“Easy A, my wooly ass! Curt, you can go tell Shro right now that there’s nothing easy about this Anthro 101 class…” Ollie groaned while face-down at the lunch table in the cafeteria. His new horns had been the topic of conversation between their group the entire morning, and it had spiraled off into an impromptu lecture by Professor LaVeur about horn and antler management.
“I-I don’t think anyone else is having much t-trouble, Ollie…” Todd said quietly, but that only made Ollie groan even louder and start to smack his horns against the table.
“Seriously, dude! We’ve just been going over basic fur care for the most part, what’s so hard about that?” Sam added. He was currently stretched out with his legs up on another chair, wearing some athletic shorts that allowed his fur to air our and his letting bare paws wiggle in the open air. He’d tried to convince Todd to go barefoot that day to really show off their new changes, but Todd had stuck with his usual jeans and tennis shoes despite them not really fitting his newly lupine legs and paws.
“Only fur care? Well la-di-da for you guys that have easy to care for fur, but this still takes half an hour to shampoo, condition, comb, dry, then comb again!” Ollie whined, pointing to the fluffy mop of wooly fur-hair atop his head. Every time he went back to the showers, it seemed, it just got curlier and fluffier and harder to manage. The thought of having a whole wooly coat of the stuff sent shivers down his spine.
“So, shave it off. Or, shear it, I guess you’d say,” Milo offered, toying with his camera in preparation for some candid shots around campus between classes. “Knit a hat out of it or something.”
“…Shit, you think that’d work?” Ollie said, dumbfounded he hadn’t thought of it first. “Would you wear a hat made out of my wool?”
“Hell no. It would be like wearing your toenail clippings,” Dare shot back as he shoveled his lunch in.
“Wasn’t askin’ you, Dare. Curt, you’d wear my wool, right?”
Curtis had been nose-deep in his music theory book, scribbling down a few chord progressions into a notebook and trying to ‘hear’ them in his head. He’d been up late toying around with his new keyboard, trying to get the hang of it before his next music class with Professor Bergling. He’d actually been reading ahead a bit and trying out a few of the keyboard’s more advanced features, and was excited to get a chance to mess around with the DAW on his laptop later on.
However, Ollie’s question snapped him out of his trance, and he looked up from his notes and had to think about it for a moment.
“Umm… Well, I guess I could… But, not if you fail the fur care quiz we’ve got coming up,” Curtis replied honestly, his ears flattening against his head slightly in embarrassment. “Greasy wool is a little… well…”
“Dude, you did not just say that!” Ollie protested in mock indignation. “I’ll have you know, my wool is going to be the fluffiest, softest, and cleanest wool you’ve ever felt! And you don’t get any, Dare! It’s all gonna be for my buddy Curt! Dogs look really cute in sweaters, right?”
He winked and blew a kiss in Curtis’s direction, making the whole table burst into laughter as they enjoyed their time together between class. Even after a few days, they’d all started to settle into the routine of college; in spite of all the changes that were happening to them all, college life at least seemed to be more-or-less the same no matter what world you lived in.
“…You really having that much of a problem with Anthro, Ollie?” Dare asked, not even looking up from his lunch.
“It’s such a pain! You don’t even know the half of it!” Ollie sighed, glumly shoveling a massive salad into his mouth.
“If you really need help, I could help you study. I might be able to help at least a little bit.”
Everyone at the table stopped eating and looked at Dare with matching looks of shock on their faces. Dare? Dare was offering to help someone?
“Uhh… T-that’s nice of you an’ all, but… No offense, but I do better at studyin’ when I’m not getting shouted at, y’know?” Ollie replied as politely as he could.
“First off, fuck you. Second of all, I’m not gonna shout at you,” Dare replied evenly, not raising his voice even a bit at Ollie’s remark. “I helped my kid brothers and little sister study all the time, and they’ve never failed a test in their life.”
An odd look flashed across Dare’s face as he said this, like he was lost in memory. Milo noticed the look and wondered what it could possibly mean, but it went unnoticed by the rest of their table.
“You’re serious? I want it in writing that you’re not gonna yell at me or spray me, but if you’re totally serious then I’m totally up for it!” Ollie exclaimed, jumping up and squeezing Dare in a tight hug from behind.
“Don’t touch me or I will spray you,” Dare hissed, making Ollie back off immediately. As long as nobody else knew that he’d been ‘disarmed’, he was perfectly willing to use the threat of skunk spray to his advantage. “And as long as you’re not dumber than my ten year-old brother, I probably won’t have to yell at you.”
“Deal! See you later, study-buddy!”
Ollie hopped up from his seat and grabbed his backpack and his plates, waving to the rest before running off for his afternoon classes. Sam, Todd, and Curtis weren’t too far behind them, since they all had business to take care of after lunch, and soon Milo and Dare were left alone at the table to pick at the last few bites of their lunches.
“…So, what happened there?” Milo asked cautiously. “You said you’re a middle child, and it didn’t sound like you had much to do with the rest of your family.”
“Shut up. It just slipped out,” Dare frowned, unable to shake the image of a happy skunk family crowded around a table together from his head.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Milo asked for what felt like the tenth time. “I don’t just keep asking you that because it makes your face scrunch up really cute.”
Dare unintentionally scrunched up his face cutely and stood up to leave the table.
“I’ll talk to you later. If I feel like it,” Dare said pointedly, grabbing his bag and slinging it over his shoulder. “And I’ll be back to our room after class so you can take your pictures, okay?”
“Sounds perfect. See you around, Dare,” Milo said, smiling his usual tusky smile in spite of his worry for his friend.
“Great. Later, pig,” Dare replied, leaning over and casually planting a kiss on Milo’s cheek, enjoying the feel of the bristly fuzz on Milo’s face against his lips.
Then he stopped for a moment. Milo and Dare’s eyes both shot open at Dare’s sudden and very unexpected display of affection. Dare slowly pulled his lips away from Milo’s cheek, taking a few steps back in complete shock.
“Dare, do y-“
“No, I do not want to talk about it! B-bye!” Dare stammered, turning tail and nearly sprinting to the door, leaving Milo completely dumbfounded at the table. As he ran outside and started marching toward the bookstore to pick up his textbooks at the last minute, he made sure to double-check his schedule to remind himself of his next class, since he had come to realize he couldn’t exactly trust his memory anymore. Right at the top of the schedule, in bold font, he read the printed information:
Dare Stryppe
Declared Major: Education/Anthro Studies
Classes: Anthro 101, Educational Foundations, Basics of Inter-Species Relations
“…God damn it,” Dare sighed, stuffing the paper into his backpack again. The moment he had seen his schedule, he could suddenly vaguely remember sitting down with his academic advisor and plotting out his first few classes to set him down the track of becoming a teacher. He could remember enthusiastically talking about how it had been his dream since he was a little kit. Me? Enthusiastic about anything? Yeah, that’s not a real memory, Dare thought sarcastically.
And yet, something in the back of his head was keeping him from turning right around and heading back to his dorm room to skip afternoon classes; the image of a happy little skunk proudly showing off the test he had aced thanks to his favorite big brother’s help. The feeling of pride and warmth he’d felt seeing that little skunk’s cheeky little grin.
“Shit. Fine, I guess I’ll try it out… Might learn something to help Ollie study a little better, at the very least…” Dare groaned, slowly walking toward the bookstore on the way to the lecture halls…