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That night, the two new friends ate with less formality and more mess. Dante played music that Chero had never listened to. They bought a deck of cards and Dante showed magic tricks and sleights of arm to the mouse's delight. Then they played card games Chero had never tried and he learned fast.

The night wore on and Chero realized he had forgotten to wash himself. He excused himself but promised he would be back quickly. He was ahead two games and he liked to keep a lead.

Before bedtime, the mouse became still.

"What is it Chero-san? You tired?"

The mouse shook his head. "It's the song."

Dante looked over at the playlist and nodded. "Yeah, this artist is weird. I never heard him before this year, but the music's all over the internet. It's different, isn't it? The sounds are from other music you hear, but they're all meshed together. It's cool."

The mouse played with his collar nervously. "I'm curious. Who's credited?"

Again the panther looked and shrugged. "Nobody. Like, actually, the artist is called Nobody."

Chero smirked at a private joke. "I helped him write that," he said suddenly. The panther was paying attention and Chero noticed. "He wrote that in spring. He had a hard time finishing it."

Dante replayed the lyrics again, listening more closely:

White sounds, deny me hearing you...oh how the snow comes down,

So wrapped in violent caresses, oh...how you fell down,

Gripped in the arm that never meant to hold you,

Grabbed and thrown down and broken, oh, oh, broken down...down...

Can you keep up the fire? Are you still going down?

Wrapped in gold and violent caresses,

Only down there could you ever look up,

Only down there could you ever keep up...

We all go down with you, down in the snow...

"It's creepy," Dante realized. "I thought it was a ballad but...it's more like..."

Chero cut him off. "I'll tell you what it's about if you tell me something." The panther was completely attentive. "Why are you staying with me, Dante-san? You changed your mind. Why?"

The song had replayed on a loop. The panther scratched the back of his head and cleared his throat. "I've got nobody, I've got no family, no job, nothing. I'm a cat living on whatever fate throws at me and hoping every day for something better. That's all I know. Maybe I'm a bit lonely too and I like you. Maybe I think you get me like other friends don't. Is that weird?"

Chero was puzzled. "But you have friends. You have your pick of lovers and seem happy with them. You can even say you have parents who care about you. I can't even claim that."

"Yeah, but...sometimes a male needs more than that," he tried to explain. "I'm used to being alone, most of the time I'm okay with that. But I keep feeling itchy to move. I feel like I'm supposed to be somewhere and I never am. So I just drive. I go to one city one night, one the other. If the car needs maintenance, I blow all my cash on it and live for a few days at the soup kitchen or the temple charity."

"So I give you a place to rest?"

"More like a reason to stay," he said. "Getting you where you have to go? Might be where I have to go to."

Chero shook his head. "Try that again in Dilectica please, I think you lost something in translation."

The panther shrugged with a grin. "So maybe it's simple. I like you, I'm lonely, and I want to help. Plus I like having a bed again."

They chuckled. "So now you tell me Chero-san. What's the song about?"

Chero had promised. He hated that he had promised. "It's about a murder," he said.

So Chero told a short, but horrific episode that he had witnessed only last year of a silver fox who had been killed in cold blood. The sheer malice had scarred everyone who had witnessed the atrocity.

"...We didn't even know him," Chero admitted. "The thing I remember was the last moment just before he died. He looked really happy. I still don't know why."

He kept his eyes wide open as long as he could. If he shut them, he would see the broken body falling down in the snow and hear the screams.

"...Then we carried him back with us. We buried him the next day and gave him a funeral. It was surreal. We didn't know him, but we all felt like we should have."

"Wait!" Dante yelled. "Who died? Who saw it? Why did it happen? These are some BIG pieces you're leaving out!"

The mouse shrugged. "You asked what the song was about. The rest is too long."

Dante was livid. "But you saw someone killed!"

"So? You think that matters? People die every day. Thousands go missing and nobody cares. Nobody knows their names. And it's a very large world with places you can hide a body. By spring time, the animals would have removed the evidence and no one would have thought anything more. I might be the only person who ever remembered he existed for all we know."

There was an uncomfortable silence that followed. Chero looked at the playlist again and sniffed deep. He found another song by Nobody and played it.

"...He made this one for me, soon after we met," he said. He smiled at the memory. "He was sweet and always smiling. Very talented too, you only have a small selection here of what he did. Most of his recordings never went public."

Dante would not answer however hard Chero tried to change the subject. He put a finger in his mouth and put his paws together to plead. "Please understand bolli-san -"

"Stop calling me that, I'm not your servant."

Chero stopped. He held a finger up to his mouth and bit down on the claw until it hurt.

"Please understand...Dante...you're innocent. Knowing everything would hurt you."

"And you care?" The panther's tail thrashed and his whiskers flared. "Hurting people comes pretty easy to you, I'd say, and you have a pretty vocabulary to use too!"

The mouse bit his claw harder and shook his head. "Why are you mean when I try to be kind? Why are you kind when I hate you? You're cruel!"

"So stop trying to control me and stop lying to me!"

Chero was flabberghasted. "How dare you!"

"I've been open with you all along and you pretend you feel one way when you feel another. I don't let my girlfriends do it to me, and you won't either!"

"You don't tell me what to do!" His voice had risen to a squeak. "You are not my master. I tell you what I want and I won't tell you what I don't want!"

How had their nice evening turned into an aggressive display? Their claws were out and their fur was high and their teeth were bared.

"That's the second time you've said that, Chero-san." Dante lowered his head as if he was ready to pounce. "You called someone a master. Or maybe a couple of people, eh?"

The insinuation was too close to the truth. Chero could have defused the escalation but for one thing. Dante chose that moment to reach out and jangle the cartouche around his neck.

Chero blacked out.

The next moment he was conscious, Dante was on the other side of the room sprawled on the floor. Chero squeaked with terror and ran over. He jumped up and down in place frantically and grabbed himself to calm down. Breathe...breathe...

The panther muttered something and Chero bent over to hear. He helped Dante sit up, checking for any bruising.

Dante groaned. "Wow...you are really strong..."

Chero whimpered. He checked the panther's head tenderly and searched for cuts or bumps. "Are you hurt?"

"Just landed on my tail."

Once it was established that Dante had only been stunned and not maimed, Chero smacked him upside the head.

***

He had hoped Dante would be angry by the time he got out of the bath, but the panther was passed out and sleeping. Even the smallest pleasures Dante kept from him!

How arrogant, Chero thought. The panther looked too comfortable. Chero nearly ripped his towel in two from how furious he was while drying himself. He had his mouth slightly open as he snored. His legs were spread apart and...oh...

Chero put a finger into his collar and pressed tightly. Dante was fully erect.

It was the first malehood Chero had seen in private in months. It was longer than the length of his paw, he could tell from a distance. From what he could see, he might be able to hold it all in his paw if he stretched his wrist. He moved closer and he took a deep inhalation. Oh...how nice...very nice...

Even if Dante was not truly available to him, there were urges that needed to be fulfilled. He would help Chero's tonight, whether he knew it or not. .

Chero was rock hard for the first time in months. He touched himself and enjoyed the heat in his fingers. His strokes were slow and sensual. He wanted to savor the image of a black muzzle of teeth biting down on his neck. Images skipped and danced across his inner landscape down the track of his body with his fingers to follow. Not every prey impulse was a hurtful one.

The psychic foreplay well underway, a claw moved up to his jugular. The dream of a sharp sandpaper tongue across his throat was almost as good as the real thing. He gripped his collar and twisted to cut off his breathing. He wheezed and squirmed, remembering a pair of arms that held him down. .

Weeks of holding back had filled his sac and saturated it. He swelled with fluids and the first drops of pleasure dripped like pearls onto his stomach. He took a gift of one on his tongue and sucked it off, savoring the flavor. Sweet and tart, no trace of salt at all. He did love the taste of himself.

He flicked his tail up and into his hole. If he twitched it just right he could - there it was.

He hit it. His back arched as the fire inside rose to new heights.

Oh no, it was too soon! No, no, no! His body was not his own! It wouldn't obey him!

He wanted the pleasure to last! He inhaled too fast and there was no turning back.

He squeaked as he came. His tail thrashed between his feet as he twisted and writhed like a hammer struck his groin and his head all at once. Fluid shot into his mouth and he licked it across his lips without stopping.

Coming down, he swiped his body of whatever he could salvage and put it in his mouth. He swallowed it and clawed his skin for the rest. Sweet relief at last. Sweet relief.

There was a moan.

Dante was awake.