“Shit! Damn it!”

Melias’ eyes popped open as a loud clunk hit his ears. He turned his head, and an orange figure wobbled in front of him. As his bleary eyes focused, he saw Xaza bouncing around the room, one leg in his pants, the other with its foot caught on the edge of the waistband. After a few kicks, the cat dislodged his claw, and slid it back into the other pant leg. 

Xaza rubbed his knee and hissed softly. “God damn.” He looked over at the bird, then quickly turned away. “Morning, Melias. Uhhh, you see that?”

The crow was still orienting himself in this reality, and not the rapidly-fading dream reality he was in moments ago. “What?”

“Alright, alright, don’t worry about it!”

Melias’ eyes slid over to the clock. 6:30 AM. He rolled over onto his side and closed his eyes. No class until the afternoon… he could get a little more sleep. Some time passed, and he felt himself drifting off until the cat’s upbeat voice jerked him back from the brink.

“Oh, Melias? I forgot to ask ya yesterday—wait, you still up?”

Melias had to fight to keep a little growl from coming out of his mouth. Can’t this guy stop talking for two damn minutes? Maybe he could pretend to be asleep? No, he was never good at lying or acting, so he grunted in affirmation.

“Okay, cool. So, did ya hear about that fight in the library yesterday? With the human?”

Melias snapped upright like a hinge. “What?”

Xaza jumped in the air just as reflexively. “Jeez, man! Don’t scare me like that!”

“What fight with a human?”

The usually jovial cat seemed off-kilter as buttoned up his shirt. “W-well, everyone’s saying that there’s a human here, and that he picked a fight with someone in the library, and—”

“That’s not what happened.”

Xaza’s ears turned toward the crow, and he cocked his head. “Wait, you saw it?”

“Yes. Other people were harassing him, and a staff member broke it up. The human didn’t even defend himself.”

“Huh! No shit?” Xaza looked left and right, as if checking for spies. He lowered his voice. “Hey, just between you and me… I’m not surprised.”

“What do you mean?”

Xaza sat back on his bed, his long orange tail puffed out and flicking back and forth. His ears went flat, and he leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees. “Melias, what do you think of humans?”

The crow’s chest tightened. Was it safe to be honest? What if Xaza hated humans? He didn’t want any trouble, so he opted for “I don’t know.” It wasn’t a lie, not exactly. He was pretty sure he didn’t believe the racism, but where did he stand? He hadn’t figured that out yet.

Xaza drummed his fingers against one another. “What I think is… they ain’t so bad.” The cat stared intently at Melias, as if trying to detect a reaction. 

The crow, ever sensitive to the gazes of others, shrunk back into his bed.

Xaza continued, keeping his eyes trained on the bird. “When I was a kitten, our neighbour was an old, old human. Didn’t ever hurt anyone. She even baked us treats sometimes.” 

Melias nodded.

“People kept away from her… said she was trouble. Told my parents they were irresponsible by letting us near her. But old Gerty could barely walk. What was she gonna do to us? Poison her cookies? Besides… she was a hell of a lot kinder than any of those gossiping pricks.”

Melias’ muscles relaxed. By now, he was pretty sure the cat wasn’t gonna jump over and claw his eyes out over this. “Judgmental people are often worse than those they criticize.”

“That’s right.” Xaza sighed. “She never did get to meet her family. Couldn’t find anyone to vouch for ‘em. She died without ever meeting her grandkids.”

The bird turned his head. “Vouched?”

“You know, the approval system.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, you don’t know?” Xaza straightened up a bit. “Well, humans aren’t usually allowed here, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there’s a way around it. The government can approve ‘em.”

“How does that work?” 

“Dunno exactly. But one of the things they need is a sponsor. No one ever wanted to vouch for her family, so they couldn’t come here to see her.”

“Couldn’t your family do it?”

Xaza shrugged. “That’s what I said. My parents were scared to, though. If you vouch for someone and they cause trouble, your ass is on the line too.”

“Oh, I see. Who sponsored your neighbour?”

“No one. She was here before the system was made, so she got grandfathered in. Or, I guess, grandmothered.” Xaza chuckled, then looked over at the clock. “Okay, I got some stuff to take care of before class. But yeah, I think we gotta be nicer to those folks.” He stared back at the bird as he said that, and Melias once again felt like he was being scanned. 

“I agree.”

The cat grinned and his tail shot up. He leaned over to pick up his backpack in the same way he did to pick up his underwear last night. 

Melias remembered his lovely scrotum, and tried, but failed, to not imagine it dangling against his underwear. He blinked extra hard.

“Good to hear! Anyway, nice talkin’ with ya, Melias,” he said as he walked over to the door.

“Bye.”

The cat smiled, then left, leaving Melias to sit with his own thoughts. Approval? Vouching? What was the point of all that? Did someone vouch for the human from the library?

As Melias sat and pondered what Xaza said, another thought hit him: he actually held a conversation with someone! The whole time, he was so eager to hear anything about humans that it’s almost like he forgot to be anxious and defensive. Was the human really having such a big effect on him?

He fell back on his bed and closed his eyes, trying to catch a little more rest. Yet his mind wouldn’t let him. Guilt about the way he snapped at the human in the library started to creep in again. He pulled out his laptop and tried going over notes for some of his personal projects, but he just couldn’t focus. He groaned and put the laptop into his backpack, then headed to the commons for a shower and breakfast. 

Showering in a public area was especially terrifying for the bird. Sure, each stall had a sliding door, but he was perpetually afraid someone was going to yank it open and see everything—or, in his case, see nothing—and if that happened, he’s pretty sure he would melt and run down the drain. So, he hopped in, washed in record time, dried off using the wall-mounted blow dryer, and redressed before anyone had the chance to expose him. Now he just needed to have an incident-free shower nearly every day for the next four years. No problem, right?

Feeling refreshed, if a little on edge, he stopped off at the food court and picked up a bag of mixed nuts as he thought about how to spend his morning. He decided on visiting the library. When he arrived, he went straight up the stairs and looked down at the lower level. There was hardly anyone there, which was just fine by him, but a part of him was disappointed that he didn’t see the human. He sat down at a table next to the railing and logged into the library’s system. To his surprise and delight, they actually had the book he was looking for, as well as the exact location where it was located. 

“Oh, right,” he said to himself when he realized he should have looked up the book before climbing to the second level. He picked up his stuff and went back down the stairs, following the signs on each aisle until he came across a copy of Fundamentals of Hardware-Software Interface Design, 3rd edition. A little out of date, but it wasn’t like they were inventing new logic gates. He plucked it off the shelf, ran back upstairs, and began taking notes in his laptop as he read. Every few minutes, he’d peer over the railing, just in case. An hour passed. Two hours passed. The library grew busy, but there was still no sign of the human. Three hours. Four hours. Eventually, Melias realized that the words on the page were entering his eyes without stopping off at his brain, so he decided that it was time for a break.

After he hopped down the stairs and put the book back on the shelf, he pulled out his phone. Still another hour until class, so he wandered around the library, his brain buzzing as it attempted to digest the knowledge in the textbook. Schematics and breadboard layouts filled his mind as he attempted to visualize how to proceed with his project. He drifted in and out of aisles of books, completely lost in his thoughts. So lost, in fact, that as he walked down a particularly tucked away row of bookshelves, he almost didn’t notice him. But when he did, every muscle in his body clenched.

There he was, sitting against the wall with a book in his hands, staring at Melias with wide eyes. The human. He raised the book to his chest like a makeshift buckler. “O-oh, you. Sorry, I can go.”

Melias just stared. Circuit diagrams were forced out of his mind and replaced with the words he rehearsed a hundred times in his mind. And yet they were stuck. Unable to leave his throat.

The man’s feet scampered in place as he slid up the wall until he was upright, then he darted down the aisle, muttering as he passed Melias. “Sorry, sorry, sorry…”

He was getting away. Come on, say something!

“Wait.” His voice was scratchy. Unpleasant. Threatening. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Wait.”

The human gasped, but obeyed.

“Um…” Melias said. The words were still jammed. There was no conscious resistance. Just a lifetime of trauma and defense mechanisms holding him back.

“Is something wrong?” asked the human. His voice was so soft, one could make a quilt out of it. Even a songbird would envy his gentle tones. “I don’t want any trouble.”

Melias turned around. The human recoiled like a spring winding up, ready to rocket off at a moment’s notice. 

“I’m sorry,” Melias finally said, his voice a deep croak, and certainly not as sweet as the human’s. 

The human did not relax even a little. “For what?”

“For being rude to you yesterday.”

“O-oh? No, no, no, it was my fault. I should have left you alone.”

A cramp in his shoulders alerted Melias that he, too, was very tense. He let his body sag a bit, then took a breath. “No.”

“No?”

Melias swallowed. He was being weird again. Come on. Talk like a normal person. He rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry. I’ve felt guilty about it this whole time.”

The human stood up straight, his posture a little less defensive. “Guilty? No, no! You didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Yes I did!”

The human recoiled and took a step back. “Sorry!”

Melias rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. He was doing it again. Shame and embarrassment coursed through him, making him feel both hot and cold at the same time. His instinct was to run, to get out, to stop humiliating himself. It was a very familiar urge, one that he could not easily overrule. “Sorry. Forget about it.” He took a long stride past the human as his voice shook.

“W-wait.”

Unlike Melias’ earlier demand, the human’s voice was like warm water soothing an aching muscle. But the effect was all the same, and he stopped moving.

“Umm, it’s fine… really. Please don’t feel bad. You don’t need to apologize.”

Melias closed his eyes. “I want to.”

“No, no, it’s fine… please.”

Please? Please don’t apologize? Melias turned back around and looked at the human. Even though his visage was totally unfamiliar to him, Melias saw no malice in those sky blue eyes. They seemed to be begging and pleading with Melias to just let him out of this situation.

It hit really close to home.

Something about the human’s vulnerability broke through Melias’ hesitancy. The words that had been piling up in the back of his throat finally started to come out. “Please, let me apologize. I felt bad for upsetting you yesterday. I don’t hate humans at all—”

The man’s eyes furrowed. “You don’t?”

“No.”

“You don’t think I’m going to try to hurt you?”

“No.”

There was another pause as the two stared at each other a little more. Melias wasn’t typically one for eye contact, but something about the man was different. The eyes of others always felt so judging and invasive… but not the human’s. The human was staring at him for… a different reason. One that Melias couldn’t quite figure out yet.

The human fidgeted with his fingers. “I want to believe you, but… mmm.” 

Oh. That was why. He knew exactly where those words were coming from. A lifetime of people saying one thing, then doing another. A lifetime of being lied to, being hurt, being scared. He wanted to tell the man he knew exactly how he felt, but his own trauma roared back, keeping those words close to his chest. He looked away and tried to change the subject. “I’m Melias. What’s your name?”

“Ah! I-I’m, um… Ro?”

Melias turned his head. “Ro? Is the intonation important?”

“O-oh, no, just, Ro,” he said, this time not sounding like he was asking a question.

“I haven’t heard human names before.”

Ro’s voice got even softer. “O-oh, well… that’s my name.” He looked toward the end of the aisle as his body shrunk back into his defensive posture. “Sorry… can I go?” His voice shook as it dropped to a whisper. “Please?”

Melias looked back at him. Those eyes… blue as sapphires and fragile as glass. They looked ready to shatter. Melias’ urge to ask questions was overwhelmed by the realization that he was doing to Ro what other people did to him. His stomach twisted at the thought. “Yes, you can.” 

Ro’s eyebrows relaxed and the corners of his mouth moved up his cheeks. Is this how humans smiled? 

“T-thank you. And for thank you for, um… well, never mind. Maybe I’ll… see you around?” They maintained eye contact as the human took a few blind steps toward the end of the aisle, before fully turning and scurrying off.

Melias was bolted to the floor. He had been left with more questions than answers, and he definitely did not get the closure he was looking for. Ro was hiding things… but of course he was. If the human was anything like he was, then he totally understood why. Still, who was Ro, really? Every time Melias tried to get to know someone, he wound up hurt—or worse, hurting them. He said he’d just keep to himself from now on. But he felt like he was calling out to this human… wanting to know more. And that was scary. 

Or perhaps it was the human calling out to him. That was even scarier.

He took a look at his phone, searching for a distraction, and got one in the form of realizing he was going to be late for class if he didn’t take off right now. He dislodged his leaden legs from the floor and trundled out of the library. He checked his schedule to figure out exactly where he needed to go. First, digital ethics and then… oh! Electronic design! Finally, the good stuff. He had already designed all sorts of circuits, and was very eager to learn more. He just hoped he wasn’t too far ahead of the rest of the class…

Digital ethics was whatever. It was depressing to Melias that some people actually had to be taught to think about the consequences of their creations, but at least it would be an easy class for him. Electronic design, on the other hand, was a problem. As it turns out, he was indeed quite far ahead of class, and his excitement quickly turned to boredom as the professor explained things that Melias had learned years ago. Yes, he knew what a schematic was. Yes, he knew what a truth table was. Surely the later classes would be more interesting than this, right? He wasn’t wasting time and money by being here, was he? 

Eventually, they got to the end of the lesson, and the professor mercifully dismissed the class. As he stepped toward the door, he felt a tap on his shoulder. A wave of revulsion shot down his arm at the unwanted sensation, and he whipped around to see a pair of badgers, one male and one female, staring at him. Dread crept in. He knew that look.

“Yes?”

The woman spoke up. “Ummm, sorry to bug you, but what kind of bird are you? You look like a corvid, but…”

Here we go. The question was like the lash of a whip to Melias, but he kept his composure. People freaked out if you freaked out. “Crow.”

The man pulled his head back, looked at the woman, then back at Melias. “No kidding? You albino?”

How do people not know by now? Melias tried not to sigh. “No. Leucistic.”

“Oh! That’s like albinism, but different, right?” she asked.

“Albinism is a complete loss of melanin, which is the pigment that determines how dark your fur—”

“Right, right, right,” the man said. “Hey, does that mean your insides are white too?”

Melias felt like he was being flattened. It was one thing to have people stare, but it was another to be bombarded with questions from people who don’t know what it’s like to suffer like this. It made him feel like an animal at the zoo. 

Plus, that was a particularly stupid question. Without answering, he spun around and walked out the door. 

“What’s his deal?” he heard the man say as he rounded the corner. That’s right. He’s not allowed to remove himself from painful situations without it being weird for everyone else. Their feelings matter, but not his. The freak bird is supposed to just sit there and answer the normal peoples’ dumb fucking questions. He’s not a person, just a curiosity. A circus exhibit.

He brooded all the way back to his dorm room. Are your insides white too? Was that guy fucking serious? Of course his insides weren’t white. Maybe if the asshole had spent two seconds looking at his mouth when he spoke, he would have seen that. Why couldn’t people just leave him alone? Why couldn’t they just accept him for what he was? Why, why, why did he have to be so different?

The thoughts continued to race as he arrived back at his dorm. Without stopping, he shoved the door open.

“Heeaugh! Can’t you fucking knock?” Xaza shouted as he leaned forward and twisted away. But Melias saw it. He saw the cat’s paw wrapped around his erect dick. And he caught another glimpse of that delightfully firm scrotum. 

And he was about to die.

“Sorry, sorry!” Melias said, his usually level, droning voice erupting into a squawk as mortification washed over him. He yanked on the handle, slamming the door shut, then took two steps away before dropping into a squat. He ran his talon through his head feathers, scratching the skin underneath, totally disgusted with himself. It felt like he had just violated his roommate. Why couldn’t he fucking knock? Too busy feeling sorry for himself to have basic courtesy? He deserved this. He deserved all of this.

It was really too much. The encounter with Ro, the badger pair’s prying questions, and now this. His talons balled into a fist as he pushed his knuckles into his eyes. Fuck it! Fuck college, fuck this dorm, fuck his life! He couldn’t do it. It was too hard. It was stupid to even try. He could just go home and stay safe with Dad and Pop and he wouldn’t have to deal with any of this shit. What’s even the point of getting an education when no one would want to hire such a wound up loser? 

He wanted to cry. He wished he could cry. But he couldn’t. Just another way in which he was different from everyone else. He couldn’t remember the last time he cried. When the emotions overwhelmed him, he just shut down as the feelings tore him to shreds. Just like now. Oh, how he wished he could ‘let it all out.’ But that would mean something could actually take the pain away from being Melias. And that couldn’t exist, could it?

The dorm door creaked open.

“Umm… whoa! Hey, you okay, Melias?” Xaza stepped out of the dorm and squatted next to the cowering crow. “Sorry for snapping at ya. I shoulda locked the door. That’s on me. Hey?”

Melias managed to turn his head. Xaza smiled at him.

“We’re good, Melias! For real!”

Melias looked away, saying nothing. The cat reached out and put his paw on his shoulder, and Melias reflexively shook his arm. 

“Oh, sorry. Don’t like being touched?”

The crow groaned. “Yes.” Why do people keep touching him? Every unwanted tap was like having garbage rubbed on his feathers. 

“My bad, my bad. Didn’t realize.”

“Sorry,” Melias said, slowly rising from his crouch. “Today was a bad day.”

Xaza sprung back to his full height. “You need some time by yourself? I could always go, uh, somewhere else.”

“You don’t have to do that.” 

“It’s no problem, really. I could go to my bud’s dorm and hang out there for a bit. Honestly, I was gonna do that anyway after, uh… well. You know. But it’s not a big deal. Seriously!”

“O-oh, okay.” For a moment, Melias thought about the cat walking into someone else’s dorm room, dropping his pants, and jerking off. It wasn’t an unpleasant thought, actually…

Xaza laughed. “You remind me of my little bro, you know?”

So much for that fantasy. “I do?”

“Yup. He’s still just a kid. Doesn’t like being touched either. Doesn’t talk much—unless you talk to him about old sports stats. Then you can’t shut the kid up.” Xaza grinned and turned back toward the dorm door. “He’s very precious and I love him to bits,” he said as he walked back into the dorm. 

Melias’ mind burned. He reminds Xaza of his little brother… who is precious to him? Did that mean something? He stepped into the room just in time to catch a glance of the laptop screen as Xaza snapped it shut. To his disappointment, the windows were all minimized, and all he could see was the icon-filled desktop. The sight made him cringe. How could people just dump all their files in one place without making even a basic attempt to organize them?

“Alrighty! I’ll be back tonight. Hope the rest of your day goes better, Melias.”

“Bye. Sorry again for walking in on you.”

Xaza laughed. “Maybe I’ll return the favour sometime!” 

The suggestion was ice in the veins. Melias took an audible breath as pre-emptive shame crashed into him like a truck. The thought of being caught in the shower was bad enough. Being caught with a toy between his legs would probably cause him to just instantly die.

Xaza’s usually jolly voice went quiet and flat. “Sorry. That was a joke. A bad one.” 

“It’s fine,” Melias said, his voice quavering a little. He was tired. His nerves were frayed. His head screamed at him. He ambled over to his bed and fell back on it as the cat scooped up his laptop.

“Okay, take it easy. Hope ya feel better soon. Want me to lock this?” Xaza said as he was half-way out the door.

“Yes, please.” 

“Gotcha.” The door clicked as Xaza left. The lock rattled, and Melias immediately felt ten times better. Alone. Quiet. Safe.

Still, he felt a little guilty. Melias had to admit that the cat was starting to grow on him. Xaza certainly could be irritating, but he didn’t feel like the cat was treating him like a freak. He was actually trying to understand and accommodate him. And now had to go somewhere else for the evening because of a weak, cowardly crow. He didn’t even get to finish masturbating. Guy was probably walking to his friend’s room, totally blueballed, and probably wouldn’t get relief there.

Probably.

Thoughts of Xaza fucking another guy forced their way into his mind, and they quickly changed to thoughts of Xaza fucking him. And the best part was… he’s seen his cock. And it looked like it would actually fit. The thought made him nervous and uncomfortable, but it turned him on nonetheless. It turned him on a lot. He shuddered, imagining the cat buried to the hilt in his cloaca, with those magnificent orbs resting up against his opening. Full of their hot sperm. The burning in his loins was too much to ignore, and he pulled his pants and underwear down to his ankles and rolled to the wall-side of his bed. He reached down the crack between his bed and the wall, and pulled out a bag with a small sex toy and a bottle of lube in it. Desire flushed through him as he lubricated the dildo, then applied a little to his cloaca before pushing it in. He took several heavy breaths as his tight hole resisted the dildo, then relented, allowing it to get deeper and deeper until he pushed until the flared base pushed up against his vent. He exhaled hard as he pushed on the base, enjoying the pressure of his cloaca squishing against the toy.

“Fuck me…”

He closed his eyes and saw his roommate’s thin, tapered cock sliding in and out as his balls slapped over and over against the bottom of his cloaca. He pulled the dildo out, twisting it around inside him as it came free, then jammed it back in. Each slam into his entrance set off a sensual shockwave, and he slid his other hand down to rub his the lips of his cloaca and press on it from the outside, increasing the pressure and pleasure. The room filled with sloppy slapping noises and shaky, crowing moans as Melias vibrated on his bed, starting to lose control.

“Harder… fuck me harder…” he managed to say between inarticulate noises, and he sped up, clenching his cloacal muscles around the toy every time it reached his depths. Oh, how he loved that pressure. He needed more. His fantasy shifted to a thick, drippy canine dick, with a nice, big knot and a pendulous pair of testicles. He imagined the toy’s base as a big, wet knot, trying to spread him apart and lock itself inside. Euphoria surged through him as he imagined his cloaca burning and stinging as the bulbous invader slowly slid past his clenching sphincter. His whole body sizzled. He needed even more. Even more!

The canine cock turned into an equine one, penetrating him all the way to those huge horse nuts. The flare stretched his vent to its absolute limit. How he longed to feel that blissful pressure, that heavenly stretch. As he drove his toy in and out, he tilted it from left to right like a joystick, trying to make it feel larger than it actually was. His breathing sped up, and he groaned as the stallion in his mind pinned his shoulders to the bed, snorting and grunting. 

“Cum in me!” 

His torso tensed and tingled as it grew harder and harder to take a full breath. Melias’ mind swelled with visions of the horse cock twitching and jumping, those big equine nuts delivering their payload deep into the bird’s hole. The tingling spread out across his whole body, his muscles acting on their own as the pleasure washed over them. His legs began wobbling, and he pulled them toward his body, his knees close to his chest. He yanked the dildo out and clamped his cloaca as hard as he could as he rubbed it with the other hand. His head and back arched back as far as the bed would let them as a powerful blast of cum squirted out of his hole, leaving a streak atop his white tail feathers. He grunted with each contraction between his legs, his body bucking up and down on the bed as the ecstasy overwhelmed all of his muscles. More of his thick, opaque semen gushed out of his hole, sliding down his crack and piling up at the base of his tail. The contractions gradually slowed, then stopped, and Melias lay on his bed, panting as stars filled his vision. He clamped his eyes shut, trying to calm his pounding head. 

“Damn...”

As he basked in his afterglow, thoughts began to creep back in. Only in his imagination could he fit such a filling cock inside of him. Only in his imagination could he get to feel his tunnel fill up with another man’s hot load. Only in his imagination would he be able to have sex at all. Only in his imagination would someone care enough about him to make him feel so loved. Only in his imagination did he matter.

His head lulled to the side and he stared at the wall. Why did it hurt so much to merely exist? Why did even the few pleasures in his life remind him of pain? He shifted to the side a bit, and the feathers at the base of his tail, glued together by his cum, tugged at the skin underneath. Cursing, he set the toy on the end-table, then reached into a drawer and pulled out some tissues. Damn, he came a lot more than usual. It was the first time he masturbated since getting here. He tried his best to wipe the mess off, but there was no getting around it—he was going to need to wash up. He pulled his pants up and slowly twisted himself off the bed, trying not to sit on his cum, and then he got up to walk to… the…

Wait… 

The dorm didn’t have a washroom.

He would have to use the… oh, fuck.