Team Spirit, Part One: The Boys

MM / MMMM

“This sucks,” Tyler Maislin observed aloud for the seventh time. Nobody disagreed; there wasn’t anyone on the other side of that debate. But the panther wasn’t about to stop pointing it out. Splaying his ears and running a paw through the thatch of black hair between them, he spat into a Dixie cup next to his feet. He didn’t chew tobacco or anything, it was just something he did because it seemed cool. None of the nicotine hit, all the random socially acceptable spitting.

He sat, melanistic tail twitching, in a steam-damp locker room the color of lichen that had somehow gone bad. The artificial humidity combined with all-natural humidity to make everything sticky, so that you stepped out of the shower already needing another.

Most of the team had departed already, rushing off to suck down craft beers and indulge in other collegiate stress sinks. Childers, a tiger and the only other feline, had announced that he was off to have a medically implausible amount of sex. But then his mom had picked him up in her SUV, raising questions about either Childers’ honesty or what that family dynamic looked like.

Tyler’s amber eyes narrowed. He wanted to punch something, but wasn’t sure what would or wouldn’t fracture his hand. “This sucks.”

“Dude. We know. Shut up already.” Anthony Pace was a stallion’s stallion, an Olympian vision in dappled white and tan with a fiery copper mane. He had a much firmer idea of what would fracture his hand, and so he did his best to blow off steam by wailing on the antiquated kickboxing bag chained to the ceiling. His punches connected with heavy, meaty whumps, filling the space with the old stable scent of horse sweat. 

Andy Tanaka, who insistently reminded people that he was a sika deer, rolled his eyes. He pretended to watch porn on his phone, going so far as to announce that he LOVED PORN like a totally normal person, but was really engrossed in a mushy hurt/comfort fanfic. “Can we not? I’m stressed enough as it is.”

“We’re all stressed,” said the lithe speedster of a ram who was Jensen Barcellos in a tone which implied that he, of course, was the most stressed. “Coach did say to wait here, right? Or like… were we supposed to go to his office?”

Tyler replayed the brief, tense conversation in his head. “He definitely said wait here. Also, he has an office?”

“He was talking about his office hour yesterday, and how he hated people calling him during it.” Andy was only half present, and he spoke with a far-off singsongy quality.

“Andy. Man.” Anthony enjoyed a much-needed chuckle at his friend’s expense. “He was talking about going to the bathroom.”

“What- for an hour?”

“You’ve met old men before.” Jensen perched against a locker on one leg, stretching again. If he stretched much more, he’d turn into that one old boomer doll that he and his brother had microwaved as kids. Armstrong something. “An hour is probably his, like, gastric warmup.”

What Coach Mills lacked in nutrition and digestive health, he made up for in perfectly imperfect timing. The thundering of his voice preceded the shadow of his dad bod by a couple seconds, and of his mustache by slightly less. Thing was intense. “Attention on deck!” The grizzly bear was always going to be an athletic director or a professional bar complainer, and he’d chosen wisely between the two. He carried a manila envelope on which a light pencil scratching was crossed out with an enormous red Sharpie X and a padded black shoulder bag that was vaguely tennis racket shaped. Could be a tennis racket, mayhaps.

The four morose stragglers snapped into a row, chins held high. They shouted in unison, “Aye aye Coach!” Whatever fear each man held within, it wasn’t enough to shake his presentation. 

Coach Mills was a man who commanded respect. He wasn’t necessarily the best coach out there. His win record was on the high end of mediocre. But he was without a doubt one of the best on an athletic faculty of four part-time adjuncts. He also taught freshman comp and the absolute wildest trip of a night school stats course you’ve ever seen.

As much as respect, he commanded fear. A believer in the axiom that the hottest crucibles yielded the strongest steel, he ran his teams hard and expected only the most committed effort from his athletes. Five hundred years back, the Florentine thinker Niccolo Machiavelli famously concluded, “È meglio essere temuto che amato, se non si può essere entrambi.” Coach Mills had no idea what that meant; he didn’t speak a word of Italian. Didn’t know who Machiavelli was, either. But if his players weren’t going to love him, they were sure as hell going to fear him all the way to championships.

And so it was with the gruffest, most gravelly lecture of his career that the bear addressed a crisis in his own back yard. His boys, his winners, his modern-day Spartan hoplites… caught cheating on an O-chem exam.

—

It was  only the sheer volume and power of Coach Mills’ yelling that secured the boys’ collective attention. He went on. And on. And on. About responsibility and the difference between right and wrong, and all manner of other concepts they understood full well. It wasn’t some childlike ignorance of how they were supposed to act that drove student athletes to cheat. It was the punishing practice schedule, social commitments, high pressure, and readily available THC gummies, paired with the low likelihood of getting caught. All of Coach Mills’ highminded bluster felt a lot like being told by their moms that they shouldn’t eat a bunch of meth and knock up a Juggalo. Yeah, thanks; the people who did that were still aware that it was frowned upon.

“Frankly,” Mills grumbled at the tail end of his spiel, “I don’t know how any of you chucklefucks thought you were going to get away with this. You went from failing chemistry to wrecking the curve and thought, hey, I bet nobody’s gonna notice?” He pointed to Tyler, singling the panther out for individualized scolding. “Except you, Tanaka, you still got a C. What, did you forget the cheat sheet?”

Tyler huffed, cocking his head at a jaunty angle. “I felt good about some of those answers. Real good. I’m not going to let some bitch-ass piece of paper get in the way of my instincts.”

“But you had the correct answers. All of them. In your hand.”

“I trust my gut, Coach. Just like you taught me to.”

Coach Mills frowned, his mustache forming a big ~. “Well… maybe don’t. Put a pin in that, yeah?”

Jensen didn’t feel like waiting for the second act of Lecture Theater to begin. He prided himself on being a man of swift action, which in practice was suspiciously similar to being a man of undiagnosed ADHD. “So what? Like, what happens now? Are we benched or something? Do we gotta write a thousand-word essay about how sorry ChatGPT is?”

“You wish, Barcellos.” Coach Mills tossed a manila folder onto the bench. Four fresh, slightly off-center copies spilled out. “Take a look, fellas. Just in case you forgot.”

No one needed to. They did because they were told to, paper crinkling in tight grips. But the boys had sensed what they were, the way you can sometimes tell that a phone call brings bad news before picking up. Corporal punishment permission and consent forms, each signed and dated in piss-poor handwriting.

Every student at their small, rigidly conservative college knew that corporal punishment was an option. Cognitively, anyway. Everyone knew someone who’d been paddled, strapped, or caned, or who knew someone who knew someone who had. They accepted this just as they accepted they could all be killed by a falling satellite at any moment. It was a possibility, sure, but too distant and abstract to provoke much anxiety. Yet here it was, the satellite, wreathed in the fires of reentry and plummeting straight toward them.

Tyler’s two week stint as a prelaw student rushed to the forefront. “But how can you prove that’s my signature? Maybe it’s a forgery, or AI or something.”

“Maislin, is that your signature right there?”

“Yeah. But how can you prove it?” Tyler was really getting a lot of mileage out of that athletic scholarship. It was a mercy that he intended to major in business now, limiting the extent to which he was liable to fuck something up once the concussions set in.

Jensen helped a bro out by cutting him off with a throaty bleat. “This is, like… no disrespect, but bullshit?” Putting a slight upward inflection on a statement like that always helped. “The cheating thing wasn’t even our idea in the first place. We’re just, like, accomplices.”

“Yeah, that’s a good point.” Andy fiddled with the tip of one antler as if he expected to find something interesting there. “It was all the girls’ plan.”

A shadow set over Coach Mills’ expression. Disappointment competed with frustration for brow space. “I thought, or at least I hoped, that I taught you better than to blame your girlfriends for your dumb mistakes. That’s low.”

Andy hissed through his teeth. “Ah… I wouldn’t say Annabelle’s my girlfriend? I’m just not about labels.”

“I… fine. Whatever. The girls you’re sleeping with.”

Anger flashed in Tyler’s apex predator eyes. He took a threatening step forward; Coach Mills did not respond with a threatened step back. “Whoa, whoa, hey man! That girl I’m sleeping with is my sister, Kiki!”

Silence reigned as glances met glances and throats were cleared all around. Everyone but Tyler buckled under the weight of awkwardness. It got Tyler too, make no mistake; it just took a moment for the connections in his brain to spark.

“Nope. Nope. Not what I meant. She is my sister, but not that other part. Just my sister. Don’t make it gross.”

Coach Mills thanked the goddesses for small blessings. “Still. The fact remains, you all cheated, and you all got caught. You’re all a ball hair’s breadth away from getting kicked out of the athletics program. So I don’t give a lukewarm shitwurst whose idea it was. You effed around, and now comes the part where you eff out. Er… find out.” Pacing like a caged predator eyeing dinner, the big bear cleared what must have been a tumbleweed from his throat. “Besides, those aren’t my girls. Not my team, not my problem. Coach Basie is the one who’s gonna take care of them. Which, I expect, she’s doing right around now.”

The boys’ eyes collectively sank upon hearing this. Coach Basie… damn. They’d have had much the same reaction if told that the girls were getting shot out of a cannon into an active volcano. There would be some heated conversations later; nobody carried a greeting card with a “sorry your whole ass got obliterated into subatomic particles” theme.

Nobody had wondered or cared what Coach Mills carried in that padded black shoulder bag. Coaches carried weirdass bags all the time; they sprouted on those people like mustaches. Now, though, in light of these forms, the bag occupied a prize spot in everyone’s attention.

Coach Mills opened ‘er up with as much gravitas as a zipper could hope to inspire. Yup. No shocker there. A bubinga wood paddle, varnished to a pristine shine, its grip bound densely with twine and ending in a round pommel. The thing had a broad, thick striking surface that could have made a respectable charcuterie board. It looked like something a country granny might hang on her wall as a decoration, maybe with a campy inscription. For the little DEER with the BEAR behind. Something corny and not at all terrifying.

Andy whistled in genuine amazement. The shock was running a little late, it seemed. “Is… is that thing real?”

Coach Mills permitted himself just one smug smirk. A rare treat, like deep fried waffles. “Not sure how it’d be fake, but yeah. Plenty real. And it’s served me well for a few years now. Ready to see for yourselves?”

“...suppose we say no?” Anthony murmured, as if afraid the question itself would bit him.

“Then I’d say suck it up, and remind you that your hides belong to me for as long as you want to play at this school.” A mumble of agreement passed between the condemned. His logic was agreed to be air-tight. “Now, gentlemen. Get yourselves ready. We’ve shot the shit enough that I’ve got more grays now than when we started.”

Nobody wanted to be the first to move, and so nobody moved. Nobody wanted to be the guy who asks dumb questions, and so nobody asked. It got weird pretty fast.

“Is there a problem?”

Andy raised his hand. “Coach, we don’t know what that means.”

“Fucksake, your generation. I swear.” Coach Mills sighed and rolled his eyes. “Get naked and do what I tell you. First thing, after you strip right down to your fur and smiles, is to line up in front of the bench. Facing the same direction, because apparently I gotta say everything.”

“NAKED?” Jensen made a face of disgust, sprinkled liberally with skepticism. He gave the impression of being unfamiliar with the concept of nudity as a whole. “Dude. I mean, Coach. That’s fucked up.”

“Wh- how is this even an issue? You see each other naked all the time. Hell, you literally just took a shower together.”

The ram tilted his head forward, curved and finely ridged horns on full display. “Yeah. Maybe. But that’s sports naked. We don’t check each other out or nothin’. We don’t, like, caress each other’s balls and read poems to each other.”

Coach Mills scratched his ass while that one sank in. “Nobody’s telling you to do any of those things now. Why would that happen? Are you worried about that happening?”

“Look, I’m just saying. Stuff gets wild. Nobody knows how that kind of thing starts until, bam, you’re at a bed and breakfast, and you got a dude nuts deep in you. And he’s your husband. And, like, you’re pretty happy, but you don’t know where it’s all going. And like, do you adopt a kid? Do you move to Vermont to be near his folks? What if one of you gets laid off, or sick? The kind of sick where you gotta be taken care of and, like, shit in a bag. And say you do adopt a kid; what if she wants to know about her birth parents?” The concern in Jensen’s increasingly personal soliloquy was palpable. This was some real shit bubbling up to the surface.

Coach Mills’ raised mitt of a hand brought that to a post-mature end. “I think you got some real anxieties there, son. And I encourage you to talk to someone about them. But I can’t stress this enough, not me. And not right now. Do what I said. And if it helps any, uh… nobody caress Jensen unless he says it’s okay.”

The way the team undressed called to mind a funeral. And while a naked funeral would probably be bitching as hell, the mood here was anything but.

Tyler seemed the least shy. The least hesitant, in any case. He pouted like someone had jammed a lemon wedge in his mouth, but slipped his tank top off with an easy grace. His snug navy blue shorts went shimmying off his hips in a way that wasn’t wholly un-feminine. Those shorts looked black on everyone else, but the contrast with Tyler’s sleek, midnight black fur made their blueishness pop. In fact, the panther didn’t give much indication of being embarrassed while he folded his clothing neatly on the bench. Not knowing what to do with his hands, he held them clasped behind his back for the duration of his wait, swaying gently on his heels.

Andy bleated in alarm. Hasty as he was, he’d gotten his BroGuard moisture-wicking performance top tangled in his antlers. His friends didn’t shame him, didn’t even laugh, as they came to his aid; this was hardly the first time Andy’s rack had caused problems in the locker room. All the same, he blushed fiercely by the time they got him free. Shedding his shorts like they’d offended him, he stepped out and kicked them into the corner. The deer’s hooves clicky-clacked in a humiliated shuffle, but he retained the presence of mind to cover his junk. It was this small nod to modesty which made the whole look far more immodest. The essential difference between dancing naked and dancing naked except for a pair of socks.

The self-proclaimed Stormin’ Stallion himself was notoriously comfortable with being naked. Most of the time, convincing Anthony to keep his clothes on was the hard part, especially his shirt. Damn thing had a way of flying off any time a camera was nearby. Now, though, he stalled for time. He hooved the floor and flicked his tail. If his buddies didn’t know better, they’d have thought he looked downright demure. When he stripped off his white tee, the fabric rippled like a stone-skimmed pond over his abs and Photoshop-league pectorals. He had the stance, sure, but not a whiff of swagger. Anthony kept his eyes downcast as he slid his shorts and XXXL jockstrap down to his fetlocks. Some guys might give him shit about the jockstrap, but when hauling a whole lot of lumber, it was wisest to strap it down twice.

Ramboi Jensen was the only one who seemed to weaponize his nudity. To turn it into an act of defiance. I’m not stripping for you, I’m stripping at you. An unmissable hip thrust drove the fuck-you point home with a flourish of artistic literalism. Newly reminded to clear his own horns, he shucked off and wadded up his black tank top, tossing it against the wall with an echoing splort. Because fuck that wall. His silky workout shorties, standard US Marines issue (they weren’t) and flattering as all sweet goodness (debatable), joined them shortly, a slightly damp projectile. Like so many warriors before–Iceni, Gauls, berserkers, some very niche wrestlers–he understood the primal filament of thought connecting “look at my dick” and “I would like to do a violence on you”.

And so the four brothers-in-sweat stood in a messy row, each with his eyes pinned on some fixed point. The floor, a spot of rust on a locker, a loose fitting on the fluorescent light panel that had never turned on to anyone’s knowledge. So long as they had something at which to stare with solemn, baleful eyes, they could pretend they were in a field or a babbling brook or some comforting shit like that. Anywhere other than here, now, doing this.

Coach Mills swung the paddle like a cricket bat, getting a good feel for its heft and speed. Not that he needed to, having long since come to think of the bubunga butt burner as an extension of his own arm. But standing there like a mannequin while his boys undressed would have felt creepy, and he liked the way they flinched at the sound of a broad, wooshing arc. “I don’t suppose we have a volunteer to go first?”

Tyler was quick to raise his hand. The team’s resident softy and all-around nice guy, he wasn’t the type to assert himself often. This, however, seemed to matter to him. “If nobody else calls it, let’s go. I’ll start.”

“Tyler, uh, bud, you… you might wanna dab that brown nose of yours.” teased Andy. As if he were in any position to do so whatsoever. 

Tyler shrugged the jab off like so much humidity. “I’m not going to elaborate, but I’ve got a sister one year older than me and strict folks. Trust me when I say that, if you have to go at all, you want to go first. You’ll, eh, you’ll get it soon.” Spoken with the soft confidence of one who knew precisely what he was talking about and didn’t feel the need to prove it. The point would imminently prove itself. “How ya want me, Coach?”

Pleased to get some cooperation already, Coach Mills rapped the paddle’s rounded corner not far from where Tyler’s clothes lay folded on the bench. “I want your back arched, on your tiptoes, feet back here where the white tile starts.” One advantage of an antiquated facility was the wealth of reference points everywhere he looked, such as the water faucet that sounds like a saxophone and the spot on the floor that looks like a grapefruit vampire. You needed to see it to understand, but it really did. “Place your palms flat on the bench here, and keep both your arms and legs at least shoulder-width apart. Like you’re doing pushups… but kinda wrong. Like Anthony does them.”

“Uh, my hooves slip and you know it.”

“Dude,” spat Andy, “I have hooves. Jensen has hooves. You just have bad form.”

“Ahem?” Coach Mills waited for Tyler to comply, but he didn’t wait long. That surprised him; Tyler was one of his most easygoing athletes and a great team player, but he hadn’t expected the panther to be so… that. To slip, almost slink, down into precisely the position asked of him with all the self-consciousness of a nude model at the Sorbonne. Or a common subway masturbator, whichever. Inviting the show to go on with his body language, unbothered by the exposure.

“Just, ah.” Tyler held his ears all the way flat against his skull. His eyes looked a tad wet at the corners. “Please don’t tell my dad, okay? It’s a whole thing.”

Coach Mills was pretty sure he knew just what kind of thing it was. “Why would I talk to your dad? You’re in college; we don’t write notes home here.” And only after he’d said it did he realize he might have wasted a valuable bargaining chip in the unlikely event that Tyler made a scene. “Everyone waiting your turn, watch, and watch close.” The burly bear of a bear tapped Tyler’s tail, curled as it was between his legs, and used the paddle’s surface to make minute adjustments to his posture. “You seriously gotta keep your tail out of the way and-”

Without further prompting, and showing the seasoned, unencumbered grace of an OnlyFur star, Tyler lifted it out of the way. Its tip flicked, and he turned his head to watch Coach Mills with a nervous but dispassionate interest. The admittedly cute star of his tailhole stood out like a flare against inky black fur, which was broken up by lighter rosettes only on his tummy and legs. His almost perfectly round coinpurse was highly visible between his thighs.

“-and yeah, I think you got it.” There seemed little point in drawing this out, so the Grand Warden of Orange Cones took aim.

Everyone, even Coach Mills, was shocked at how horrifically loud the paddle’s crack was. The report echoed off rust-stained walls and patchwork ceiling panels barely covering rolls of silvery duct insulation. None of them had ever fired a gun inside a giant metal hamster ball, because why, but Andy imagined just that. His teammates just imagined themselves in Tyler’s position, both wishing they’d gone first and wondering whether an impromptu Faustian pact might get them out of this.

Tyler was more surprised than anyone when he didn’t scream. Didn’t yelp, didn’t wheeze, didn’t even cry out. He knew as well as any other resident of his neighborhood that he was not the most quiet recipient of spankings. But the noise didn’t arrive. Instead, he jerked his head back as far as his neck permitted and twisted up his feline face into a wide-eyed grimace. The way a mime might convey both mortal terror and food poisoning at once. 

Coach Mills lost a bet with himself. Maybe he hadn’t pegged the big cat perfectly after all. But he consoled himself with the ear-pinning crack of wood meeting boy. Tyler danced on his toepads, his feet never quite leaving the ground. Only when the paddle slammed home for the third time did any sort of noise escape the panther, a groan that could have passed for the swaying of an old oak.

Only a lesser man than the bear would have stooped to mocking Tyler’s reactions. But he came awfully close when the bubble-butted track star bounced his ass up and down like an apprentice stripper. This was followed by more dancing, toe to toe in a vain attempt to disperse the sting, and a whining, grating squee that neither your cat nor your car engine should make.

Sympathies rose with the scent of fear sweat. Abstractly, in the thoughts-and-prayers sense rather than something that would put their momentarily pristine boy asses on the line. The other players still found points on which to fix their unwavering gaze. Only they all picked the same point now, and it was their buddy’s naked ass.

Every feline family knew about the Claws Talk. That essential discussion about how not everyone had claws as pointy as an obsidian arrowhead, and most people didn’t like having claws sunk into their flesh except sometimes as a sex thing. Even then, be careful and bring a first aid kit. Fuck it, thought Tyler, and he allowed his to sink into the bench’s wood. Firmly enough to anchor him there, maybe to help him fight the urge to swing around and snap that paddle in half.

Coach Mills slapped said paddle with fierce intensity and precise aim. With minor deviations, accounted for by Tyler’s kittenish squirming, the faint lines under fur which marked the paddle’s edge were impressively parallel. 

Finally, either because his eyes were burning or his brain broke, Tyler yeowled in pain. A high, jagged, keening cry, the perfect complement to those tears welling up. More than welling up; as soon as the report from the next swat faded to a ringing in the ears, they rolled down his cheeks in narrow rivulets. 

For once, Coach Mills wasn’t at all inclined to tell anyone to shut up. He wanted them to cry and howl and carry on. He wanted the experience seared onto their egos, and for nobody to go around telling people how they totally toughed it out. He wanted them to understand the profound difference between being disciplined as a student athlete and spanked like a naughty boy who dented dad’s car.

That distinction was certainly not lost on Tyler. Despite his best attempts at cooperation, he needed two reminders not to pivot on the balls of his paws and squeeze his thighs together. The first reminder was free. The second cost him a dizzying pair of swats across his thighs.

The sleek kitty’s tears wet the bench with all the drama of a rainy Hollywood funeral. Though even the most emotionally insecure bro would be forced to admit this was full-on crying, Tyler’s audio track wasn’t a match. He internalized every wail he could, which was obviously more dignified in that it made him sound like he was teaching himself how to deepthroat with a ghost pepper. Like a man. 

Neither carved from cold stone nor molded from pussy, Coach Mills weighed the benefits of proceeding. Beneath the melanistic coat, Tyler’s skin was quite dark as well, which made it difficult to judge the physical effect he was having. Where rising weals should have been red and blooming bruises should have been purple, both were a mottled brownish-gray on him.

Eh. three more ought to suffice. Three of the firmest, most calculated, most motherfuckingestly awful swats ever to light up Tyler’s bottom. One, and he gasped, somehow coughing and moaning at the same time. Two, and he let out a dreadful MROW. Nearly the exact same sound male felines stereotypically made when getting their barbs stroked just right by a queen; whoever named female cats hit the mark with that one. Or, in Tyler’s case, by a latex sheath which at least brushed the copyright on a certain fictional embodiment of the deadly sin of gluttony. He’d chosen that over half his textbooks last semester and regretted nothing. Three, and he scream-choked like the chastised kitten he felt himself to be.

Before going off to school, most of Tyler’s spankings ended with his nose stuck in the corner of his dad’s home office, with or without a similarly sore sibling just opposite. It wasn’t fun, but it offered a sense of finality–of closure–he now realized had been comforting. This one ended with Coach Mills grabbing him firmly by the scruff and marching his sniffly paddled ass to the wall behind his friends. He didn’t need to ask for direction, as the grizzled grizzly did all the directing for him. Soft, mauve feline nose set against the strip of paint-stripped wood into which windows had been set once upon a time. Hands on the back of his head, fingers laced together. Back straight, legs together, knees trembling. That last one wasn’t specified, but there was nothing Tyler could do about it.

Even a mediocre pair of ears could have heard the lone drops of water splattering concrete in the showers. The stillness which descended on that locker room was almost otherworldly. Tyler’s lingering sobs were mostly of the silent variety, playing out in the jerky, arrhythmic shuddering of his shoulders. 

“Now you know what it’s about,” barked Coach Mills to the group as a whole. “And none of you can pretend you weren’t watching. So do what kittycat did and don’t bother playing dumb.” He swung his paddlin’ arm in a great circle to free a whole sheet of bubble wrap’s worth of pops.

Before the ensuing pause could heat into a simmer, Andy took a step forward. “I’ll go next, Coach.” He cast a glance to Anthony and Jensen, maybe expecting to be fought on this point. Nobody cared to push back. 

Everybody was now perfectly clear on what Tyler had meant about going first. Hopefully this would be one of those lessons they could tuck away and never call upon, but sure as anything, they’d all remember it. But knowing it would be better to get it over with and actually volunteering for the hot seat were as far removed from one another as knowing you ought to study and cracking open a book.

Andy waited for instructions he knew weren’t coming. Surprise, they didn’t come. Envying Tyler’s soft feline footpaws, he adopted a wide stance in as close an approximation of tiptoes as he could manage. He was shocked to discover that he was near tears, the humiliation and stupidity of his predicament utterly stifling. This was indeed bullshit, and nothing could convince him otherwise. Speaking before thinking, he closed his eyes and blurted out, “Coach, can you make them look away or something? I got all my shit on display here. It’s making my skin crawl.”

“Can, yep. Can do.” Coach Mills twirled the paddle in his grip, almost dropped it, and tried to play it off as an intentional flourish. “Won’t, though.”

No matter how close to the chest he played his cards, ranking students on the cuteness of their asses felt certain to herald a messy job hunt. Still, Coach Mills knew that Andy’s was damn near perfect by virtue of having functional eyes. It would have been crazy to deny. The ocean was big and wet, Rogue One was the best Star Wars movie, Andy had the butt of a Shinto kami whose whole thing was having a perfectly rounded ass. Coach Mills’ time stationed in Japan left him with the notion that there were supposed to be eight million kami; surely there had to be The Super Cake One. Ō-ketsugami.

Enough staring. Wait, just a little more staring… okay, that was enough. The paddle rested across Andy’s cheeks, an asp about to strike. The (incorrect) working definition of potential energy. There it stayed while Andy made a series of corrections, attempting to refine his posture without really knowing what it lacked. To the uninitiated, it resembled wiggling. How it differed was anyone’s guess.

Andy was just starting to wonder if the old bear had experienced a mini-stroke or something when an echoing crack drew his full attention. Less the crack, really, and more the explosion of pain spanning his ass. He didn’t say anything, didn’t make a peep. He was too distracted. This was an unfamiliar sort of pain, one his first impulse was to examine like a detached and impartial outsider. Why were there so many terms for describing every possible quality of wine and so few describing the depths of nuance within pain? Breaking a finger and sitting on your balls weren’t remotely the same sensation; why the lack of specificity? And for something as universally relatable as-

Another wooden whallop promptly derailed that train of thought. Andy rocked forward, gasping. The urge to contemplate pain from a metacognitive standpoint fled him. In its place was a much stronger urge to scream bloody murder and jump Looney Tunes-style clean through the ceiling. “A… a… aaaooow?” Why did it come out as a question? In any case, the answer was yes, ow. More ow came knocking as the paddle flattened Andy’s nicely supple buck cheeks with seismic force.

“Ah, the SHITTING…” Neither a proper curse nor a complete sentence, but apt enough. His bruised dignity was tomorrow’s problem; his bruising ass was a right now issue of some importance. 

“Back in position,” Coach Mills grumbled. “You’re a long way from done.”

Huh? Oh. This was the deer’s first indication that he wasn’t already. He’d shot up, bent at the middle like a strung bow, with his head tossed back and both hands clasping his behind. All he knew to do was shake his head; he pictured one of those RPG dialog prompts, but every option was “Oh hell no.”

“You got ‘til the count of three to” do something or other. What, exactly, Andy didn’t register. He just kept on shaking his head and failing to rub that raw heat away. His ass had to be the deep red of an overripe tomato by now. Peering over his shoulder and sticking it out, he was horrified to see a pair of pert tawny cheeks, each rocking half a white spade shape. Light sand-brown spots trailing down his hips and thighs. So… normal.

“Nope. Coach, nah man. No.” Oop. Expecting a jet of piping hot invectives, the buck rushed to walk his statements back. “I mean that’s, like, way too intense. Can’t we do something else? Please.” Andy despised the naked desperation in his voice, which faltered and cracked. “I’ll run laps until there’s a big round ditch up to my knees. Please? Please.”

“Nobody’s keeping you prisoner here, Tanaka. You wanna walk? You know the way out. Might want to put some drawers on, but that’s a you problem.” Coach Mills stuck a stubby, clawed fingertip in Andy’s face. “But if you stay, we finish this. Not until you want me to stop, but until I’m good and ready. Clear?”

Summoning up his reserves of courage, Andy nodded. With a tremble in his hands, he resumed the assigned position. This time he figured he’d keep his eyes closed. If knowing a swat was on the way made it worse, then logically, the absence of awareness should sdjklhfgbvkhzsdgvf

Nopenopenopenopenope. Coach Mills drilled that thing across Andy’s tender sit spots. The sweet-cheeked buckboy willed himself to remain perfectly still, which accomplished dick all because he was up like a rogue coil. He didn’t think he was crying, but at the same time he acknowledged that his breath shook out in ragged gusts and the taste of salt clung to his lips. “Coach, I can’t. I actually can’t. I want to, goddesses, I want to. I’m trying. But I don’t even know I’m doing it.” Andy’s big, expressive, watery prey eyes begged for… what? Guidance? Encouragement?

“Pace?” Coach Mills snapped his fingers, and his coltish MVP trotted over obediently. “Tanaka’s doing his best. But I think he could use a hand. Wanna be a teammate?”

Anthony’s curt nod indicated little. Only that he understood, and that he’d step in to help a bro in need. If he thought about it, this wasn’t much different from passing the ball or signaling a maneuver. Naked. While his buddy was getting his ass worn out like a mouthy fawn. The stallion took a knee and invited Andy to surrender both wrists into his industrial strength grip. He did, trusting as could be. Trusting without reservation. Their eyes met.

“You got this. Okay? You got this, no problem. And hey,” Anthony’s smirk should have been noxious, but the boy was charming despite himself. “No homo, right?”

Andy screwed his muzzle up in confusion. “We… we dated for, like, five months, dude.” Whatever admonishment he had cooking went out the window the instant Andy felt the paddle rap his rear again. Whiiiiiiiiine…

Coach Mills took fullest advantage of no longer having to anticipate Andy’s twitchy movements and random ass-covering. He paddled the squealing, squalling buck with steady rhythm, pausing only to check his progress. Where Tyler’s black-on-black color scheme defied evaluation, Andy’s peach of a butt glowed satisfyingly red beneath thin fur. It was kind of nature to adorn such spankable rumps with a patch of white through which blushing showed freely.

Andy struggled helplessly against Anthony’s hold, but his wrists might as well have been encased in concrete. This should have been terrifying. It wasn’t. No longer having the option to tuck and cover was liberating. It freed him up to focus on his suffering. 

Noisy claps on crimson cheeks drowned out everything other than the wailing. Andy didn’t just break the promise he made himself to remain stoic. He broke it, stomped it, lit it aflame, peed out the fire, and dispersed the ashes by rocket’s red glare. Chained sobs opened up only for the YELP and heaving breaths following each swat.

Coach Mills determined that just two whacks didn’t count. One barely clipped Andy’s hip thanks to a sudden sway. The other whooshed straight over the spot previously occupied by a butt, barely grazing Anthony’s mane. No matter; that only meant his grand finale counted five scorchers rather than three. 

Andy was stood against the wall, mirroring Tyler’s stance with his nose pressed to wood, before he fully processed that his paddling was over. As he presumably hadn’t teleported there, he winced to think what that short walk of shame must have looked like. In his peripheral vision, he saw Tyler looking suitably humbled. Well that was some instant camaraderie, alright.

Jensen steeled himself and took a step forward. Might as well get this over with.

“No, not you.” Coach Mills used the paddle to direct traffic. “Pace. You’re up.”

“But I-”

“This isn’t a discussion. Pace, come on, let’s go.”

Anthony cleverly thought to hide a half-chubby the size of a baguette behind his hand. Just the one hand. Covered about, oh… nothing. But hey, he didn’t feel as self conscious that way. “I’m sorry, Coach. Really. What I did was wrong.” The horse swallowed hard, not quite up to the challenge of eye contact.

Huh. Coach Mills narrowed his eyes, brushy ‘stache puffing out on his breath. He suspected this was a ploy for sympathy, but things didn’t add up one way or the other. Imagining the stallion genuinely contrite over something was just as difficult as imagining him with the mental bandwitdh to be properly manipulative. Regardless, he counted his blessings. What was he going to do if Anthony didn’t cooperate, force him? Fat chance.

“Uh. Well. I’m glad you’re doing some reflecting. First things first, though.”

Neither of them accounted for what an absolute unit the horse was. When Anthony set his hooves and palms at their appointed spots, his musclebound ass was presented at about the same height as Coach Mills’ nacho-sculpted chins. This posed a logistical problem for a grizzly who wasn’t at all accustomed to feeling short.

Some of the most uncomfortable fumbling ever ensued. Anthony seemed uncharacteristically willing to play the good boy. He guided himself, from sleek hips to those steel girder shoulders, precisely and promptly as directed. It was just that, as a rule, any close interaction between dudes who weren’t on dicking terms felt weird when one of them had an erection fit to hang a coat off.

Anthony was getting pretty pissed about that bit, truth be told. Was it just stress wood? Was that a thing? Or was there going to be a lot of deep introspection in his near future? Did he kinda-sorta get off on being stripped, or on seeing his teammates paddled… or on the idea of being paddled himself? He didn’t like any of those options. But, in the longstanding tradition of manly men raised by older manly men to be ball-achingly manly, he embraced the mirage of a necessary Option D with delusional confidence. 

Ultimately, the solution was for Anthony to just lay across the bench crossways, its perpetually wet boards pressed into his abdomen. Swollen, twitching tip resting unacknowledged on cold concrete. Just don’t think about it, he told himself, which proved akin to telling an hyperactive kid not to think about the fireworks display and focus on drying paint instead. Anthony surprised himself by quite instinctively lifting his hips a ways. And daggum, if that didn’t make his flanks a tempting target!

Coach Mills was plenty warmed up now. Almost limber, in that less of him cracked than usual when he moved. He lined up the first of many swats more quickly, more settled, more sure. And he delivered it from a place of coolness and familiarity, making for a smooth segway into the next. And the next. 

Anthony knew he was going to reach back. Athletic success was all about discipline, right? He hoped that was true, and not just something reassuring to tell guys born without mechanically perfect physiques. He balled his hands into fists and planted them on the floor, determined not to let them budge. Dial in. Mind over matter. Other fanciful hokum. 

The stallion had once been in the right place at the right time to observe one of his sister’s epic tannings. He’d been amused by the way she kept kicking her legs out, stiff and straight, each time mom’s willow switch scorched a dawny pink stripe where she wouldn’t be sitting anytime soon. The delicious schadenfreude of that day was stolen away in an instant when Anthony caught himself doing the exact same thing.

Between paddle falls, Anthony kept quiet. He wasn’t afraid of crying; he didn’t think so, anyway. That barrier was well and truly shattered within this sore little clique by now. He just didn’t, or maybe couldn’t. Whenever that smooth bubinga snapped hellfire into dappled colt-toned cheeks, Anthony let loose a guttural whinny. A sort of cross between a donkey’s bray and a coyote’s yip, but recorded on cassette tape and forced through a meat grinder. 

The heat rose quickly from unfriendly to unbearable. Anthony felt a pang of jealousy over Tyler’s cutesy girlyman tears, more so over Andy’s full-on bitch bawling. That he labeled them so didn’t strike Anthony as a potential reason why his body refused to give him any of his own. Come on! If he could cry every time he thought about how Gandalf had sent an extra eagle to bring Smeagol home–fuck, fucking wizard truly believed in the capacity for change–he could also cry from this. And yet, he didn’t. 

Coach Mills concentrated the bulk of his attention in a narrow banda where Anthony’s ass was thickest. Where it bounced the most. The horse didn’t have much fat on him, and wasn’t much given to bouncing. This therefore seemed like the range to roast. Bounce was good, bounce was safe. Bounces meant bruises. 

The pitch and volume of Anthony’s meat grinder mashup noises rose in direct proportion to the burn. That awful, clawing, bone-deep burn that didn’t get the tiniest bit better no matter how he squirmed. Wood slapped devilishly hard against his glossy fur, which offered about as much protection as a happy thought. A sheen of brilliant apple redness peeked through, most of all when he popped his legs out like they were spring powered. 

Whether he was just in the groove or done with all this business, Coach Mills allowed noticeably less time between blows. He didn’t know Anthony’s pain signals well; before this, he was only theoretically aware that Anthony experienced pain. The boy was a tank. But in the interest of fairness, ol’ grizzlegut couldn’t go any harder on him just because he was built tough. The bear flicked his wrist at the end of each swing, which he found suited this lowrider position better. Everything else skirted guesswork. 

Anthony raised his fists up to his face and brought them pounding back down in time with the kicking. He for one was not worried about the intricacies, or about what his buddies got. His internal monologue was reduced to variations of “ow” and “shit” and “ow, shit” on an endless loop. Desperate, he tried to writhe the pain away, hooves clacking hard against the floor. It helped. Or maybe it didn’t. Anthony didn’t dwell on it, only recited the Litany of Ow Shit under his breath between those shrill equine yodel-spasms over which he had no control.

When the dimples on Anthony’s cheeks framed a uniform study in red, Coach Mills was ready to call it quits. He brushed away a bead of sweat traveling slowly down his muzzle. The odds that admin would go for adding competitive butt-beating to the core fitness curriculum were slim, but he marveled at the level of exertion required. If events were opened up to paying spectators, that would solve the school’s budget problems forever. MIT would come begging for a lil’ taste of that surplus. But this felt like another one of those ideas he should keep to himself.

Coach Mills scruffed Anthony to pull him up just like the others. It felt like a back injury waiting to happen, and Anthony didn’t give any indication of noticing. Pivot to an opportunity for obedience. “You know the drill by now. I want that horse snout of yours against the wall, hands on the back of your head. And if I see any of you rubbing, you’re going to have problems. Get!”

There was no accounting for just how damn cute Anthony looked shuffling along with his shorts and jock strap twisted up around his hooves. Along he waddled, just so, until he planted those hooves almost proudly shoulder-width apart and assumed the prescribed stance. Though he faced the wall, a considerable distance separated his velvety nose from it.

Tyler risked lifting his nose for a sideways glance. He looked, puzzled, at Anthony’s blushing face. Then he looked down, and out roared a single stray belly laugh. If he got in more trouble, so be it; some things demanded to be acknowledged with a ssnnnrrrkkt.

“Pace, you get lost on your way to the wall, son? Look at your red-assed buddies and do what they’re doing. Nose goes on wood, ricky-fuckin’-tick.”

The hoss clopped nervously and shifted his weight from side to side, but made no forward motion. He might have groaned, or perhaps it was the ancient pipes in this building about to cook off again.

Coach Mills waited what he felt was a respectful amount of time before taking matters into his own hands. Most would have called it a blink, or a half-blink, maybe a nanoblink, but respectful was relative in this case. “Son, I know you’re not making a bad choice right now. ‘Cuz if you mean to impress your teammates, this ain’t the way to-”

What separated Anthony from the wall was neither empty space nor misguided stubbornness, but better than two feet of granite-hard horse cock. From its proudly flared tip swung a pendulous glob of precum, stubbornly refusing to drip. Welp… not a lot Coach Mills cared to do about that.

“Ope.” Coach Mills’ midwesterner was showing. “Alright then. Just. Uh. Yep. Just do your, ah, do your best.”

Jensen readied himself, only to be hoisted back upright by a massive bear paw. He quirked an eyebrow, glancing to Mills in a mounting spirit of dread. Why dread? He couldn’t put his finger on it. But he was certain it belonged.

Coach Mills grinned the way he did when he knew the other team had committed to a game-throwing mistake. “I guess now’s the time to spill the beans, boys.” He circled to stab a cold glare straight through Jensen. “See, Barcellos here is attending this fine institution on a legacy scholarship. And would you believe it?” His grin darkened further until it matched the petrification factor of his eyes. “His beneficiary–benefactor? Benefice? whatever–called me just this morning to swoop in and save his goat ass. Permission to administer corporal punishment, denied.”

Jensen blanched. Wide-eyed, riding a surge of panic, he shook his head hard enough to make the scratchy scruff of his chin wobble. “No way. There’s my permission form, right there. I signed it, I own it.” If there was one prospect infinitely worse than having to endure what his co-cheaters did, it was being the only one who didn’t. He’d be branded a buddyfucker overnight; he’d probably have to put it on his LinkedIn. “I’m an adult. It’s my decision, and I’ve made it. Give it to me, Coach. Give it to me hard.”

Oof. Phrasing. Coach Mills didn’t so much as poke at it, which Jensen took to mean that he must be in thought. Focused on something. “Sorry, fella,” growled Mills, “you may say yes, but under the circumstances I felt I had no choice but to defer to your benefarctorwhatnot.”

It said something about the privilege of Jensen’s comfortably middle-class upbringing that he hadn’t actually thought about the conditions of his scholarship. He wasn’t even fully aware that he was here on a scholarship to begin with. Bills just sort of got paid, book vouchers cleared, and fraternity introductions made by the unseen forces of the cosmos. “So,” he started in a halting tone, “when you say the… the scholarship legacy person, you don’t mean-”

“What’s up, bitches?!” boomed a deep voice from the entryway. A colossal ram who looked to be a believer in the Gaston diet announced his arrival to nobody in particular. He strode in on a red carpet which existed only in his mind, indulged in a clap-and-twirl, and flashed a professionally whitened smile.

Coach Mills swaggered up to bump the guy’s fist. “About damn time. I was starting to worry you might not make it.”

“Sorry, Coach. I forgot I had this presser thing today. Just a Q-and-A, but my agent woulda bit a chunk off my ass if I skipped it.” The new arrival took a long, scrutinizing look around from behind a pair of titanium-rimmed Carnovira athletic shades bearing his signature. He hadn’t signed them; they came from the factory that way. “Whooo-eee, does this bring back some memories! Place still has that…” he sniffed, then wrinkled his nose, like a sommelier taking notes from a 2011 Domaine Pierre-Yves Premier Cru Chardonnay into which someone had just farted. “That kinda old college stank. Hey, Coach, y’all still got that pipe in here that burns you real bad if you touch it?”

“Oh, Bernie the Burn Pipe? Nah. We had to get rid of that after, yannow. Burns.” Coach Mills shook his head and tsked, as if to say stupid lawyers with their panties in a wad.

All those whose noses were supposed to be against the wall turned to face the ram whose biceps looked like surgically embedded hams. A spark of dawning recognition zig-zagged between them, finally emerging from Tyler’s mouth. “Hey. Hey! I know you. You’re Markus.” Spoken with a reverence normally reserved for religious leaders and astronauts. 

Markus. Markus Fuckin’ Barcellos. The guy had to walk past at least three pictures of himself just to get to the locker room. A locker room in which his initials were carved into ancient cinder block, now displayed behind a small pane of plexiglass. You know you’re hot shit when someone looks at your petty act of vandalism and thinks, whoa, we have to preserve that for posterity.

“That’s right! And you’re full-ass naked.” Markus didn’t mean it as an indictment so much as a fun fact that felt worth raising. Another scan, and he locked onto Jensen’s terror-stricken face with the task and purpose of a Sidewinder missile. “Heya, little bro.” Every Geiger counter in the state must have started clicking off the beam of that grin. You could get a tan from it, or Silver Age super powers. Or properly Chernobyl’d.

“What the actual fuck are you doing here?” was what Jensen wanted to ask. Wanted to shout. “Ppfkkhwweaaahhhaa?” was what he actually asked, because this development proved to him that there was no higher power. Not a benevolent one, anyway.

“Oh, did I not tell you? Yeah, man. I got your back. As soon as I heard, I put in a call to old Coach Vosker, but he’s been dead for like three years, so I put in another call to Coach Mills, and I told him HEY,” Markus jabbed his finger into the air, “you keep your hands off my sweet, innocent lil’ baby brother, you hear me? I said, that kid may be a weird dipshit, but he’s the only brother I have, and there’s no way I’m cool with you whacking his ass until he pisses himself or makes broken Furby noises or whatever.”

Jensen know this douche routine well enough to sense the ‘but’ coming. It had to be. He’d fallen prey to the insidious ‘but’ so many times that it was scorched into his psyche to anticipate something awful at the end of any non-hostile sentence. This time it was taking unusually long. And it had been a couple years; maybe Markus had done some real maturing in the meantime.

“Not when Coach has so many rules he has to follow. Not when he’s got a job and a reputation to consider.” Ah. Not a but, per se, if functionally similar. “See, he’s only allowed to ‘discipline’ you,” he said between air quotes, “but I’m not your coach. I’m not your teacher. I’m not your boss, or your dad. I’m your big. Damn. Brother. And I’m not going to ‘discipline’ you. I’m going to literally fuck you up.”

Everyone, Jensen included, was relieved to learn that Markus was hazy on the distinction between literally and figuratively. For one in particular, though, that relief died out quick as a spark. Not knowing what else to do, Jensen bolted, making a break for the entryway. His hooves skidded on wet concrete, and he tumbled into a stack of towels.

“The hell do you think you’re going, kid?” Markus  turned out to be a lot more graceful on his feat than his built would suggest. He executed a rather dainty pirouette and snatched his panicked, yelping brother by the curlies. Er… those being his horns, what with their very pronounced curvature. 

Anybody with half an upbringing knew you simply did not grab a HABP–a Horn or Antler Bearing Person–by either. It was as unthinkably rude as asking to look inside a marsupial’s pouch or handling an otter’s favorite rock without permission. Even seeing another ram do it filled the rest with a pang of secondhand discomfort. Maybe it was okay because this was his kin, or a HABP to HABP thing. Or, most likely, it was because Markus had a full head in height and an easy hundred pounds on Jensen and intended to figuratively fuck him up.

Coach Mills read the writing on the wall. Not the permanent marker inscription reading Reigl is t[h]e cock lord. The writing that told him he might be better off not witnessing what was about to occur on school grounds. “I probably shouldn’t stick around for this. Claire’s got dinner cooking at home, and I’m late enough as it is.”

Markus shot a nod and a wave the bear’s way. “Always nice to be back at the ol’ alma mater. Catch you around, Coach.” The obscenely powerful ram was seated on the bench with his little brother–emphasis on little, given the comparison–draped face-down over his lap.

Jensen swore, or thought he swore but may have yelled gibberish. He wanted to come up with a really hurtful, devastating insult to get under Markus’ skin, but every one of which he thought applied to rams or goats generally. “You can’t… ffffkkkkk… MARKUS! Cut the shit. You can’t pull me over your knee like a goddessdamn-”

“Watch me.” Hard to argue with that, least of all when Markus pinned Jensen in place with negligible effort one-handed. He needed that other hand to strip his thick, polished leather belt out of its loops. The dreaded swish and jingle sent Jensen’s fists pounding ineffectually and his legs splay-kicking like  a frog’s. Markus doubled the belt over, its hefty silver buckle clasped in his palm for a secure grip.

Their own red rears momentarily forgotten, the other players watched in a state of transfixed awe. The train wreck kind, not the really impressive rainbow kind. Andy hated the expression “deer in the headlights”, but damn, the shoe fit. They spoke not a word, commonly aware that they were about to behold something terrible. And they would most assuredly not be looking away, nosiree. They owed it to their friend to watch. Or something. They’d justify it later. 

Jensen came dangerously close to squirming himself off Markus’ lap. Markus responded with a good-natured chuckle. And by trapping both of Jensen’s legs with his right in a hold strong enough to tow large freighters into dock. This had the added effect of pressing Jensen’s deliciously sculpted ass farther up, his balls trapped between his thighs.

“No! No! NO! Markus, fuck you, man. No. I mean it, no.” Emotion weighed down Jensen’s pleas toward the end. After that, he didn’t bother anymore. 

“See you gentlemen at practice this Friday. Not a minute late.” Basking in the glow of a job well done, Coach Mills went to stow the paddle in its case. Markus asked him offhandedly to leave it, and he was happy to comply. “Alright. Just drop it off in the faculty lounge when you’re done. You know how to get there?”

Markus answered with a thumbs up. He was in the zone. 

Coach Mills whistled on his way out of the lockers. The sun was starting to set, and he was hungry. Behind him, the wet, snapping schlaaack of leather biting flesh sounded out. Another lash made the fur on the back of his neck stand up a few seconds later. He was willing to bet that little sibling spat wouldn’t be over soon.

He checked his phone, trying to ignore the kinds of screams which usually indicated chainsaw murder. Not to mention the way he could still hear the thump of each belt stroke as it landed even as he walked away. It must have been as heavy as it looked in Markus’ grip. Claire wanted him to pick up detergent and bread.

A text from Coach Basie consisted wholly of four big red hearts. It took a second, during which the bear contemplated throwing his phone into a drain pipe somewhere, but then he got it. Four red hearts, four blazing bottoms. He was going to have fun catching up with her over lunch soon. He didn’t know what to send back except four peach emoji splashed with a red filter. 

There weren’t a whole lot of perks to being an AD at a school he sometimes had to prove existed when friends asked him where he taught. Local friends. But at least he got to go home  each day knowing he’d left an impression.