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"Deck the Howls"

by Kyell Gold

Jefferson Cortes kept stealing glances at José when the other coyote wasn't looking, which was much of the eight hour drive. José loved the desert, and Jeff was sure that the slender coyote could have happily passed the entire drive just watching the golden, red, and white sands roll by, barking at the tumbleweeds like he was back in grade school, and watching the vultures circle overhead like a big "Welcome Home" banner. That was why Jeff had offered to drive, even though it was José's car. But José broke up these studies with quick looks back at Jeff, tongue hanging out in a wide grin, saying, "You doing okay?" To which Jeff always replied, "Yeah," and pretended to be keeping his eyes on the road even though he could have kicked back and taken a nap and the car would've kept right on going down the ramrod-straight I-10.

Thinking of the long, straight highway while looking at his boyfriend's gorgeous muzzle and sweet body gave Jeff a ramrod-straight hard-on. He adjusted his pants, wondered briefly if he could get José to blow him in the car while driving, and dismissed the thought almost as soon. José would probably do it, and Jeff was anxious to try, but they'd only been dating a couple months, and Jeff had no idea how to ask for sex outside of bed. Everything they'd done had been safe, strictly by the book, up to--but not including--this trip.

It occurred to Jeff that this might be the last chance he'd have to get any kind of sex from José. Once they got to his parents' house, and José found out that Jeff had not only not told them he was bringing his boyfriend, but had not even come out to them, he would probably be upset, and Jeff didn't know how quickly he'd be forgiven. Not to mention that his parents would certainly have them sleep in separate rooms. And on top of those worries was the creeping certainty that José was too good for him and would get tired of him.

Part of the reason he was bringing José home for Christmas was that his boyfriend was one of those weird people who legitimately loved Christmas. Sharing it had been a Big Deal. And he'd never understood Jeff's own disinterest in the holiday, so Jeff thought that a few days with his insane family might help clear that up. Jeff had other reasons for bringing José home, too, but none of those had to do with José specifically.

Hopefully it would get his mom to quit bugging him about coming home for Christmas. His older brother Richie had managed to miss the last two by being abroad, and Jeff had made noises last year about joining Richie overseas rather than coming home, which had alarmed his mother to the point that she had tried to buy Richie a plane ticket to come home this year, and had called Jeff nearly every week as the days grew shorter telling him that his brother was coming home and he should be too.

Richie was not, of course, coming, and Jeff knew this as well as he knew that he had to. He'd wanted to skip the family Christmas for years, but most acutely during his senior year in high school, when he'd realized that the jocks turned him on more than the cheerleaders did. He knew his parents would never understand, and as much as he wanted to miss Christmas, he couldn't just stop going the way Richie had. He would have to get his parents to stop inviting him.

"You'll have a Christmas tree, right?" José said.

"Two of them, probably," Jeff snorted. "One big one for the living room, and one for the rec room."

José's tail thumped against the seat. "Wow, two trees? Does your dad put up lights?"

Jeff rolled his eyes. "Just you wait."

Indeed, there was no missing their house once he turned onto the familiar block. Lights blinked along every edge and crevice of the usually modest two-story house, and both of the trees in the yard were glowing like a nuclear disaster, as Richie had once said. But the lights weren't the worst of it. In the yard, garish snowmen fought for space with immense plastic candy canes under the malevolent gaze of a huge inflated Grinch.

"I remember the year we got the Grinch," Jeff said as they drew closer. "I begged my mom not to put it up, but she didn't listen to me."

"I think it's great," José said, eyes fixed on the house as they drew closer. "Really bright and cheery."

"You're going to love my parents," Jeff muttered.

"I hope they like me," José said, and to that, Jeff was silent.

His mother must have seen them park, because she was waiting by the door when Jeff opened it, his bag slung over his shoulder. José came in behind him and closed the door, and waited politely while Jeff's mother got the obligatory "how are you, I haven't seen you in so long" hug out of the way.

"Let me look at you!" she said, holding him at arm's length. "Oh, college is agreeing with you, I can tell. I'm so glad you're home. Your sister is out with Mark, but they'll be back for dinner. I'm making roast beef and mashed potatoes. Do you still like gravy with your potatoes?"

"Sure," Jeff shrugged, and only then did she notice José.

"Oh, who's this?" Without waiting for an answer, she said, "I'm sorry, I'm Henny Cortes, Jeff's mom."

"José Cepillo," José said with a look at Jeff, his ears going down. "Jeff didn't tell you I was coming?"

"Oh, no, he likes to spring things on me." Jeff's mother gave a short, forced laugh. "But we're delighted to have you. Always room for one more, Jeff knows that."

Faced with his mother in the flesh, Jeff hesitated, the word "boyfriend" trapped on his tongue. "Thanks, Mom," he said, and cursed himself for lacking the courage to follow through on his plans.

"We've made up your old room," she said, "and I'll just bring up one of the air mattresses for José. I'm in the middle of dinner now, so I need to go make sure the roast doesn't burn."

"Okay," Jeff said, and waved to José to follow him up the stairs.

"You didn't tell them," José said, but he didn't sound angry, he sounded disappointed.

"No, I guess not," Jeff said.

"You didn't even tell them I was coming."

"Well..." Jeff didn't want to argue with José, not now. "They'd never let us stay in the same room if they knew."

"Oh." The other coyote followed him into his room silently, and dropped his own bag on the floor while Jeff tossed his onto the bed. "I was just thinking it was nice to have a family accept me."

Cripes, the last thing Jeff needed was to hear José's sob story about how his family wouldn't let him back in the house since he was gay. "I'm sure they'll accept you once they know," he said. "I'm gonna tell them tonight." Maybe if he promised José he would, he'd have the courage to go through with it.

"Oh, no!" José grabbed his shoulders. "You mustn't do anything that would ruin Christmas!"

Jeff almost laughed at the alarm in his boyfriend's eyes, but he managed to stop himself. "Don't worry," he said, "I won't say anything to ruin Christmas." And then he heard the creak that meant that someone was coming up the stairs, and saw a clever solution to his problem. He leaned in close to José and pressed his muzzle to the other coyote's for a nice, deep, passionate kiss.

José resisted at first, mumbling something around Jeff's tongue like, "What if," but he didn't get any more of the question out. They remained locked together long enough for Jeff to hear a brushing at the door. He cupped his ear to hear better and heard his mother's soft intake of breath, and then the footsteps as she hurried away.

José, with his back to the door and his ears focused on Jeff, had missed it. He smiled at Jeff as they parted and licked his nose. "Okay," he said. "I don't mean to be weird about it. It just...it means a lot to me."

"I know," Jeff said. "I think it's sweet."

His mother still hadn't brought the air mattress up when she called them down to dinner half an hour later. Walking past her on his way into the dining room, Jeff caught the minty scent of Listerine and knew that that meant she'd gone straight from his room to the liquor cabinet. He wondered if she'd confront him about it or if she'd just pretend it wasn't happening.

"Oh, José," she said as the other coyote followed Jeff in, "I've put your air mattress down in the rec room with Mark. There's more room, there, and...I think you'll be more comfortable."

Meaning: I'll be more comfortable, Jeff thought, but he didn't finish the thought or register José's "Oh," because at that moment he saw who else was seated at the table.

His father was pouring wine for everyone, and the glass he was currently filling was held in a large white paw that did not belong to a coyote. The other white paw lay on the table, on top of the smaller brown paw of Jeff's sister Gillian, and the owner of the paws said, "Thanks, Mr. Cortes," and turned to look at Jeff as he put his glass back

"What is he doing here?" Jeff said.

The large wolf grinned at Jeff, cupping his grey ears forward. "Hi, Jeff," he said. "How've you been?"

"He's my boyfriend," Gillian said. "You remember Mark, I guess."

"Yeah," Jeff said, and sat down hard in his chair.

"You want some wine?" His father hovered over him as José took the chair next to him.

"Oh, yeah." Jeff held up his glass.

Mark took a sip of his wine. "Jill says you're at UCLA, right?"

Cautious, Jeff looked back at him. "Yeah."

"That's cool. I got a scholarship to ASU, but I haven't made the team yet. It's way harder in college."

"You play sports?" José leaned into the conversation.

"Yeah, Mark was the champion figure skater in our high school," Jeff said.

Mark laughed, while Gillian glowered at Jeff. "I play baseball," he said. "I'm not that good, but I'm working at it."

"Are you studying anything, or just playing games?" Jeff asked.

"Oh, I'm majoring in Communications," Mark said. "I want to be a broadcaster if I don't make it in the big leagues."

"I think that's so clever of him," Jeff's mom said, bringing in a plate of green beans and setting them beside the steaming mashed potatoes. "Don't you think so, dear?"

Jeff's father was putting away the wine, and now turned to sit down. Before he could answer, Gillian jumped in. "You don't have to patronize him, Mom. ASU is a good school. I'm applying there, too."

"You're also applying to Cal and Stanford," Jeff's father said. "And you're going there if you get in."

Gillian didn't say anything, but Jeff didn't miss the look she gave him. Gillian was perfectly capable of going to ASU if she decided that was what she wanted. Jeff had only briefly considered ASU; it would have been much cheaper, and he could have probably paid his own way and been free of obligation to his parents, but most of the kids from his high school who bothered with college had also gone there, and that was not a world he was keen to re-enter.

"We played Stanford last week," Mark said. "They kicked our ass. Oops, sorry. I mean they kicked our butts." He lowered his ears and looked around the table.

Jeff's father forced out a brief laugh and waved the faux pas aside. "Wait 'til you get on the field, right, Mark?"

"Dad, this is José," Jeff said. "He's at UCLA with me."

"Hi," José said.

"Andrew Cortes," Jeff's father said, but didn't get up to shake José's paw. "Welcome." Jeff could tell by his demeanor that his mom had told him what she'd seen.

"Thank you for having me," José said.

"All right, who wants roast beef?" Jeff's mother brought the platter into the dining room and set it down. "Andrew, will you carve?"

While the food was being distributed, Jeff kept sneaking looks at Mark. He was sure his sister had started dating the jock just to torment him. Memories of having his muzzle shoved in the toilet, of being knocked down in gym class again and again, of his eighth-grade science project being trashed, all swam before his eyes as he looked at the wolf who was squeezing his sister's paw and happily taking a plate of meat from his father. And he didn't even know I was gay then, Jeff thought. Imagine if he knew. Of course, it's probably all latent homosexuality channeled into aggression. All jocks are like that.

And that gave him an idea.

As his father handed him his food, he leaned across the table and said, "So, Mark, I forget...are you a pitcher or a catcher?"

The wolf looked back, bemused. "Right field, actually."

"Oh, right." Jeff sat back with a grin and smiled at José, who was looking at him with tilted muzzle. This dinner might be fun after all.

"I didn't hear you guys come in," he said to Gillian, knowing she'd likely walked back from behind the house. He always parked back there when he had a car, his senior year; around Christmas it had the advantage that there were no garish lights, so the yard remained dark and their parents could not always see when they came in, or who with.

"We came in the back door," she said.

"Oh, right." He nodded and looked at Mark. "You guys use the back door a lot?"

Mark looked at Gillian, and then back at Jeff. "Whenever we walk back from my house, yeah."

José was looking more annoyed now, but Jeff was smirking to himself and having a much better time than he'd anticipated. He reached for a salad bowl. "Hey, Mark, want me to toss your salad for you?"

"Uh...sure, thanks." The wolf held out his bowl.

"We have a community baseball team in L.A.," Jeff went on. "I'm a switch-hitter, but we don't have a lot of people, so I'm also a bat boy." He gave the wolf his salad and a smile.

"Hey, that's cool," Mark said. "Community sports is great."

"I didn't know you played baseball," Jeff's father said.

"Oh, I don't," Jeff said, and then, realizing he'd gone a little too far, said, "Not yet. I mean, we've just practiced a bit and we're getting ready to play in the spring."

Gillian had caught on and was glaring at him too, now, so he eased back for a bit, but he felt a warm sense of triumph, and when his father raised his wine glass and said "Cheers," Jeff looked at Mark and said, "Bottoms up."

For the rest of the meal, he continued to toss flirty gay terms at the clueless jock, enjoying himself immensely. José spent quite a lot of time talking to Jeff's mother about her decorations or cooking or something, and Jeff's father, at the other end of the table, tried to talk to Mark about sports, but both Gillian and Jeff kept interrupting to turn the conversation to their own ends, Jeff just to work in more gay slang, Gillian to talk about the party some friends of hers were throwing that night.

They had barely finished eating when Gillian grabbed Mark's paw and announced that they had to get ready for the party. "Don't you even want some dessert?" Jeff's mother called after her. "I made an eggnog custard..."

"That sounds great," José said, and got up. "Can I help clear the table?"

"Oh, no, sit down." Jeff's mother got up herself, but José didn't sit down. He picked up some plates and took them into the kitchen. Jeff's mother's ears flicked, but then she smiled and said, "Well, thank you," and followed him.

"Listen," Jeff's father said to him quickly, "whatever you do out in L.A. is your business, but you will not do anything like that under this roof, and you will not bring any of your pervert friends home in the future. Do you understand?"

His good humor vanished in a moment, and he was five again, being scolded by his father for breaking a window or saying the wrong thing or not doing well enough at school. "Yes, sir," he said sulkily.

"Good." José came back in the room just then, but if he noticed Jeff's changed demeanor, he didn't say anything.

"May I take your plate, sir?" he asked Jeff's father.

"Of course, thank you." The older coyote leaned back and then tapped Jeff's shoulder. "Help your mother clean up."

Jeff stood without a word and carried his own plate into the kitchen, then came back and picked up his wine glass and brought that in as well. He continued carrying one thing at a time until José had cleared everything else from the table, and then he returned to his chair, playing with his napkin and listening to his mother's protests from the kitchen. "Oh, José, you don't need to help. Go sit down. Well, okay, here, you can dry, how's that?"

José responded with some muffled words about how good the meal has been that Jeff barely caught over the running water. His father finished his wine, poured another glass, and said, "So, how are your studies going?"

"Fine," Jeff said, curling his tail under his chair.

"Exams all go okay?"

"Yeah."

His father took a drink of wine. "What are you taking next term?"

"Oh, I don't know. History of Urbanization, Linguistics 101, that kind of thing."

"Did you look into that Legal Studies course? David Miller knows the guy who's teaching it, says he's really good."

"Dad, I don't want to go to law school."

"You don't have to go to law school. I'm just saying, keep your horizons open. Don't just do this sociology thing because it's easy."

"I'll look at the class," Jeff said.

"That's all I'm asking. Have you heard from your brother lately?"

"Yeah, he's having a great time over in Amsterdam."

"He's also learning a lot. That's a great experience. Does UCLA have a semester abroad program? I don't know if you could get into it every year, like he has..."

"I dunno."

"Maybe Richie would know. You can ask when we call him tomorrow."

Fortunately, Jeff was spared from prolonging the agonized conversation by the arrival of dessert. He found his mother's eggnog custard far too sweet, and he didn't like eggnog in general, but this time he was glad to see it. He took the over-large portion she dished out and choked it down while José ate enthusiastically.

"Really good, Mrs. Cortes," he said, and Jeff's mother flicked her ears and beamed.

"What sort of food are you used to having?" she asked. "If you like, I could try to add a side dish to dinner tomorrow."

"Oh," he said, "I don't mind. This is all delicious."

"It's no trouble," she insisted, making Jeff wonder whether she was going out of her way to be nice to José just to annoy him. "If there's something you'd like?" When José hesitated, she pressed. "There is. Go ahead, tell me!"

He smiled and lowered his ears, one of those adorable self-conscious gestures that had first attracted Jeff to him. "Well...my mother made really good mochos. You know what those are?"

"Of course!" Jeff's mother smiled. "I'm sure I have a recipe around. I'll add that to my list when I go to the store tomorrow."

"My mother has a good mocho recipe," Jeff's father said.

"I'm sure she does, dear." Henny turned to José. "Do you know your mother's recipe?"

"Not precisely," José said, looking at the older coyote, who had shrugged and was taking another drink of wine. "But I could guess at it."

"That would be delightful. Why don't you come to the store with me?"

"Mom!" Jeff protested. "I was gonna show him around town tomorrow."

"Well, you come along too," she said. "The store's in town."

José turned to Jeff, and his smile was genuine. "I'd like to go."

It felt as though everyone were conspiring against him. "Fine," he said, and slouched down in his chair, ears flat against his head. He played with his fork and plate until his father reached out and took the fork from his paw, placing it on the table without a word.

José had to help clean up, of course, so Jeff went alone upstairs to his room, and met his sister and Mark on their way down. He contrived to rub his rump against Mark as he passed him on the stairs, and that made him feel a little better.

Gillian stopped after she'd passed him and said, "Mark, go on and wait for me out back. I just want to talk to Jeff."

"Sure," the wolf shrugged, and disappeared around the bottom of the staircase.

"What's up?" Jeff said.

"Listen," she said. "I don't care who you bring home, or if you're a fudge-packer, but stay away from my boyfriend, okay?"

"Hey," he said, "I'm just having a bit of fun."

"I know exactly what you're trying to do," she said, and then smirked. "And you might as well not bother anyway. After this Christmas, you'll be the only kid they have left and you'll never get out of coming back."

"What's that supposed to mean? Hey!" Gillian had given him a saucy wave and skipped on down the stairs, flouncing her tail in the annoying way she did when she was particularly smug about something. Jeff stared after her. She'd brought home a boyfriend of a different species, and their parents appeared to like him. If they hadn't kicked her out by now, there wasn't much else she could do.

Her words stayed with him, though. If they kicked Gillian out, and Richie continued to remain abroad, he really would be their last kid, and gay or not, they'd want him at home. His father hadn't said anything about him being kicked out, just that he couldn't bring his boyfriends home. Though his mother appeared to like José so much, he thought she might want to sleep with him.

That thought squicked him so much that his fur bristled up, and he took off his shirt to brush himself down. He hadn't brought his favorite brush from school, but his second favorite had stayed at home, and he ran it through his fur in slow, gentle strokes, feeling himself calm down as he did.

José came back into the room, glanced at him, and picked up his bag. "Hey," Jeff said, "if you finish brushing me, I'll do you."

The other coyote stared at him, then put the bag down. "You sure you wouldn't rather go run after that wolf?"

"Oh, come on," Jeff said. "I was just havin' some fun! Why is everyone all bent out of shape about it?"

"Well, you told me you told your parents about us, and you didn't, and then you spend all dinner flirting with your sister's boyfriend. I'm sorry, but that's not how my family celebrates Christmas." José seemed almost to be on the verge of tears.

Jeff crossed the room and took his paws. "Look," he said. "I'm sorry. It's just stressful for me, being home. I know Mark from way back. He used to bully me, back in middle school, and then he ignored me through high school. He was one of the jocks, the cool guys. I was just a dirty coyote. So I just wanted to make fun of him, toss out all those words that he wouldn't understand and laugh at him. Did you see his expression when I offered to toss his salad?"

"Still," José said, but the corners of his mouth were crinkling upward.

"It was like this." Jeff put on his best "duh" expression and tilted his ears all askew, and José giggled.

"Stop it," he said, half-heartedly pushing Jeff away.

Jeff held on. "You see what I mean? It was just harmless fun."

"Well, don't do it again, okay?"

Jeff held a paw to his heart. "Promise."

José nodded and turned his muzzle back toward Jeff, who leaned in for a kiss. He was already half-hard from being so close to José, and when he got his kiss, his sheath jumped nicely to attention. He rubbed it into José's leg, but the other coyote pulled back. "Jeff...not now."

Jeff half-growled in frustration, then grinned. "Yeah, you're right. Tell you what...sneak up here tonight after midnight. My parents are always asleep by then."

"I don't want to cause more trouble..." José said.

"Just be careful going past their room," Jeff said. "The floorboards right outside their door squeak, and they leave them that way intentionally. C'mere." He led his boyfriend outside and pointed to the hallway rug. "They'll leave a night light on in the hall. If you jump over that flower pattern there, you'll be fine." He demonstrated.

"All right." José hefted his bag over his shoulder. "I'll go get the bed set up and then I'll come back up to hang out for a bit."

They relaxed together on Jeff's bed listening to music (Jeff said he didn't have any Christmas music, when José asked) until his father came up to tell them he was going to bed. He knocked on the door even though it was half-open, and coughed to announce himself. Jeff said, "Yeah, come in," and resisted the urge to say, "We're not doing anything."

"You guys go ahead and stay up if you want, but your mother's going to make breakfast around eight, so if you want some, be up by then."

"Okay. Thanks, Dad," Jeff said, and José chimed in with thanks as well. They heard his parents close the door to their room and then José grinned at Jeff and kissed him on the nose.

"I'll head down to sleep too. I'll come back in an hour and a half." He brushed Jeff's stomach through his shirt.

Jeff was hard again at the thought, almost immediately. He kissed José back and thumped his tail against the bed. "I'll be right here," he said.

He had intended to take a nap, but after José left, his hard-on didn't go down no matter how much he tried to think of other things. He lay in bed staring at the ceiling and made it twenty minutes before starting to fondle himself. At eleven-thirty, he had to stop or he was going to jerk himself all the way off, so he turned over on his stomach and ground his hips ineffectually into the soft sheets.

At eleven-forty-five, he heard his sister and Mark come home, and heard his mother talking to them. He'd forgotten she would wait up for them, and he cursed his sister for staying out so late. José would never come up if he saw Jeff's mother waiting there. Fortunately, she followed Gillian upstairs and went to bed at the same time.

Hopefully, Jeff thought, she would be tired enough that she would fall asleep quickly. By twelve-fifteen, he was so horny he didn't care whether his parents heard them or not. He flipped back over onto his back, sliding his paw along his fully erect shaft in preparation for José walking through the door, imagining all the things they would do. José's muzzle on him, his tail up as José mounted him, or maybe José would be in the mood to be mounted, and he could bury himself in that warm, sleek body...

Twelve-thirty came and went. "Come on, José," Jeff muttered.

At twelve-forty, he decided that José must have fallen asleep, and he slid out of bed, trying to push his erection back into his boxers with very little success. An old terrycloth robe hung on the back of the door to his room, and fortunately, he found that it still fit, at least enough to conceal the bulge in his shorts without making him put on a pair of pants.

He crept past Gillian's room and was just about to jump the flower pattern when a hiss startled him. Spinning as quietly as he could, he saw Gillian peering out through the slightly open door of her room. "Psst," she said again.

"What? You'll wake up the A.P.'s."

"Nah, Mom had a glass of vodka she was nursing. She'll be out cold. Listen, are you going downstairs to get together with José?"

"Yeah."

"Could you tell Mark to come up, too? I think he fell asleep."

His first reaction was to say no, but he was too slow; Gillian disappeared back into her room, leaving the door ajar. I'm not your errand boy, he thought, but then it occurred to him that if Mark came upstairs, he and José could do whatever they wanted in the rec room. He slipped back to his room to grab the lube he'd packed and then skirted his parents' room without a sound and heel-walked down the stairs to keep his toes from clicking on the wood.

Through the living room and into the rec room by the light of the Christmas trees, bright as day to his eyes. Of course his mom left the trees on 24/7 once it got this close to the holidays. But the Christmas music in the rec room, that was probably José's doing. It had been left at a low pitch, but Jeff's ears caught the strains of 'Here Comes Santa Yote' as he padded through the doorway.

He had no trouble seeing José on the air mattress, on the other side of the rec room tree, which he saw was festooned with all his and his siblings' favorite ornaments from years past. The coyote appeared to be sound asleep, not even sitting up waiting for him, or waiting for the coast to be clear. Jeff felt a twinge of annoyance; wasn't José as horny as he was? Well, he'd wake up Mark and get rid of him and then they'd have a nice and naughty Christmas cuddle, here by the tree.

The wolf was sleeping on the couch, an old comfortable thing soaked with the scents of Jeff and his siblings from countless hours of watching TV, playing games, listening to stories, and just hanging out. Jeff was amused that the wolf had chosen to sleep there. Must be in love with his sister's scent or something, or else he didn't care about smell and thought the couch was more comfortable than the air mattress that lay unused on the floor.

Jeff padded quietly up to Mark and put a paw on his shoulder, shaking him gently. Turned away from him, the wolf didn't stir. "Hey," Jeff whispered, shaking him a little harder.

Mark's large form stirred; his tail twitched and fell off the couch, hanging down to the floor. He turned over onto his back and opened his eyes, and Jeff could see the reflections of the Christmas lights in them. The sight was so unexpectedly pretty that he hesitated for a moment before saying anything.

A large paw grabbed the front of his robe and pulled him down. Jeff barely had time to register a moment of panic before there was a tongue in his muzzle and the taste of wolf and beer pounded his senses. The initial rush of panic made him struggle, but the paw's grip was unbreakable, and he found himself responding to the kiss, sliding his tongue against the other and pushing his muzzle further against the larger, broader white muzzle.

And then another paw brushed his leg, under the hem of his robe and moving up, claws teasing the inside of his thigh, making his soft moans reverberate in the wolf's muzzle. He was rock-hard, and the small part of his mind that was coherent enough to wonder is this really happening? was drowned out by the surging song of his hormones. He waited, trembling, for the paw to reach his boxers, and when it did it slipped up underneath them as though they weren't even there, clawtips moving through his fur all the way up to his sac, shifting for a better angle, and then cupping his sac before the leathery pads moved up his warm sheath and gripped his straining erection.

His first thought, that the sleepy, drunk wolf had mistaken him for his sister, was clearly wrong, because the paw started to pump him, showing no signs of alarm at all. He shuddered at the paw's firm strokes, up and down, and moaned again, and while that paw remained firm on him, the other abruptly let go of his robe.

The kiss broke in an instant. Jeff found himself gulping for breath inches from the bright eyes, dancing with Christmas lights and other, more primal gleams. Slowly, the long pink tongue that had just been licking the inside of his muzzle curved around from one side of Mark's lips to the other.

The paw that had held his robe found Jeff's paw and pulled it down to the muscular chest, covered with only a thin t-shirt. When a mesmerized Jeff placed his paw on the t-shirt and Mark saw the bottle of lube, his eyes widened slightly, and then his muzzle spread into a wider grin.

He got up from the couch without releasing Jeff's shaft and led the coyote out of the rec room and into the living room, through to the kitchen, and to the back porch. "W-wait," Jeff said finally, as he closed the screen door gently behind him. The night was cool, but not cold, and he was burning inside anyway, his legs shaking from the heat of the paw wrapped around his erection.

Mark turned to look at him, a little annoyed. Jeff could see his breath, barely, a wisp of white in the cold air. "What?"

"You're..." The words dissipated before he could even form them. His wit, his facility with words, all deserted him.

The wolf squeezed his cock, rubbing a thumb under the sensitive tip, making Jeff gasp. "Yeah?"

"I...but..."

Now Mark let go. "Why did you wake me up?"

Jeff looked longingly at the paw, wanting nothing more than to have it back around him again. He looked at the broad chest, and thoughts of José evaporated as quickly as his breath vanished in the air. "To...tell you to go upstairs..."

The wolf grinned at him. "This is more private." He reached over and undid the front of Jeff's robe. "So what's the problem? Come on, you were flirting all through dinner. You said you're a bat boy, and I've got a nice bat for you."

Jeff's gaze shifted to the bulge in Mark's boxers, and he smiled. He reached out and brushed the back of his paw up it. "You sure do," he said. The length was big and hard, and as he kept rubbing his paw along it, he felt the dampness at the tip even through the boxers.

"And you came prepared, didn't you?"

Mark was looking at the bottle of lube. Jeff had forgotten about it; now he grinned. "Yeah."

"You think you can take this big bat?"

Jeff pulled the boxers down, exposing the wolf's erection. It looked dark in the moonlight, and felt hot as the coyote gripped it in his paw, pulsing with warm life. He met the taller canid's eyes and gave him his best smirk. "Oh, I can take it." Even if he couldn't, he was so desperate for it now that he would've said that anyway.

Mark reached out and pushed the robe off his shoulders. Jeff let it fall to the ground, then pulled his boxers down and stood naked on the aging wood of his back porch. He sucked in his stomach, basking in the wolf's scrutiny and watching his expression. Slowly, he let his tail wag back and forth as he reached out for the dark, tempting shaft again.

As he grasped it, the white paw enfolded his member again, sliding up in an expertly firm stroke. Before he knew it, they were kissing again, muzzles locked together in a hot embrace as their paws pumped up and down, the kind of moment Jeff had often read about and never shared, hot and passionate and apart from the rest of the world, existing only for them. The taste of wolf overwhelmed him, the hot arousal was silky smooth against his paw, and the deliciously cool breeze ruffled his fur.

Mark's paw was soft and sure, and before he knew it, Jeff was gasping and moaning into the other muzzle. The wolf stopped and stepped back, grinning. "You ready now?"

"God, yes," Jeff panted, and dropped to all fours. His paws spread out on the old wooden boards of the porch. In the moonlight, he could see the grain of the wood, the places where the boards had buckled against each other, and he remembered sitting on the porch with his brother and sister, playing cards on days when it was too hot to go out into the sun, his mother bringing cactus juice out to them. He grinned fiercely at the memories, thinking that he was just playing a different kind of game now, with a different kind of friend.

He heard the soft squirt of the lube bottle, and his cock jumped in response. I'm so conditioned, he thought, and closed his eyes, his whole body thrumming with desire. He arched his tail, signaling his readiness, even though he realized that was something he did with José (and had done with David, previously), but Mark might not know.

It was apparently a universal signal. When the touch came, under his tail, he shivered and raised his head, looking at the wicker furniture and the small, low table he'd grown up with. Did he ever imagine he'd be staring at it on his paws and knees while getting it from Mark Winter, on Christmas Eve? He moaned as the claws teased his tail hole, spreading the cool slickness around there, and then closed his eyes as thick fingers pushed inside him.

They worked his rear for only a brief time before sliding out, quickly replaced by what he'd been longing for. The hard wolfhood probed and then pushed, thrusting deeply into him as the wolf's body engulfed him from above, arms circling his chest, legs pressed up against his, stomach trapping his tail against his back. He whined at the thick length, and Mark nipped his ear. "You okay?" he whispered.

"Yeah," Jeff panted.

"Okay. Keep quiet, then, or I'll have to keep you quiet." A paw reached up and held his muzzle shut, then released it. Jeff growl-laughed and then had to clamp his mouth shut himself as Mark's other paw, the one with the lube still dripping from it, found his hanging shaft and gave it a couple quick strokes. The wolf's hips slid out and then back, and Jeff muffled a squeak.

Mark nipped his ear again. "This isn't gonna take long," he said, pulling back for another thrust, and this time he held on to Jeff's ear as he pushed deeply back in.

"Uh-uh," Jeff panted, feeling the wolf slide in and out of him faster and faster, the large knot already stretching him as it slid in and out. As it swelled further, Jeff felt more resistance getting it inside him, and a couple thrusts later, Mark stopped pushing it in at all, just sinking the rest of his length into Jeff and pulling back out. He might not know how to tie properly, Jeff thought, to the extent that he could still think with that back and forth under his tail and the paw stroking him.

He felt the surge of pleasure all at once, clenching in his midsection and then exploding from him in waves. Behind him, the wolf's thrusts mirrored his shudders as the larger canid held him tightly and emptied himself into Jeff's rear, growl-panting into the coyote's large ear.

"Mmmmf!" Jeff moaned through clenched teeth as the familiar smell of his own musk rose steaming through the chill night to his nose.

"Uhh...uhh..." Mark panted. "Oh, man." He gulped, and Jeff felt the long exhalation of breath across his ear. "You smell pretty good, you know?"

"Thanks," he said inanely, his head still spinning from his climax.

Mark slid back and out of him, and Jeff found himself pressing back to try to keep the wolf inside him, unused to being vacated so quickly after a climax. José liked to tie with him, and so had David, and he liked the ten or fifteen minutes of quiet afterwards. The wolf, though, was already standing and putting his boxers back on. "Thanks," he said, waving a paw and yawning. "Night."

"Night." Jeff waved, and watched Mark stand with the screen door open, looking back as the wolf admired (he felt) his naked body. The wolf was pretty handsome himself, and Jeff couldn't believe he'd missed the signs that he was gay, or at least bi, in his rush to make a fool of him. His gaydar had been seriously out of whack, or maybe just out of practice since he'd been dating José. And really, he'd always expected athletes to be gay, or maybe he'd hoped they would be. He was just surprised when it turned out that way.

Mark gave him one last look, a smile, and then went into the kitchen, tail waving behind him as he eased the door closed.

Jeff sat back on his haunches, and looked at the mess on the porch. He was sleepy now, and certainly didn't feel like cleaning it up. If his parents found it, they'd know what he did. So he would leave it there. They couldn't mistake the smell. He grinned down at the stain and pulled his boxers and robe on.

By the time he got upstairs, he was in pretty dire need of the bathroom. He was halfway inside, fingers poised over the light switch, when he heard a "Hsst!" from across the hall. It wasn't until that very moment that he remembered Gillian, and it occurred to him that he'd just had sex with her boyfriend.

"What?" he hissed back.

She motioned for him to come into her room, but he shook his head, turned on the light, and started to close the bathroom door.

"Gillian!" he whispered as she jumped across the hall and into the bathroom.

She pushed the door closed. "Just tell me if he's coming up. I'm tired."

"No." He backed away from her, looking for something to cover his scent. "I, uh, couldn't get him up..." He coughed to cover his laugh at his own words.

"You mean you got distracted with your butt pirate," she said, sniffing. "Is that K-Y? Honestly, Jeff, you..." Her nose wrinkled.

He tried to back away more. "Yeah, sorry. Look, just go ahead on down, and..."

"That's him!" Her ears shot straight up and her nostrils flared. "You asshat! You total scumbag! You couldn't stand that I have a cuter boyfriend, so you went and slept with him!"

"Hey! José's plenty cute."

"Then why didn't you sleep with him? Huh? You are such an ass, Jeff." She shoved him in the chest, hard, and he almost fell backwards over the toilet.

"Jesus, Jill, calm down." His heart was pounding now, because he realized that he didn't really know this young lady whose eyes were blazing, whose tail was bristled out, who looked about ready to clench a fist and pop him one.

"Don't tell me to calm down," she said. "I told you to stay the hell away from him, but you couldn't listen, could you? You always have to be the best one, always have to have the last word. Well, fine, you can have the last word, because you're gonna be the last one here."

She looked on the verge of tears. He reached out and said, "Hey, Jill..."

"Fuck off," she snarled, and slammed the bathroom door closed on her way out.

Jeff stared at it for only a moment before locking it.

While he was taking care of his need, he heard a light knocking at the door. "Jeff? Jill? Is everything okay?" His mother sounded not at all sleepy.

"Fine," he said. "Sorry, the door slipped."

"Oh, okay. Sleep well, dear."

"Thanks," he said, "I sure will."

When he finally woke up the next morning, the sun was in his eyes and his clock read 9:18. The smell of pancakes filled the air, but it was an old smell, and as he yawned and stretched, he resigned himself to a breakfast of cold cereal. Which wasn't all that bad, except that they probably didn't have his favorites any more. He stretched, luxuriating in the warmth of the morning and the happy afterglow of getting his ashes hauled. The imprint of the wolf in his rear was faded, making him regret that they hadn't tied, because he would feel that longer.

Thoughts of José and his sister crossed his mind, but he didn't worry about them too much. José didn't have to know, and his sister could take care of herself. He lay in bed, grinning, thinking about the night, and rubbing a paw up and down his stomach and hips. This had turned out to be a pretty good trip home after all. He couldn't wait to see if he ran into any of his friends downtown, so he could tell them how Mark Winter was a fag just like him.

Of course, he thought, getting up finally, he couldn't tell them in front of José, because José would want to know how he could be so sure, and Jeff wasn't about to screw up what he had going with José just to notch himself one up on Winter. And come to think of it, he didn't really need to do anything like that outside the house anyway.

And he didn't really have any friends he was looking forward to seeing.

It had been a nice idea while it lasted, though. He showered, dried his fur off, and padded downstairs in loose jeans and a black tee.

Nobody was in the living room or the rec room. He poked his muzzle into the kitchen and smelled the pancakes, more strongly. Following the scent to the oven, he found a small plate in there, still warm, and assumed it was his, since everyone else appeared to be gone. The syrup and butter were in the usual place, and so, when he got out to the dining room, was his father.

"Morning," the older coyote grunted, engrossed in his newspaper.

"Hi," Jeff said, and tucked into the pancakes with gusto.

Jeff had gotten halfway through his pancakes before his father said anything else. "You have a nice shirt and slacks?"

"Umf," Jeff said around a mouthful. "I didn't bring any. Maybe in the closet."

"You'll dress up nice tonight for the party," his father said. "And then your mother wants to go to midnight Mass."

Jeff swallowed. "I don't want to go to the Andersons' party. I thought José and I would just stay home."

"You will. We're having the party here."

"But Dad..."

His father picked up the paper and started reading again. "I don't ask much of you anymore. All I want is for us to show up at this party as a family."

"Some family," Jeff muttered under his breath, and fortunately, his father pretended not to have heard, though he saw the older coyote's ears twitch and knew he had. "Where is José anyway? And Mom?"

"They went out shopping," his father said.

"Oh." Jeff finished his pancakes in silence and got up.

He heard the rustling of the newspaper behind him. "If you want to be helpful, you could get out the vacuum and sweep the living room and rec room. There's needles all over again."

"You shouldn't have real trees anyway," Jeff retorted from the doorway. "Why kill a tree when you could have a nice-looking fake one?"

"Those trees are raised to be Christmas trees," his father said. "If we didn't buy them, someone else would, or else they'd be chopped up at the end of the season. So why shouldn't we enjoy them?"

"Yeah, but by buying them, you're creating a market that encourages more people to harvest them."

His father looked at him from under bushy eyebrows. "Don't talk back. Just vacuum the floor."

"I'm on vacation," Jeff grumbled, turning to go into the kitchen.

"So's your friend," his father said, "but he was pitching in this morning before you were even up."

"Well, he likes shopping," Jeff said. "I don't."

"He was cleaning, too. Scrubbed down the back porch. It looks great. I was thinking of serving drinks out there."

So José had probably seen the stain on the porch. Jeff sighed, feeling a flush of embarrassed shame. He'd have some talking to do when he got home. But the idea of having drinks out on the porch, and standing on the spot where he'd gotten a nice lay, appealed to him. "I think that's a great idea," he said. "Where are Jill and Mark?"

"Jill went out shopping, too."

"What about Mark?"

But either his father hadn't heard him or was ignoring him. He rinsed his dishes and left them in the sink, and then went to stick his nose in the rec room.

The couch and air mattress were both empty, but if he put his nose down to the couch, he could smell the wolf through the thick scents of him and his siblings. Mark must have gone out somewhere else. He had family in the area, too, so he likely wouldn't stick around for the whole holiday. Jeff grinned to himself. Better that way. Why taint a nice meaningless encounter with awkward after-sex conversation?

He ran the vacuum lackadaisically around the living room and rec room, and then retreated upstairs to check in with his online friends, who all seemed to be having a great deal more fun than he was. He lamented being stuck in the middle of nowhere, got a couple offers to spend next year's holidays, and told one of his closest friends what had happened the previous night. They discussed how he should handle it with José, and then moved on to talk about the latest download by their favorite band, leaving Jeff in a considerably better mood by the time he heard activity downstairs.

His ears caught female voices and José's light male voice. José would come upstairs, he knew, because he would want to talk about what had gone on the previous night. Sure enough, a few minutes later, Jeff's door creaked open.

"Hey," José said.

"Nice shopping?" Jeff asked.

"Yeah!" José shut the door and went to sit on the bed. "We got the stuff for the mocho and your mom's gonna let me help make it. You have cool parents."

Jeff shrugged. "If you don't have to live with 'em."

José's tail had been wagging against the bed; now it slowed and stopped, and his ears went down. "So...I, uh, I'm sorry I didn't come up last night. I was just real tired, and I fell asleep."

This took Jeff by surprise. "Oh, that's okay..." José didn't respond, but he was looking down and his ears remained down. Jeff took the initiative. "I heard you cleaned up the porch."

"Yeah." He sighed. "I went out there in the morning just to get some fresh air, and...it looked like it needed some cleaning."

"Listen," Jeff said, "I went downstairs to find you, and Mark was awake...well, I woke him up to tell him to come upstairs to my sister's room, and he just grabbed me...it all happened really fast."

Miraculously, José appeared satisfied with that explanation. "I guess it's partly my fault. If I'd come upstairs when I said I would, it wouldn't have happened."

"Well, yeah," Jeff said, and then, magnanimously, "but I could have woken you up first. He was just nearer the door, and I really didn't expect it to happen."

"So did he, uh..." José looked down at the floor. "I guess I don't need to know. He's a wolf, you can't catch anything from him. All right. I won't think about it again. But you should have cleaned up. What if your parents had found it first?"

"Yeah." Jeff nodded, thinking, that's what I wanted, but only said, "I was just so tired."

"Must have been going around." José gave him a hesitant smile. "Oh, your mother has a surprise for you."

Jeff rolled his eyes. "Did she get pistachio ice cream again?"

"No, no. I won't tell you what it is." José reached out and took Jeff's paw.

Jeff got up slowly. "I hate surprises."

"It's nothing bad, I promise," José said.

"You don't know my mother," Jeff replied, but followed his boyfriend into the hall and down the stairs. Rounding the bottom of the stairs, he could hear his mother in the kitchen, talking to someone he assumed was his sister, until he caught the scent in the air.

"Oh, no." He stopped and groaned. "She brought home Alice."

José paused. "Yeah. She's really nice. Your mom said you were friends."

"Were," Jeff said. "We dated in 10th grade. She's my ex-girlfriend."

"So that's nice," José said. "You must have been really close. Was it a bad breakup?"

"No, not really." Jeff kept his voice down. "We broke up because I decided I liked boys."

The boy he currently liked wagged his tail. "Good! So there's no problem."

"Don't you see what my mother is doing?"

José looked back at the kitchen and then at Jeff. "Um...trying to fill her house with friends on Christmas?"

"She's trying to get me and Alice back together, to get me to go straight."

"Huh? No." José waved a paw. "She just...we ran into Alice completely by accident."

"I'm sure," Jeff said. "She didn't make any calls on her cell phone before you left? Or while you were shopping?"

Now José looked less sure. "Well...she might have. Jill and I had our own list to shop for."

"There you go." Jeff shook his head. "I guess Alice probably doesn't have much interest in getting back together, at least."

He headed for the kitchen, but now it was José who hesitated. "Oh...she did say something about..."

"Oh, no. What?"

"About...missing the old days...I thought it was just, you know, friendship, I didn't know. I'm sorry, Jeff."

Jeff shook his head. "Might as well let her down gently." He squared his shoulders, curled his tail down against one leg, and marched into the kitchen.

On his way there, he passed Gillian, walking quickly with her head held high and a very satisfied smirk on her muzzle. "Have fun," she said to him, flicking her tail as she passed him and marched up the stairs.

José stared after her. "What do you think she did?"

"I don't know," Jeff said, "but I bet my mom's in the liquor cabinet now."

She wasn't, not quite, but her eyes kept flicking over that way, and Jeff figured the only reason she wasn't going there immediately was because of the other coyote in the kitchen. Alice was much as he remembered her, a bookish coyote with glasses and slightly matted fur that wasn't particularly remarkable. He'd gone out with her more for her shared love of books and words than for her looks or for the frankly unmemorable sex. They liked the same books at first, until she got into romance novels, and when he discovered that they shared more taste in men than books, he'd called it quits.

She was holding a knife, hovering over a cutting board where a garlic clove had been half-chopped. When Jeff came in, she gave him a quick look and a strange smile, a distracted greeting. His mother barely seemed to see him at all.

"Mom?" He walked over to her. "What did Gillian say?"

"I always wanted to have one, of course, but this is so sudden..." She was looking at Alice and beyond Alice, continuing some conversation she'd been having with Alice, or the vodka bottle.

He looked at Alice. She glanced from his mother to him. "A grandchild. Your sister just announced that she's, um, expecting."

"She's pregnant?" Damn, he thought, I can't top that one.

"I'm going to be a grandmother," his mother said.

"Who's the father?" Jeff asked.

"Oh, my, I didn't even ask," his mother said faintly. "But it must be Mark, or else...well..."

"Wasn't she dating that Jake guy for a few months?"

"Who's Mark?" Alice asked.

"You know him. Mark Winter," Jeff said.

"The wolf? So it'd be a..."

Mixed race cub. Jeff hadn't paid much attention in health class, but now he remembered some lecture from Mrs. Cartwright about how most mixed-species pairings couldn't have kids ("without issue," she said, like a total tool), but canids could, some of them. All the damn foxes could interbreed, and coyotes and wolves could too. There weren't any coy-wolves in their school, so he'd forgotten the lecture as soon as it happened. The wolves stayed with the wolves, and the coyotes stayed with the coyotes, and why would anyone have a mixed-race cub anyway, when they wouldn't belong to either group?

Unless that person was deliberately trying to piss off her family. But that was crazy. She wouldn't get pregnant just for that. Would she?

His mother had put a paw to her muzzle at the mention of Mark's species, and now was drifting towards the dining room. Jeff figured he'd let her go get her drink and let Alice down at the same time. "Good to see you again," he said to Alice, and urged her out into the foyer. "C'mere. There's someone I want you to meet."

"It's really good to see you too," she said, and followed him out to the base of the stairs. "I guess I showed up at the wrong time, huh?"

"This is José," he said, ignoring her question. "José, this is Alice." As they were shaking paws, he said, "José is my boyfriend."

"Oh, that's sweet," she said. "How cute."

"We've been going out for three months now." He took José's paw and held it, and José squeezed his paw back after a moment.

"That's just darling," she said, not looking at José at all. She reached out and touched his arm, the one that wasn't next to his boyfriend. "Wow, you've been working out."

"Just a little. So how did you end up coming back with my mother?"

"She'd already invited me for the party," Alice said. "I happened to be at the grocery store this morning, and ran into her, and she asked if I'd come along."

"She didn't call you?"

Alice looked away and grinned. "I'm a terrible liar. Yeah, she called me. She asked me not to tell you."

"Told you," he said to José, gesturing to Alice. "She wants us to get back together."

"Well, yeah," Alice said. "She only mentions it every time she sees me."

"I'm sorry," Jeff said sincerely.

"Don't worry about it. I like your mom. I like your whole family."

"Me too," José put in.

Jeff rolled his eyes. "Great. You two can go help with dinner." He looked at the stairs. "I'm going to go find out what's going on with Jill. She's pregnant," he said to the puzzled-looking José, whose mouth dropped open.

"Pregnant?" Jeff heard his boyfriend asking Alice as they walked back to the kitchen. He mounted the stairs slowly, and pushed open the door to Gillian's room.

She was placing clothes in a suitcase. "I'm sure I won't be able to come to the party tonight, once Dad hears," she said. "Give my best to the Andersons."

"Are you really pregnant, or did you just say you are?"

She grinned at him. "Oh, Jeff, I wouldn't lie about something like that." She threw another sweater into her bag.

He leaned against the doorframe. "Who's the father?"

Her eyes flashed darkly at him. "It was going to be Mark, until you ruined that last night. Maybe I don't need a father."

"You're not immaculate," he said.

"Thanks for the reminder, Mr. Pure and Clean. Don't you have something to stick in your muzzle other than my business?"

"Hey, I'm just curious," Jeff said. "I mean, you are my sister."

"Oh, you remember that, do you? Since last night, I mean." She'd filled her bag, and now zipped it closed.

"Look, it's not like that meant anything." He shook his head. "Anyway, I didn't start it."

"Oh, zip it, asswipe. I heard you at dinner. Just because Mom and Dad don't know flirting when they hear it doesn't mean I don't."

"Fine, whatever." If she was going to blame his harmless teasing for her boyfriend being gay, he wouldn't be able to argue with that. "Where are you going?"

"Going to Mark's for the night. After that, I don't know."

"Don't be so sure about that. Dad was pretty insistent about me going to this party. And you're not showing enough to embarrass him yet."

"That's why I'm leaving now." She lifted the bag and walked toward him. "If you'll get out of my way, that is."

He stepped aside and waved her graciously into the hallway. "Be my guest."

"Thank you."

Watching her flounce down the stairs, he thought, well, this is certainly the most eventful Christmas I can remember.

Gillian made it only as far as the bottom of the stairs before their tearful mother, lubricated now with whatever her current poison was, accosted her and made her drop the bag, grabbing her arm and pulling her through the living room into the rec room. Jeff got to the bottom of the stairs in time to see his father in one of the leather chairs turning away from the TV before his mother pulled the door closed. He padded quietly over and put his ear to the door, but they were talking low and the TV was on, and he couldn't hear anything clearly, so after a while he gave up.

He wandered into the kitchen, where José and Alice were looking over some of the recipes his mother had out. "We should get this started pretty soon if it's going to be ready," Alice said.

José's ears were half-down. "My mother would kill me if I tried to cook Christmas dinner for her."

"Oh, I've cooked with Henny before," Alice said. "I'm sure she won't mind. Right, Jeff?"

"Sure," he said, and José gave him a strange look, his ears lowered still further. "Really, it's fine. It's not like she's that great a cook."

"This doesn't look too hard." Alice ignored him, while José looked shocked at his bald statement. "Just a lot of veggies to chop."

"I'll help with the chopping," Jeff said. "I'm hopeless at anything else."

"You're good at chopping, though," José said. "You're a great kitchen assistant."

"I remember," Alice said thoughtfully, "the time we made a cherry pie. Remember? Eighth grade?"

"Yeah, we got in trouble because we didn't clean up the kitchen," Jeff said.

"I thought the apple pie we made for Thanksgiving turned out really well," José said, handing Jeff a bell pepper and a knife. "Here, chop this like for salad."

"Actually," Alice said, handing him a larger knife, "I find this works better for peppers."

He held both knives, and then put the larger one down. "This one will be fine, thanks."

For whatever reason, her ears went down and José wagged his tail to brush Jeff's leg. Jeff focused on chopping the pepper, because if he didn't it was odds on he'd nick one of his pads.

"Let's see," Alice said. "The only thing besides the veggies for the stuffing is measuring out the herbs. José, you can do that. I'll cook the sweet potatoes."

"I was going to start the dough for the mocho," he said. "It has to sit for a couple hours."

"I've made bread with my mother for years," Alice said. "I can make the dough and then you can do whatever you need to do. The sweet potatoes need to stew for a while."

"I'll start on the dough while you do that," José said. His voice had gotten colder.

"Fine," Alice said. She busied herself with pots and pans, making enough of a clattering noise that further conversation ceased. José got out a bowl himself, measured flour into it, and then investigated the cupboards until he found some yeast. He added salt and sugar and then dropped the water and yeast into the middle of the bowl. Alice got her pots settled just as he began stirring and walked behind him over to the fridge. As she walked behind Jeff, her paw slid along his rump.

"Ow!" Jeff dropped the knife and brought his wounded finger to his muzzle, licking the pad.

"Oh, is it bad?" José grabbed his paw and inspected the wound. Alice was there in a moment, too, pushing her muzzle in to see it.

"Let me look," she said. "Oh, that's not too bad. Press a paper towel over it and it'll stop bleeding in a minute."

José shot a sharp look at her and brought the paw to his muzzle. "Let me make it better," he said, and licked the pad.

Alice stared at him and then gave a small "hmph" and walked over to the fridge. She found the sweet potatoes and started chopping.

José smiled and nuzzled Jeff's paw. "There. Be careful, now!"

"Thanks," Jeff said, and finished the second pepper. "What else needs chopping?"

"How about some celery?" Alice handed him a stalk and pressed up to his side. "Just small pieces, you know. Like this." She took the knife, rubbed against him, and chopped twice off the end of the stalk.

"You know how to do celery, hon," José said, coming up on Jeff's other side with the bowl in his arms.

"Okay," Alice said, "looks like you're set here, then." And Jeff felt the odd sensation of both her tail and José's against his legs.

"You know, really, I need a little more space to chop properly," he said, and with glares at each other, both coyotes moved away from him.

Jeff shook his head, his fur almost prickling from the tense silence in the kitchen. He finished the first and second stalks of celery, by which time José had covered his dough with a towel and moved on to some other recipe. Alice took time out from cooking the sweet potatoes to make little suggestions as José went through the preparations for the next dish.

"It's so nice to be back here for Christmas," Alice said. "Just like the old days. I really miss that, don't you, Jeff?"

"Uh." Jeff was working on his third celery stalk, and paused so he wouldn't cut himself again. "Actually, I kind of like L.A."

"Yeah," José chimed in. "In our neighborhood, they put up wreaths and lanterns all along the street and they light up all the trees. It's really pretty, and on Christmas Eve, we used to have carolers come up and down the street."

"And why aren't you at home this year?" Alice said.

"Because I'm here. With Jeff." José put his arm around Jeff's waist.

"That's sweet," Alice said again, and turned back to her cooking.

Jeff didn't usually mind being fought over, but this was getting annoying, not to mention the fact that he had to chop vegetables while listening to it. His eye caught a flash of motion past the kitchen door, and he saw his sister running upstairs. "Oh," he said, relieved, "there goes Gillian. I'd better go after her."

Before either José or Alice could object, he'd scooted out of the kitchen and up the stairs, where he walked right past Gillian's open door and into his room. He opened a book and stayed there for the next two hours until his mother called everyone down for dinner.

She called it "dinner" even though they were eating at three in the afternoon. The menu varied little from year to year, and every year his mother managed to overcook the store-cooked ham, the vegetables, and whatever else she tried to make. Occasionally one of the dishes turned out fine, usually the ones she'd had a lot of practice with, like green beans with almonds, or peas and carrots.

Gillian had appeared for dinner with a bland smile that gave no indication of how the afternoon's conversation had affected her, while Jeff's father kept his muzzle tightly shut and his ears swiveled pointedly away from everyone else at the table, and Jeff's mother was smiling and swaying as she brought the dishes in from the kitchen. Jeff sat next to José, and Alice moved her place to sit on his other side, but it was José's tail that Jeff moved his to touch, not Alice's.

His mother said Grace, only missing one of the words, and they started eating. This dinner started out traditionally, with Gillian saying, "Great ham, Mom," a comment which had acquired more and more sarcasm over the years. The ham was the first thing Jeff tried, too, and he grinned at Gillian as she made her comment. Same as ever.

The sweet potato, though, was really good, and he heard other startled murmurs around the table. Alice, watching his reaction, smiled smugly. "Like that?"

"Yeah," he said, "it's really good."

"Try the mocho," José said, handing him a plate of the steaming rolls.

He took one and bit into it, onion and garlic flavors building on the fresh bready taste. "Wow," he said.

"Not as good as my mom made," José said, "but pretty good."

"The stuffing's really good," Gillian said, sounding surprised.

Jeff's mother was ecstatic. "Oh, thank you, thank you," she said. "My little helpers made it so easy."

"It was really fun," José said, beaming at her and then at Jeff. "I helped with the glaze on the ham."

"There's glaze?" Gillian said.

"No, not glaze." José looked at Jeff's mother. "Gravy?"

"Sauce," Alice said.

"Oh, right." José nodded happily and pushed a bowl toward Gillian. "Sauce. Try it."

"Looks like you already have," Jeff murmured.

José grinned bashfully at him and whispered, "Just a little."

"I bet," Jeff snorted. "Alone in the kitchen with my mother." He'd only ever seen José drunk once, and it had been pretty funny. It had also led to a great blow job and then a great lay the next morning, and just remembering that night and morning got him hard. "More wine?"

His father wasn't drinking wine, but just about everyone else at the table had a glass in front of them. The unexpectedly appetizing food called for more wine, and before the end of the meal, Jeff's mother had opened a second bottle.

Apart from the occasional snipe between Alice and José, the meal went much better than Jeff had anticipated. He even pitched in on the family cleanup, which extended from clearing the table and washing the dishes to making the final preparations for the party. He was just coming back from the dining room as the caterers arrived, and he heard his father mutter, "if I'd known she could cook like that, I wouldn't have wasted the money."

Jeff snickered, and his father turned and grabbed him suddenly by the arm. "Come here. Jill, you too." His sister looked up from cleaning the table in the dining room and followed them into the rec room.

His father shut the door. "Listen, you two. I want you on your best behavior tonight. I only ask this once a year. Jeff, when someone asks you what you're studying, answer politely, and don't rule out law school." 'Someone' in this case was Jack Anderson, Jeff knew. "And Jill..." he sighed. "Don't mention your condition. Jeff, don't mention yours either."

"What 'condition'?" Jeff said.

"You know what I mean. Him." He gestured out the door.

"Oh, Dad," Gillian said, "Get into the twenty-first century."

"No kidding," Jeff said.

"We can discuss terminology later." His father's whiskers were twitching. "I just want this party to be uneventful. You hear me, young lady?"

"Uh-huh," Gillian said, but Jeff could already see the wheels turning in her head, and his father could too.

"I mean it." He lowered his voice. "You want any help raising that cub, you behave yourself like a proper member of this family. Have I made myself understood?"

"Yes," she said sullenly.

"All right. Then come help clean up." He opened the rec room door and gestured to the living room.

"I'm cleaning in here," she said.

"I'll help you finish." Jeff picked up a TV Guide from the couch and walked over to the cabinet with it. Their father watched for a moment, then walked away.

When he was out of earshot, Jeff said, "Holy hell, Jill."

"He does not know me," she growled.

"I can't believe he would use your cub as leverage to get you to behave at a party!"

"Oh, I can believe it. You didn't hear about little Maria Anderson." She said the name mockingly.

"Uh-oh." He vaguely remembered a young coyote in a prim dress looking on disapprovingly as he and his sister threw food at each other during a company picnic.

"Getting married in May. To a doctor. A rich doctor."

"That must have driven Dad crazy."

"He only mentioned it once and then never said another word. I'm sure it was eating him up." She stabbed savagely at a dust bunny. "That's why I broke up with Jake. Dad had him so down on himself that it was pathetic, because he wasn't going to med school or anything. I had to let him go. So Dad got what he wanted."

"So you picked up Mark to confuse him? Unknown jock, and a different species."

She grinned at him. "He raised the stakes, I raised him right back."

He leaned against the doorframe. "He never used to be this bad. Before, I mean."

"We weren't adults before. He's still trying to control us."

Jeff shook his head. "I think you grew up faster than I did."

"Us females do that," she said, polishing the coffee table. She appeared to have forgiven him for sleeping with Mark, at least temporarily now that they were faced with a common enemy.

"We just have to get through this party and then sleep through Mass, and it'll all be over."

"You're such an optimist," she said. "I can handle it in here. Go finish up out there. God forbid Mrs. Anderson finds dust behind the painting."

"All right." He grinned, and paused at the doorway. "You going to be okay?"

The grin she gave him back, had his father seen it, would have gotten her locked in her room until New Year's Day. "Oh, I'll be fine," she said. "I'll be fine."

He passed the dining room on his way back to the living room and saw that his father was still in there with Alice and José, who were at least not at each other's throats. They were watching each other coolly while Alice was talking about some concert she and Jeff had gone to, and Jeff only caught the words, "they played 'Eternal Flame' and it was so romantic" before he was around the corner and out of earshot. He grinned, and bet himself that she wouldn't tell José about having thrown up on the way home.

The doorbell rang ten minutes later, and because he was tired of wiping the window ledges, he ran to get it. He opened the door and saw the tall, athletic wolf standing on the doorstep in an awkward-looking light blue suit that he filled out rather well.

Mark met his eyes and smiled, but it was a polite smile of recognition more than anything else. "Oh, hey," he said. "Party's not started yet, I hope."

"Oh, uh, no," Jeff said. The previous night's memory had slammed back to him, full force, and he was fighting an erection again before he knew it. "Come on it. Living room's almost clean."

His father looked distinctly relieved to see the wolf. "Hi, Mark, come on in. We've got wine in the dining room."

"Thanks," Mark said, and walked in without another look at Jeff.

"Close the door," Jeff's father snapped. "And go get changed. Guests will be showing up in twenty minutes. Gillian," he called, heading for the rec room, "time to get changed."

Jeff closed the door and walked slowly toward the stairs, feeling annoyed at Mark. Did he not remember last night? It would've been nice to have some acknowledgement, like a wink or something to show that they'd shared a secret. Even if it didn't mean anything. He'd probably either blocked it out or he didn't remember it at all. Jeff shrugged, and went upstairs to change.

When he came down, his mother had turned on all the lights and put up even more decorations, though Jeff wouldn't have thought it possible. He made the quick tour of his favorite decorations: the wreath on the door with pine cones that still held an improbable scent after thirteen years, and reminded him of pine forests; the simple mobile of Christmas stars, calm and elegant amidst the shouting clamor of the other décor; the old cloth reindeer he'd made in second grade.

Then there were his least favorites, and narrowing that list down was hard. The Santa Yote with a stain that looked like blood on his mouth, and a cracked ear and sinisterly narrowed eyes that made him look like a gangster? The dancing elves who shrieked "Jingle Bell Rock" when anyone came too close to them? In the end, he couldn't top the ornament that held a miniature of a 1950's painting in which Santa Yote had been surprised by two sleepy cubs in what looked like the act of molesting one of his reindeer (who seemed, appropriately, half-terrified and half-ecstatic). Staring at it, he wondered if his childhood had been affected by this ornament at all. Certainly he couldn't remember a time when they hadn't had it. Probably one of Grandpa's or something. Creepy old bastard.

The rec room door was closed, and when he approached it, he heard Mark and Gillian's voices, sharp with the edges of an argument. Sure what it was about, he slunk away and sat in the dining room with Alice and José, who by now were talking about books they'd read. At least they weren't fighting any more. Jeff found that relaxing, and a little disappointing, but when José put a paw over his, Alice didn't even react, and he supposed that was all for the best. He joined in the conversation and actually enjoyed himself up to the point where the first guests arrived, and his father dragged him out to be presented to them.

The party started off calmly enough. The Andersons made all the appropriate remarks about how lovely the house was and how much Jeff and Gillian had grown, and it was so lucky the chances Richie was getting in Europe. Jon Anderson, who was a year younger than Jeff, was going to Cal and had made Dean's list his first semester, but Jeff paid special attention to Maria, the girl his age who had apparently worn her wedding dress to the party. It was bright white, with lace over the shoulders and a small sprig of holly as a concession to the season, and it flowed around behind her so awkwardly that Jeff was tempted more than once to take up the edge and walk around behind her like a cub holding the train.

She was pretty, no doubt about that, with ribbons in her styled fur and makeup applied artfully around the eyes. But every time he edged close enough to hear her talk, she was saying, "my fiancé," or "George is a doctor, of course," or "the wedding" or some combination of those three. He grew quickly bored of listening to her and roamed the party looking for other entertainment.

By this time, José and Alice had joined the crowd, and José caught up to Jeff first. "This is pretty nice," he said, enunciating so carefully that Jeff knew he was trying to hide the fact that he was quite tipsy. He hadn't started wagging his tail all over yet, but his eyes were a little unfocused. He took another drink from his cup and wiped eggnog off his muzzle.

"You know that some of the eggnog is spiked, right?" Jeff said.

José nodded. "I asked your sister for plain. I don't want to get much more drunk."

Jeff tried to decide whether the smell of alcohol was from the eggnog or from José's breath. "I think I'll get some too," he said, wanting the sour tang of rum more than the sweet cream.

"Okay. I'll be right here." José smiled at him and parked himself next to the living room Christmas tree. His head was just even with the creepy Santa ornament.

On his way to the eggnog, Jeff was accosted by his father and presented to the Hathaways, a retired fox couple who lived down the street. Mr. Hathaway had made quite a bit of money in some kind of energy company or another, and whenever Jeff's father got hold of some kind of business plan that required investors, the name Hathaway inevitably came up.

"You remember Jeff," his father said. "He's at UCLA now, but we're looking into law schools for him."

"Oh, very nice," the old fox said, shaking Jeff's paw. "You've certainly grown up."

"Thank you, sir," Jeff said.

"I have a friend on the faculty at ASU," he said. "It's not Stanford or Harvard, but it's a respectable school. Let me know if you need a recommendation when the time comes."

"Thank you, sir," Jeff said again, and extracted himself from the conversation.

At the eggnog table, his sister was serving, which he found slightly odd, but she was also dressed up more than he'd ever seen her. She had gone all out, with a lovely blue dress that he thought was their mother's, a fake corsage pinned over her ear, and a lacy forest-green wrap draped over her shoulders. She'd also put in earrings borrowed from their mother, little teardrop diamonds that caught the light and sparkled.

"You look great," he said. "Do we have any plain eggnog?"

"Sure. There's cubs around. You want some?"

"God, no." He held out his cup. "I'd take the rum straight up, but that won't be out for a couple hours yet."

She grinned and poured him some eggnog. "I'll be gone from here by then. Five more minutes, that's all I agreed to do."

He sipped the frothy sweet cream on his way back, and almost spilled it when one of the aforementioned cubs barreled full force into his legs. "Whoa, there," he said, putting out a paw to the young coyote, who looked bemusedly up at him and then scampered away, dangerously close to the elegant vase on the side table. Jeff paused to move it back further from the edge, and was considering whether to remove it altogether when a deep voice spoke at his back.

"Jeff, right?"

He turned to see Jon Anderson, a coyote about his height, dressed up in a sleek white shirt that was probably silk with a "HO HO HO" tie on. He and Jeff had been playmates at some of the company picnics and parties they'd attended together, and had been in the same middle school for two years, when Jeff was in fifth and sixth grade and Jon in fourth and fifth.

"Jon," he said, and stuck out his paw. "How are you?"

"I'm great, just great," he said. "How about you?"

"Pretty good. You're at Cal, right?"

"Yep. I like it, but I sort of miss the desert. You've got some desert out in UCLA, right?"

Jeff nodded. "It's a couple hours away, though. The ocean's closer."

"The ocean rocks," Jon said with a grin. "Are you still seeing...um, what's her name, that girl from high school."

"Alice?" He saw her moving towards him across the room. "Uh, not really."

"Oh. I thought I saw her here."

"You did," Jeff said, and she joined them just at that moment, putting her paw on his arm.

"Hi, Jeff," she said. "And...Jon, is that right?"

"Yeah," he said. "We were just talking about you."

Jeff tried to remove her paw from his arm, but couldn't quite do it unobtrusively enough, so he let it stay there. She appeared not to notice his efforts, saying, "I heard about your Dean's list, congratulations," but her paw tightened on his arm.

"Oh, thanks," Jon said, and his ears flicked. "It wasn't that big a deal, really. I mean, you know how freshman classes are."

"I'm not in college," Alice said, and Jeff, who had gotten a 2.5 and a threatening letter from his father in his first semester, stayed silent.

"Oh? What are you doing?"

"I work at the library and I'm doing some home crafting in my spare time." Jeff endured the description of her jewelry aspirations largely by ignoring it and looking at other arrivals as they came through the door, and Jon, from his frequent nods and glances at Jeff, appeared no more interested.

"Well, look," he said finally, interrupting Alice in the middle of the detailed process by which melted glass could be shaped into different patterns, "I'm gonna get another drink. It was nice seeing you both."

"Good to see you, too," Jeff said. When Jon was out of earshot, he said, "I suppose I could thank you for getting rid of him."

She continued to resist his attempts to get her paw off of his arm. "You see, I can be a good companion."

"Alice," he sighed, "I'm with someone. And I'm..." he looked around to see if any of his father's friends were nearby. Mr. Hathaway was talking to Maria Anderson about ten feet from them, his large black ears constantly swiveling to take in the room. "Well, you know."

"I know what you think you are," she said, "but that doesn't matter even if it is true. You still need a wife, don't you? How are you going to have kids? Who are you going to bring to parties?"

The shine in her eyes was mostly wine-fueled, he suspected. "Listen," he said. "I'm with someone."

"Oh, that doesn't matter," she said. "You people all cheat on each other all the time anyway, and it's not like it's a real relationship. I mean, you," here she lowered her voice to a loud stage whisper, "slept with that wolf last night."

"Oh, my God." He could feel the fur on his back standing up as his ears laid down flat.

"José told me," she said. "He said how it was really okay, because it was just one of those things that happened. Frankly, I'm more surprised at him. I mean, he was dating your sister, and he's a baseball player and everything."

"Oh. My. God." He couldn't believe José would have told her something like that. He must be more drunk than Jeff had thought. "I gotta go."

"Jeff, just think about it," she said, following him through the increasingly thick crowd of people. "You'll see I'm right. I'll show you..."

"Jeff!" his mother cried, sweeping down on him in a hideous red and green dress. Plastic candy canes swung from the base of her ears in wide arcs. "Alice! Oh, look, you're under the mistletoe!"

"Mistletoe's four feet away, Mom," Jeff said, edging further away from it.

"It has a wide shadow!" she said, and now everyone was looking at them. "Come on...a Christmas kiss!"

"For the love of--mmmf!" He never finished his sentence, as Alice planted herself on his muzzle and wrapped her arms around him like some kind of inexorable sea monster. He kept his lips resolutely closed against the insistence of her tongue, and extracted himself from the kiss as soon as possible, as the onlookers clapped briefly and then returned to their conversations.

His mother was sniffling and wiping joyful tears from her muzzle. "It's so beautiful," she panted, and wandered off.

Alice's muzzle was curved in a happy smirk. Jeff wiped his own mouth off and took a swig of eggnog. "Hope you enjoyed that," he said to her.

"Didn't you?" she asked as he walked away. He waved her away, though the fur on his tail felt her following him until he got to the Christmas tree where he'd left José. His boyfriend was no longer there.

"Look how pretty the tree is," Alice said, coming up to his side as he looked around.

"Right," he said, and twisted his way through a crowd of people, heading toward the kitchen. He hadn't quite made it when he ran into José, bearing a tray of some kind of appetizer.

"Hi, hon--er, Jeff," José said. "Your mom asked me to help serve!" His tail was wagging as though he'd been asked to put the star on the tree.

"Mom," Jeff said, spotting her on her way back to the kitchen, "José's not a servant."

"Of course, darling," she said. "Why don't you and Alice go have some more eggnog? I need to get the drawing pads out."

Jeff turned, and Alice took the opportunity to grab his arm again. He cast desperately around and saw Mr. Hathaway nearby. He dragged Alice over to him.

"Mr. Hathaway," he said, "Have you met Alice? She's a friend of the family. She works at the library and makes jewelry. Tell him about the jewelry," he urged Alice over the fox's faint acknowledgement.

He didn't wait for her to get started before slipping away, but as he wasn't looking where he going, he ran smack into Mark. The wolf put a paw on his shoulder and grinned down at him. "Careful," he said.

Jeff glared at him, muttered, "Sorry," and ran after José.

His boyfriend had put the appetizer tray down and was taking another glass of eggnog from Gillian. "Hi, Jeff," he said. "This is really fun."

"Just wait," Jeff said darkly. "Mom's getting the Pictionary pads out."

José's ears perked up. "Pictionary?"

"Not just Pictionary. A special Christmas version. The clues are all Christmas carols, and when the team guesses them, they have to sing them."

"That sounds fun!"

Jeff stared at his boyfriend. "You're serious? Well, you can go play without me."

"Come on. It'll be fun."

"No." At the hurt look and drooping ears, Jeff rolled his eyes. "Look, I don't want to pick at childhood scars. You can go ahead, really. I don't mind."

"But it won't be as much fun without you."

Jeff barked a short laugh. "Trust me, it'll be more fun."

José looked around, then leaned in furtively. "I'll...make it up to you later."

"Yeah, you will." Jeff grinned. "Actually, the games would be a really good time to sneak upstairs."

José would probably not have agreed to that if he weren't drunk, but as it was, Jeff noticed him shifting his hips to accommodate his arousal, and he nodded with a wide, panting smile. "Okay. I'll leave early and come find you."

"We'll have to go up separately," he said, grinning back and feeling not a little aroused himself. "Just catch my eye when you go upstairs."

Just then, his mother called gaily, "Everyone who wants to play a game, come into the rec room!"

"Go," he said, and José took off with a grin, tail wagging.

"You're not going?" his sister said from behind him.

He turned to see her standing next to a tray of appetizers, small flaky pastries that smelled of mince. "No," he said, popping one into his mouth. "And I see you're not, either. Hey, these are pretty good."

"I know. I've had four already." She flicked an ear, and at the same time, he saw their father coming toward them. Cold air swirled around him; he must have just come in from outside. His red shirt and green tie were almost as bad as Jeff's mother's dress.

"Both of you, in there to play the game," he said.

"She's got plenty of people," Jeff argued.

"And I'm helping out the caterers," Gillian said.

"You two are really spoiled brats. If you don't care enough about your family to participate..."

Across the room, Diana Anderson's cackling laughter rang out, distracting their father. "That's her third glass of wine. She really can't hold her liquor." He looked very pleased by this. "Jeff, get the vase off the sideboard." His mother was a happy drunk, but Mrs. Anderson was a clumsy drunk.

"Sure," Jeff said, and moved to do that before his father could reiterate his order to play the Christmas game. He cradled the vase in his arms and paused in the living room, looking for somewhere safe to put it. Back porch, he decided. There was a corner behind his father's bar where it would be out of the way. He pushed through the dining room and past the caterers in the kitchen.

When he got to the back porch, it was deserted save for a few cocktail glasses, undoubtedly because it was much colder than the previous night. His breath hung in front of him without dissipating now.

He put the vase down, turned around, and jumped when he saw Alice standing on the porch, having apparently materialized out of nowhere. "Hi, Jeff," she said. "Kinda cold out here, isn't it?"

"I was just heading back inside." He tried to get around her, but she stepped to one side and back to block him.

"What's your hurry? Your boyfriend is singing 'The First Noel' in there, but I can keep you warm out here."

There are few things as unpleasant as being hugged by someone you would rather not be hugging, but one of them is being hugged sexually by someone you would really rather not be hugging. Alice ground her hips up against his crotch and tried to kiss him again, but he managed to angle his muzzle out of the way before she could. She settled for pressing her face into his neck, her paws groping down to his rump.

Ears flat, Jeff tried to push her away. "Hey," he said, roughly, "listen, I don't know what my mother told you, but really, I don't--mmf!" She had taken advantage of his talking to kiss him again, and this time got her tongue in there too. It reeked of wine and rum, getting the alcoholic smell up into his nasal cavity.

The smell was so strong that it dazed him; it was a moment before he was able to spit out her tongue and get his paws between them. She really was surprisingly strong, and fairly determined. "Alice, please, just stop it."

She pressed closer to him. "No. Not until you recognize what's good for you."

"What's good for me? How do you or anyone else know what that is?"

"You certainly don't," she replied. "Throwing your life away. What we had was special, you know that as well as I do. It just didn't work because of the sex. But now I know what you like..." She lowered her voice. "I can be a bit boyish, you know," and her paw reached down under his tail as she said that.

That was the spur he needed to match her determination and strength. He squirmed free of her and stood panting on the porch. "You're drunk," he said. "You should go sober up before you go around groping people."

"Oh, for heaven's sake," she said. "Groping? We know each other. We had our first sex together. No, I let you go once, and I'm not going to make that mistake again."

Incredulous, and getting colder in the night air, Jeff considered his options. He couldn't get back in the house because she was in the way. He could go out the back porch and around the front. Or he could try to brain her with the vase. Even though, he thought, he wasn't actually starring in a slapstick comedy, the last solution had more than a little appeal right now.

"Look," he said, "I'm sorry you haven't found anyone since we broke up. But remember when we broke up and you said you were okay with it?"

"I was, then!" she cried. "But when you left, I didn't realize how much I missed you. You didn't have the right to break up with me."

"The right? The right? I can't be happy with you. That doesn't give me the right?"

"I don't know why you're being so mean." She was trying to act despondent, but he could see the gleam in her eyes. She thought she could make him feel guilty. "I even like José. You could still see him a couple times a week. I'm bending over backwards for you."

"Listen to me," he said, "I. Don't. Want. You."

"That doesn't have to matter," she said softly.

He shook his head. "You don't get it. Let's talk when you sober up." He took a chance and pushed past her, and this time she didn't stop him, though he was afraid she would. He stole a cookie from the caterers' trays as he went through the kitchen, and shook his head, moving through the dining room and to the back of the staircase, where a window opened onto the back porch. Putting his nose to the window, he saw the door close and guessed Alice had come back in.

"Drunk people," he muttered to himself, and then, more to say the words than because it was true, "God, I need a blow job."

"Say what?" He turned and saw Mark there, in his blue suit, a cookie in his paw.

"Uh...sorry. Just having a frustrating conversation."

"I saw. I thought I might have to come out there and break you two up." The wolf grinned, and tossed the cookie into his mouth.

"We're already broken up, and what business is it of yours anyway? Why were you watching us?"

Mark shrugged. "Just saw her follow you out there. Didn't look like a scene you wanted to be part of. But I didn't want to just walk out into it."

"No." He paused, squinted up at the wolf as an off-key 'We Three Kings' burst from the rest of the house, causing both their ears to go flat for a moment. "Why are you so worried?"

Mark grinned. "I don't know. Seems like you're having a tough time, is all."

"You just want another ride on the porch?" Jeff folded his arms.

"If you want," Mark said. "Looks like your ex came in, so it's empty out there."

"That's not what I...oh, hi, Aunt Janine." His father's older sister had spotted him and come over to pinch his ears and tell him how tall he'd gotten. "This is Mark, Jill's boyfriend."

Mark extended a paw. "Ex-boyfriend," he said.

"Oh, my." Aunt Janine looked back and forth between them. "Well, it's Christmas, you'll make up. And Jeff, look how big you are! How are you liking college?"

"It's fine." They moved back to the living room, where he told Aunt Janine about college through 'O Holy Night,' 'Rudolph,' and 'Howl to the Star,' the only Christmas carol he really liked, because it was one of the few times he could howl as a cub. In the middle of that last one, Gillian came over and Mark excused himself while Aunt Janine pinched Gillian's ears (more carefully because of her earrings) and told her how big she'd gotten.

"Yeah," Gillian said, "I'm wearing a B-cup now."

If she'd meant for Aunt Janine to be shocked, she was disappointed. "You'll fill out soon enough," the older coyote said. "I was twenty before I put on a C-cup. Of course, having your first cub is good for one extra size too."

"Oh, good," Gillian said, "so I've got that to look forward to."

Aunt Janine leaned forward curiously, sniffing the air, and just then Jeff saw José come out of the rec room, humming to himself and weaving a bit as he made his way to the stairs. He caught Jeff's eye and winked, and made his way slowly up the stairs.

"Gillian," Aunt Janine said while this was happening, "are you...okay?" She looked not only at Gillian's muzzle, but also down at her belly. At least, Jeff thought, if she did guess the secret, Aunt Janine was not one to go blabbing all over the place.

"I'm fine," Gillian said. "Do you want some eggnog?"

"Yes, dear, but you'd better go make up with your boyfriend."

"Yeah, why don't you do that?" Jeff said. "I need to, um, go do something."

"Fine," Gillian said. "I'll go find Mark and make up. Then Jeff, you can get Aunt Janine her eggnog."

He looked at the stairs, then at his aunt's muzzle. "Oh, I can find it myself," she said.

"No, that's okay." It wouldn't hurt to let a few more minutes go by, as much as he felt himself getting hard again at the thought of getting up there and shutting himself in his room with José.

"Well, tell me about this girl of yours. Alice, is it?" She walked alongside him as he made his way back to the living room. "I saw you kissing earlier. You do make a nice couple. She's the one you were--"

"We're not dating," he said.

"Oh." She chuckled softly to herself. "Well, you never know what the magic of Christmas will bring. Maybe you will be again soon."

"I doubt it," Jeff said. "Here's the eggnog. Plain or, um, enhanced?"

"I'll have the rum." Aunt Janine smiled and held out a paw, and Jeff poured her a spiked eggnog.

"Delicious," she said. "Your mother's still buying that White Paw Rum, I see. It goes well with the eggnog."

Aunt Janine kept his attention for a few more minutes, and then he managed to disengage himself and get back to the stairs. He got only a third of the way up before his father's voice stopped him in his tracks. "Jeffrey!"

He leaned over the banister. "What?"

"Where are you going?"

"Just upstairs for a minute."

"Come back down. We've only got two carols left and you're going to help finish the game. The Andersons are winning, and we can't have that."

The forced jokiness in his father's tone set Jeff's teeth on edge. "Dad, nobody wins at that game. You're all losers."

His attempt to copy his father's irreverent tone failed. The older coyote glowered and lowered his ears. "Get down here now."

Jeff looked up and then sighed and marched back down. José could wait another ten minutes, hopefully, without passing out. He trailed behind his father back to the rec room, eyes down.

"Mark, if you want to, you can join us. You're part of the clan." His father had stopped in front of the tall wolf. Jeff looked up in moderate surprise.

Mark met his look and shrugged. "Sure."

"I guess my sister didn't come find you," Jeff said as they entered the rec room. "I didn't think she would."

Mark's reply was drowned out by the chorus of 'Hark, the Herald Angels Howl' from the opposing team, and then by the effusive hugs of his mother telling them how much fun they were going to have and how happy she was that they'd come to play. Jeff folded his arms and wished she could be happy for him without being drunk, or at a party.

The last carol their group got was 'Deck the Halls,' one of Jeff's least favorites, but he guessed it quickly and then sang 'fa la la la la' gamely along with his family and Mark. Then, while his mother was still thanking everyone for playing, he escaped the room.

The wolf followed him. "Why was your sister looking for me?"

Jeff started up the stairs again. "Oh, she told Aunt Janine she was going to find you to make up, or something. But I didn't think she would."

Mark came up the stairs as well, and as Jeff turned in annoyance, Mark said, "She was looking in the wrong place. I saw her go up there a while back."

Jeff's fur prickled and he felt a chill. He turned and looked up the stairs, and then back at Mark. "Oh, that bitch," he said, realizing what his sister was doing, and ran up the stairs.

The door to his room was slightly ajar. He hesitated outside it while Mark came up beside him. Gillian's door was wide open, and her room was empty, and so was the bathroom. He didn't want to go into his room, but he felt he had to. He reached for the doorknob, then pulled his paw back as he heard a low moan, a sound he'd only heard José make with him in bed.

Mark heard it too, and reached past him to pull the door shut gently. "Come on," he said, and pulled Jeff into Gillian's room, closing the door behind them.

"I can't believe she'd do that," he said, sitting on the bed. "She did it deliberately. She got him drunk and then kept me out of the way while she came up here..."

"Well," Mark said, "You know, she was pretty upset about last night."

"Yeah, but that was an accident!"

The wolf grinned, his ears half down, and sat cross-legged on the floor, looking up the coyote on the black bedspread. "Look, uh, Jeff, I've seen a lot of accidents. You didn't accidentally bend over and drop your pants, and I didn't accidentally fuck you."

"But...I mean, I didn't deliberately set it up like that. She is such a conniving, backstabbing..." He trailed off. His hard-on had gone away briefly, but recalling the previous night was bringing it back, in force. "Why are you being so nice to me?"

"What do you mean?" Mark looked sincerely curious.

"I mean...you were such a prick all through high school. Remember the toilet, and...my science project, and..." He was getting angry all over again, but Mark didn't seem fazed or guilty.

"Oh," he said. "That was just kid stuff, y'know? You seem like a nice guy, and Jill talks about you a lot. Plus you're kinda cute."

"Kid stuff?" But of course, Mark Winter hadn't been his only tormentor, nor even the worst. He'd just been one in a line of people determined to make school miserable for Jeff.

"Yeah. Sorry," he said, and again seemed sincere. When Jeff looked at him, he flicked his eyes deliberately at Jeff's crotch. "I'll suck your dick if it'll make you feel better."

Jeff looked around at his sister's room, the pink of her middle school years covered with a layer of black, the posters of bubble gum pop torn down and replaced with angry women screaming into microphones. "In Jill's room?"

Mark nodded to the wall. "She's fucking your boyfriend in your room."

"Well," the coyote said, aware that he shouldn't say yes, but too hard and aroused and angry to say no, "it won't make me feel worse. But you don't have to."

"It's okay," Mark said, getting to his knees. "I kinda want to anyway." He put one paw on Jeff's thigh and the other on the bulge between his legs.

The coyote moaned softly at the electricity of the touch. His tail thumped against the bed. "Why?"

Mark grinned, paw working at the fastening of Jeff's pants. "I haven't sucked a lot of dick," he said, "so maybe I don't know the protocol and all, but I've never been asked why." He slid a paw inside the opened pants and wrapped his paw around Jeff's shaft. "I dunno. I like it, and you're cute, and you're having a pretty bad day. Plus, you know, Merry Christmas."

His fingers drew Jeff's length out into the open air, and Jeff, accustomed to sex under the covers in the dark, watched raptly as the wolf drew his tongue up his stiffness to its tip. The soft pink tongue left glistening trails of moisture on his shaft, and trails of pleasure through his body. His paws clenched the sheets and he exhaled, his body tense. He tried to will it to relax as Mark licked up again, holding him with one paw while his tongue explored Jeff's erection, tasting the pre leaking from the tip and swirling around the sensitive areas until Jeff let out his breath in a gasping squeak.

"For not having done this much," he panted, "you're pretty good."

Mark grinned and flicked his ears in appreciation. Between licks, he said, "Well...you know, us athletes...we're a pretty gay bunch."

"If I'd known," Jeff moaned, "I would've gone out for more spor-orrrrrrts!" Mark had slid his warm muzzle down over the end of Jeff's shaft, sucking on it as he licked. His paw was now holding a rapidly swelling knot, massaging it as he licked, and he curled his ears down, focusing on his muzzle as he pumped it up and down.

It was over almost too quickly, but Jeff was seriously worked up and on edge, and the wolf's tongue and muzzle had no difficulty bringing him to a shuddering, yipping climax. Mark kept the coyote's shaft imprisoned as he came, exhaling warmly and taking Jeff's seed. He held it in his muzzle until Jeff had lain back, panting and moaning happily. Then the wolf drew his lips up and off of the coyote's twitching erection, held up a finger with a grin, and disappeared across the hall to the bathroom.

Jeff lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling and panting. Nothing occupied his mind but the pleasure he'd just had, and when Mark came back and sat next to him, he hadn't even pulled up his pants. He turned to the wolf and smiled.

"Feel better?" Mark said.

"Yeah." Jeff glanced at the wall beyond which his sister and José were still presumably going at it. "I do. Thanks."

Mark grinned. "You can return the favor for me sometime."

"I will," Jeff said sincerely.

"Not now, though. I'll get back down to the party. See you there. And don't sweat it with your boyfriend. He was probably pretty wasted."

"Yeah, I know. I'm more mad at my sister. But I'm sure I can work things out with José. It'll be fine." José cheating on him was much less an issue after he'd had his second meeting with Mark. At least, as long as he didn't think about who José had cheated with.

"Your sister's a good yote. She just needs to get that not everything is about her."

"Believe me, I know." Jeff sat up and pulled his pants up, finally. "She always does that. I think she gets it from our parents."

"Maybe." Mark grinned. "I know your family seems pretty cool, but this season does somethin' to them."

"Tell me about it." Jeff rolled his eyes. "Anyway...thanks again. I feel a lot better."

"Thought you would. A blow job always cheers me up." Mark patted his leg, and stood up. "See ya down there."

Jeff watched the wolf's tail wagging slowly as he walked out, and listened for the creak of his step on the stairs. He lay back on the bed again and contemplated not going back down, just staying up here until the party was over and it was time to leave for Mass. Fifteen minutes before, he would have closed his eyes and shut the door, but now he felt better, more at peace with the world.

When he stepped into the hall, he noticed that the door to his room was now closed, and when he pressed his ear to the door, he heard only soft breathing. Gingerly, he opened it, and saw José passed out on his bed, shirt rolled up to his midriff, pants around his knees, just the tip of his member poking out of his damp white sheath. His eyes were closed and his tongue lolling out of his muzzle as he slept, peaceful and happy.

Jeff covered him with a blanket and walked out, closing the door again as he did. From downstairs he heard strains of 'Deck the Halls' again, and winced as he walked down to rejoin the party.

His sister kept trying to catch his eye, but for the next hour he managed to avoid her, dodging from one guest to another and sending tipsy relatives and friends to intercept her. He saw Mark occasionally, once standing beside his sister and once talking to their Aunt Janine. The wolf looked so bored that Jeff started over to rescue him, but got trapped along the way by Maria and Diana Anderson, and only barely rescued the wreath on their door from Diana's elbows when she made an expansive gesture.

His mother was running another party game, but it was a low-key game that involved making up Christmas limericks. Various pads and pencils were being passed around the party, for each guest to contribute a line and then pass it on to another. Jeff added one line: to "As Santa Yote got on his sleigh," he wrote, "His reindeer said 'No freakin' way!'" After that, he passed on the pads as they came his way, and plotted how he would escape when his mother assembled everyone to read the limericks.

With an hour to go until the end of the party, he felt he was on the downhill stretch. If the worst thing that happened to him was the incident on the porch with Alice, this wouldn't be a bad party, and Alice had been avoiding him since he came down from upstairs, or else she too had passed out somewhere.

He overheard Jack Anderson talking to his father, and stood nearby so that he could hear. His father's ears were tightly focused on Jack, but the other coyote looked pretty drunk, his ears wandering aimlessly around, tail puffed out a bit and wagging erratically.

"Great party this year, Andy," Jack was saying. "I really like what you did with the food."

"Thanks, Jack," his father replied. "Diana's looking well, and congratulations on Maria's wedding."

"Well, you know, he's an orthodontist. So at least the kids'll have straight teeth." Jack Anderson had an annoying laugh, which he brought out to accompany that remark.

Jeff's father laughed his polite laugh, and said, "It's great that she's ready for marriage already."

"Don't worry, I'm sure Jill will find someone soon. Maybe she'll get back together with that baseball player. He looks like a good kid."

"Well, she's at that age where she doesn't really know what's good for her," Jeff's father replied. "We try to tell her, but she gets her fur up and just won't listen, you know?"

"Sometimes she just needs to hear it from someone else," Jack said. "Hang on." Jeff followed the older coyote's ears and eyes as he scanned the party, and saw Gillian some fifteen feet away, talking to Abel, Aunt Janine's son. He noticed that Gillian looked moody and more than a little tipsy herself, and started forward to interrupt Jack before he could say anything, but he wasn't fast enough.

"Hey, Jill," Jack called above the crowd. She turned to look at him, and so did half the people in the living room. "When you gonna get back together with that wolf? You guys make a cute couple."

This remark killed most of the conversation in the room. Jeff winced. He couldn't decide whether Jack was trying to be progressive by supporting a mixed-race couple, or trying to embarrass his father by pointing out his daughter's mixed-race relationship. Probably the latter, though he could always claim the former. Probably he was annoyed that the party had gone off so well.

If that was the case, then Gillian's reply made Jack Anderson deliriously happy. She stared at him for a long, silent moment, long enough for her father to clear his throat and say, "Hey, Jack, how about..."

But he never got a chance to finish that remark. "When am I going to get back together with the father of my unborn cub?" Gillian said, in a voice that was now attracting the attention of people out in the foyer. "Never! You want to know why?" The deathly silence was an affirmative answer that she didn't need, because she barreled on regardless. "Because I caught him fucking my brother!"

Jeff could clearly hear eight ticks of the living room clock before any other sound reached his ears. His father took that long to recover, and he was the first to move. Shooting an angry look at the stunned Jack Anderson, he pushed his way to Gillian and said, "Come on, sweetheart, you've had too much to drink." He pulled her forcibly out of the living room.

And then everyone turned to look at Jeff. His fur rose on the back of his neck, and there was nowhere for him to look to avoid the dozens of eyes staring at him. Jack Anderson's look of bewilderment was becoming one of those smugly superior smirks that bigots got when they found out Jeff was gay. And before the murmur of conversation had fully resumed, Jeff clearly heard a young cub's voice say, "Mommy, what's 'fucking'?"

That broke the spell. He heard the mother begin to say, "Not, now, honey, we have to leave," followed by a loud murmur of conversation. Jack Anderson said, "Jealous of your sister?" but he ignored the comment, pushing his way out of the living room.

People kept looking at him, only now it was out of the corners of their eyes. Their ears swiveled to follow him as he walked by, and the hot flush he'd felt in the aftermath of his sister's remark didn't go away. He passed his mother, standing just outside the kitchen with a sheaf of limericks in her paw. "Oh, Jeff, listen to this one," she said, but he pushed past her. "What's the matter?" she cried after him.

The caterers had packed up and the kitchen was empty. He shoved the screen door open and stepped into the cold of the back porch, panting.

The cold air calmed him as he filled his lungs, and he leaned against the wall. Glancing to his left, he saw the red glow of a cigarette in the dark shadows outside the spread of the porch light. For a moment, he tried to recall whether his father had invited any bobcats; most canids hated tobacco, but cats and rodents, with their less sensitive noses, often indulged. They didn't know any rodents, but there was a family of bobcats that lived nearby.

The mystery was dispelled with another breath. It wasn't tobacco, it was the milder and more illegal drug, which Jeff had tried a couple times in college. Mark strolled into the fringe of the light, half his face in the shadow and an abashed grin on his muzzle. "Didn't figure anyone'd be out here," he said, and then tilted his ears. "You okay? You look bad."

"Why does she have to try so hard to ruin everything?"

"I dunno. What'd she do?"

Jeff took a breath of cold, to steady himself. "She announced to the whole party that you're the father of her unborn cub and that she caught us sleeping together."

Mark took a drag and exhaled. "Whew. I can see that might upset you." He extended his paw to Jeff. "Want a toke?"

"Sure." Jeff put the joint between his lips and inhaled, tasting the mildly heady drug and the scent of the wolf.

Mark moved a little closer. "Are you upset that she's doing it, or that she's doing it better than you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jeff stared at him.

"Oh, when we went to the party last night, all the way there she was just talking about you bringing José and how you were trying to get kicked out of the family Christmas before she did. I don't really understand any of it, frankly."

"Even after tonight?"

"Your family didn't seem that bad. They go a little crazy around Christmas, but so does everyone."

"I've always hated Christmas," Jeff said.

"Always?"

"Well, no. I mean, when I was a kid, it was great, all colored lights and presents and fun. But now it just seems like an excuse for people to get drunk and yell at each other."

From the kitchen, faintly, he heard his mother calling, "Jeff? Jeff, are you out there?"

"Shit," he said, and handed the joint back to Mark. "I don't want to go back in, and I'm sure not going to Mass now." He opened the screen door at the back of the porch. "I guess...crap."

Mark hustled him down the stairs and into the shadows just as the inner screen door opened. "Jeff?" they heard his mother say, and then she sniffed audibly and called back inside, "It smells funny out there."

"What's the matter now?" Mark said softly.

"We drove here in José's car, and he's passed out upstairs with the keys in his pocket."

The wolf held up a set of keys that jingled softly. "Ho ho ho," he said. "Wanna get out of here?"

Jeff grinned. "You're a lifesaver."

"Think of me as a Christmas angel," Mark said. He put out the joint and stowed it carefully in his pocket as he walked briskly across the yard to where a line of cars was parked.

"Do I have to?" Jeff padded after him, tail wagging.

"Well, it is Christmas, and I'm doing you a favor. But you don't have to."

Mark owned a sporty two seater that started with a wonderful growl. He pulled away while Jeff was still buckling his seatbelt. "I think you have this Christmas thing all wrong," he said. "It's just supposed to be about people being nice to each other."

"Why does that have to be a certain time of year?" Jeff said, watching his house's roof lights disappear in the rear view mirror. "Why can't we just decide to be nice to each other all the time?"

"You know," the wolf said, "here's the thing. For me, Christmas is always just a time when I get to kick back and think about people and remember to do nice things. I get busy, you know, and sometimes I don't do things and wish I had. So once a year I'm always thinking about it."

"What is this, some kind of after-school special about the true meaning of Christmas?" Jeff said.

"Heck, I don't know the true meaning," Mark said. "I just know what it means for me."

"Tell it to my family."

"Yeah, well, you can't let them ruin your Christmas for you. You gotta make your own Christmas season if you don't get any help from them."

"Easy for you to say," Jeff snorted.

Mark laughed. "Yeah, I guess it is. So where we going?"

"Don't care." Jeff leaned back in the seat and watched the town go by. He glanced over at the wolf, relaxing back in his seat and controlling the car with one sure paw on the wheel. Mark's blue suit was missing its jacket, probably left back at Jeff's house. He filled out the shirt and pants nicely, and looking at the full crotch of the light blue pants made Jeff smile. "Hey," he said, "I still owe you something."

Mark saw where his eyes were and grinned, leaning back in his seat to give Jeff access. The coyote slid out from under the seatbelt and reached over, opening up the blue pants. By the time he slid his paw inside, the wolf was nice and hard, and he drew the long shaft out into the cold air. He slid his paw up and down the warm hard member until Mark said, "Getting a bit cold."

"Sorry." Jeff grinned and leaned over, slipping the wolf into his muzzle. He felt the wolf's arm across his shoulders, and a moment later the car was filled with the sounds of some chorus or another singing, "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen." Jeff closed his eyes and let the spirit of Christmas fill him.

Epilogue

Jeff opened the door and waved Gillian inside. "Here, take Ethan, please." She thrust the cub into his arms.

The coyote wagged his tail and took the bundle, holding it in one arm and wiggling his finger over the cub's muzzle with the other. "Hi, Ethan! Are you fussing? Are you driving Mommy crazy?" The cub cooed and laughed, and waved at Jeff's finger.

"No," Gillian said, "I just have to go to the bathroom."

"Where's Mark?" he called after her retreating tail.

"Parking," she said. "He dropped me off."

He grinned and bounced the cub as the bathroom door slammed. When his sister came out, she said, "Thanks for letting us stay here. Again."

"No problem," he said. "It's Christmas now. We should have some kind of family around."

She started to say something, but the door opened and Mark walked in, hefting a big bag over his shoulder. "Ho ho ho!" he called. "Merry Christmas!"

Jeff and Gillian both laughed as the wolf closed the door and joined them. "Hi, sweetie," he said, and tapped the cub on the nose. Ethan laughed and grabbed his paw.

"He's gotten big since the last time we saw him," Jeff said.

"Sure has," Mark said, and leaned down to nuzzle Jeff. "And he's cute, too! I'm sorry I'm not the father."

"He'd be even cuter then," Jeff said.

Mark laughed, and leaned down to kiss him. "You like holding him? You wanna look around for a cub for us to adopt?"

Jeff kissed the wolf, and then grinned. "Nah, I'm okay just being an uncle for now." He handed the cub back to Gillian and settled into a warmer hug from Mark, his back to the wolf's chest. "So what happened with Jake this time?"

"Oh, same old," Gillian said. "I'll call him after Christmas and we'll get back together."

"Well, you can always stay here," Mark said. "Happy to pick you up at the bus station anytime." Jeff nodded his agreement.

"So it's been a few months now," Gillian said, rocking the cub and looking back and forth at the two of them. "Working out okay?"

"Yeah," Jeff said, and squeezed the wolf's paw. "I think so. Mark found a baseball team around here to play with."

"And Jeff's learning how to relax, and doing better in school." Mark nuzzled the coyote's ears, and Gillian grinned.

"Good. I'm gonna go feed Ethan."

"I'll get your room set up," Mark said. He released Jeff with a nuzzle to the ears and Jeff snuck in a grope between the wolf's legs once Gillian had her back turned. Mark's tail wagged as he padded into the spare room.

"I heard from José and Alice," Jeff said, standing by Gillian as she rummaged through the bag. "They're spending Christmas with Mom and Dad before going to José's family's place. They're as happy as, well, Christmas elves."

"I knew he wasn't really gay," Gillian said.

"Oh, he's gay," Jeff said. "Trust me."

"Well, bi, maybe." She found Ethan's formula and headed for the kitchen. Jeff grabbed the bag and followed her. "When's Richie getting here?"

"Tomorrow. He couldn't get a flight from New York 'til then."

"Funny that he came back from Amsterdam this year."

Jeff laughed. "He didn't tell you? He told me last month. He was only in Amsterdam that first year. After that, he just stayed at college and said he was in Amsterdam. The family he stayed with there liked him a lot and sent his mail on."

Gillian stared at him, bouncing Ethan while she waited for the formula to heat. "That's insane," she said. "I wish I'd thought of that."

"I know." Jeff chuckled. "And now he's coming here. Funny, we had to leave home to be a family."

"That's pretty," Gillian said. "You read that in one of your classes?"

Jeff laughed and took Ethan while she got the bottle ready. "I practiced it."

"Well, it sounds nice." She looked at him. "Thanks, again. For letting us stay."

"Hey," he said, "you introduced me to Mark. I owe you. You sure it's okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine," she said. "I don't have a thing for him. I'm glad you guys are happy. It gives me something to torment Mom and Dad about when I talk to them."

"They know he's not Ethan's father, right?"

"Oh, yeah. They're glad I'm trying to make it work with Jake."

"Are you?"

She shrugged, taking Ethan back and bouncing him while he slurped from the bottle. "Not really. Just 'til something better comes along. He's a spineless wimp who lets anyone older than him tell him what to do."

"Hope you find something soon." He saw movement outside the kitchen and followed Mark into the living room, where the wolf was putting some Christmas carols on their little boombox.

'Howl to the Star' came over the speakers, and Jeff wagged his tail as Mark turned around.

"You're under the mistletoe," Jeff said.

Mark looked around. "I thought you said you weren't going to get any."

"I didn't. But it casts a wide shadow." They hugged, touched noses, and Jeff smiled. "Merry Christmas," he said.