deaf people on campus.

"Damn dude, your ex? That's rough," Jonah said, at first with a smile, though one that quickly faded when he saw how tense Flynn was. "You good?"

Val was squeezing Flynn's paw tightly. "It's okay hun, you'll be alright," he muttered. "They probably haven't even seen you yet."

Flynn shook their head and fell back in their seat. "Yeah... it's probably fine. I mean... I think we're on better terms now?" It wasn't a question, but it felt like one.

A speaker crackled to life behind Jonah as someone checked the mic. "Is this thing on?"

Oh, fuck.

Oh, fucking fuck.

"Hello everyone! I'd like to thank you all for coming--I'm really excited to see so many--uh, so many Eevees like me in the audience."

Jonah felt the blood rush to his face as the Glaceon's eyes fell directly on him. The Glaceon from the library. The one who... when...

"I have to say I'm impressed we got this much of a turnout, especially for such a risqué topic, but I'm happy to have you here nonetheless! My name is Grace Nieves, and I am a student here at the college. I major in psychoanalytic therapy, with a minor in sexual education. And this--"

Grace clicked a button on a clicker she was holding, and a screen behind her jumped to life.

Fucking. Hell.

"--is a lesson on safely engaging in sex through the lens of kinks and fetishes."

Jonah swallowed. Distantly, he realized that Val was trying to say something to him, but he wasn't really listening to Flynn's boyfriend.

He recalled that day, when Grace had saved him from whatever Sylv--his ex, had planned to do to him. He'd still landed a semester-long ban from the library (for better or for worse) but honestly, he'd been lucky enough that Grace had been, well. Graceful.

"Let's start with a question for the audience: can anyone tell me what a 'kink' is?"

The Leafeon raised his paw. "Something that turns you on?"

Grace nodded. "That's a really good baseline definition for it, yes. On a psychological level, a 'kink' is some kind of stimulus that our brains have associated with a feeling of sexual arousal. There are lots of psychological theories that I could get into regarding why kinks actually develop, but we're here to actually talk about how to safely engage in them."

The slide changed. A list of common kinks appeared on the screen, featuring a whole slew of things that made Jonah cringe. Feet and paws. Musk. Age play. Latex and rubber. Diapers. The list went on, each entry more concerning than the last. At the end of the list, a box separated a select few from the rest. CNC. Pet play. Master/slave. Bondage. Hypnosis.

Jonah froze. No. Nononononono. This could not be happening.

"You'll notice I separated a few at the end off from the rest. These are kinks that specifically play with the ideas of consent and agency. We're going to touch on those more later, but keep those in the back of your minds for now. Can anyone tell me anything that all these entries have in common?"

A voice from ahead of Jonah spoke up. "Some of them are kinda gross..." It was one of the fire-types, a Cinderace.

"Well, yes, several of these can be seen as objectively gross, but on a fundamental level, what do they have in common?"

The audience was silent.

"No one? Well, they're all... completely different! Sorry, that was a bit of a trick question." The Glaceon winked. "I appreciate the comment about the gross-ness of it, though, because that takes us to our next slide..."

As the presentation went on, Jonah found it harder and harder to pay attention. Every now and then, Grace would say something, and images of Sy--his ex would pop into his mind. He saw her ribbons, constricting him and his breathing; he saw her delicate paws, grabbing at his dick without regard for his wants; he heard her soft voice, probing his mind and quieting his thoughts of resistance.

He hated to admit it. But he missed how she made him feel. As wrong as it all felt, as controlling and dismissive as she was, as violated he had been... it was the most pleasure he had ever experienced in his life. Some horrible part of him wanted that back. Syl... her voice echoed in his mind, making him want to come crawling back to her. To beg to be hers again.

Not that she'd ever want him back after what he did to her, breaking up with her in such a public manner. But...

Flynn elbowed Jonah in the side. "Dude. You're fuckin shaking," they hissed. "Are you okay? We can go, if you need to."

Jonah shook his head. "I'm fine," he whispered back. He was not fine.

There was a picture of a traffic light on the screen. "The traffic light system is a great safeword system to use for consent play situations like this," Grace was explaining. "If you're ever unsure about your partner's consent to a scenario, you can check in by asking them for a signal. Green means you're good to go, yellow means slow down, and red means stop everything. Of course, you may be in situations where you can't use your voice, in which case you can use American Sign Language. Bre?"

Umbre rose from their seat and stepped up to the podium. They started signing, and the Alakazam, who Jonah now realized was watching Umbre's signs intently, started speaking.

"Hello everyone, my name is Umbre and I'm the college's resident deaf kid." The audience chuckled. "When I do scenes with my partner, I'll use these signs to communicate consent."

A closed fist with an outstretched pointer and thumb, shaken. "Green."

A closed fist with an open pinky and thumb, also shaken. "Yellow."

A pointer finger dragged down the chin. "Red."

"In a pinch, you can also sign the starting letters as long as you communicate with your partner or partners beforepaw: G. Y. R."

Grace stepped back in. "Thank you Umbre," she said, waving a paw down from her chin as the Umbreon sat back down. Jonah saw Umbre sign something to the Leafeon, and the Leafeon glanced back at them. "It's very important that whatever safewords you use, both you and your partner or partners understand fully how they work and what they mean, and that you are never completely restricted from using them."

Heh. That was laughable. Syl had never taken the time to do anything like that with Jonah--in fact, she had consistently ignored his protests and shut them down with her hypnosis. It was... scary, how much of a hold she still had on him.

"That, of course, brings us to our final topic of the night: rape."

A chill ran down Jonah's spine. Jonah had heard stories of rape, but they were never anything like what he had gone through with Syl. The stories were more... violent. More extreme.

"Sometimes people have a misconstrued idea of rape being when a man forcefully impregnates a woman. Some will expand the definition to being any kind of unwilling penetration, regardless of gender, place, or outcome. I, however, expand the definition even further: rape is any coerced sexual act that is not fully consented to by all parties involved."

Wait. Was it? But...

"For example, calling back to our kinks of consent play and safewords, if one party is unable to use a safeword and needs to, it's rape. If one party does not fully consent or expresses clear discomfort without a safeword that means you're good to go, it's rape. If a safeword is ignored, it's definitely rape. And if one party is placed in a situation where they are unable to speak for themselves, such as if they are drunk, if there is a language barrier, if the party is a minor or non-sapient creature, or under the influence of mental duress from Stockholm syndrome or even hypnosis that has been misused to undermine consent, it's rape."

This time, the word hit Jonah like a truck. Syl--she... had it truly been rape? He had agreed at the beginning, but he definitely didn't want her to do what she had done in the library. And... she'd ignored him when he tried to resist. Silenced him with her charms. Her wonderfully addicting charms...

He had agreed at first.

He had agreed...

Before he knew what he was doing, Jonah's paw shot up in the air while Grace was mid-sentence. She paused, evidently startled, then narrowed her eyes. "Yes?"

Suddenly, all the attention was on him. The other audience members had turned to look at him, and suddenly a crowd of ten felt like a crowd of ten thousand. "Um. I. Uh. If--"

Grace crossed her arms. "Don't think I didn't see you when you walked in, Jonah. If you're here to poke fun, I won't be tolerating that kind of behavior and you will be shown out."

Jonah cringed. So Grace did still see him as some kind of sexual degenerate. "It's--it's not like that I swear, I just--" Grace raised her eyebrows impatiently. "If, if someone gives consent, to something, at first, but then, they, um..." His voice trembled.

Flynn reached over and grabbed Jonah's paw. "It's okay Jo."

His roommate's paw was warm--expected, for a fire-type--and seemed to pull Jonah's thoughts back into manageable chunks. "If you... want to take away consent. And you can't. Because of, um... reasons... is that. Is that rape?"

Grace hesitated. "Yes, I'd say so. Obviously everything is judged on a case-by-case, but--"

"She raped me."

Those words hung in the air as a single tear rolled down Jonah's cheek. He could hardly believe them himself, but the more he said those words in his head, the more correct they felt. And the worse he felt.

"S-Sylvia fuckin' raped me, in the library, she--it was non-consensual, I... She..."

"Jonah," Flynn muttered. "Breathe." The Flareon's paw squeezed Jonah's tightly.

"L-look, Jonah, I..." Grace started, "I am a mandated reporter, it's part of my program. If this is a legitimate accusation I will have to tell the authorities." She swallowed. "I didn't even... I..."

The Espeon sitting up near Umbre piped up. "I can vouch for him." Jonah realized with a start it was the same voice that had popped into his head that day at the library. "He and his girlfriend were creating a lot of psychic energy in the library, I couldn't help but notice. I distracted the Sylveon and gave Jonah a temporary psychic barrier to protect him from her. It was definitely rape."

Jonah's breathing quickened. "I don't... I don't wanna take her to court over this... I can't face her again. She's--she's too powerful, I--"

"I'm sorry, Jonah, but this is enough information for me that I'm legally obligated to share. Especially in front of an audience--" Grace gestured to the group. "My paws are tied. The best I can do is bring you and Espen with me when I make the report."

Jonah felt sick to his stomach. He couldn't--no, he wouldn't put himself in a situation where he can be so easily manipulated all over again. He couldn't do that again. Not again.

"Jonah. Please breathe. I need you to stay with me here," Flynn said. They had withdrawn their paw and looked visibly frightened; Jonah was passively aware that Flynn's fur was brighter than usual. Val had retreated against the back wall with the Buizel, who was very evidently trying not to cry.

"I can't... She... She'll..." None of the words that popped into Jonah's mind reached his lips. It felt like the world was closing in around him, like Sylvia's ribbons had done countless times before.

Jonah. You're having a panic attack. I need you to focus on my voice. It was Flynn's voice, but this time speaking directly into his brain, just like Sylvia had done. It should have been comforting; it was his roommate, and his best friend, and yet... Jonah was close to throwing up.

He shook his head, trying desperately to clear it, to think of anything other than Sylvia. He tried in vain to say something, but none of the words that came out were intelligible to him. He felt distantly a paw on his shoulder, a ribbon around his neck, and a soft voice in his mind.

Mine.

Jonah laughed. There really was no escaping her, was there? At the end of the day, he would always be Sylvia's sex slave. Her ribbons were never going to disappear from his mind. He would always be--