The doors of Amsey Middle School burst open with a flood of students heralding the weekend with whooping cheers. Everyone carried a jacket or sweater of some sort. Layering up made sense this morning, but a heat wave rolled in after lunch. The trees lining the school drive-up were arrayed in all shades of orange and yellow; colors unused to wilting in such heat.
Chance, a fruit bat in the lower grade, grudgingly stepped from the welcoming cool indoors to the stark, breezeless heat. He picked at the front of his sleeveless navy shirt, trying to get some airflow. Humidity made the fabric cling to his orange neck ruff, and his back was already accumulating sweat beneath his backpack.  He was also hauling a duffel bag, still quite square from having been stuffed in his locker all day. He fanned his arms a bit, wary of anyone watching him do the ‘chicken’ move, but even that little fanning movement with his wings, helped a lot.  Their black membranes grew hot quickly in direct sunlight.  “It’s supposed to be autumn!” the bat shook a fist at the sky.
“It’s not that bad, Chance.”  A doberman approached from behind, tossing his jacket over a shoulder as he fell in beside his friend.  “My grandparents live in an actual desert. It was way worse than this when we visited last summer.”
“I would shrivel and die in the desert, Nathan.”  The bat panted, stumbling in dramatic fashion against a guardrail.  “I’m melting!”
The canine rolled his eyes and took up a post at the top of the school steps, scanning the stream of cars in line to pick up kids. “Hey, wasn’t there something you were about to show me before class?”
“Oh, right.”  Glad to be distracted from the heat, the bat pulled a graphing calculator from his pants pocket, poked it to life, entered a command, and proffered it.
“Is this…”  The canine’s eyes widened.  “Dude, no way!  How did you get a game on here?  Yesterday you said you didn’t have the right cord for that…”
“I typed it!”  Chance mimed with his thumbs. “It’s only about a million lines of code.  I copied it from that website…”
As simple as the game was as the canine fiddled and figured out the controls to move a character around a little 2D space, the fact it was on a calculator made it special. “Remind me to borrow this for math class…”
“Nathaaan!”  A distant voice perked up the dog’s ears, and Chance followed his gaze away from the blocky LCD screen to see a beagle lady waving from the car lineup.  “Look, Chance!  There’s my mom.  Come on, I’ve been looking forward to this all week!”
And so it was they piled into the eggshell-blue Beetle belonging to the smiling Mrs. DeClaire.  “Seat belts, kids.”  The instant they were buckled in, Change leaned across the middle seat, pointing out the less obvious controls and features of the calculator game.
They were still pulling out of the school when the doberman lifted his muzzle and sniffed at the air.  “You got groceries, mom?”
“Yeah, I needed some things for dinner tonight, since Chance will be with us.”
There were days Chance envied his friends’ nose.  He watched Nathan messing around in the game. He noticed a typo in one of the menus. Thankfully it was in the text, not in any important code. The bat bit his lip, barely containing his glee at watching his friend fall into some of the same pitfalls he’d made too, his first time playing. The grumbling garage door caught his attention just before it swallowed the tiny car and cast them in shadow, Mrs. DeClaire asking, “Nathan, would you bring in the groceries?”
“Sure, mom!”
“I’ll help too!”  Chance piped up, rolling out and back toward the trunk.  Nathan was lining up bags on his arms.  Chance couldn’t do that because wings, so he went for the heaviest double-bagged stuff. “Hey, Mrs. DeClaire?  Is it okay if I go shirtless for a while?  I’m really hot…”
“That’s fine, dear.  Careful, that has eggs.”
“Okay.  Thank you!”
They streamed through the living room with grocery bags, chattering about what to do first as they passed the TV and the N64 tucked neatly under it.  Once everything was in the kitchen, Mrs. DeClaire shooed them out to go play while she put everything up.  Nathan went to hang up his jacket by the front door.  Chance was a moment behind, and from there they rocketed up the stairs.  The bat made it to his friend’s room first, dropping off his duffel and pausing to strip off his sweaty shirt.  He and Nathan shared a glance, and their eyes traveled in unison to the nerf guns under the bed.  Chance dove for them, tossing one at the canine.  “Twenty seconds, go!”
The dog grabbed a fistfull of nerf darts before bolting back out.  The bat counted down.  “Twenty, nineteen, eighteen…” Bam. His swiveling ears tracked his unsubtle canine friend’s landing at the bottom of the stairs.  “…twelve, eleven…” A thud out by the front room, maybe the hiding spot behind the piano?  Too obvious.  “…six, five…”  His ear dipped at a clack. Plastic on stone? Fireplace by the TV?  “…two, one…”  Just Nathan’s mom clattering in the kitchen.  Yeah, he was by the fireplace, and Chance was already moving  when he shouted, “GO!”
Pop!
The boys laughed heartily, spraying the house with foam darts.  Diving for cover, picking up each other’s ammo, barreling over furniture, and quickly losing track of who’d been shot the most.  The only safe room was the kitchen; neither of them dared catch an adult in the crossfire.  Chance stayed on the offensive, driving Nathan out of cover, back toward the front room.  But when the bat rounded the corner… where was he?
A dart sailed in through an open window, clocking Chance on the arm.  Screaming, the bat give chase outside.  Front door to the back deck and back inside.  Mrs. DeClaire stepped into the hall, skirt drifting in a hot breeze from the front door to back.  “Alright, you two! That’s enough. Doors need to stay closed. No more roughhousing.” 
They knew better than to argue.  Hot, huffing, they scoured the house and yard alike, picking up darts and winding down.  Nathan shot the bat a smirk.  “We only got like, an hour until dinner.  You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Super Smash!”
They weren’t far from the kitchen, and could enjoy the scent of imminent dinner while they duked it out in cartoonish fashion.  The garage door grumbled once more to announce the return of a lanky doberman, muzzle graying early. Nathan’s ears perked up, though he never took his eyes off the TV, spamming Chance’s character with attacks. “Hi dad!”
“Evening, boys.” The old canine paused to give his wife a tender greeting, then slipped off upstairs for a spell.
Nathan owned the match handily.  It was his game and his console, after all; he got a lot more practice. Chance loved it anyway, and they only laughed harder when he accidentally teleported his character off the edge of the map.  There went his last life.  He spent the rest of the game using his controller’s pause button to strategically foil Nathan’s combos and help the AI win. Annoying as it was, the canine took it in good sport.  And it still wasn’t enough to stop Nathan from fetching first place.
Mrs. DeClaire rounded everyone up for dinner. The cute square table they ate at was so tiny the bat nearly kicked Nathan’s dad in the shin while the older canine said grace. At the look he got, Chance hooked his feet in the rungs under his chair and left them there for the rest of the meal. He stuffed his muzzle with pasta and, although less enthusiastic, devoured the salad as well.  Quietly, he wished his mom made such nice meals now and then.  He remembered when Dad would cook, but that didn’t happen anymore.
“This tastes amazing, Mrs. DeClaire.”  Chance beamed, but quickly turned his attention to Nathan.  “Hey, I had a website I wanted to show you.  There’s some hilarious videos on it!”
The young canine was in the middle of downing a full glass of milk and making a face the whole way.  Getting it all over with as quickly as possible was his philosophy. His cup hit the table harder than he expected.  “Phew…  Little late for computer stuff.  What about legos?”
“Okay!  I can show you the vids in the morning.”
And so as soon as the boys deposited their plates in the sink, they vanished into the basement.  Nathan’s lego collection was…  massive, to put it mildly.  There never seemed to be enough storage bins for everything when they had to pick up.  On one side of the basement they had a positively enormous castle; on the other, an assortment of spaceships.  The space scene called to them both, and they spent a good ten minutes rehashing where they’d left off in their ongoing story.
“And then they activated the self destruct!  So they’re about to blow up.”  Nathan was already making the sound effects.
“But the enemy disabled it already.  Cuz of the impostor, remember?”
“Oh right, that’s why you switched him to the mean head.  Alright - well this guy is onto the impostor!  He’s gonna hack back into the main computer from over here…”
The bat tipped his head.  “He’s the surgeon, how does he know how to hack the computer?”
“He writes games in his free time, remember?”
“That doesn’t mean…  Oh, whatever.”  Chance laughed it off.
Their space adventure carried on and the boys broke several ships - most of them intentionally, all met with laughter, and several more were built before the evening was out.  Chance was especially proud of his latest.  He loved playing with Nathan’s lego collection - so much more extensive than his own.  It allowed him to build things that actually looked good, and had room to move lego people around inside.  They each had a character inside at the moment.  A boy and a girl.  “They’re on a really long flight,” Nathan declared.
“I hope they brought all the latest games.”
“Nope, they had to leave spacedock in a hurry.  It’s an emergency mission.”
“Books?”
“Nope.”
“Well, this is going to be a really boring trip.”
“Just means they have time to get to know each other.  Maybe do things… You know…  it.”  Nathan grinned at his friend. Things like this came up in grown-up movies, and it was tantalizing there.  Why couldn’t that happen here, in their story?  He knew it wasn’t appropriate… not yet…  and from the bat’s blush, he knew it too.
Chance glanced down at the characters.  “It like…  they like each other that much?”  
“They’ve been working together for forever, so yeah.”
“But like…”  He lifted a wing to obscure his muzzle.  He was grinning, yes, but gawd it felt naughty.  “… they aren’t married.”
“So?”  Nathan reached into the lego ship and moved his character right up next to Chance’s.  “My guy doesn’t care.  They may not live long enough to get married.  Their ships keep blowing up!”
The bat mulled it over before meeting his friends’ gaze. Both flushed. This was new ground.  This was stuff they weren’t supposed to talk about, or know about.  But, in the end, Chance took a deep breath. “Okay.  They do it.  But she’s gonna want to get married when they get back to spacedock!”
Turned out that ship blew up too.  Their characters survived, of course, and Chance built another version of the same ship since he liked it so much.  It was much more compact this time, and he ended up liking it even more.  He was still beaming at his creation when Mrs. DeClaire called down from the top of the stairs, “Alright, bedtime!”
“Aww, can’t we…”  The bat glanced over his shoulder.  Nathan was shaking his head while fighting a yawn.  “Alright, we’ll be right up!”  But he was taking his new ship.  Nathan, seeing him stow the ship behind his back, gave him a weary look.  They both knew they weren’t supposed to take legos upstairs. But Chance grinned, made a shushing gesture and crept up the stairs.  He didn’t hear anyone.  The coast was clear.
At least until he nearly walked straight into Mr. and Mrs. DeClaire in the front room; she in a bathrobe with her damp hair up in a bun. The ship went behind his back.  “Hey!  Thank you both for letting me stay here tonight.”  
“It’s no trouble, sweetie.”  The beagle smiled at him.
The adults suspected nothing as Chance crabwalked past them without turning tail; boys would be boys.  When Nathan rounded the corner and drew their attention, the bat turned at last and cradled the ship against his side, tromping up the stairs and praying none of the little pieces would pop off.  “Goodnight!” he called over his shoulder, hustling to stash the ship in Nathan’s room.  He could hear his friend talking with his parents, though he didn’t care to make out what.  Sounded like it’d be a minute, so he dug his toothbrush out of his bag and headed to the bathroom for the bedtime necessities.  As he finished up and got out, Nathan was waiting to get in.
By the time the doberman returned to his bedroom, Chance was flying his lego ship about the room, uttering muted spaceship noises. Nathan sighed and flicked off the lights.  The bat hissed when the light went out.  “Sensors just died!  We’re flying blind, need to land now!”
“Chance… come on, man, I’m tired.”
The bat groped forward.  The desk was somewhere around here. “Oof!” He found it with his knee, not his paw, but managed to land the spaceship safely.  “We’re down… minimal damage.”
“That’s enough.”
“Geeze, fine.  Just turn on the light so I can roll out my sleeping bag.”
Point made, Nathan acquiesced and flicked the light back on, granting Chance to unpack his duffel.  He pulled out a very old musty sleeping bag. He hated this thing. It was thicker than double stuffed pillows.  It would be cozy in a snowstorm; for anything short of that, the bat slept on top of it, and supplemented another blanket… which, he realized with a groan, he forgot to bring. He could ask for one. Though honestly, he didn’t feel like he was going to need it.  Come to think of it…  “I hope the AC kicks in soon.”
“Uh, about that.”  Nathan stripped off his shirt and tossed it in the hamper.  “We leave it off at night.”
“Aww, why?  It’s so muggy and it’s not cooling off.”
The doberman shrugged, flopping back on his thin creaky mattress.  “Mom says you don’t feel it when you’re asleep, so it’s the best time to save on bills.”
Chance eyed his friend with some initial incredulity. Getting to sleep in the first place would be a lot easier if it were nice and cool.  But he wasn’t about to argue the point.
Nathan caught the bat’s expression and shrugged.  “Hey, most nights it’s fine with just the ceiling fan.  Mind hitting the light?”
Chance made sure the ceiling fan was on high and plunged them into darkness once more.  He could just make out Nathan pulling the sheet up, and he made a lot of rustling.  Presently the doberman drew his pants from beneath the sheet and hucked them at the hamper, too.
Yeah.  Without AC that would probably be for the best.  Chance, under the scant cover of only the darkness, shed his gym shorts, dropping them in a heap somewhere near his overnight stuff.  He flopped back on his sleeping bag in just his snug white underwear.  Nope, definitely didn’t need a sheet.
If only it weren’t so quiet. Chance typically slept with a white noise machine.  It was one of the few things that helped him sleep. For some reason, he just couldn’t sleep without some low rhythmic noise.  And the ceiling fan, despite being on full blast, was just a whisper, despite the volume of air it was pushing.  “You got another fan or something?”
The doberman reached for the nightstand and fiddled with something.  The click of a cassette into the player, then low voices.  An audio book?  Sounded like it was starting right in the middle.  “Is that better?  It’s all I got.  My music is too loud.”
The voices and sound effects were indistinct.  “….Better than nothing.  Thanks,” Chance whispered back.
Amazing that he could hear the tape playing that low over a fan that pushed this much air. But it wasn’t quite enough. Even with bare fur and spread wings under the steady flow of air from above, the bat felt on the verge of sweating.
Rustling from Nathan’s bed.  Another lump tossed toward the hamper.  Only it felt short.  Chance caught a whiff of boxers and kicked the garment away.  If he had any top sheet at all, he’d ditch the undies too.  He was tempted anyway.
As he lay there, nocturnal eyes acclimatizing to the dark, the silence growing deeper, he started making out bits and pieces of the audio book.  A lot of the names that came up were familiar, and  his mind started trying to fill in the blanks.  Was this from the book that one movie was based on…?  No, no it wasn’t, but now he was getting a mangled version of that story with events of this one…  the result unfolding in Chance’s mind was some serious absurdity.  It wasn’t helping him sleep at all.  Nathan was snoring long before the cassette ended with a little clack.
Chance found himself sliding his boxers south. Whatever. If he fell asleep like this, and Nathan woke up first?  Nathan was naked too.  He would be one to talk.  Besides, Chance always woke up first.
What did Nathan look like without…?
Oh heck.
It was boredom more than anything.  Just a look.  The bat shimmied out of his briefs, kicked them off, and rolled silently to his friend’s bedside, surveying the landscape of the canine’s sheet.  With careful breaths to keep them quiet, Chance pulled back the covers a bit, watching the Nathan’s bare chest rise and fall in rhythm. His breathing would change before he fully woke up if anything happened, right?
Sheesh, Nathan was totally unsheathed!  The bat’s eyes lashed immediately to the canid penis as he uncovered it.  Not so different from his own, but… well, longer.  Thicker.  Actually it was very different…  He touched a finger on each side, exploring the stem where it vanished into the canine’s sheath. Yeah, a lot thicker, especially with the slight bulge.  The head was shaped different, too.
It jumped out of his fingers and hit his palm.  He almost jumped, almost made a noise, but, wide-eyed, he stilled himself.  The dog dick had just twitched, and it, uh… Yup, if he touched it again, it twitched quite high.
How had boredom turned into playing with Nathan’s stiffy?  More to the point…  why wasn’t he stopping?
Chance found a soft brush sometimes made Nathan’s penis twitch several times.  Each place he tried seemed more sensitive than the last, and…  Wet.  The tip was wet.  The bat nearly froze again but… no.  No, it was just like the wet spot he got in his undies sometimes looking at girls at the pool or something.  Annoying slick stuff that didn’t dry easily.  More of the stuff leaked out against his finger. But it felt kinda nice, right? He scooped up the dollop and rubbed it right down the middle of Nathan’s cock, and it definitely got a reaction; it practically pushed back against his paw for more.
Wasn’t this gross?
He took a moment watching his friend.  Still steady breathing.  So the bat could keep rubbing.  Nathan’s member wasn’t twitching anymore; it stayed up on its own, throbbing.  Chance could wrap his whole hand around it, which he did oh so gently.  There was a swelling bulge near the base-  Oh!  Canines had knots, right! He thumbed the canine’s pre into the flat head, and brought up another hand to explore the knot.  He could barely get his fingers around it!  It was throbbing so-
Hot fluid hit the bat’s hand, sliding slick between his fingers, freezing him in place. The canine’s breathing was still steady and even.  He’d cum in his sleep.  And Chance had… made him.  His breath had caught, he needed air, but he was afraid to breathe.  The bat retreated to his sleeping bag, but he didn’t want to touch anything with his slick hand.  Chance shoved his muzzle into his pillow and panted through it.  What had he done… and… why was he so hard?!
He couldn’t stop if he wanted to. His fingers wrapped around his own raging erection, spreading Nathan’s warm, slick ejaculate along his own shaft.  It felt so good, but…  but he couldn’t just shoot here!  Where could he…  that wouldn’t be found in the morning?
He was hot, in every sense of the term, and crawling into his sleeping bag was frankly stifling.  But, inside, he humped his fingers and bit his lip.  No sound.  Not one. Effing. Sound. He held it all in when every fiber of his being wanted to moan, stroking off with Nathan’s cum.  So hot… but he couldn’t get the picture of his friend’s penis out of his head.  The feel of his friend’s dick throbbing between his fingers…  Chance whimpered into his pillow, unable to fully restrain himself while he spent his seed in hand. He came, and he kept cumming, shuddering until the last vestage of strength was whisked out of his body.  The bat lay panting, sweating, shocked at what he’d just done… but gawd it felt good.
As he returned to his senses, he had two overriding concerns: the mess he’d just made, and the heat.  He felt like he was about to have a stroke right there in his sleeping bag.  Had to be careful not to spread the mess as he crawled out, and he needed to wash his hands.  The rest…. Well, it would stay in his bag… and he’d deal with the nasty leftovers at home.
One stealthy butt-naked jaunt across the hall and some slow, careful patience with the doorknobs got him to the bathroom. He was grateful for the night light here, and he didn’t need to flip the light switch to get cleaned up.  The teeny light was more than enough to his well-adjusted eyes.
The nice tile floor was cold to the paw.  Before he left the bathroom, the bat submitted to the urge to lay down on the smooth surface, and sighed a moment of relief from the heat… Chance was having a hard time resisting weird urges tonight, apparently. But he’d never thought floor tiles would feel so amazing. 
His reprieve was short; the tile warmed up beneath him all too soon, but it was worth it. He employed one last trick to beat he heat; he borrowed a spray bottle of water and squirted down his wings; arms, membranes, everything.  His fur was soaked.  He didn’t care if he dripped everywhere on the way back.
Chance tried not to think of the grossness inside the sleeping back he was using as a mattress. He grimaced at the clock’s glaring heartless red letters: 2:14 AM.
When he opened his eyes next, it was 6:29, he was still exhausted, and it was still completely dark. Well, it had cooled off, and Chance was lying naked and a little cold. He wasn’t falling back to sleep anytime soon, though, so he rolled over and pulled a set of fresh clothes from his duffel.
The bat dressed quietly, eased out of Nathan’s room, and roamed the silent house.  Familiar, but not home.  Comfortable, but it felt weird to hang around alone.  He found himself sitting at the kitchen table, plagued by thoughts of the night prior; it  clung to his thoughts like a stubborn addiction. Chance worried he couldn’t regard his canine friend without remembering the night before.  
His ears picked up at the the shuffle of slippers, announcing Mrs. DeClaire.  “Oh, Chance!  What are you doing up so early?”
“Woke up in the night, couldn’t go back to sleep.”  It wasn’t the first time he’d been up this early sleeping at Nathan’s…he just didn’t usually come downstairs. He rubbed at his face. “Bit of a headache.”
She got him an aspirin and made him a hot waffle.  A good dose of syrup seemed to take the bat’s mind off his troubles, and he even talked the doting beagle into letting him have coffee with her. She chatted a lot and asked questions; happy for the distraction, Chance was more than happy to discuss how school was going, and how his mother was holding up at the new day job.  It helped to just talk normal things.
He was feeling much better by the time Nathan finally came downstairs and got his own waffle and orange juice. The bat watched him carefully for anything out of the ordinary, any sign he knew… 
“So,” the canine turned to Chance with a smirking muzzle full of waffle, “Funny videos?”
Chance could breathe again.  
The internet was an amazing time sink, and it was good to laugh at nonsensical songs. Even if his mirth felt a little hollow.  Nathan looked up some game trailers next.  But over the dramatic music, Chance picked up voices downstairs.  Was that… mom? 
As footsteps ascended the stairwell, Mrs. DeClaire’s voice became discernible.  “…not healthy for you, dear.  I don’t know about this new job.  Are you still looking?”
“God, yes.”  Yeah, that was definitely mom coming around the corner.  “It pays the bills for now, though.  Hey sweetheart!”  She called in greeting as she appeared, leaning on the door frame to Nathan’s room.  “I got some bad news.”
Chance could do the math.  “You’re picking me up early.”  Behind him, Nathan groaned.
“Yeah.  New boss changed my schedule last night, had me work a double instead of going in today. I need to be asleep long before I was planning to pick you up.”
“Aw come on, we can put him up until you wake up!”  Nathan complained, but Mrs. DeClaire reminded him they had family plans for the evening.  Chance held his tongue and just tried not to let Nathan see his relief.  He needed time to digest… maybe forget last night.  To think the whole time he was trying to sleep and… more… Mom had still been working.  If nothing else, he could sympathize with her weariness.  Nathan’s grumbling fell away as the bat moved to pack up his duffel and don his backpack.
Nathan and his mom came to the door to see them off.  The doberman waved sullenly, while the beagle called warmly after, “Goodbye Chance!  Rest well, April.  I hope your schedule smooths out soon!”
Chance brushed a McDonalds bag off the passenger seat and flopped into the car, closing his eyes shortly after he got buckled in.
“Something wrong?”  Mom asked as she pulled away.
“Huh?”  The younger bat glanced up with bleary eyes.  “Oh, uh… no, I just didn’t sleep much.  It was really hot last night.”  
“Well that makes two of us.  Going to nap with me?”
“Maybe.”  Chance watched Nathan’s house recede in the side mirror.  He wasn’t sure he’d ever look at his friend the same way again.
Was that an inherently bad thing, though?