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Dan wrapped his fingers around the knurled steel bar and pushed against it. He didn't want to move it yet, he just wanted to feel its cold, solid weight against his palms. Taking deep breaths, he gathered his energy and focused his attention on what he was doing.

He took a moment to look past the bar into the warm, brown eyes of his partner. Bo stood casually behind the weight bench, his huge, jet-black handpaws resting on on either side of Dan's. The varius was standing so close that Dan could feel the heat radiating from him, and Dan used that as another source of strength to draw from. "Push." In that one word, softly spoken, Dan heard a request, a suggestion, an encouragement, a command, and buried deeply, his partner's willingness to help in any way he could.

At Dan's nod, Bo lifted the bar off the rack and rested it on Dan's slowly swaying arms. Bo saw his partner's eyes lose focus as the other man fell inside himself. Bo had seen this before in his friend, and knew that the battle had started.

Dan sucked in a huge lungful of air and lowered the bar to his chest. As rapaciously as a black hole devours light, he reached out with his mind and absorbed every scrap of energy that was available in the world around him. He knew that it was only his imagination, but he could almost feel the eddies and currents of power in the room around him. He channeled these forces into his chest and triceps and felt his muscles harden in response.

A hundred and sixty kilos of iron were pushed away from his chest, and Dan threw all of his mental energy into increasing the distance between the weight and himself. Halfway, two-thirds, three-quarters... With a growl that was equal parts exertion and triumph, Dan shoved his arms straight. Bo let the weight rest on his arms for a few seconds, then pulled it back into the rack with a resounding clank.

As soon as Bo pulled the weight off of his arms, thunderous applause and whoops of recognition erupted all around him from his buddies who, without Dan noticing, had gathered around him to lend their support. He smiled and ducked his head in embarrassment, feeling more encouraged than he'd ever thought possible. There was a time in his life when he wouldn't have made the attempt to get to know anyone else in the gym; but Bo had made certain that Dan knew all of his lifting buddies and felt comfortable in their world.

For the first time, listening to Kip and Jake and Dunny and all the others cheer and whistle, Dan felt like he was part of their extended family. Stealing a glance at an outwardly bored-looking but inwardly happy Bo, it struck him what a huge difference the man had made in his life.

***

Side-by-side in the gym's oversized shower, Dan and Bo lathered themselves under the sharp spray of hot water. After almost a year in each other's company, they were comfortable with each other's nudity. Each man had seen everything there was to see about the other's physical body and were able to ignore their powerful physical attraction. Mostly.

Several times, however, Dan caught himself stealing glances at Bo, admiring the way the soap bubbles traced paths through his dense black fur. The white trails looked like rivers on a topographic map as they meandered the valleys between the mountains of muscle that undulated beneath the surface of the varius' fur. "Here," Dan said, pulling a rubber-fingered bathing brush out of its holder on the shower wall, "let me get your back."

Bo turned away from Dan and backed up more quickly than expected, eliciting a surprised yelp from the sapiens as he got sandwiched between a warm, furry varius and the cold, ceramic tile of the shower wall. "Oops," Bo smirked, giving Dan a lewd grind with his hindquarters before pulling away. "Sorry. My mistake." His voice was as cool and aloof as usual, but Dan could feel his mate's mischievous nature warming their mental bond. "You're so tiny, I didn't see you back there."

*mirth*

*embarrassed*

"Clumsy ape," Dan groused, angling his body away from the shower entrance so no one who came in would see his growing erection.

you must have really liked it

when I climbed on top last night

Dan thought, running the grooming device through the lush black fur on Bo's back. The hair was longer and thicker here than on his front; denser and not as soft. The sapiens tried to keep his eyes north of the border, as it were, but was unable to stop their southbound travel. They came to rest at the base of Bo's tail, and it took little imagination for him to remember how his mate had wagged that bear-like stump against his lower belly as he had driven himself inside the night before.

you're getting better at it

Bo thought back at him,

you just need a little more practice

Dan chuckled and put a dollop of conditioner on the grooming tool. Bo's skin tended to dry out and itch if it weren't moisturized, and the mental link that had formed between them would have Dan feeling everything that Bo did. Besides having to feel the unpleasant sensation crawling across his own skin whenever Bo got itchy, Dan had already repaired several broken door frames in their house after Bo had used them as improvised scratching posts, and he wasn't eager to do it again. Running his fingers through the fur at the base of Bo's tail, Dan thought that it was easier, cheaper, and far more enjoyable to just work a little conditioner into the hair down here in the first place.

Bo was oversized, even for a battle varius. The huge morph cut an imposing figure at over two hundred centimeters tall, weighing in at almost two hundred kilos of fairly solid muscle. Topping his cannonball shoulders was a head that resembled a dog's more than a man's, with small, triangular ears and a short snout that held a mouthful of sharp, white canine teeth. Regardless of the superficial resemblance, nobody would have mistaken Bo's face for a dog's. The eyes peering out from under his jutting brow were far too intelligent for that.

To Dan's eyes, his partner was a combination of the most noble parts of man and animal; all the best pieces, put together in a way that was both distinctive and well balanced. Dan knew that most people didn't share his appreciation for Bo's looks, but that didn't matter to him one bit. In spite of the difficulties that their relationship had brought into his life, Dan had never once regretted falling in love with the man.

He and Bo had been in each other's lives for a year now, and had been mated for almost four months. Four wonderful months of being able to reach out and touch his mind whenever he wanted to, of being able to feel the love the varius shared for him, and of knowing the unshakable loyalty that had come not only as a result of Bo's altered genetics, but as an extension of his personality.

As he rubbed his strong fingers through the coarse, black fur growing on Bo's back, Dan did his best to obliterate any seeds of muscle tension he found before they could grow into painful knots. Although Bo rarely gave any outward indication of discomfort, through their mental bond Dan felt each and every spasming muscle as if it were in his own back. Bo might be better at hiding it than most, but he felt pain as much as everyone else. Dan had taken it as his personal mission in life to alleviate as much of that pain as he could. His mate had suffered enough.

Dan worked his way down to his favorite spot, the swirled cowlick of hair just above Bo's thick, stubby tail. When he dug his fingers in and began to scratch, Bo gave out a quiet groan of pleasure, his right leg jittering up and down ever so slightly. Dan grinned and disentangled his fingers before his husband got worked up, grabbing him by the shoulders and turning him around to aim his back at the shower head to rinse the conditioner off. The obvious swelling in the varius' sheath told Dan that he hadn't stopped rubbing quite soon enough.

Bo shrugged off his involuntary reaction and returned the favor for Dan. His thick, warm pawpads made the use of a skin scrubber unnecessary as he moved them across the ever-expanding tract of back that Dan had grown too large to reach by himself. Although Bo knew that Dan didn't consider himself attractive, he really didn't understand why. He didn't see anything wrong with the sapiens man's body. Everything functioned as it should, and to Bo's eyes it looked efficient and well-assembled.

Bo had never been particularly attracted to men, but something about Dan Blocker made him exceptional. The knowledge of who Dan was on the inside made Bo's heart jump in his huge chest every time he saw him. That someone so inherently good could find such immense value in a battle-varius as homely and damaged as himself made Bo feel absolutely unworthy.

The dream of every varius was to find a truly compatible mate with whom he could successfully lifebond. It was a dream because so often it was not reality. The lifebond revealed everything about your mate to you, including all of the personality quirks they didn't want anyone to know. No matter whether they be conscious lies or subconscious denials, every secret was stripped bare to your bondmate. If you were bent on deception, you might be able to hide your secrets for a few days; but eventually your mate would know the truth about you. At that point, they would either learn to deal with your foibles or move far away and struggle for the rest of their life not to wither away as their body and mind warred with each other, needing to be together yet wanting to be apart.

Bo had suspected that Dan was a good man before they'd bonded, but he was nonetheless astonished to discover that the man's only significant flaw was his lack of self-esteem. Dan harbored no cruelty, maintained no grudges, and tried his level best to see the good in everyone. That Bo had managed to capture his attention seemed nothing short of astonishing, and he was determined to make himself as good a man as Dan already thought he was.

From Bo's perspective, in their bonding, Dan had gotten the short, dirty end of the stick. From Dan, Bo had inherited patience, temperance and understanding. In exchange, Dan had received a grumpy attitude, a stubborn streak a mile wide, and a host of nasty nightmares that left the man screaming himself awake almost every night. It was hardly a fair trade and a part of Bo was certain that Dan was sure to leave him; but for some reason the man refused to go.

Bo finished rinsing himself off and stepped into the force dryer just outside the doorway to the shower. As he closed the door, sensors inside activated jets of high-pressure air that blew the water from his fur. After slowly turning around a few times to blow out the majority of the liquid, he disconnected a hose from the wall and used the hand wand to direct the high-speed stream of warm air around his nether regions, careful to keep the family jewels out of the way. Still, every now and then he got careless and punched himself in the fruit with the high-pressure blast. It wasn't pleasant.

Once water no longer dripped off of him, he pushed a large red button on the wall and gentler streams of warm air took over. He ran his paws through his hair to separate the strands and speed the process, finishing the job in minutes but still leaving his lips and the tip of his nose feeling slightly chapped. Bo stepped out feeling fresh and clean, but most of all, hungry. Bending over slightly, he examined himself in a mirror as he passed. He ran his fingers through his headfur in an ineffectual attempt to tidy himself, and saw his reflection grimace at the gnawing ache in his belly. He suppressed the feeling, knowing that it would still be a while before he could eat. He'd carefully planned their evening, and he wasn't about to spoil the surprise he'd planned for Dan!