The First Day of School
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_The First Day of School _ ©MMVIII Whyte Yoté
"...and so, if you could read over chapters one and two in your textbooks, or at least breeze over the illustrations, we'll be ready for class tomorrow." The broad-shouldered bear at the front of the classroom loosened his thin black tie as he settled behind his desk. He'd been pacing the length of the chalkboard the whole period, waxing intellectual about Pythagorean identities and square roots of tangents. When the bell rang, he seemed to heave a sigh and deflate even further into his chair. He was feeling the strain as well as any of his students, that much was obvious. Jaire had just a little pity for him.
The classroom was empty except for him and Mr. Bosley; that's the way every period ended with Jaire. The mouse preferred instead to gather his things in the order in which they assembled themselves in his satchel--textbook, notebook, slide rule--and arrange them accordingly so they took up the least space possible. It was a pet peeve to most who watched him, but it was the way he got things done.
"You have anything you need to ask me, Mr. Thomass?" The mouse looked up from the satchel. Mr. Bosley reclined, his face toward the suspended ceiling where dirty, age-old lights hung and cast their pekid glow even though one side of the classroom held a line of windows. The brown bear's thick fingers formed a tent over his muzzle while his thumbs massaged his temples.
Jaire stood and shouldered his satchel across his slight frame. "No, sir, just making sure I have everything." He weaved through the maze of desks toward the door. "Will it be a problem if I type up my homework? My writing is almost illegible."
One intelligent yellow eye gazed at him over thin pince-nez frames. It was one of those looks he got from nearly every teacher he came across. Fourteen years old, just into high school, and he was asking about typing his assignments. Testing into Trig wasn't nerdy enough, huh? Jaire sighed inwardly and wished the bear would just answer the question.
"If you want, son; frankly, I don't care if you paint it on a piece of flotsam as long as you do the thing." Jaire nodded, and was turning to leave when the bear's paw grabbed his elbow.
"Yes, sir?"
The broad ursine nose was mere inches from his own, narrower snout. The mouse could feel its humidity, its quivering, in his whiskers. "Lemme give you one piece of advice, as a wise old man."
"Of course, sir."
"I know you're smart, and you know you're smart. But nobody else has to know how smart. Don't be a standout. You're already two years ahead of everybody else." Jaire's glasses were starting to fog with Bosley's breath. "Just do the work and be good. You don't have to impress me, you hear? D'ya understand where I'm coming from?"
As stoic as Jaire may have looked on the outside, he did feel a twitch of panic being told this by a teacher. Word-of-mouth had gotten around the eighth grade, stories about Freshman initiations and bullies picking on the nerds and geeks, how if you didn't have a letter jacket you weren't worth your weight in salt. Jaire hadn't given much credence to the gossip, but apparently Mr. Bosley had had experience with similar matters. That was saying something. He felt at once exposed and underarmed.
He nodded at the bear.
"Good," Bosley patted him on the shoulder, smiling a smile much warmer than his words just now had been. "Just trying to make it easier on you."
"I appreciate that, sir," replied the mouse, waving as he left the room. "On your desk, start of the period tomorrow." It looked like this year was going to be the year of Stealth Trigonometry. No matter; he'd pass and move on to Calc.
The second bell rang almost as soon as he left the classroom. It was fifth period, lunch. Normally, there would still be stragglers in the halls, but everyone had someplace to be: either in the cafeteria or study hall. Jaire almost scoffed to himself as he walked to his locker near the library. He knew enough about how this place worked from hearing stories from his older brother, Mick. In front of Mom and Dad it was a hallowed place of higher education, where values were learned and adhered to. In the company of Jaire, however, painted a much darker, more erotic, unstable picture.
Mick was a senior. He was getting out this year.
"If you see me, try not to say anything," he'd said this morning at the breakfast table. "You're a total square, and chicks don't dig stuff like that. It's cool that you're smart and all, but...you know." Jaire knew; he knew, plain and simple, that Mick was pretty steady with a girl--pinned, even--and he didn't want his nerdy brother ruining things for him. Jaire had nodded and said okay, and smiled. Mick was a swell brother, but sometimes he could be a drag. He figured he could give up that much, though.
Fifth period was the social crux of high school. Lunch was eaten, cigarettes were smoked in the bathroom, the lovebirds got in what necking they could, where they could. The jocks picked on the retards in the study rooms, and all the smarties (read: bully bait) gathered in the library to keep sane and away from everyone else for a little peace and quiet. Jaire was no different. After stowing his stuff in his locker, he took his brown bag lunch with him and headed to the center of the school's Y-shaped wings.
Ahh, solace. The silence, the organization, the Dewey Decimal System. It wasn't as private as the prop room behind the stage curtains at his old middle school, but he could eat in peace and maybe get some reading done. Homework could be reserved for home; this was his daily personal break from the homework. The place was only half-full, anyway. The librarian's desk was front and center, surrounded classroom-style by about fifteen study desks. Shelves of books lined the front and side walls; the back wall was pane glass and gave onto a grassy courtyard.
A group of jacket-clad guys sat in one corner, remarkably quiet, passing around a worn copy of Sports Illustrated. Jaire guessed they probably had Playboy inside, judging by their downturned eyes and crooked smiles. He noticed a vacant spot in the opposite corner, walled in by shelves holding the complete Encyclopedia Britannica, so he strode across the room and sank into the worn armchair that looked as though it had been there since the end of the War. Things like that were common in public schools. As the mouse set his lunch on the small sidetable next to him, he noticed a copy of National Geographic, September 1963. That was actually the current month! His opinion of public education just improved, if only slightly.
Skipping past articles about whitewater rafting and volcanoes in Bali, the mouse engaged himself with an in-depth article on Australia. When the librarian, an elderly and rather plump-looking zebra, looked over at him, a look of actual amusement crossed her face when she realized she was looking at an honest-to-goodness student in her library. She smiled, Jaire smiled back, and he continued reading, trying to be quiet with his paper bag as he went through the bologna-and-cheese sandwich, apple, milk and snickerdoodle with which his mother had supplied him.
Normally during the lunch hour, students who ate in the cafeteria would spend half an hour in study hall before migrating downstairs to eat. But for those who, like Jaire, brought their own food, the study areas were open to them as well as the cafeteria, freeing up their lunch to a full hour. This allowed the mouse to engross himself completely in his reading, which he did as soon as he finished his food. It was like an odd kind of catharsis for him, a calming mantra of articles and photography and ads for this camera and that brand-new sedan and the other airline to sunny Puerto Rico.
So zoned in was he that it was by pure chance that Jaire looked up from the words to see every guy in the corner, letter jackets and all, staring at him. Even though they weren't all wolves (there were two of the lupine variety, out of the six males), they acted like a pack when ducking down into a huddle once they saw the mouse had noticed them.
"Jerks," he said under his breath. He knew he looked the part: thin frame, short, glasses, well-spoken and well-written, the whole shebang. Middle school had been tough enough, with the cliques and teasing and--ugh--P.E. At least in high school Jaire had hoped to find a different crowd, if not in the other freshmen then in the upperclassmen. He knew about the jocks, and the bullying; that was part of school, after all. But reading National Geographic on lunch in no way merited ridicule. Well, they could kiss his grey-furred ass for all they cared.
But it gnawed on him as he continued to read. Even more so than wolf ears, his round radar dishes, once tuned in to a certain sound, kept homed in whether he wanted to be or not. He kept glancing up at the males, no more able to help his eavesdropping than he could grow wings and take to the sky. Two wolves, a coyote, a rhino, a lion and a Mastiff. Most likely from the football team. They were doing a good job of whispering, but the acoustics of the corner in which they sat amplified the sound perfectly.
"...not a big deal, Tate. We all did it too."
"How do I know you're not shittin' me, huh?"
"You wanna talk to Larry Boyd? He graduated last year. Did it more than once, if you know what I mean."
"He's--"
"I'm not sayin', I'm just tellin' what I know."
"It's still stupid, guys, c'mon."
"Wait...is he calling a tradition stupid? That's not kosher, man."
"I didn't mean--"
"Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. But you're on the team, and you're in it with us. You gotta."
"...or we could just blab to the rest of the first string that it was Coach, and not a freshman."
"What the fuck, dude! Is that a threat?"
"We're just sayin' it's not a big deal. Doesn't mean a thing. Except that you're in good with everybody."
Jaire listened with growing interest, and just a tiny spark of dread, because he was fairly certain it was him they were talking about. Keeping his head down but his eyes up, he could make out the six guys sitting in a powwow circle in chairs just as raggedy as his. The rhino looked dead serious; the coyote had eager expectation written across his slender muzzle. The grey wolf Jaire pegged as Tate, the subject of the prodding, by his flat ears and grimacing face. Just like Bosley, the mouse felt the smallest of pity for him. At the same time, he was thinking what his course of action should be if the wolf decided to beat him up for the sake of his good standing on the football team.
"Good man," the other wolf, a brown, clapped his buddy on the back and gave him a smile any used-car salesman would approve of. Oh, no. Where was Mick when you needed him? Number one, he wouldn't let anybody beat up his little brother, no matter how much the jocks thought he deserved it, and number two, Mick would relish the opportunity to flex his bravado in front of whatever lady he was currently courting. He was probably in the deserted band room, necking or something. Good for him.
Still pretending to read the magazine, Jaire kept his focus on the grey wolf, whose back was towards his corner of the library. He was talking into the floor, it seemed, and the words were not only muffled, they were inaudible. Even his gesticulating hands were indecipherable, but his ears remained back and his tail out of sight. Finally, he rubbed his eyes and stood, much to the silent encouragement of his peers. And then he was walking straight towards Jaire, his eyes everywhere but at his target.
Here we go. Don't be party to these petty games. The mouse put his eyes back on the magazine, not really looking at it, until a wolf-shaped shadow fell over the pages. Sensing a cue of some sort, he looked up, trying to act older than his age.
"Can I help you?" his voice was even, underlined with wary venom. It was convincing. Tate's ears were up, but his tail was practically dusting the insides of his thighs.
"Yeah. Yeah, I hope you can." Hands on the hips, looming stance. He looked over his shoulder, at the librarian, saw she was occupied, then continued. "I hear you're good at math. I seen you in Trig, and Bosley's an asshole. Doesn't teach worth beans. I was wondering, you know, if you might wanna help me with my homework real quick?" Slick, real slick. The wolf had that nonchalant tough-guy thing down pretty well, Jaire had to admit. Any freshman with lesser hearing would have taken the bait immediately, either blissfully entering into danger or fearing for his career as a student.
"Mr. Bosley's just fine. I don't seem to have a problem."
Tate fidgeted a bit, evidenced only by twitching fingers. "Well, you know, you're in his class and you're a freshman. I'm supposed to be graduating at the end of the year, and I barely got enough credits in math. You can be my private tutor, like."
Pretending to think it over, Jaire tried to figure out the angle the wolf was getting at. Obviously, this was not the point of the conversation. Tate could suck at Trig, fine, but the mouse doubted the other guys were pressuring him to ask for homework help. That's not how it went. The wolf wanted him out of the library. Twenty minutes left in the lunch hour; by now he was probably getting desperate.
"I'm awfully busy with my own classwork. Maybe you can find someone else who's good at Trig? You could talk to Bosley; he said he was always available to help." The wolf was shifting from foot to foot in thin motorcycle boots that looked way too small for his feet. Agitation came off him in waves.
"Naw, you see, you're the best person I could find; if you could just take a look at my book, it's in my locker. I don't like to talk like I'm a retard, but the math is killin' me." Jaire took the smidgen of pity he felt and crushed it like one of his mom's Tareytons.
"Go away, Tate. I'm busy." At this, the wolf's face practically did a pole change, first from disbelief to an anger that must have been a throwback to the football field. He unabashedly turned back to his friends across the library, where they quickly acted as if they had nothing at all to do with this whole charade. Both he and Jaire saw the wolf was getting no help whatsoever. A growl had started to make its way from his chest to his throat.
Kneeling, the wolf was down way too close to Jaire's face. His eyes reflected hurt pride, that familiar desperation and a little hate as well. "I don't care whether you wanna help me or not. If you don't get up right now I'm gonna knock your head so hard you won't learn nothin' for the rest of the day. You still have a whole year to go."
And Jaire smelled it. He smelled that the wolf meant what he said, that if he didn't at least follow him outside the library he would make sure the mouse had a hell of a time getting through his freshman year. This was not fair. Of course it wasn't fair. This was how it was. If he had to get pummeled once, if he could get home and talk to Mick, he could nip this in the bud. He had the wherewithal and the reputation to make a difference. And if Jaire had to hide behind his big brother for a year, so be it. Some things were worth preserving.
The mouse stood up fast, sending the wolf teetering off balance and almost over one of the encyclopedia racks. Without waiting, he stalked to the door and went through, noticing the group of jocks scrambling out of their places as well. They would have an audience, wonderful.
"Wait up!" Tate whispered as loud as he could. When Jaire didn't respond, the wolf got his shirt collar and threw him sidelong into the lockers lining the right side of the hallway. "The fuck you think you're going? You don't know where my locker is."
"What does it matter?" the mouse spat back. "You're not taking me to your locker. Don't you think I know better than that? Give me a break. I heard your friends. Here they come now, right?" The rhino and Mastiff had rounded the corner into this wing of the school, and stopped short a safe distance away.
"Would you just shut up? You don't know shit," said the wolf, who grabbed Jaire's arm and yanked him from the wall, pulling him along at a swift pace he could barely keep up with. It was probably better not to antagonize Tate further; if he was just doing this for his friends, maybe the beating wouldn't be so bad. He hoped. Still, Jaire had no intention of just giving up without some kind of fight.
It was amazing how the halls happened to be empty at just this moment, too. Anyone walking around during lunch wouldn't be questioned anyway because it was viewed as a kind of free-for-all. Students would be at the other end of the school, teachers would be smoking in the Teachers' Lounge, and nobody at all would think twice about a grey wolf and a skinny mouse hurrying along and ducking through a maintenance door halfway down to the end.
Deserted...even as Jaire followed begrudgingly, his stomach was beginning a nice series of flipflops.
The door opened outward, striking the brick exterior of the building. Cool fall air, fresh September air, hit Jaire's face and danced along his whiskers. "Stay here," Tate mumbled, and slammed the mouse against the wall. Small bits of trash swirled about; it was twenty feet or so to the end of the corridor. No windows, save for a small one on the door. Jaire was thinking this must be exactly what the architect had in mind when he drew up blueprints for the school: an alley designed specifically for beating up Frosh.
Tate grabbed a broken dry mop from the corner, upending it and shoving the jagged end of the handle into the asphalt. When Jaire looked up, he saw shadows of faces fighting for the best view of the action. He felt like Custer at Wounded Knee.
"You know, you think you're going to be so cool when you're through with me, Tate. But I'm going to let you in on a little secret."
"What's that?" asked the wolf, turning around, his tail a twitching bushy rudder behind him. He came down nose-to-nose with the mouse, a perverted resolve glowing behind his pupils.
Jaire pushed against Tate's chest. "Back off! Your friends're gonna get a show, and you'll be high and mighty for all of two days, and then nobody's gonna care. I can't stop you; there's no one who can out here. So you take all the time you need, Mister Big Scary Predator, because tomorrow you will wake up and you will feel terrible." Jaire could hear his mother edging in at the end of the sentence, but maybe that's exactly what he needed. Maybe he could channel enough of her Jewish guilt complex to make a difference.
For a second, Tate seemed to be bewildered by the mouse's sudden show of bravado. He glanced at the door, biting his lower lip with one upper fang, then loomed close. "Lemme tell you something, okay? You don't get it...you don't get it at all. You don't get what it's like, okay? Just shut up and don't move. This is complete bullshit."
And Tate went to his knees in front of Jaire. Stared straight ahead. Reached forward and started to fumble with the mouse's belt buckle.
"No. No, no, no, don't you touch me--"
The whole alley shook with the vibrations from the wolf's chest. He remained stoic, expressionless as his fingers worked the buckle loose and went for Jaire's fly. A beating, fine. A pantsing or a wedgie, maybe. But this didn't seem like either. It was clear now that Tate didn't particularly like what he was doing; he did not look like he was relishing the moment as much as dreading something the mouse couldn't quite figure out. All he knew was, when he tried to push the wolf away he was met with a heart-stopping rumble.
"Shut up, just shut up," the lupine mumbled, mostly to himself. "God dammit." Jaire's fly was open, and a second later his boxers were being pulled aside, Tate fishing out his genitals with not so much as a pause. Watching with nothing short of amazement, the mouse realized he was much more vulnerable now and decided to shut up as asked. "What do you do?"
"Huh?" Tate made a fist around the flaccid shaft of his penis, pulling the light grey fur over the exposed head with none too much care.
The wolf looked up at him, ears gone, muzzle taut with a grimace. "How do you get off, huh?" he rolled his eyes. "The fastest way." Tate's other hand cupped his balls, coaxing them to loosen up despite the breeze swirling in the alley. How was he supposed to answer that question? Jaire's only sexual experiences had been with his own hand.
"I don't...I don't know. Tate, you--"
"Fine," interrupted the wolf. "Shit." He concentrated on the length before him, looking for all the world like he was about to throw up. Jaire had hardened up a bit just from the friction, and he knew it wasn't necessarily his fault, but the embarrassment did not lessen any. Licking his lips, more out of necessity than expectation, the wolf touched the tip of his tongue to Jaire's cockhead.
Cheers went up from the opposite side of the door. The mouse felt the flush bloom up his neck, into his face and set his ears on fire. He had a hand at each of the wolf's ears, keeping them from folding flat like they wanted to. Then he was engulfed in warmth, and a blast of air hissed through his teeth.
This shouldn't be happening, he thought. "No shit," he wanted to tell that all-important voice of reason in his head, but he could no more stop Tate than he could get his erection to flag. The wolf's snout was buried in his pubic fur, his head making slow trips up and down his length, his eyes closed...and was that a whimper the mouse heard?
"Tate, stop," Jaire breathed, though the commanding view he had of the action made him feel more than a little dominant. To a point. "You don't have to--" The wolf made it very clear that yes, he had to, when ten sharp claws dug into the mouse's thighs. The threat of a real beating was enough to convince Jaire to resign himself to a blowjob...which, although non-consensual in its own way, wasn't nearly as painful as the alternative.
Growling in frustration, Tate pulled off, panting and licking a stray streamer of saliva (or pre, either one) from his lower lip. He looked lost, and dismayed, an expression that didn't quite mesh with his stocky physique or his letter jacket. His headfur, normally slicked back with Brylcreem, fell over his eyes, which watered from the effort of spreading his jaw in such an awkward position. "You gotta tell me how to do it!" The whine was unmistakable now. "I'm gonna throw up. Fuckin' foreskin, I don't know how to...you know." Jaire noticed, then, that the wolf was talking to his knees; he couldn't bear to look the mouse in the eyes. The fact that there was no dissuading him remained.
"You have a sheath?" It seemed a logical question. Jaire gave his soaked penis a few idle strokes, ignoring a perverse inclination to bat the wolf over the muzzle with it.
"Yeah...I never seen one like yours before. I mean, I never looked hard...I...just tell me, okay?" If Jaire didn't know any better, he would swear the wolf was on the verge of tears. Perhaps...he couldn't help but feel sorry for the jock, for whatever cruel hierarchy had driven him to prove himself in this way. Still, a wolf tongue was immeasurably better than a bloody nose.
"How am I supposed to know? Whatever." Jaire sighed, resigned to accepting the situation for what it was and giving the wolf what he needed, if not what he wanted. This time he did bap Tate over the muzzle with the end of his cock, just to get his attention. Pulling his foreskin back halfway, something Tate hadn't thought to do (and likely got a tongue full of fur for his trouble), and held it in front of the wolf.
"What?"
"Suck it, I guess. I'll tell you when it feels good."
Tate opened up wide and seated half of the mouse's length on his tongue, bringing his upper jaw down to seal it in. The warmth and slickness made Jaire shudder; he hadn't planned on this happening so early in his teens, but he wasn't complaining in the slightest. Male or female, a muzzle was a muzzle.
Except this muzzle was sloppy and elementary; Tate's tongue was everywhere in a frantic bid to get him off. It stroked, then it rolled, and lapped a little before sitting still while the wolf's lips tried to suckle but only ended in creating a painful vacuum. Not to mention the teeth every once in a while on his sensitive flesh.
"Stop," ordered the mouse in a soft tone. He knew he had a distinct advantage but was smart enough not to push it. Tate was still, as if impaled on his cock, and Jaire took the back of his head and pulled it forward until the shaft was half-covered. "Okay, now don't suck like a Hoover; just stay there and rub over the bottom of the head. And no teeth!"
Tate nodded weakly, the wet breath out of his nose cool against the mouse's exposed shaft. The wolf was beginning to drool out of the corners of his mouth, but it stopped when his tongue took up the slack and began a languid massage on the underside of Jaire's glans. For the first time, then, it felt good...like he was beginning to move up that familiar ladder that every male climbs, often multiple times a day.
"That's good, just keep doing that," he praised, feeling a smile prick the edges of his mouth. No sound from beyond the maintenance door now; Jaire could just imagine Tate's friends staring in rapt silence as their buddy serviced a freshman, on his knees, with what appeared to be mounting passion but was, in fact, earnest to get it over with. He was willing to bet more than one of them was hard.
A breeze kicked up around the school, sending light trash swirling around their heads and making the mouse's testicles withdraw into his body. Tate's eyes were shielded by his disheveled hair; his hands steadied the rest of him, and his ears had come upright again, more from concentration than anything else. Jaire found his hips moving just slightly, the change of angle speeding him along toward climax. When the wolf tried to dip his head in time, the mouse held him.
"You can stay still. I'll do the rest, don't worry." If Tate really disliked this as his behavior indicated, Jaire would take as much responsibility from him as he could. It was the least he could do, given the pity he felt for the wolf. He only slid around about two inches, and slowly, as to avoid choking Tate and risking an even bigger, malodorous mess. Watching his cock disappear and reappear between those slick black lips, and the feeling of perceived power that went with the view, was more than enough to keep him going.
The urge to start calling the wolf good boy, good puppy, was strong but ill-advised. Who knew what would happen after all of this was over, after Tate did what he needed to do and had time to think about how humiliating it had been. The way the upperclassmen worked, there must have been something worth it to the wolf. If it was only acceptance and claps on the back, that seemed more than silly. But there was no understanding the customs of high school politics, especially being as this was the first day of his high school career.
Tate rumbled again, a long, gravelly one this time; Jaire jerked and gagged the wolf accidentally. When he pulled off to cough, the mouse mumbled a half-hearted, "Sorry." Eyes watering, Tate hawked back and spit to the side, coming back to glare at the mouse. "I said I was sorry."
No response. The wolf merely shut his eyes again and opened his mouth. It almost brought Jaire's erection to a standstill, seeing a predator in that position...not because it was demeaning to males, not really, but because he felt he didn't have a choice in the matter. That because his friends were watching, it was somehow required of him. What a crock of shit.
"What do I get out of this?"
"Huh?"
"Obviously you really want something from your buddies. What's in it for me?" Jaire tried to push aside the guilt accompanying his tough-guy words.
"You get a fuckin' blowjob," said the wolf, with evident derision.
"I want protection. You think I want to be picked on all year? Especially by your friends in there, when I was the one to get you whatever they promised? I'm a whole lot smarter than that. I know how it goes. I just want to be left alone. Is that hard?"
Hands on his thighs, Tate remained staring at the ground between the mouse's feet. His whole body was tense with thought. What was a clear set of statements to Jaire might not have been as easy for the wolf. It didn't take long, however, for him to realize the decision had already been made for him. Circumstances dictated only one answer.
"Fine." Spoken to the broken asphalt, just above a whisper.
"Thanks, Tate," said the mouse, with admiration he really felt. "You're a swell guy."
"Shut up. Meet me in the art room after school, and we'll talk. Alone."
"Sure thing."
With that, the wolf shifted forward again and Jaire placed his now-flaccid member in the proffered muzzle. Tate closed around it as before, positioned his tongue, and held still while the mouse began another set of thrusts. He was hard again in no time, and it was much easier to concentrate on the pleasure of it all now that he and the wolf had come to some sort of understanding about all this.
While Tate sat stoically and waited for it all to be over, Jaire again took an odd sort of pleasure at seeing his length part those dark lips, pass between the unseen fangs and just tease the back of the wolf's throat. And when that lupine rumble began again, it was only a matter of time, a short matter of time, before the end was unavoidable.
A bar of midday light had crawled across the far wall, only six feet away, and the mouse watched the edge of it as it traveled over a brick about a quarter up. He concentrated on the grey masonry at the bottom of that brick, edging closer as the sunlight creeped toward that spot. His hips became agitated and uncooperative, but the wolf was still, the only constant in this whole equation. Slowing down, feeling every ridge and trough in the jock's muzzle, it was suddenly just all too much.
The sun crept to a new brick.
"Ready?" the mouse breathed, and almost before Tate nodded his balls retracted and he was lifting his head up in a subdued moan as he emptied himself. All he felt were contractions, and a sudden extra slickness that could only be his own cum, adding lubrication to the final few pumps of his hips. The wolf gave a choked cough but nothing else, a stray drop of white landing on the embroidered letter over his left breast. Jaire was already softening when Tate released his cock, which went straight back into his pants.
Tate stood up, now seeming much bigger and more threatening, but he was silently ambivalent. He walked over to the maintenance door; Jaire was struck with that pang of guilt again seeing the wolf's tail absolutely emotionless. Everyone on the other side was clamoring for a spot at the glass, but the rhino seemed to be the one who needed to see what the wolf had to show him. Looking up at the glass, Tate opened his maw and stuck out his tongue. Jaire saw the puddle of fluid and blushed hotly; seeing the proof right there made it almost too real.
A din erupted from the wolf's jock buddies, but they were quickly extinguished by the booming voice of the rhino: "Shut up, guys, you wanna get us in trouble?" He then turned to the wolf, still outside, waiting for an absolution, and mouthed one unmistakable word: swallow.
The wolf hesitated only a second under the rhino's stony glare. It was only Jaire who saw Tate's tail curl onto itself to keep from coming through his legs and into view. His ears disappeared while he gagged down the mouse's seed, and immediately the door opened to muddled and loud acclaim from the motley crew of seniors. Before turning to go inside, he pointed a stiff finger, claw included, straight at the mouse.
"I'll see you after class," he snarled, though Jaire knew exactly what that meant and he had to suppress a snicker. Some people just couldn't be changed. The joys of pressure. The mouse only nodded, smoothed his shirt down and watched as the wolf was absorbed back into his sphere of comfort, and led away down the hall to whatever his reward was, if only the acceptance of his peers.
Jaire lay back against the wall; the bar of sunlight had almost reached the ground. The first bell rang, ending the lunch period. Strange; it had seemed so much longer than that. He cleared his throat and, with a final zipper check, made his way through the maintenance door, leaving the corridor with its secrets.
FIN
2/21-3/5/08