Long Apart

Story by Ceeb on SoFurry

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A long-awaited commission for FA: silverrat which was inspired by his great interest in my other incestual work, Too Close and features similar themes. I'm quite happy with how this came out!

Thumbnail background is from CGTextures.

Writing (C) me

Concept (C) FA: silverrat


----Act I

--1

Jasmine laughed and yanked on her little brother's ears until he yelped, but he was little in age only. Eight years old to her nine, William was nearly six feet tall to her five. Both of them being pure-bred eastern gray kangaroos, massive size was in their destinies. Little Jasmine had her blonde locks in a pixie haircut and William had a brown, bedraggled mop and big, thick glasses on his snout to offset terribly flawed hazel eyes.

Jasmine never let her younger brother's size deter her. In every sense, he was harmless to her. To other boys not so much, but he took her playful abuse with a smile, the same kind of smile she gave it with. It was just play.

She pulled a little harder until she spurred him to swat at her paws with a laugh. She giggled, "Your ears are as big as daddy's, they look silly on you!"

William dived into the grass to pluck his ears out of her grasp. Swiftly he grabbed at her ankles and dragged her squealing to the lawn. "Well, your feet are bigger than mom's are!" It was true. The young kangaroos were oddly-proportioned, adorable in that uncanny way reserved for the young. For adults, it was a reason for endearment, but between the two of them it was ammunition for playful fights. Whatever the case was at that moment in time, they just writhed and thrashed and stained their clothes in the grass.

The father peered out through the kitchen window when he heard the squeal. That moment was a respite in which the deathly serious discussion ceased.

"Everything all right?" mother numbly asked.

"Yeah," father answered with the same numb tone.

"How did you meet him?" mother asked without looking.

He pulled away from the window, backpedaled a few paces, turned on his heel and padded out of the kitchen. "I don't want to talk about it, can't we just leave it at that?" he wearily, rhetorically asked. There was little subtlety in his words and he all but demanded that she back down. She always understood his hints, but she never heeded them. Stubbornness on her part wasn't a catalyst in the downfall of their marriage but by then it was just another wedge digging in further and further between them.

Following only a few steps behind him, she much less somberly growled, "I deserve to at least know who the sinful homewrecker is."

Father paused at the threshold of the den, whipped around on his heel again and shot her a disgusted scowl. "He's not a homewrecker!" he said with a dangerous edge. "We haven't even done anything!"

With a vitriolic glare in her eyes, mother folded her arms over her generous chest and hissed, "You told me he kissed you and you were tempted. How could you ever be tempted by something like another man?"

Father ran his paws down his head and the back of his neck, pinning his long ears against his cropped and handsome brown hair. With every ounce of strength he fought back tears which were the sum of rage, indignity, betrayal and more negativity he couldn't define. He quavered, "I was confused and curious, and I still am! I wanted comfort from my wife!"

"I'm hurt that you've been lying to me this whole time! Two kids and almost ten years of marriage. A perfect life in the eyes of the lord and--, and then this!" she snapped. Imperceptibly she tightened up her arms and choked a sob back into a broken whimper.

The boomer shook his head slowly and rubbed his temples. Calmly he said, "It wasn't a lie. I swear I loved you and I still do. You're beautiful." He inched closer, grasping for her shoulder. Voice hardly above a whisper, "Please, I'm telling you the truth."

She flinched away and shook her head. "Don't touch me, you degenerate. My father will loan me the money for a lawyer." A beat. Her glare was white-hot, straight into his watering green eyes. Finally came the surgical strike, right for the throat: "I'm taking Will. I don't want him growing up to be a faggot like you." In that moment she expected him to explode and maybe hit her. Instead he winced like she'd plunged a knife into his heart.

He thought, how could I ever love an evil bitch like you? The words teetered on the edge of his tongue but he couldn't say them or keep looking into those loveless eyes.

--2

"Mom and dad are really loud this time," Jasmine mumbled and clasped her paws in her lap. Uneasily she turned to look at her brother, sitting with her at the picnic table. The argument thundered out of the open windows.

Absently, William straightened his already-straight glasses. "I don't even know why they keep fighting. Do you?"

"Daddy said he made a new friend at work," Jasmine pondered, "and that he and mom were gonna have to talk about him."

William pondered too, and then he mumbled, "I dunno why she'd yell at him for that. She never yelled at me for making friends."

"Let's go ride bikes, maybe they'll be okay when we get back," the girl said as she stood up from the table. William wordlessly followed.

--3

The children didn't stray far from the house and stayed in near trusted neighbors, away from the main road. When they came back in the early evening, their home was saddled with deadly silence, and although the night was chilly enough to warrant closing up the windows, they were all still wide open. After putting their bikes away beside the garage, the young kangaroos crept inside to more frightful silence. No TV sounds, no arguing, no noises at all, and adding to the ominous stillness was the lack of lighting sans father's reading lamp.

Father sat in his armchair, not with his feet propped up as was usual for him. It had been a habit of Jasmine's since she'd been a toddler to tickle his pads when he snoozed in his chair. Instead he had them planted firmly on the floor, and his mind was somewhere between total lucidity and the fuzzy haze of oblivion without the aid of alcohol

"What's going on, daddy?" Jasmine asked, walking with her lumbering little brother in tow.

Heartwarming affection in her tone reminded father of how his wife had once been. He saw much of her in their daughter in the nuances of her features but the love and innocence was something he doubted if he'd ever see in his wife ever again. "Mom and I had a fight," he said quietly. With a shaking paw on Jasmine's shoulder, he pulled her in and sat up. He squeezed her against his chest and sighed into her downy blonde hair.

William awkwardly shuffled and shifted on his big, clumsy feet and asked, "Um, about what? Where's mom at?"

Father idly rubbed his daughter's shoulder and lay his chin on top of her head while mired in reluctant silence. Oh, William, he thought, looking at his nearsighted son with a mix of affection and dejection. "Just come here, honey," he finally sighed and reached out. He held both of his babies in a group hug.

Less in understanding and more in confusion and anxiety, the two children kept quiet and held their father. He was always affectionate, quick with a hug or a smooch. If your friends say their dads don't hug and kiss them, he had once said on the subject, then their dads don't love them very much. Because of that they didn't read too far into his embrace until he started to weep. William was timid, but Jasmine was empathetic and precocious. Softly she bumped her muzzle to his. "Dad...?"

"Jasmine," he sighed and eased out of the hug. Both of his paws came to rest on his knees and he regarded his fidgeting children with puffy, wet eyes. He lamented how pitiful he must have looked to them. "Look, both of you," he tried to begin, ending up stammering. "I, uh." He sighed and smoothed back his hair, left frayed and messy from anxiously smoothing it just like that dozens of times over the course of the day. "Mom is going to leave," he said as stably as he could. Disbelief and greater anxiety started to glaze over William's eyes while Jasmine's took on a teary sheen. Father continued, quaking, "We had a big fight over something stupid," he said and huffed a hollow, small laugh. "Something really, really stupid..."

"B-but," Jasmine mumbled, "you fight a lot."

He looked at Jasmine with his eyes relatively wide. "Honey, I--," he grunted, "moms and dads aren't supposed to fight all the time." Jasmine clasped her paws behind her back and looked down at her fidgeting toes.

There was one more thing, one last bombshell to trump the rest. His wife had made it his responsibility to drop all of them. The bitch! he coldly thought. He steeled himself into a stern look at William whose eyes were dazed behind cute round lenses. "Will... Honey," he said for the boy's attention.

William gnawed on his lower lip as he tilted his head.

"I, ah," father grunted and rubbed his forehead. "I love you."

"I love you too," said William in a voice too tiny for even a preteen.

A cold knot in father's stomach made it hard to fight back outright sobbing, so he pushed away the loathsome task of telling his children what else was coming tomorrow and he tried to lie to himself. He said to himself that he could stop her and her father's divorce lawyer. She couldn't and wouldn't touch them.

A deep sigh preceded father pushing himself up to his feet. Another, shorter sigh helped to clear his head. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the kitchen. "You guys must be hungry. Come on. I'll make us something to eat." By no means a good cook, he baked a frozen pizza under the pretense of feeding all three of them but he didn't take even a slice of it. Jasmine ate two while William, big and always growing bigger, easily put away the rest.

Despite his hunger, father had no appetite. Usually a frozen pizza with his kids was a delightful occasion. When mother worked late they'd have junk food and watch movies past bedtime even on school nights Instead everything was numb and gray. He didn't bother to tell them to do their homework. They were such well-behaved children that they always did it on their own, and Jasmine was apt to help her brother when he invariably needed it. He had so much trouble with his arithmetic

Before much longer he sent the both of them to bed and then remembered to close the windows. With his babies attended to, he collapsed in his chair again. Exhaustion borne of stress claimed him quickly and he passed out under the glare of his reading light.

----Act II

--4

Bill glanced bleary-eyed at haggard but youthful face in the scummy mirror, the face of a typical young man in college. He had gotten up at noon; time to make up for lost hours. Carefully he applied his contact lenses and blinked them down over his bloodshot eyes. He brushed his teeth and scraped what felt like froth off of his tongue from sleeping with his mouth open. He combed his short brown hair a few ways, first with a cute part in the middle and then with bangs over his eyes. Finally he combed it back and let it hang where it chose which happened to be rather handsome.

He tried to pick the freshest clothes he had. Blue jeans with no stain or smell and a campus hoodie today signaled a pretty good start to the day. "Maybe I should wash all this stuff," he mumbled to himself and nudged at a mound of clothing belonging to himself and his roommate with a foot claw, stirring up a rank, evil smell. In light of the foreboding smell he decided to study first.

Bill was a well-built kangaroo with smokey fur and immense proportions. Six and a half feet tall on sturdy legs and enormous feet, he was hounded by the coaches in one-sided courtship. His lack of sporting proclivities meant he attended college solely for his education, which he had no intention of squandering aside from late-night gaming.

Penetrating such dull textbooks wasn't difficult for Bill. He pushed away his mental distractions and left his cell phone off while he took notes and scanned pages. What he sought was a career as a mathematician, but he was biding his time in general study. Fortunately for him, he was poring over mathematics at the moment. In high school he had proven himself a gifted with numbers and never once deviated from that passion.

To anybody who casually observed Bill around the campus, it was difficult to imagine that he was actually a bit of a slob. He didn't go out of his way to exercise and yet he managed to keep the fat away just by walking. His metabolism was enviable, as was his size when he was able to grab books without the need of a ladder. Only he was truly aware of his slovenly behavior, and some concern about the state of his dorm started to creep into his mind. The hardening mound of clothes was at the forefront of his thoughts as he nibbled on the eraser of his pencil. An outside observer would have thought him stumped by the intense formulas on the dogeared pages before him but their mysteries were old news to him. Finally he clapped the textbook closed, stacked it up with its kin and notched them back onto the shelf.

--5

"You're a freshman, aren't you?"

Jessie turned at the query and glanced at the stoat who asked it. "I am," she replied.

Jessie was six feet of gray kangaroo with raven hair down to the middle of her back, soulful eyes and just enough chub on her big body to be very attractive. Knee-high shorts put her legs on display and a tight campus-branded tee did the same to her thick bust. The stoat was much more slender and a foot taller, and unlike Jessie she had malicious features, namely a pointed grin. It unsettled the kangaroo but didn't frighten her. Every weasel she could recall seemed to have the same expression.

"You sure don't act like you are," grinned the stoat. "Here I am in my senior year and you didn't even try to kiss my feet!" she tutted and leaned back against a washing machine. It was poorly balanced and its crazy wobbling jostled the stoat's slim body in a way she seemed to playfully enjoy.

A grin quirked Jessie's face. She was a tomboy who had no compunction with tying a weasel up like a pretzel. Dominance seemed to radiate from her when she folded her arms across her thick bosom and said, "You're right, I didn't try." Dad always said don't get pushed around, she thought. "Wanna kiss the bottoms of mine, scrawny?" Jessie lurched closer, to which the stoat gasped, squeaked and flinched.

"Easy killer, I'm playing!" the stoat cackled and lunged forward faster than Jessie expected. Had it been a fight, the lanky, tan weasel would have landed the first punch. Instead Jessie was in her arms for a playful squeeze. "I don't do that hazing shit, it's immature." Perpetually she grinned, but now coyly.

"I was about to beat you senseless," Jessie grinned back. Nothing was playful about her tone and she gave the stoat a squeeze tighter than necessary.

"I bet, I saw you clean that hyena's clock down at the gym. That your first time sparring? He seemed surprised..."

Jessie smiled pridefully. "It wasn't, no. I feel bad, but he wouldn't quit asking if I wanted to 'go down unduh.'"

The stoat punched Jessie's shoulder but her spindly fist was ineffectual. "He'll bounce back! Who needs that much blood anyway?"

The kangaroo laughed and the weasel joined in. Intuition told Jessie that she had met somebody like-minded. She stepped back and sat on the rumbling dryer she was using. "Where's your dorm at?"

"This building, dummy," the stoat smiled. Jessie stuck out her tongue. "Top floor, room B-07," the weasel finished. "Coed dorm," she crooned, "so many boys." At the word, she clasped her long-fingered paws, batted her eyelashes and followed it up with a retch.

Jessie chuckled. "Yeah, guys are usually douchebags."

Away went the stoat's grin for a tight-lipped smile. Her eyes seemed to glow and she padded closer to Jessie. "You wanna hang out tonight? Pizza, movie, other stuff?" A jaunty bob of her eyebrows matched by a swish of her bare tail gave Jessie a cue which she caught, but couldn't pin down in time.

For the moment the stoat merely seemed like a fun girl and Jessie was fresh with no friends to speak of. Shunning a friendly face was the last thing on her mind. "Sure, I'd love that," she smiled.

"Great," the weasel beamed. Briskly she slapped her paws down on either side of Jessie and sealed the date with a kiss. It lasted only a second but Jessie's cheeks flushed and her eyes popped wide open. The stoat's lips lips were soft and her fur was plush but Jessie was clearly uncomfortable and shocked. The stoat realized her error and pulled away. "Oh, shit. Um, sorry."

"No no, it's uh," Jessie blurted. "You... You like girls?" She tilted her head quizzically.

Evil smiles came easily to the stoat. "Very good! You're perceptive!"

"It's my gift," Jessie mumbled and looked away.

"Well, sorry I tried to put the moves on you. Girl's gotta try somewhere. But hey, if you ever wanna try playing on the pink team," she grinned.

Somehow, Jessie's blush brightened. "Ummm."

"I'm kidding," the weasel lied with a smile. Perhaps much too late she asked, "Hey, what's your name?"

The kangaroo pushed the distraction of the kiss aside and took comfort in her lack of arousal. "Uh, Jessie."

"Uh-jessie, got it," the stoat winked. "Mine's Christine. So you still wanna hang out? Movie, pizza, but no--," a bob of her eyebrows in lieu of further words.

"You promise?" Jessie warily asked.

The weasel lay a paw over her flat chest and held up the other, palm flat. "Scout's honor."

Jessie sported a smirk but wrangled it down to a smile. "You were a scout?"

"Hell yeah," Christine grinned. "Where do you think I learned I was gay?" They shared a laugh and then the stoat lumped her laundry into a dryer. Around the same time Jessie's dryer finished up and the kangaroo loaded her laundry into her basket.

"So-o-o, eight? Nine?" Christine asked. Jessie was bent over with her head in the dryer; Christine unabashedly stared at her prone behind. She loved the chubby ones.

Jessie hefted the basket easily and clutched it to her flank with one arm. "Eight works for me. B-06?"

"B-07," Christine gently corrected.

"Sure. I'll be there," Jessie smiled. Seemingly nonplussed by the kiss, she left with a goodbye.

Christine always fold her laundry in the laundry room instead of around her roommate just out of habit. One after another, she neatly folded her items and set them aside. She was humming a punk riff under her breath when another body stepped in through the open door. At a glance she thought it was Jessie again, but where Jessie was chubby, this kangaroo was simply dense. Tall, muscular, clearly male and therefore of no interest to Christine beyond buddies.

Bill caught Christine's eyes and smiled meekly. "Hi," he said and took to a washing machine.

"Hi to you too," Christine said tightly and with a smile of her own, short-lived though it was. "Be all marsupial up in here," she sniggered, never breaking off from her folding.

Nearly at the washing machine, Bill glanced back at Christine and asked, "Sorry?"

Without looking up Christine said, "Some kangaroo girl - a flyer? - was just in here."

"Flyer, yeah," Bill remarked while he shoved his and his roommate's laundry into the machine. Atypically of a bachelor, he was careful in arranging his laundry and he went so far as to measure his detergent twice. Once he had the machine running he took to one of the folding chairs close by. Rather than turn his whole body to face Christine or move the chair, he turned his head to look her way and asked, "So you saw a girl kangaroo...?"

Christine smirked to herself. Yeah, and you can't have her, she thought. "That's what I said, right?" Bill said nothing, so Christine went on, "Why, you looking for a girlfriend?"

Bill's tone was defensive but not angry when he said, "I didn't mean it like that, I just haven't seen any girl kangaroos around here." He turned in the chair and when he found it uncomfortable to sit side-saddle, he noisily twisted the chair itself so he could better face the stoat. "I guess I just haven't looked around enough yet. I mostly keep my face in the books."

"Seems like that makes you rare," Christine winked. "Most of the guys around here just party, I don't like 'em."

The kangaroo glanced at his washing machine and then back at the stoat. He toyed with the knotted ends of his hoodie's drawstring and asked, "So what kind of guys do you like?"

Christine sniggered, folded the last of her shirts and set it in the basket. "I don't," she said enigmatically and left. Bill didn't figure it out until he was nearly done folding his own laundry.

--6

Jessie showed up to the stoat's dorm dressed for comfort in a loose tee and well-worn sweat pants. After two knocks on the door, Christine opened it wearing a toothy grin typical of a weasel. "Hey, I guess I really didn't creep you out!" she beamed as she dragged the flyer in.

"Not completely," Jessie said in deadpan while she summed up Christine's dorm. In her mind, she had created a tapestry of punk rock posters and girly pinups. She wasn't disappointed. Rather than worry that she was stepping into a den of lesbian debauchery, she took Christine's earlier promise at face value and sat down on what she rightly guessed was the stoat's bed, given the greatest concentration of posters and photos thumbtacked to the wall.

"I didn't know what kinda pizza to order," Christine murmured, spurring Jessie to glance around for it with a pang of hunger in her belly. The stoat caught what she was doing and grinned. "It's on the way. No wonder you're chubby," she laughed and stuck her tongue out. "So anyway, I got one supreme, one with just sausage."

"I like sausage," Jessie chimed in.

"I know," said Christine with exaggerated forlorn, and the kangaroo swatted at her. "Watch it girl, those fists are deadly weapons, I seen 'em almost kill a man."

"Just need love and hate tattooed on my knuckles," Jessie smiled cheekily as she leaned back against the wall. "What're we gonna watch?"

The stoat grabbed her laptop off of the dresser and opened it up. "I like action movies," she said, not to Jessie's surprise. "So we're gonna watch The Terminator! Everybody likes that movie."

Jessie said nothing, but her coy grin told Christine everything that she needed to know, and for all of ten minutes they watched. Jessie stayed perched as she was but Christine demonstrated enviable flexibility, bending practically backwards to put her chest on the bed with her belly and legs against the wall. Jessie lamented being a little bit chubby in light of Christine's lanky body.

After the pizza arrived, neither girl focused much on the movie. While Christine steadily packed away a slice of pizza, she said between bites, "Some kangaroo came into the laundry room today!" Jessie couldn't help but smirk. Christine waved away the humor and went on, "No, no, a different one. A guy!"

"A boomer?" Jessie asked with piqued interest.

"Exactly," Christine said with the distinct worry that she didn't know if boomer was the right word. Jessie's attention was undivided and she stared, her expression urging the stoat to continue. Christine savored her captive audience as she chewed up the crust of her pizza slice. "He was kind of a dork," she mused, "tried to hit on me."

"What was his name?" Jessie asked, leaning closer.

While grabbing another slice, Christine rolled her eyes and said, "I don't know, but he was colored like you." She bit into her pizza, chewed and seemed to consider her next words carefully. "Are you looking for a boyfriend?"

"I wouldn't exactly say that," Jessie said with great uncertainty. "But if I were gonna, I'd start inside my own species. Wouldn't you?" Christine smiled like an imp and Jessie was quick to grab up another piece of pizza as if to make a distraction. "I wouldn't mind meeting another kangaroo, that's all I mean," she huffed after a bite, with her mouth still full of food.

"Okay, okay," Christine chuckled and turned back to the computer. "Man, I love this movie. It's not even the violence, it's just really stylish, you know?" Jessie mumbled some idle agreement at which Christine nudged her and sneered, "Lovestruck or something? Chill out, the guy wasn't a stud or anything."

"No, no," Jessie blurted. After suddenly remembering the pizza in her paw, she took a bite. "It's just," she chewed and swallowed, "I was thinking about my screwed-up family."

"Screwed-up families, don't we all have one?" Christine murmured with her beady eyes back on the screen.

Jessie found herself smiling almost in mischief. "Did you have two dads?"

Christine snapped her eyes back on Jessie and grinned massively. "Oh, shit. You mean those 'Timmy Has Two Daddies' books were based on your life?"

The flyer had two short words in mind for Christine. Instead she rolled her eyes and chuckled rather darkly. "I loved both of them, they took great care of me, but it does put a strain on some things."

"I bet," Christine said with rapt attention. "My old man was religious. Good upstanding Christian, which translated into beating my ass for deciding I liked the pink. Mom stayed in the sauce until he divorced her drunk ass." She used the uneasy beat in the conversation to size up Jessie's expression, and as she expected, the kangaroo looked absolutely disgusted and sympathetic, an ambivalent mixture of emotions Christine was used to seeing. The stoat smiled in her malignant way and said, "Don't you dare say you're sorry. It made me tough and made me realize who I am. Follow your fucking heart, Jessie. Okay?"

"Okay," Jessie timidly said.

"I mean that," Christine urged with growing mania. "I tried that 'pray the gay away' shit and it just took me further away from what I really wanted, and by the time I told my old man where to put his bible, well, my girl was already gone. So if you meet some guy - I got no problem with straight people, I don't - and he makes you happy, go for it and don't let go."

"Are you gonna be okay?" Jessie asked with nearly a cringe.

Another beat punctuated the unease. The gunshots in the movie didn't seem to exist. Christine stared first at Jessie, then at a swatch of wall queerly bare of posters and photos. She stared at this unseen horizon for an eternity before she dabbed at her wet eyes with the back of her wrists. With a bleary and bloodshot gaze she wearily looked back at Jessie and smiled almost coyly. "I'm sorry," she blurted. "I'm sorry had you had to hear and see that shit. I usually keep it locked up."

Jessie realized she had been chewing on her lip and stopped herself. "I really don't know what to say."

Christine was sharp in her tone, her mania in full force. "No, you know what? You listened, you didn't laugh or tell me you're uncomfortable. I know you are, but you didn't say it. Thank you." She clapped her palms together and interlaced her fingers, and whether or not Jessie was through looking under it, Christine's mask was fastened back on. "You still care about the movie?"

"I'd be lying if I said I was," the flyer answered.

Silently Christine shut the laptop off, closed the boxes of pizza, stood and pulled her ratty night shirt off. Jessie blushed and looked away, but not before catching sight of the stoat's naked and pierced yet nearly flat breasts. As her friend made herself decent with a more presentable tank top, Jessie asked, "What're you doing?"

"Fuck this movie and fuck this cell," Christine sniggered. "Let's go to the gym!"

"At this hour?" Jessie bleated and glanced around for a clock.

Christine consulted her phone and stuffed it back into her pocket quickly. "It's almost eleven o'clock. So what? Gym's open all the time, people gotta exercise. Come on, let's go!"

Despite a beautifully plump figure saying otherwise, Jessie loved to exercise. She smiled, scooted off of the bed and planted her big feet on the floor. "All right, let's go for it."

--7

"Bill, man?"

Bill looked up from his textbook to his roommate. "What's up?"

Bill's roommate was a hyena named Ian who stood at an even five feet at the crown of the skull, but five-foot-five if you measured to the tips of his black mohawk. Though cute in the way hyenas typically were, he had a black eye, unnoticeable under the fur and manifesting most prominently as a burst blood vessel tinting his eyeball. Perpetually sneering and stocky, tonight he felt particularly feisty and he asked, "Why are you such a dork?" Lying on his belly with his chin propped up on his palms and his knees bent, he looked far too feminine for the words to carry any weight.

The boomer never took Ian's jokes seriously and he smiled slightly at this one. "Because I'm actually getting an education while you're not."

"That's probably it," Ian grinned. "You're too big to be a dork, though! What are you, seven, eight feet tall?"

The kangaroo laughed. "Six and a half."

"Everyone's a giant to me, okay? I'm a fucking hyena!" Ian got himself cackling and howling as hyenas were apt to, and in the interim Bill skimmed the pages of his textbook. "But seriously, you should be on the football team like me."

The sudden queer gaze Bill shot him made Ian snicker. "You're the towel boy," said the kangaroo in deadpan. "If they put you on the field you'd get popped like a zit."

"Whatever!" Ian huffed and flopped over on his back. "All I'm saying is you'd be great football, man! You're huge and strong!"

"I'm just big," said the boomer sheepishly. "I'm no athlete."

Ian rolled off of the bed, landed on his knees and lunged closer to Bill. Eagerly he reached across the desk and covered the kangaroo's textbook with his forearms. Behind him swished his tail, and he said with a grin, "You don't even have to be that good at it. As smart as you are, you'd make a great player!"

With a smile of his own, Bill clapped a heavy paw on Ian's short muzzle and pushed the hyena back. "And how do you figure that?"

Nonplussed, Ian knelt opposite the desk, folded his arms and lay his chin on top of them. Peering at Bill from the tops of his eyes he said, "You can figure out angles and launch vectors for throwing the ball and shit like that! Girls'll be all over you!"

"I'm not really interested in girls," Bill said. When Ian started one of his cackling fits the kangaroo snapped, "I don't mean that! I'd just rather study, okay?"

"Sure... Su-u-ure," Ian grinned and patted Bill's paw. He winked and blew a kiss at the kangaroo. "You can admit you want me, baby."

"I'm gonna cram you in a suitcase," Bill said, but his threat was undermined by a grin. "Aren't you straight, anyway?"

"Honestly, I go both ways," Ian shrugged. "Why do you think I chase the jocks around? Man, have you seen the way they all shower together? And then they actually insist that none of them love the cock!"

"And you want me to be a football player," Bill numbly said down to his textbook.

Ian braced his paws on Bill's desk and pushed himself up. "But you're not up for," he switched to a zoot suit gangster tone, "chasin' some skirts?"

"You're gonna have to find another wing man, sorry," Bill chuckled.

The hyena shrugged, backpedaled and turned to face the far wall. "Sure!" he said, throwing his paws up in the air before letting them slap down. "What would you want with a six-foot-somethin' flyer who can probably crush watermelons with her thighs?" Bill blinked and slowly looked up at the back of Ian's head. The hyena turned just in time to catch him staring and his teeth gleamed in the light. "Oh? Are we interested now?"

"I..." Bill muttered. "A flyer? You know that means kangaroo, right?"

"That hurts, Bill," Ian said in a rare moment without a grin. "Hyenas aren't stupid just because we love to laugh and smile so much."

"I'm not sorry," Bill smiled, "because I know you really are stupid."

"I know I'm stupid too. Point is, did you see my burst blood vessel?" Like a little boy with a nasty gash earned in a bicycle spill, Ian rushed Bill and got right in the boomer's face. "Didyasee, didyasee?"

Bill made a yuck sound, grabbed Ian's snout and shoved him back again. "Yeah, what about it?"

"She gave it to me! For no reason, she just cold-cocked me!"

"And you think I'm gonna be interested in a girl like that?" asked Bill, bewildered.

Ian paused and took on a plaintive expression. "Well, um," he blinked at a twinge of pain in his eye, "I was actually sparring with her at the gym."

"Did she fight dirty...?" Bill asked.

"Nnno, but I asked her to," he smiled tightly, "go down unduh with me."

"So you made a lame sex joke," the boomer said sagely, leaning back in his chair, "and she tried to rearrange your face."

"It's true! It's all true, your honor."

Bill looked down at the textbook and hummed thoughtfully. Finally he looked up at Ian, who was all but prancing in anxiety, and he said, "I guess it couldn't hurt to meet some girls. And if she punched you, then I think we have some common ground."

"You haven't punched me," Ian grinned.

"Not for a lack of wanting," was Bill's sly answer.

"Well, I'm going to the gym," Ian said as he clasped his fidgeting mitts over his stocky belly. "You ought to come with me. Be my wing man"

Purposelessly, Bill notched his finger in his textbook, flipped ahead a few pages and then flipped them back. "You're not gonna quit bugging me until I say yes, are you?"

Ian nodded and grinned. "You have to protect me if that kangaroo girl is there. The only thing that can fight a kangaroo is another kangaroo!" He coughed obnoxiously into his palm and added off the cuff, "Wouldn't hurt you to get laid, either."

For the first time in the conversation, Bill blushed and found himself on defense. "What's that supposed to mean?"

A shrug of Ian's shoulders precluded his dubious wisdom. "I've never seen you score with one gender or the other and you're kind of a dweeb." He fixed the boomer with his wild-eyed gaze and said, "Sometimes I think you only get hard from doing math!" Like a predator, he lunged at the desk and made Bill flinch, which validated the hyena's whole act and made him cackle. He clapped his paws down on Bill's shoulders and squeezed tightly. "So come to the gym with me! If nothing else, get some exercise or something, they've got balls to play with!"

"All right. All right!" Bill grunted and shrugged off Ian's paws.

Ian beamed. "That got you going! You love playing with balls, huh?"

Bill stood up sharply and kicked the chair back. It rolled on its casters and bounced off of the dresser, its finish long beaten off of it by previous tenants. Bill was slightly amused to see the hyena flinch away, and he grinned, "I'm gonna make good on cramming you in a suitcase when we get back."

"Ooh yeah," Ian grinned, wiggling his hips when he neared the door, "I love guys who play rough."

Bill grunted, switched his hoodie for a light tee and followed after the hyena.

--8

"Damn, girl," Christine winced. Even with dense training pads, she felt Jessie's bare fists drilling into her bony palms. "You ought to be a fucking MMA fighter or something."

"I don't like that MMA stuff," Jessie huffed and swung with all of the crude gracelessness of a bar brawler. Her blow knocked the stoat back and made her shriek.

Christine tossed the pads down and took a step back. "Enough, enough! You're gonna miss sooner or later, and I'm a bleeder!"

Jessie smiled innocently shrugged her shoulders. Her paws were still balled up into menacing fists. "You were the one who wanted to see how hard I can punch, didn't you?"

"I found out, I fucking found out!" the stoat laughed. "Fuck, you're a brute," she huffed as she gathered up the pads. "Too bad you're not looking for a girlfriend, I could totally ride on your shoulders at a pride parade."

The kangaroo mopped her brow with a towel and then slung it over her shoulder. "You go to those things?"

"Oh, god no," Christine smiled. "They're tacky, I think a lot of people do it less for pride and more for shock value. And some guys go just to get blowjobs." When Jessie snorted out a sudden, ugly laugh, Christine slid in closer and bumped her middle with an elbow. "Have you ever, y'know?"

"I already told you, I don't like girls," Jessie said with considerable patience.

"No, no," the stoat shook her head. "The cock, y'know? Ever get some?"

Blushing shyly but blinking in indignation, Jessie admitted, "A couple times."

"I was just curious," Christine grinned. A lash of her long tail punctuated such wickedness. Before she could push Jessie any further she peered around the flyer and promptly grunted her disgust. "Here comes down unduh again."

"You're kidding," Jessie huffed as she turned and saw the hyena for herself. "He must want another lump," she thought aloud. She didn't notice the boomer following a few paces behind him until Christine grabbed at her shoulder and pointed.

"Hey, look! There's that kangaroo guy I told you about, girl," she said eagerly.

"I thought you said he was a dork," Jessie said, sizing up the burly kangaroo. His comparatively small hyena friend caught sight of Jessie, pointed at her and barked something back at the boomer. In an instant the kangaroos locked gazes. Jessie let the boys come closer.

"He acts like one," Christine laughed. "Dorks come in all sizes. See, the hyena's a little dork and the kangaroo's a big one."

When the men were near earshot the stoat quieted down and eased away from Jessie, where she sat down on a weightlifting bench. Secretly, she hoped to watch Jessie beat the hyena up again.

"Are you guys friends?" Jessie asked, planting her paws on her formidable hips.

"Just barely," Bill answered with a smile. His eyes were already roaming Jessie and taking inventory of the many pleasing curves of her body. At a glance he could tell she was a tough girl, and he had no doubt in his mind that she wouldn't have a problem beating Ian up again if she wanted to.

The flyer gave Bill her own once-over. She had never met another boomer of her exact species before. Smaller ones had come and gone, but no other eastern grays. The light, smokey color was distinct and so was the enormous size. Jessie was an easy six feet tall but Bill was even taller than that. "Eastern gray?" she asked coyly.

Bill kept looking back at Jessie's breasts, rendered beautifully in a snug campus tee. His own shirt hung loose. "Yeah. Yeah, eastern gray. Are you?"

Jessie didn't realize it but she was subtly presenting herself. A puff of her chest and a slight baring of the neck did wonders for Bill's unconscious desires. "Mhm, I am." Away from Bill, she stared at Ian and couldn't stop from smiling at seeing his wounded eye. "Sorry I punched your hyena."

"Oh, he's not mine," Bill smiled. "I wanted to say thanks, actually!"

As hyenas are wont to do, Ian started to cackle. Jessie laughed, mostly at the little scavenger's expense. "You're welcome, I think he had it coming."

"Ye-a-a-ah, he told me he made a... Lewd, racist remark? Wasn't that right, Ian?" Bill asked in deadpan, glaring down at the hyena.

"Man, check that shit out," Ian said off nowhere in particular. "That's one awesome distraction over there," and he promptly scampered off. Jessie snickered, Christine laughed and Bill was left sighing and shaking his head.

When Bill finally wrangled his gaze back to Jessie's he said, "Well... It was nice meeting you." He smiled timidly and took a step back, laden with trepidation, mired in shyness.

Jessie stared at the boomer for the entirety of three seconds before she spoke up. "What's your name?"

"Bill," he automatically answered. A long, agonizing beat. "What's yours?"

Sheesh, he's such a dweeb, Christine thought, rolling her eyes.

"It's Jessie," the flyer smiled. "You new here?"

"Sorta. I've been here about a month but I just keep my face in my books all the time." Another beat, broken up by a smile and a coy, disparaging remark. "I'm a nerd. Just need the glasses."

Jessie closed the gap and stood not a foot away from Bill. So close, they could smell each other and an unconscious bonding began; they bathed and wore deodorants, but hormones and pheromones could only be masked, not blocked completely. Neither kangaroo realized the cocktail of olfactory signals they were getting but their subconscious minds worked diligently with the information.

Hugging just beneath her generous bust, Jessie stretched her shirt even more tightly over her breasts. Her bra kept her nipples from peeking through but every aspect of her breasts' curves was dirtily clear to the blushing boomer. "I don't mind nerds. They're easier to rough up," she said, but despite the playful undertone she was being very sweet as her smile proved.

Bill didn't have much frame of reference with girls. Having touched a naked breast in high school hardly made him a debonaire man. He ran through years of dubious dating advice from his religious stepfather and what he had gleaned from movies. With a smile twisting his face up into what looked like a grimace, he asked, "Would you like to do something sometime?"

The flyer tilted her head and her smile widened. "Like what?" Quickly she realized the flaw in her query and she suggested, "Want to get dinner?"

"I'd like that," Bill said with a level smile.

Jessie leaned in close and kissed Bill's cheek. Under her lips, his cheek felt white-hot, and in her chest was a fluttering she had felt twinges of before when boys had first become an interest. "Ummm," she glanced back at Christine. The stoat smiled warmly and nodded. Eyes on Bill, Jessie said, "I'm free right now. It's late, but..."

"But the cafeteria's open all night," Bill said quietly, "and I'm caught up on my studies enough that I can blow it off for one night. So...?"

Something was strange about this situation, so said Jessie's intuition. Bill was adorable and being close enough to touch him made her skin tingle and her whiskers quiver. It was utter infatuation in a way she had never felt, and Bill felt an analogous set of anxieties and ambitions with Jessie so close by.

"So," Jessie said and took one of Bill's paws, "let's get to know each other."

As Jessie and Bill left paw-in-paw, Ian scuttled over to Christine who regarded the hyena as one might an unexpected cockroach in the bathtub. "Can I play matchmaker or what?"

"What the fuck are you talking about, lazy-eye?" Christine hissed with vitriol. "I told her all about him."

--9

Jessie and Bill stood side-by-side at the cafeteria register. The bleary-eyed skunk girl working it asked, "What can I get you guys?" A gaping yawn followed.

When Bill yawned too, the immune Jessie spoke up. "Any nachos?"

The cashier smiled and both kangaroos caught a leery glint in her eyes. "I re-e-eally wouldn't eat the nachos at this hour, not unless you like chewing on rubber. Can I recommend the pizza?"

Jessie grunted at the suggestion and whatever interest had piqued in Bill's face vanished in deference In a stroke of brilliance, he smiled at Jessie and asked the skunk, "Can we get a couple of sundaes made?"

"Oh, sure," the skunk girl yawned, her fingers hovering over the register's buttons. "Do you want two smalls, or do you guys want to split a big one?"

Just the notion made Bill laugh shyly. Even cool and tough Jessie blushed and grinned, but she managed to talk. "Let's get a big one."

Bill paid against Jessie's half-hearted protesting and the skunk invited them to take a table. "Um, don't bother taking a number," she smirked. "I'll remember you guys."

Across from one another but not yet paw in paw, Bill and Jessie talked idly but sized each other up even further. Jessie complimented his hazel eyes, Bill offering the same on her green ones. "Thanks," she smiled, "they're my father's." There were things Bill was too shy to compliment Jessie on, and he felt like he would have made a fool of himself to call her beautiful. Though she certainly was, he harbored a distinct fear of mincing words or stammering.

"If you think about it," Jessie said, "it's gonna be ridiculous if we end up dating."

Bill's long ears dipped and his smile, formerly easy, began to wilt at the edges. "What makes you say that?"

"I clocked your roommate. If that leads to a relationship, it's a romantic comedy," Jessie coyly grinned.

The boomer paused and considered for a few seconds. "You're... Right, actually," he said in a hushed mumble. In a flash his smile returned, suddenly coy like Jessie's. "So what comes next, then? A wacky misunderstanding? Maybe that sleepy skunk girl's gonna bring over our sundae and spill it on you, and then I'll ask if you need to take your shirt off."

"Then I'll get offended and smack you or something, right?" Jessie smiled. Bill nodded smartly. The flyer giggled, grinned and leaned in and down, peering at Bill from the tops of her eyes. The look alone made him blush but the following words erased any question of sincerity. "As funny as that is, I really hate romantic comedies. You're a guy and I'm really hoping you're straight, so I'd guess you hate them too."

"I'm straight," Bill blurted as he flinched away from Jessie's lean. She giggled at his shyness.

Finally the skunk girl came with a hefty sundae. It was a bowl of vanilla ice cream drizzled with chocolate sauce, topped with whipped cream and nuts with plastic spoons in her paw. "Here you guys go," she said as she set the treat on the table. "It's slow tonight," she murmured, "I'm really sorry."

"We've been enjoying ourselves anyway," Bill sheepishly said to the skunk.

"Yeah, I was kinda curious actually," she said and smiled, bracing her paws on her slim hips. "You two on a date?"

Bill looked questioningly at Jessie. The flyer answered, "I think so."

"I thought so!" the skunk said and clapped her paws together in delight. Her excitement belied her persistently dozy look. "I won't keep you guys from your ice cream. Have fun!"

"Ah, she's really nice," Bill murmured when the skunk was out of earshot. When he turned back to the sundae he saw that Jessie already had a bite in her mouth. He grinned tightly and grabbed his own spoon. "This reminds me of being a little kid," he said, gathering up a bite smothered with chocolate.

"Mmhmm," Jessie murmured before she took another bite. Much of the sundae disappeared in silence as they gobbled down their frozen treat and exchanged stricken little looks when their eyes so frequently met. It wasn't in Jessie's nature to blush but she couldn't seem to get her cheeks to stop glowing, and Bill's smile was adorably awkward and constant.

Down at the bottom of the bowl, the kangaroos scooped at half-melted ice cream with orphaned peanut chunks in it. "Heh, this is really good," Bill chuckled. Ordinarily he would have been playing video games at such a late hour while ironically worrying about lost sleep, but tonight he felt only lofty infatuation which flared higher still every time he looked the flyer in the eyes.

"Yeah, I love some good ice cream," said Jessie just as she set down her spoon. Bill decided to give up a moment later. She reached into the melted scraps and dabbed her finger with it, and before Bill could react she prodded his thick nose and smeared it with the melted mess. He flinched and yelped while she shrieked with a giggle. Watching Bill snuffle and hastily lap at his nose before wiping with a napkin made Jessie laugh. "I couldn't resist, that was too funny."

Dropping the sticky napkin into the plastic bowl, Bill sneered, "You get a free one."

Jessie smiled and batted her eyelashes. "For being pretty?"

Considerately, Bill hummed and then said, "I'll take that, but I was gonna say for decking Ian." Jessie laughed again and grinned at the boomer.

"How do you put up with that guy? If I punched him after five minutes, you must be a saint to deal with such a bonehead."

A somber glaze overtook Bill's face and he lost focus on Jessie, seeming to stare somewhere over her shoulder. When he looked back at her he said, "I dealt with a lot of craziness from my mom, let's put it like that."

"Oh, sorry," Jessie muttered, leaning closer. "I didn't mean to dig up bad memories."

Bill waved as if warding off an evil spirit. "Oh, it's nothing you did. She was just very strict, went out of her way to browbeat me, that kind of thing. I tuned her out with books, she and my step dad disallowed video games and other," he finger-quoted, "'tainted forms of entertainment.'"

"Religious nut?" Jessie asked coolly.

"The worst," Bill scoffed. "I'm in college now, though," he said with a gesture around the cafeteria, "out from under her thumb. Even being awkward and alone here is better than with her."

At Bill's words, both kangaroos smiled warmly, Jessie's coming more quickly. She stood up and so did Bill a second later, and she took his paws into her own. In their mild difference of size, she found that her paws did not fit neatly into Bill's but their fingers interlaced perfectly. "I don't think you're alone," the flyer whispered with all the intimacy in the world despite the mingling bodies around them.

"You're really, really beautiful," Bill huffed, blushing. Gently he squeezed Jessie's paws and leaned close enough that their noses bumped once. The tactile sensation that came with holding paws reaffirmed the chemical bonding of hormones and pheromones they sniffed out on each other. For Bill, the emotions came predominantly as infatuation underscored with raw lust, but somehow they were more refined than a simple urge to fuck. Lust for a chaste nerd like Bill meant masturbation but this particular lust was something new to him in Jessie's presence. "I-I feel strange right now."

"I feel strange, too," said Jessie with subtle fear in her voice. Deep in the part of her brain where smells were decoded, everything seemed right and well but something wrong occurred to her, familiarity which was dulled but not forgotten over the years, a biological warning against something but changed by time and absence until it felt like the deepest attraction imaginable. "I like being around you, Bill," she whispered again. Now her nose touched his and they both wrinkled and wriggled them at the contact. Their paws squeezed tightly on one another until their fingers throbbed but neither minded the pain for the closeness.

Embarrassment came over Bill like a tidal wave and left him trembling but he did nothing to pull away. "I've never felt like this about anyone, I don't know what to think," he whined. "We just met, and everyone says..." He sighed. "I've always heard about going too fast."

Jessie quieted him with a kiss in which she softly licked his lips. It was subtle, easy for even him to miss. In Bill's trembling she gained an unexpected coolness and all that she wanted was to calm the handsome boomer. "Every guy I've ever been with just wanted a quick screw, and I won't lie and say I don't like sex. You're something different from them, I don't care if we're going fast."

Bill's embarrassment hit a fever pitch. The idea of Jessie riding another man was strangely free of malice; deep down he loved the idea of a girl who defied mother's stringent religious habits. Raw affection smoothed everything else out but the overall shyness his virginity imposed kept him shivering. As silently as he could from sudden awareness that they were not alone, he whispered, "I'm a virgin."

It was easy for Jessie to believe, but all boys needed a little buff to their ego, even one she felt so strongly for. "Are you?" she asked back, just as quietly. Bill nodded shamefully, and was in fact ashamed of it for the first time in his life. But Jessie did something that soothed over all of the awkwardness and made everything okay: she kissed his lips and pulled away from him, disengaging one paw to pull him with the other. "Bill," she said softly, "come with me."

"Ah, um," Bill muttered and glanced at the mess on the table. "Where...?"

Jessie waited until Bill met her gaze just so she could smile at him. "My dorm. I don't have a roommate yet." The way Bill's expression tightened while his ears splayed back confirmed his virginity. His palm was hot, his grip like rigor mortis. Under different circumstances Jessie would have felt bad about not cleaning up after herself. She made a mental note to bring the skunk a tip, and she walked Bill off to her dormitory

--10

Through the door and into her dorm, Jessie pulled away from Bill and sat down on her bed. As he stood blushing and dumbly smiling, she patted the mattress and smiled back. "Come here... Sit with me," she said to him.

Tentatively, Bill joined her and the bed sagged tiredly under their big, heavy bodies. For the moment Bill occupied himself with the dorm, but the decoration was sparse and his eyes wound up on Jessie who waited for him to come around. Their eyes locked and he was lost in her gaze, but he didn't flinch when she put one of her strong paws on his thigh. "Are you sure about this?" Bill asked, fidgeting.

Jessie's lips parted but no sound came out. Suddenly smiling coyly, she slid her paw northward and let it rest against Bill's groin. The thickness of his denim fly kept him from feeling the finer points of his touch but the symbolism of it made him gasp. "I want you to understand," Jessie whispered, "I'm not a whore. There's just something about you I like, and I think questioning that would be a big mistake."

"I kinda understand that," Bill said, laying his paw upon her wrist. At his touch she softly kneaded where she guessed his sheath to be and he huffed laboredly through his nostrils. "Um, can I be honest with you?"

"I'd prefer if you were," Jessie weakly smiled with flushed cheeks.

"I've never been with a girl, which I told you, but I don't wanna..." As Bill trailed off to grapple with words, he clasped his paws and rubbed the pads of his thumbs together. "I don't want to underwhelm you."

Jessie withdrew her paw from his groin, shifted to her knees and tightly clasped her paws over her knees. "Nobody's a stallion their first time," she softly chuckled. "Just relax," the flyer cooed. On a whim but with grace that seemed well-choreographed she gripped her shirt at the bottom edge and pulled it up and off. A dull sports bra underneath was soon pulled off just the same and her unencumbered, full breasts spilled free with nipples peeking lewdly from the well-groomed smokey which dressed her. Down below them, terminating just beneath her navel was the subtle crease of her pouch. Bill's eyes were predictably on her breasts.

"Oh, jeez," Bill huffed. His lip, nose and whiskers quivered while his breathing grew quick.

The flyer smiled timidly and scooted closer to Bill, never breaking eye contact. "Let me take care of you," she said quietly while her paws slid under the bottom edge of his shirt. With his compliance she pulled his shirt up and off to bare his body, built naturally sturdy like her own. In an inversion of their roles she stroked the hard bulk of his chest and put a kiss on his lips. For the moment Bill was wooden, frozen in time but blushing like a neon sign.

Soon Bill's virginal shyness wore thin and his paws found Jessie's topless form. His fingers were used to touching textbooks, not women, but when his strong digits grasped her supple breasts he found himself growing bolder. One paw stayed on the flyer's generous chest while he wrapped his free arm around her back and pulled her in close. As if in response she wrapped her toned arms around his neck and pulled herself up into his lap. The kiss broke and both kangaroos huffed like the lusting, confused young adults they were.

"Goddamn," the overwhelmed boomer shuddered, finding Jessie too close to keep up his groping. Instead he hugged her with both arms and stroked up and down either side of her spine with his big paws. Chest to chest and mutually shirtless with this full-figured flyer, Bill felt all of the religious sex-shunning vanishing in a haze of what he instinctively felt as love in its most raw form. Everything from his blushing cheeks to his twitching whiskers to his throbbing penis spoke volumes of his arousal being physical and emotional.

Jessie kissed Bill again with all due harshness, and this time Bill wasn't hesitant. Both kangaroos parted their lips and their tongues met in a heated exchange of lewd licks and saliva. Even the slovenly bachelor Bill was hesitant to drool but he cared little when he felt it dribbling down his chin. Jessie herself was just as overwhelmed by the kiss, being used only to the most contrived of necking with casual boyfriends past. Bill was a man of her size and species and his tongue filled her maw just as much as his eager, if not adorably sloppy kissing left her hot and ready. Just as Bill was hard in his jeans, Jessie was wet in the loose confines of her sweat pants.

Opening his mouth to gasp and huffing awkwardly through his nostrils further outed Bill as inexperienced, but it was his eagerness which mattered to Jessie. Very soon his paws were hungry for more of her sexy body and they slid beneath the pliable waistband of her gray sweat pants, cupping the fine curve of her ass below her thick tail. For comfort she wore no panties, leaving Bill's paws against only her plush warmth.

Hormonal urgency drove the more experienced flyer to push for what her body craved. With all of her needs coming to a head, she pushed Bill down and he had no choice but to flop back on the bed for her. Most of his torso was off of the bed but neither kangaroo seemed to care about the awkwardness of maneuvering in such a small bed built for one, and as Bill scooted back onto the bed, Jessie grabbed at his fly and unzipped it. Beneath and tented heavily were the boomer's dull blue boxer shorts, and where the tip of his penis ground was a dark smear of pre.

A raw need for sex kept Jessie from teasing Bill and she appropriately pulled his boxers down, springing his cock free of the elastic waistband. For a hot minute she admired his male flesh, finding it not overtly long but thick enough to please. One eager paw wrapped around the shaft and squeezed it tightly, and its twin took hold of the boomer's plump balls hanging below. Bill gasped at her touch alone and he bit down sharply on his lip. He wanted to speak to Jessie and let her know that her paws felt so fine, but all he managed was a whimper. The sound brought a smile to Jessie's lips, all but missed when she immediately parted them and engulfed the boomer's first few inches.

No amount of self-abuse and coy crotch-rubs in high school could have prepared Bill for Jessie's tight and eager suckles. Her technique wasn't a perfect one but she filled the gap with sheer tenacity. Gulping, slobbering and pumping what wasn't slipping in and out of her bobbing maw kept the virgin boomer on his toes and left him groaning the praises of such a hurried blowjob. Somewhere Bill lamented the fact that he was giving Jessie no pleasure but what he felt for himself outweighed the guilt. Beyond that, he was mistaken in the assumption; Jessie loved every second of the blowjob. Tasting his masculine flesh and snuffling deep into his groin stirred up a haze of scent and pheromones. Conversely, Jessie's tail was flagged high over her prone behind and her dampened snatch was filling the air in competing pheromones to fill Bill's head.

Instinct is always the greatest motivator, calling up hardcoded behavior and urges which the conscious mind may never be fully aware of. In the grip of his instinctual need to fuck Jessie, Bill awkwardly sat up and just as clumsily cupped her neck and her chin, the latter damp with runoff saliva. In this moment his brain was anything but rational, his speech silenced in the heat of the moment. He eased Jessie off of his cock and she left him slathered in her drool. There was a vacant intensity in her own eyes which suggested an identical frame of mind, and neither kangaroo was in any shape to question the overbearing haze of lusty instinct which had beset them.

Jessie scooted back from Bill who gave no quarter even as she dropped prone on the bed. It was time for Bill to be the man and he put his shaking paws on Jessie's hips. He didn't realize that he was panting when he hooked his fingers into her sweatpants and pulled them down, and neither did he realize that he moaned however subtly when he saw a hint of pink between Jessie's legs. A simple glisten of wet pussy was all that it took to really spur Bill and he tugged the flyer's pants all the way off, tossing them aside. Just as hastily, he got rid of his own bottoms and he found himself kneeling just perfectly between Jessie's powerful, bent legs.

Only in this most inopportune times did the imminent sex halt and the kangaroos locked eyes. Bill's penis stood swollen and dribbling, Jessie's cunt soaked and needy in anticipation. "Oh, my god," Bill ruefully chuckled with an extraordinarily sheepish smile, "what's wrong with us?"

"Ah, I dunno," Jessie admitted. Her thick tail hung off of the bed and thumped against the floor. "This is gonna sound weird, but I feel like I've known you longer than this."

Bill looked away, thinking of another name beginning with a J. Before sentiment could sully the moment he pushed those thoughts away and scooted over top of Jessie. The blunt tip of his aching cock rubbed clumsily against her tight folds and he put his paws on her knees for some degree of control. Again came those troublesome thoughts, but this time he looked down at Jessie and they vanished of their own accord. She made things right. He smiled down at her and she smiled back with a subtle hint of teeth. Amidst the hormonal confusion of recognition and lust, everything felt calm like the eye of a hurricane.

Just once, Bill ground his penis against her, and then he grasped his shaft to brace it. Penetrating Jessie's tight pussy was unlike anything he had ever known and a deep, resonant moan shook his chest while a grin crawled across his long snout. Her humid warmth invited his thick cock, her vaginal muscles drawing him deep inside one subtle pull at a time. Bill relinquished his penis and merely let Jessie's body draw him in, grinding inwards only when he felt it was most appropriate. While he shuddered and crooned, Jessie quaked and moaned with reserve but staggering pleasure. It came as little surprise when she wrapped her arms around the boomer and pulled him in close. Again their lips met. Jaws parted, tongues wrested in the heated kiss and wet suckles filled the air just as passion did. Finally Bill's hips pressed flush to Jessie's.

Coming into play again was the mighty catalyst of instinct, driving Bill's hips to make him dutifully but slowly fuck the lovely flyer. Emotions and pheromones were in overdrive to the point that neither kangaroo could deny the intimate, terrifying closeness of the moment but pleasure and instinct kept their minds single-track and helplessly moving ever forward to sweet release, barely masking rational thought and recognition. Still they suckled on the kiss, swapping saliva and twisting their tongues into knots. Rarely was the kiss a closed circuit, often open wide so they could gasp for breath and whimper the sweetest of nothings. Bill's hard, thick cock drilled deep into Jessie with every bump, her eastern gray size making her just a perfect match to take his girthy endowment. Jessie's breasts didn't jiggle, their flesh pressed too tightly to Bill's hard chest for that.

Jessie's paws hurriedly combed through Bill's hair and made tangles in its short locks. Far on either side of the boomer, her big toes curled, her blunted talons nearly touching her own arches. She wanted to whimper to Bill and tell him she was on the verge but the kiss was too sloppy an affair to even consider giving up. Her body language might have conveyed it to him had he not been a virgin but she didn't want him to quit until he was done.

"Mmmh!" Jessie grunted under the wet slop of the kiss. Her cunt ached in spasm around Bill's penis as she squirted, her breathing momentarily becoming a series of staggered huffs through her open maw when the kiss would permit it. All throughout the dizzying frenzy of her orgasm Bill continued to pump her with dependable efficiency, prolonging the climax he was allegedly oblivious to.

Never had Bill lied about his virginity, but he could tell something special was happening for Jessie when she clenched around him and shuddered through her whole body. He knew exactly what an orgasm looked and felt like and he saw it as a sign to hurry along and finish up, something which wouldn't be far off, especially not as her climaxing pussy milked him like so. The sex itself lost no luster, but the kiss was becoming cumbersome as he picked up his pace and needed to pant too, so he broke it off but stayed close by. With time his hips were moving quite fast and with greater strength driving them, but there was nothing harsh or painful about the way he made love to Jessie.

"Ah," Jessie squeaked, "that feels so, so good, Bill..."

"D-does it?" Bill asked with that neon blush reappearing almost immediately, but his pace didn't suffer in the embarrassment, in fact becoming more hasty. Far off but rushing closer was the outright bliss of release and his balls drew taut to his loins in the coming moments.

"Ooh, my gawd," the flyer hissed through a bitten lower lip. Aimlessly she pawed at Bill's neck and shoulders. When he tried to drift away she squeezed him close by the neck to forbid it.

Bill could feel the tingling ravages of his orgasm coming on and he thought to ask if he should pull out of the flyer but it was too late. With the suddenness of a thunderclap he smacked his hips flush to hers and blew a load so thick and pent-up that Jessie could only guess at how long it had been since he'd last gotten off. All she knew for sure was that his seed was what her body craved and she warmly cooed and panted just as he grunted through his tightly-set jaws.

"That was..." Bill gasped after the fact, when afterglow had totally washed over him. He dared not slip out of Jessie and dilute their intimacy.

"Something else," Jessie sighed.

"Yeah, something else," Bill chuckled. "Um, hey. Not to spoil the moment, but..."

It took Jessie only a second to guess where Bill was going. Gently she said, "I'm not in heat, don't worry about it."

"Right," Bill said sheepishly. "Ahh, hey, what did you say earlier?" he asked, still catching his breath. "That you feel like you've known me longer...?"

Jessie blushed and turned her head to the side to stare at the empty bed. "It's weird and you'd seriously be grossed out if I explained." Curtness in her tone warned Bill away from the subject, but Bill had a mathematician's tenacity when something piqued his interest.

"I want to know," he said lowly. "I'm already closer to you than I've ever been with another person, period."

Guilt laced Jessie's expression as she met Bill from the corner of her gaze. She whispered, "Promise you won't judge me for it."

"I swear I won't," Bill replied emphatically.

Jessie's pulse quickened and she exhaled slowly to calm herself down. "When I smell you," Jessie stated in fragment, closing her eyes. "When I smell you... I think about my brother."

A queer expression overtook Bill's face. "Well," he said tonelessly, "I think I know what you mean." Before she could counter him with questions of her own, he softly prodded, "What was your brother like?"

"Oh," Jessie sighed, "kind of a nerd. His eyesight was bad and he wore these thick glasses. I remember having to help him with his math homework all the time, too. I remember one day he figured out how decimal points worked and he was unbelievably happy. He gave me a big smooch and told me, thanks sissy, but I had never showed him any of that stuff. I didn't even know how decimals worked yet. I knew he was really smart then."

While Jessie recounted, Bill blanched and his erection waned which Jessie took as a matter of course after sex. Just recalling a little moment of her childhood put Jessie in easier, lighter spirits and she opened her leaden eyelids to see Bill's quivering lip and splayed ears. His expression put a cold knot in her stomach and she asked fearfully, "Bill, what's wrong?"

A long, agonizing silence permeated the room, both kangaroos too scared to break it. Bill avoided her eyes completely when he asked, "Y'know what Bill is short for?"

"Um," Jessie mumbled, "Wuh-William," and so did her expression pale.

"Yeah, my name's William," he said dully. He pushed himself up to his knees and his shaft had by then hid in its sheath completely. There was a very flat, listless hope in his voice when he locked eyes and said, "Please tell me your name's not Jasmine."

"Oh my god," Jessie whispered. "Oh, oh my god."

Whatever tiredness the kangaroos felt after sex was pushed to the side by revelation and mild revulsion, but what negativity they felt was directed inwards. They mutually found one another attractive even in light of the truth and having partook of extraordinarily forbidden fruits, and to that end neither dressed but Bill seated himself on the opposite bed.

Jessie remained on her own bed with her paws folded across her belly. Occasionally she absently dipped her fingers into the warmth of her pouch. "God, I don't even know what to think right now, this is so fucking weird," she groaned, although her body still awkwardly tingled with afterglow.

The boomer rubbed his knees absently. "If mom found out about this..." His voice had a numb, droning quality which seemed completely devoid of all emotion as if he were in shock.

"Ah, mom," Jessie mumbled. She saw an opportunity to escape the mortifying reality of the situation. "Whatever happened with her?"

Bill looked over at Jessie with sad, tired eyes and an ironic little smirk. "Mom? She's a religious psycho. Half the reason I wanted to move to the campus was to get away from her and my step dad." While Jessie mulled it over, Bill went on to say, "She outright forbid me from ever talking to our dad. I learned early on what faggot means, let's put it that way."

Jessie winced. "Oh, god, I'm sorry," she whined, suddenly wanting nothing more than to squeeze Bill close. An hour before she would have happily done so. Knowing the truth made the notion feel awkward and frightful.

Bill waved off the sympathy, scooted back and put his shoulder blades against the wall. "I want to know about dad," he suddenly said with more life in his voice. "Please?"

That was something Jessie could do. She sat up, put her feet on the floor and nodded. "What do you want to know? I'll tell you anything."

"Was it true?" Bill suddenly asked.

Despite the broad ambiguity of the question, Jessie knew he could mean only one thing. She nodded sagely and answered, "Yes. It was."

Bill chewed his lower lip. He absently stared at Jessie's breasts but didn't notice them. "Keep going."

"Well," Jessie mused, "he never changed. He didn't become bitter after the divorce. I think he was relieved, especially after Greg moved in..." She fixed her gaze on Bill's and ground her palms together. "I'm sorry that you got the short end of the stick. I never wanted you to go."

"Don't be sorry for me," Bill said as evenly as he could. "It wasn't your fault. It was mom's. It was probably dad's, too." With a great sigh he folded his arms behind his head and pushed out his colossally broad chest. "So what now?"

Jessie continued to grind her palms together and her tail ground against the bed. "I want to say I don't know." Bill only gave her a strange look. In response she smiled humorlessly. "I mean... I want to say that I have no idea what to do, but that would be a lie." In spite of the buzz of emotions she was physically tired and standing took a bit of effort. First she stretched and then she sat beside Bill who didn't squirm away from her. "I love you," she said flatly, followed by a kiss on his cheek.

"But we're brother and sister," Bill said without conviction.

"Do you love me?" Jessie was quick to ask. Just as quickly she added, "Not like a brother loves a sister."

Bill pretended to search for the answer he already had with the vague hope he'd find a different one. Finally he said, "I do love you, but... We can't do this."

The flyer gnawed on her lower lip and looked away from Bill. With a hollow voice she said, "Dad and Greg never really brought you up. I think it was because they didn't want me to be upset over you." She shrugged. "It wasn't like we could ever get in touch. So... I'll admit that I quit thinking about you, maybe just to keep myself from having such a broken heart."

"According to our bitch mom," Bill spat, "you were doomed, physically and spiritually. When I was a teenager I had a fight with them. I demanded to see you."

Jessie glanced back at Bill with wet eyes. "Do I want to know how it went?"

Bill twiddled his thumbs and felt like he could cry, but he didn't. "After I had it out with mom, my step dad took me upstairs and beat me with his belt. Only time he ever did that. I never quit thinking about you, I just quit bringing you up." The silence that came was broken up by a weak sob from Jessie. Bill moved to comfort her and then halted. "Jessie... No, Jasmine, I don't want you to go away again. You don't know how much I missed you."

"Yes I do," Jessie winced. "I don't want to lose you again, you're my brother..."

"But we can't do this," Bill said emphatically. Suddenly in a hushed and conspiratorial tone he said, "It's incest."

Jessie twisted and put her leg over Bill's lap to straddle him, defeating his weak effort to keep her off. Hot tears further welled up in her eyes when she kissed his lips. "I know it is. I know it is, okay?" she whined. "It's gonna be hard for us like it was for dad, but I don't care. I can't lose you again, not after all of this fucking time," she quavered.

Bill opened his mouth once and couldn't speak. He was trembling, blushing and longing to cry until he wrapped his arms around Jessie. Her warmth and scent soothed him. Her body aroused him. Knowing who she was to him somehow ceased to matter when he had her close. Rather than speak he returned the kiss and Jessie interrupted the reverent silence with a sob.

"Don't cry," Bill whispered to her, feeling his own eyes getting watery. "I'm here, don't cry. Please... I won't go."

"Oh god, Bill," Jessie whimpered, and she sank into his arms. In due time Bill joined her with reserved tears of his own. "I love you, Bill. I don't know why this happened, I don't understand it, but just don't go anywhere."

Leaving was the last thing on Bill's mind. Through the confusion he knew that Jessie was perfect. The separation haunted them, their trials tempered them and the specters of stigma and shame and loomed over their immediate futures, but those were things to worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow they would sort out their life; tonight they made love again. They pressed close, kissed harshly and knew the bliss of release again through a sheen of tears and fear. Tomorrow never really came, after all.