The warm morning sun streamed in through the dorm window and fell across Milo and Dare’s dozing bodies. Milo grunted quietly as he awoke, his snout still pressed deeply into the thick, soft fur on Dare’s back and with his thick arms wrapped around Dare’s thinner frame. God, how did I find the best-smelling skunk in the whole world?, he thought idle as he rubbed his snout against the small of Dare’s back, breathing in the deep, slightly toasty scent seemingly baked into his skunk’s fur. Almost like caramel or fresh bread, mixed with just a hint of muskiness. They’d drunkenly stumbled back to the dorms around 2AM after the party the night before, and Milo had a hazy memory of dragging Dare off to the showers to wash off the smell of booze and sweat, but that particular, familiar scent still clung to Dare. Milo hoped it would never go away.
“Careful back there, pig, or I’m liable to go off,” Dare muttered in front of him, a slight slur still in his voice from the hard night they’d had the night before.
“You already told me you got fixed, Dare. Or did you forget?” Milo teased. He reached his hand down and gently parted the thick fur at the base of Dare’s back, eying the thin red scars that decorated the skunk’s skin.
“Yeah, I did forget. Or maybe I was lying to you, hmm?” Dare fired back, lifting his ass and wiggling it playfully in front of Milo’s face, his morning wood bouncing a bit between his legs enticingly. “Interested in finding out?”
Milo laughed and rolled out of bed, walking over to the mirror on the wall and glancing at himself. Every time he looked at himself, his arms and chest were packed with more and more tight muscle, clearly visible even under the brown fur that had nearly covered his whole body by now. The tusks in his mouth extended nearly a full inch out from his lower lip, and just like his muscles he expected they’d be getting even bigger.
“Will, look! I think they’re getting bigger than yours!”, he said proudly, pulling his lip down to show the thick tusks off to his big brother. “Think they’ll keep on getting bigger?”
“Geez, making me feel a little inadequate here, little bro,” William chuckled. “Pretty big ones for a guy your age… Bet they’ll really attract the ladies, huh? Not that I’d know anything about that, ‘course, but-“
“Will… Y-you know, I‘ve been thinking about it, and I don’t really think I-“
Milo blinked a few times, shaking himself out of the memory that had crept into his head when he had been distracted. Warmth spread through his body as he recalled that time, when he’d first told his big brother that he was gay, and how Will had told him how proud he was of him. How proud his entire family had been for being himself. And then he remembered the old version of himself, packed into a state home bedroom with a bunch of other boys. He’d told a couple of them he was gay, but they didn’t give a shit. They weren’t bigoted or grossed out by it, they just had their own problems to deal with. But his new family… they cared. They loved him, wanted him to be his best.
Milo smirked at his reflection, knowing deep down that he was on his way to becoming the best man he could be, even if that man just happened to be a boar. He did a few flexes in the mirror, enjoying seeing the muscle ripple and throb with every move he made. “I’m gonna head to the gym, Dare,” Milo decided. “Can’t trust these things to keep getting bigger on their own…”
“Don’t you fucking dare, pig,” Dare sighed. “You’re gonna stand right there and keep on flexing ‘til I get bored of watching it…”
“Who says you can’t come along with me?”
“This nightmare of a hangover and this nice warm bed, that's who,” Dare replied, pulling the blanket up tightly around himself. “Besides, I’ve got a few hundred pages of child psych to read up on and a paper to write… Can you believe they’re making me volunteer at a local school for this class? Fucking ridiculous…”
“You know you’re looking forward to it. You’re gonna make a great teacher someday, Dare,” Milo laughed, walking over and planting a kiss on the tip of Dare’s pink nose and feeling the skunk’s whiskers twitch happily. “Just try to get that potty mouth under control, or the principal will make you sit in the corner on your first day.”
“Fuck off to the gym, pig. And don’t you dare take a shower afterwards. I want you to reek when you get back here.”
“Love ‘ya too, Dare.”
-------------------------------------------------------
It seemed like half the school had showed up to the party the night before and most were still sleeping off the festivities, so the gym was relatively quiet that morning. Milo had even stopped by Sam’s room to see if he wanted to join him, but for whatever reason neither Sam or Todd came to the door, so Milo assumed they were still sleeping off the night before as well. Once he got to the gym, Milo changed into a pair of athletic shorts, going bare-chested like most anthros did during their workouts. The more he changed, the fewer odd looks he was getting from the upperclassmen; by now, there were only a few areas on his body that were left completely unchanged by the transformative energies of Claw Valley, making him truly feel like a member of the college community after just a week.
Soon, Milo had leapt right into his workout, still getting used to the equipment but wanting to try out as much as possible to really put his changing body through its paces and see what he could really do. He started off with the pullup bar, easily lifting his increased mass with the powerful muscles in his broadening shoulders, then he moved onto the pulldown machine, steadily adding more and more weight and feeling the fur on his body getting damp with sweat at the workout he was giving it.
Feeling properly warmed up, he headed to the weight bench and loaded up a few barbells with as much weight as he thought he could handle. He’d never done this before, but it looked simple enough, right? Just lift the bar up and down. Taking a deep breath, Milo lay down on the bench and began to raise the weights, his chest pounding with exertion and his arms burned, feeling the entire weight of the barbell fighting him with every movement. Finally, he let the barbell fall on the bench’s rack, panting with the intensity of the workout.
“Five reps… Is that good or bad?” Milo gasped, wiping his sweaty fur out of his face with one arm.
“Good, considering you were doing it all wrong.”
Milo glanced up and saw a big brown-furred man walking toward him, and once he got closer Milo saw that it was a bear anthro, probably an upperclassman considering he was completely changed.
“Yeah, I figured I was messing it up,” Milo admitted, sitting up with a groan. Milo looked over the bear, and was a little surprised at how fit he was; most of the other bears that Milo had seen around campus were a bit round around the tummy despite their otherwise muscular figures, but this man was trim and tall, built more like a basketball center than a football lineman.
“You’ll get it eventually. Want a few tips?” the bear asked, gently pushing Milo back down flat on the bench. “First off, don’t lift over your chest, keep it above your head. Don’t worry, it’s not gonna fall on you or anything. Keep your feet flat on the ground, don’t let ‘em lift up. And remember, exhale when you lift up and inhale on the way back down…”
Milo’s arms were still aching, but he had to admit that with the other man’s tips the workout was going a lot easier than before. “Uhh, thanks a lot. I guess I’ve never really done anything like this so…”
“Really? I’m surprised at that. You picked out the barbell with grips for hooved hands, so I figured you had a little experience at least,” the bear replied, and Milo glanced at the bar and saw it had a shaped groove which his three-fingered hands fit into perfectly, ensuring a secure grip. “Or, maybe that was a new memory, huh? We all had to deal with ‘em, I guess…”
“You’re… You came from the other side, then?” Milo asked, sitting up after finishing his last lift and setting the bar down.
“I mean, I guess I did. Gets hard to keep track of it after a while, so I didn’t even think about it until I got back here at the start of the semester. But seeing all you half-changed little freshies makes it harder to forget that I was in your shoes just a year ago,” the bear replied, an uneasy look passing his face momentarily before offering a paw to Milo to shake. “Name’s Keith, by the way. I’m usually here around this time, if you ever want some more tips or just someone to talk to.”
“Milo. Uh, sure. Sounds fine to me,” Milo said, accepting the handshake and standing up from the bench press.
“Great! It’ll be nice to have someone to work out with besides-“
“Besides who?” a quiet voice growled from behind Keith, and Milo glanced over to see an annoyed-looking squirrel tapping his paw against the floor and rolling his eyes. “I didn’t know it was such a bother for me to join you at the gym once in a while.”
“Don’t even lie, Terry. You’d rather be in bed right now anyway,” Keith replied with a cheeky smirk on his face. He laughed and leaned down to kiss the diminutive squirrel on the nose, making the other man’s fluffy tail curl up involuntarily and a blush spread to the tips of his ears.
“Maybe I would. But since I’m here, I expect you to join me at the cycling machines once you’re done flirting,” Terry sighed, turning on a dime and waggling his enormous tail at his boyfriend before walking off while muttering to himself. “Not gonna catch me getting all sweaty, a little aerobics are enough for me… Still fucking hungover and he brings me to the fucking gym for a date…”
Keith watched in amusement as the squirrel stomped off while ranting, then he leaned over to whisper to Milo. “Good thing he’s cute, right?” he said quietly, patting the boar on the shoulder with a laugh. “Anyway, here’s my last little tip for you before I need to go deal with my little headache over there. Don’t forget to work the legs too. looks like yours are still changing, and that’s a good thing in this case; if you can get a head-start on them while they’re still transforming, they’ll end up stronger once they’re fully changed. Just a little trick I picked up last year that I thought I’d pass on. Have fun, call me if you still need any help!”
Keith steeled himself before slowly following behind Terry and getting up onto a cycling machine alongside the squirrel. Milo stifled a laugh as he heard their bickering start up again almost immediately, wondering what on earth they could possibly see in each other.
“Keith seems like a decent guy, but he must be a little desperate if he’s dating that,” Milo murmured to himself before wandering off to try out a few of the other workout machines, wanting to work up a good sweat for Dare to enjoy once he got back to the dorm…