FSE

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Hey, everypeeps! Yena's back with more of this blorp. Also nurge... but don't take too much, or you'll get sick.

If I happen to have any new readers in this fine episode, I encourage you to start Free Association from Episode 1, if you find the tags of this one agreeable. :3

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_ Tuesday. _

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"Alright, don't bring your projects up here just yet, we're going to talk about how I want them organized first, and then when you've turned them in you can leave," the sloth was droning. Somehow, he managed to make a very loud, commanding shout sound remarkably like stale bread tasted... The guy had some serious talent, when it came to boring.

Brad, halfway out of his seat, slumped back to a slouch, clutching the sheaf of papers and wondering dismally if he'd have to pry out the staple now. Probably. If the guy was gonna be all picky and shit, why hadn't he just put his instructions on the project sheet? That way people who didn't pay attention would look like idiots.

"Now, some of you probably read the project sheet and saw I mentioned on there not to staple the guideline sheets in with the pieces..."

The wolf sighed, and began prying up the staple. His ears twitched back a little, sheepishly.

Next to him, Mortimer was vibrating. The two had finished up their big assignment the previous day, and the doberman had been on edge then, as well. His tail was whipping about with a hundred and twenty percent its usual furor; his ears were flipping between forward and back like shutters in a windstorm. His fur was visibly pricklish, and had a faint sheen that belied cold sweat.

The other canine had said it was nerves regarding turning in a quarter of the points for this course...

...but after the way he'd jumped and stammered when Frederick offered him a "Hey..." and a small smile, earlier... Brad had his doubts. The two hadn't exchanged a word since... though, that didn't seem too uncommon for the bear. Frederick had barely said anything to his own partner, an equally large and serious rattlesnake. Brad wondered if they'd divided up the project with surly grunts and appended the two pieces without so much as a 'Hmmm.'

Ricardo had been cool today, offering a "Hello..." that Brad couldn't politely ignore, before becoming wrapped up in girl chat with his female familiars, one of whom was his partner. Good riddance, in his victim's opinion. The wolf wondered whether that was going to be all, or if he should be on his guard... He'd have to try to slip away quickly after class.

The marsupial was still doing his less-fabulous-pretty-boy act. Brad was irritated to feel himself responding to it.

He was irritated to find it reminded him of Wallace, again. Thinking of Wallace when he'd been happy and carefree felt... almost wrong, now. Like being unfaithful, somehow, to the schnauzer's memory.

Brad had never been unfaithful to anyone, concurrently or otherwise. He didn't like considering it.

He knew firsthand how it felt to be on the other end.

"Once you've gotten your projects in order, let's have them all in neat stacks by your recitation section, let's have section A here, and B over here and C... hm, maybe here, only keep them separate from A, and..."

In the gathering chaos, the wolf lost himself in automata and routine, the mechanics upon which a mediocre student relied. To secure an appropriately mediocre grade, survive a painfully mediocre lecture... continue a slow, mediocre life. People swarmed up to the front of the room, a heaving mass of irritated apathy. Dead week... Too close to winter break to care anymore. Everyone had better things to be doing... Everyone had better places to be.

Jonathon was at the hospital right now, or would be soon. Having some scan done to that shiny thing inside his head that Brad liked so much. Trying to figure out why it was acting funny. Why it wouldn't just behave itself.

It was something the wolf worried about, now. What if the raccoon just froze up, went all tense and unresponsive when they were cuddling... What was he supposed to do? Make sure he didn't hurt himself, lay him out gently, sure... but what was he supposed to do? About the feeling in his chest, the anguished expression that rose on his face, even at the thought of...

The wolf left behind a heap of disorganized papers, an exhasperated sloth trying to combat the tide. Tangled crowd, tangled thoughts. He escaped out the lower door of the lecture hall, slipping through the surge of students streaming up the stairs. A quick detour through the basement was nothing, he had a while to go until math class anyway... And hopefully, he'd be able to avoid running into Ricardo on the way out.

Brad wished there were scans for other things. Make dumb organs behave and quit thinking about Dillon and Wallace and unfaithfulness so much. Acting funny...

The basement of the english building was plain creepy. Lots of dingy cinderblock that had once been painted white. Steam pipes running overhead. Chronic flooding problems that made the entire building smell like mildew. Bad fluorescent lighting, long winding corridors... the works. Brad shouldered his backpack a bit more securely, and set off along the mostly deserted passageway. Everyone else who had the same brilliant idea as him was heading the other direction, towards campus proper... Brad supposed he'd run by the coffee place in the union before finding somewhere quiet to study.

"..._not trying_to do that..."

The stressed words sounded over irrelevant noises, just audible and echoing, filled with emotion and tension the wolf's academically-oriented mind was unaccustomed to. He blinked, steps faltering slightly as he continued down the hallway.

"...just want to talk to you..."

That voice sounded awful familiar... The wolf grimaced.

Surreptitiously, he stopped to lean against the wall, checking his phone casually. He looked up, left and right down the hallway... it was momentarily empty. The wolf scooted sideways, closer to the nearest hallway branching off into the bowels of the old building.

The speaker was fairly quiet overall, voice almost masked by the hiss of steam in the pipes... but at this range, no conversational volume was incomprehensible.

"...I just... wanted to maybe hang out with you sometime... that's all..."

A deeper, rougher voice began with a sigh. "Don't bother with all the pretense. I know what this is about. I'm just... not interested, okay?"

"I... It's not what you think... really... I just..."

"If I were interested, you would have known a long time ago. Believe me."

Brad swallowed, inching a little closer. Wow, this was getting juicy...

"Frederick... It's not like that, I... I'm not gay, really, I only want to... be friends..."

A pause.

"Oh. Hm. Funny, my gaydar's usually pretty good, since I'm only into men myself... Oh well, doesn't matter anyway. You're just... not my type, dude. Body, personality, or interests. I don't mean to be rude, but... I don't think we'll be hanging out. Sorry."

A wordless squeak.

"Well... Guess that's that. Sorry again."

Brad flinched as a large ursine passed into the main hallway, trying to look very interested in his phone. The bear did a double-take, and then paused and gave him a glare... after a moment, blushing a little, the wolf looked up and acknowledged it.

Frederick sighed a little, and jerked his head at the hallway he'd just left, following the motion with a significant, pained look.

Brad grimaced, and nodded.

And with that, Frederick was gone, and the wolf was hesitantly peeking around the corner.

Mortimer was standing facing away, turned slightly... Brad could imagine how he'd cornered the bear, how Frederick had pushed past him in leaving.

His tail wasn't moving. It hung limply from the back of his shirt, surmounting silky red shorts, running shoes and socks. His shoulders were slumped under his t-shirt, and those floppy ears were in the most peculiar position...

"Mortimer?"

The canine whirled, and cringed upon seeing his intruder. "Bradley..." His expression quivered.

"Uh... uh, you okay?" the wolf mumbled, not at all smoothly.

Mortimer's ears drooped. "You heard, didn't you..."

Brad scratched the back of his neck. "Might have... caught a few things..."

The doberman looked down. "Fuck..."

It was awful quiet. Mortimer rubbed the side of his muzzle, scuffing one footpaw.

"You were the last person I wanted to hear something like that..." the doberman mumbled. "Not... not because there's anything special about you, just..."

The wolf sighed. "I know, Mortimer. You don't have to hide it."

Abruptly, the dog sobbed, dripping tears onto the ground before he could even get his paws up to his face. "I guess I'm pretty fucking obvious, huh?"

"Oh, Mort..." Brad moved forward, reaching out for the doberman's shoulder, before drawing his paw back somewhat. He grimaced, thinking of Jonathon... maybe it was better if he gave the doberman some space...

Mortimer all but lunged at the wolf, wrapping his arms around Brad's shoulders and wedging his face between the wolf's neck and collarbone. Brad's fur tufted as he felt the sniffling, wet dobie assault him with his emotional mudslide.

"I j-j-just don't even know what the fuck's going on," the canine whimpered. "...and every time I start to feel like I know... what... what direction to go, to find out, everyone else knows so much m-m-more than me and treats me like I'm fucking stupid and - "

"Mortimer, no one really thinks that," the wolf said soothingly, sympathy welling in his chest. He could remember it all too well, that feeling... he'd been a little bit younger, but...

Tentatively, the wolf moved his arms from their awkward positions at his sides, to wrap around the big, athletic doberman now leaking on his collar.

"Yeah, sure..." the dog scoffed. "M-maybe not, but I sure feel stupid even so... for f-fuck's sake... I... some of the... sh-shit I do... I don't even know why, I just, I..."

"You feel things and act on them..." the wolf murmured.

Slowly, Mortimer pulled back, wiping the dark tracks on his cheeks. His eyes met the wolf's... and didn't look away. "Y-yeah..."

His nose brushed against Brad's...

...but that was all.

Hooo boy...

Brad inhaled slowly, and then blew it out in a huff.

Mortimer was slowly beginning to blush. He pulled his arms from around Brad's neck, putting them behind his back. His weight shifted. He gave a little cough. "Ah... ahem. S-sorry."

"It's okay..." the wolf mumbled. "Just..."

"I know you have a boyfriend... I shouldn't..." The doberman wiped his cheeks again, trying to dry them out. Having tear tracks in your fur was always humiliating, especially for guys... "I have morals. I'm not... just some horny emotional idiot."

"I know that," Brad said quietly. "I've never thought you were. That's why we're friends."

The canine looked up at him, his expression somewhat milder... thankful, Brad realized.

"You... really think anyone thinks of you that way? Just because you're... confused?"

"My roommate sure does," Mortimer whined. "And now... F-frederick does too, I guess..."

He sounded so sad... Brad's heart ached.

"And I was sure you did, after... a couple days ago... It... it really was an accident..." The canine was blushing so hard that Brad didn't have trouble believing him. "I mean... maybe I could have changed in the bathroom at school, but... I didn't mean to... come onto you or anything. I... I have morals." He looked at the wolf anxiously, as if for validation. "I just feel things..."

"And you act on them."

The dog nodded tentatively. "Yeah..."

"Your roommate seemed nice..." Brad said, a little disheartened. "You said he was, didn't you?"

Mortimer looked down, cheeks reddening. "He... we've... stopped talking."

"How come?" Brad groaned. That was never a good development...

"He... gets angry when I say I'm not gay..." the dog muttered, before looking up. "But... but I'm really not... I'm not gay, I'm just... I just..." Tears welled in his eyes again.

"Why would he get angry about something like that?" Brad asked, gently.

The dog looked down. His cheeks were very red. "I... I d-don't wanna talk about that... N-no offense..."

The wolf sighed. I hate to guess... but I can guess. "Look... Mortimer..." he rumbled, at a loss...

The droopy-eared athletic doberman looked up at him shyly. "Y-yeah?"

"Let's go get a coffee. You and me." The wolf smiled a little. "You can talk to me about whatever you want. You don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to. But... I'm here for you, buddy."

Mortimer hesitated, looking at him. He almost said something, but stopped.

Then, quietly, he mumbled, "Okay..."

---

It was a bit like that moment right between waking up, and drifting back to sleep.

The raccoon always had a half-on grin, after a while in there. Of course, he wasn't supposed to move, hence the big cage around his head... but it was so hard to stop that little grin from forming. Hopefully it didn't matter, since they were looking at something a bit deeper... He'd been a bit worried that had been the reason they had to do another, but apparently that wasn't the case.

"Almost done, Jon, just a bit longer... Then you can stretch your poor cramped tail."

Damn it, didn't he know how hard it was not to giggle in here? Feeling like you were almost dreaming... Trying not to drift off, trying not to jerk awake... While a gigantic magnet and an electric coil made all the water molecules in your body do the wave, like a tiny stadium.

Was it really worth all the fuss, though? His parents said so... Brad said so... The poor guy was so freaked out about this. He wouldn't say it, but Jonathon knew... The wolf was an open book. He wore his heart on a flagpole out the window.

Or maybe that was just Jonathon, who saw it like that.

Well... Nothing to do but... Keep doin', the coon supposed. If he was going to end up on drugs, fearing that strange feeling he'd felt for the first time in Mike's dorm room...

Some of it had come back. A few minutes, maybe. Dimly. The doctors had said that might happen... At first, the raccoon could only remember being fine, playing games with his friends...

Now, he could remember starting to feel... weird... Sitting down on the couch while the others talked. Feeling worse and worse, rapidly.

He felt like he could almost rememeber... Looking up at the ceiling, Mike leaning over him... Jason freaking out in the background, paws up against his muzzle... He'd probably imagined that memory, though, based on what the others had told him.

Memory was weird. He'd have to ask Brad about it sometime... The wolf really knew his stuff, about psychology and things...

Now he was having a hard time avoiding a smile for entirely different reasons. He wondered what Brad was doing right now... He was probably done with class... Studying?

Heheh... Knowing the wolf, he'd have his trusty mocha in one paw. Sluuurp. Delicious... It sure made his tongue taste nice.

He wondered when they'd get to have a nice date again... The fancy date with Marty had been great, in the end. He wanted to go someplace nice with his wuff... and this time, the coon would pay.

Maybe not quiiiite as expensive as the last fancy place, though... The thought made him blush a bit.

"Okay, think we're all done here... Sit tight, I'll bring you out."

The loud grinding sound of the machine, just audible beyond the intercom headset, halted abruptly, and Jonathon felt himself slowly being brought out of the tube.

Good thing he wasn't claustrophobic. He didn't blame people who couldn't handle this thing... It was pretty eerie even if you weren't worried about being stuck.

Soon, someone had come to undo his head restraints and retake his headset. "Take it nice and slow this time, mmmkay?" he said, with a grin.

Jonathon chuckled, remembering last time... he'd gotten up a bit fast and felt a little lightheaded. Not uncommon after the procedure, according to his attendant... but it had been carefully noted down, along with the rest of the data regarding his head health.

"How's the tail?"

Jonathon giggled a bit and waved it. "Fine this time... I think the different pillow helped. Thanks."

The MRI technician leaned against the machine he'd been operating, smiling at his patient, and gave Jonathon a little pat on the shoulder. "Good to hear! A cute tail like that has to be well cared for."

Jonathon blushed a little at that, and smiled, waving his stripey a bit more.

"Alright, go ahead and stand... slowlyyyy... Got my arm here if you need it..."

Jonathon carefully rose to his feet. "I feel fine," he reassured.

"That's usually what people say before I have to catch them," the technician joked. His own tail was waving sinuously behind him, as though he was sliding through water instead of air. Incessantly... Habitually.

Skinny guy, bit muscular. Kinda short, but not as much as Jonathon, of course.

Not-at-alllll bad-looking. The raccoon could not deny that... he'd _really_noticed it, the past couple times he'd been here. He tried not to think about it too much... He was sure Brad wouldn't mind if he looked a bit, right?

"Still feel okay? Darn, I got myself all looking forward to scooping you up..."

Though... the guy sure flirted a lot...

It really made Jonathon kind of uncomfortable, even as it made him smile. Weren't there regulations about this sort of thing? He supposed the guy wasn't actually the doctor in charge of him... And it wasn't like he was receiving care, just diagnostics...

Heh. Rationalizing...

Jonathon looked down with a little smile. He couldn't protest too loudly anyway - he liked the fellow. Really nice guy. And it was really... quite flattering, having a guy just spew sweet-talk all over you, even if you weren't going to do anything together. ...He should really mention that he had a boyfriend sometime...

...but oh gawd_that would be so awkward and aaaah! The raccoon's stomach lurched just thinking about it. Just casually mentioning he liked dudes... Or worse, saying 'I'm in a relationship,' so so so obvious that he wasn't specifying the _gender of his partner...

No way, no how, not ever! Not something Jonathons were capable of!

...Even though the shark seemed to have guessed...

"Whatcha blushin' for?" the technician asked quietly, with a toothy smile.

Jonathon gulped. They were kind of close... "N-nothing... So, uh... when will I find things out?"

The nurse breathed in and out, as though resettling his mind, and stood up a bit straighter... coincidentally also further away from the raccoon, as if by magic. "Well, we've got a lot of analysis to do, hopefully we'll find something a bit more helpful this time... Different mix of contrast markers, you know, should help things to show up, if there's anything. You'll hear soon enough, don't worry until then." He gave the raccoon's shoulder a little pat.

"Got it," Jonathon smiled a little. "Am I free to go, then?"

"Heheh, much as I'd like to keep you around, there's nothing else I need from you." Another wink. "Dr. Jo may want to talk to you, though, why don't you head back to the waiting room and I'll tell her to find you."

"Okay, will do!" the raccoon chirped.

A soft chuckle. The shark crossed his arms. "You're really too cute."

Blush, grin. "Shadaaaap..." All these fluttery feelings in his tummy...

"See ya later, Jon." A final shoulder pat.

"Yep... Bye, Dillon."

---

This chapter was nearly titled "INFIDELS!" because it made me giggle so much, but I figured that would be too much of a giveaway.

I'm curious, did anyone see this coming? I've only been setting it up since before Daniel and Mitch... In truth, those two were kind of a distraction...

Interesting times await. See you guys in two weeks.