“So, why’re you so fucked up anyway, Dare?” Max asked, grabbing the mixing bowl Dare had just finished with and scooping out a bit of frosting to taste. “More vanilla, dude, or Milo’s gonna dump you.”
“Thanks, but I didn’t ask for your help, Max,” Dare growled sarcastically, snatching the bowl away from the hyena’s paws and stomping back to the kitchen counter. However, when he thought Max wasn’t looking, he sneakily added a few more drops of flavoring to the bowl before giving it a quick stir.
“Told you~…” Max teased, making Dare blush and nearly toss the bowl right in the laughing anthro’s face. Luckily, Dare managed to keep his annoyance in check and began carefully frosting the small chocolate cake he had finally managed to get right. It was just big enough for one, with maybe enough to split if Milo was in a good mood. “I’m serious though. Stripes said your old parents were a little WASP-y, but that doesn’t explain your major malfunction. We RAs don’t usually like to talk about how things were back on the other side, but-… You’re gonna wanna crumb-coat that first, just so you know.“
“I know that! I’ve done this a hundred times,” Dare shot back, checking out the cake from every angle before spreading a thin coat around the outside before adding on a thicker layer on top. “And I don’t think my personal life is any of your business… Hell, it probably won’t even matter by the end of the semester when I forget everything, right?”
“I dunno, Dare. If anything’s still bothering you, you might want to sort it out while you can…” Max replied quietly, speaking from experience. “If you really don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, but I might be able to help. Too much frosting on the top, by the way. It’s gonna slump down.”
Dare glared at the hyena, but eventually he just sighed and began to adjust the cake with Max’s input. “It’s not a big deal. I can talk about it, if it’ll get you off my back,” Dare sighed. “Let’s see here… I dunno, I guess you could say I got bullied a lot in high school. Had to learn how to act out to get myself kicked out so I could get away from it all… And the habit stuck, you know?”
“Something makes you uncomfortable, you try to get away from it,” Max replied with a knowing nod that pissed Dare off a bit. “’Course, there’s a line between doing what you need to do to survive and just dodging anything unpleasant, right? Bullying, though… that’s a little vague.”
“That’s because I’m not going to tell you everything. I barely wanted to tell Milo…” Dare said quietly. On the other hand, Max had been helping him out, and he seemed like a trustworthy enough person in spite of being a complete jokester sometimes. “…It was a guy, friend of mine named Keith. I thought he was interested in me and tried to kiss him, and he… he took it the wrong way, I guess you’d say.”
“Keith?” Max asked suddenly, raising an eyebrow. “…Big guy, I bet. Brown fur?”
“Yeah, how did you know?” Dare asked suspiciously, frowning slightly at the mention of ‘fur’ before writing it off as an anthro thing to treat fur as synonymous with hair.
“…No reason. You just seem like a guy with a type,” Max said airily, as if nothing were out of the ordinary. “Anyway, looks like you’re almost done here, so I’ve gotta go take care of something. Good luck, Dare. A cake like that’s at least worth a blowjob, unless you fuck things up somehow.”
Dare just stood there, his face burning with annoyance and embarrassment as Max whistled to himself and left the kitchen. As soon as Max was out of earshot of the kitchen, he pulled out his phone and scrolled down his contact list to find the lead RA of the sophomore dormitories.
“Jay? Mind if I ask you something?” Max asked quietly and completely seriously. He hoped his suspicions were wrong, but he had definitely heard of stranger things happening here in the Valley. Some people with a bit of understanding told themselves the Valley tries its hardest to make everyone it touches happy, but that was just a simplification in almost every case. The Valley gave people what they needed, but it was rarely so simple as showering a perfect life on them except for only the luckiest of people, as many of the freshmen were bound to discover before too long.
---------------------------------------------------
Milo sat alone in William and Guy’s dorm room, going over a few photographs he had taken that afternoon once he’d finished up at the garage. Guy had left to get some practicing done on his cello at the music building, and William had tagged along to listen. And probably to see how soundproof the practice rooms are, Milo thought with a smirk.
A quiet knock at the door shook Milo out of his thoughts. He stood and walked over to the door and looked through the peephole, but only saw a black-furred paw giving him the middle finger, which made Milo burst into laughter.
“Heard that, pig,” Dare’s muffled voice came from the other side of the door. “Wasn’t gonna let you hide from me anymore.”
“I wasn’t hiding, Dare. You can just be a bit much to deal with sometimes...” Milo said as he opened the door wide and looked at Dare bemusedly. His eyes drifted up to the small, adorably rounded ears sticking out from Dare’s hair, not to mention the thin fur that had begun to sprout around the skunk’s face. “Dare, did you get shorter?”
“Don’t even joke. I used to play basketball, that’s like asking me if my dick fell off. And it didn’t, in case you’re curious,” Dare replied easily, though he hadn’t exactly checked his height recently. “I’m sure you’re just getting taller… Do you mind if I come in?”
Milo took a deep breath and stepped aside, and Dare quickly entered the room and closed the door behind him. In his hand, he held a small Styrofoam box, which silently pushed into Milo’s hands. The boar sniffed with his sensitive snout and smelled an alluring scent of chocolate and vanilla, and he curiously opened the box to see a small cake, thickly covered in frosting and striped with ribbons of black and white icing.
“Thought you might like something sweet to cheer you up… And it kinda looks like my ass, so you can enjoy eating that,” Dare added, trying his best to sound aloof. Milo, of course, saw right thought Dare's bravado and smirked, pulling Dare into a hug and planting a short kiss on his forehead.
“That’s nice, Dare. Did you buy this for me?” Milo said quietly, nuzzling Dare’s ears with his snout and feeling the smaller skunk melt into his arms.
“Fuck you, I’m not gonna waste my money buying one,” Dare replied. “I made it for you. Just letting you know what you’d be missing if you finally came to your senses and decided to dump me.”
“You? You can bake?” Milo snorted, pulling away from the hug with a grin on his face as he set the box on William’s desk.
“Dare can bake. All up here,” Dare clarified, tapping his head. “It’s really weird, just knowing how to do something like that all of a sudden. Still don’t know how I feel about it, but as long as it’s there I figured I’d use to… umm…”
“To do something nice for me?” Milo continued, making Dare blush even redder and silently nod. “I guess I know what you mean, though. I was down in town and stopped by the local garage, and before I knew it I was helping out changing oil and taking engines apart like I’d been doing it for years.”
“I was gonna say, you smell like a rusty oil drum,” Dare joked.
“Excuse me? A skunk is telling me that I stink?” Milo shot back.
“I never said I didn’t like the smell,” Dare replied with a sultry wink. “And… promise me you won’t tell anyone else, but I can’t actually spray. I… Well, ‘Dare’ had the glands taken out years ago. It’s a skunk thing, like getting your tonsils out.”
“So, I don’t need to worry about getting in close down there without feeling like I’m disarming a bomb?” Milo joked, getting caught up in the playful atmosphere and feeling like they were joking around back at their own dorm room like before. Realizing what was happening, he sighed and sat down on the bed. “Dare, stop it. I’m still not sure about this. And even if I was, we’re not going to do it in my brother’s room…”
“Do what? Take some pictures and eat a little cake?” Dare replied, starting to take his shirt off and showing off the thin coat of fur that was coming in on his chest. The little green nipple ring stood out against the black fuzz, catching Milo’s eye immediately. “Don’t ask. It’s a ‘Dare’ thing, not something I ran off and got myself. Although, it looks kinda cool, right? Want to get a few close-ups of it?”
“Dare…”
“I’m serious, Milo. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Dare said immediately. “I know this photography project is important to you, and I’m here to help you with it. Nothing more than that. I know I haven’t done much to make you trust that I’m being honest here but… Well, I’m gonna try. Okay?”
Milo was silent for a moment, watching as Dare calmly stripped out of his clothes and tossed them in a pile at Milo’s feet. He picked up his camera and snapped a few candid shots of Dare, enjoying seeing Dare’s more vulnerable side after dealing with the overly guarded skunk for days.
“Okay. Just know that you’re still on thin ice,” Milo replied finally. He stood up and gently brushed Dare’s hair out of his face to reveal his bright green eyes, still completely unchanged from the first time that Milo had seen them. If it means enough to you to have, it'll keep, Milo remembered Stripes’ words from a few days before. Guess they really do mean something to me.