“It’s not much,” the aging spaniel said flatly as he opened the door to the trailer.

You’re not kidding, Tom thought. The place looked like it hadn’t been updated since before he was born: The floors were drab, the furnishings were dated, and the walls had wooden accents. 

“It beats sleeping in the hay loft,” the porcine replied sarcastically. He immediately regretted his tone, but he didn’t know how else to respond. He was still running on autopilot, in shock from the events of the weekend. His mental health had been in shambles for the past two years, what with his parents fighting, the arrival of his baby brother Patrick, his friends Kelly and Aaron becoming stepbrothers after their parents started seeing each other, and then their new half-step-whatever brother Henry, then Kelly going off the rails and having not one, but two kids of his own, the only thing that seemed normal and comfortable anymore was his summer job at Oxbow Ranch, a family-owned cattle farm just out of town. So when he got caught in the shower with his little sister Beth, that’s where he ran.

“It’s no trouble,” the senior canine replied with a chuckle, “none of the kids are using it, and it’ll be nice to have someone reliable here for a change. Besides,” he continued as he stepped inside, “you’re not the first stray we’ve taken in!” 

Don gestured to the right, through the door into the trailer’s living room. It was bright, with windows on both sides, and sparsely furnished with a brown floral-print couch, a solid wood coffee table, and a large TV cabinet. “Satellite TV,” he bragged, “more channels than you’ll ever need. And there’s a VCR in the cabinet in case you wanna rent a movie or somethin’.” He walked up the steps and turned left, gesturing down to the far end of the trailer through a sort of walk-through kitchen, with grey vinyl flooring and a beige fridge that rattled whenever it started running. “You’ve got a few pots and pans in case you want a midnight snack,” he said, grunting as he leaned down to open the cupboards and show off the contents, “but there’s no point in you holing up here for dinner when Claudia keeps cooking like we’ve still got a full house. Y’know how she gets.”

Tom smiled. Claudia was the matriarch of the Oxbow family, a blue heeler, younger than Don by a few years. She used to be a switchboard operator for one of the big phone companies back in the day before she and Don settled down. She had plenty of stories about living and working in the ‘big city’ back before Tom and his parents were even born. She also made the best pancakes. 

Tom opened the fridge, thinking about food, and was surprised to find a twelve-pack of green cans on the bottom shelf. He picked one up, thinking it was soda. “Fuzz lite,” he read out loud. “They spelled ‘light’ wrong . . .” He quickly realized this wasn’t soda at all and quickly put the can down, thinking he’d seen something he shouldn’t.

Don just let out a throaty chuckle. “It’s just beer,” he grinned, “yours if you want it. If you’re old enough to live on your own than you’re old enough for a cold one. They’re just leftovers from calving season last spring anyways.” He closed the fridge door and gestured to the rest of the trailer, continuing the tour as he talked. “Couple years ago I had some hooligans staying here. They decided to go into town and get drunk one night, and didn’t come back ‘till next morning. One’a my cows must’ve gone down just after they left, and by the time I went to check on’er, both her and the calf were gone.”

“I’m sorry,” Tom mumbled. He had no idea these cans had such a tragic backstory.

“It is what it is,” Don shrugged, “But ever since then I make sure I keep my helpers stocked up on whatever vices they need. Booze, cigarettes, porno, don’t care. Whatever it is, it’ll cost me less than a dead heifer.”

It was a morbid point of view, Tom thought, treating the cows and calves like a numbers game. It was an unpleasant reminder that as much as Don and his wife loved the farm and all their animals, there was still a business to run.

The pair walked through the kitchen, past the bathroom and the back door. Tom could see a trail worn into the vinyl tile from the back door to the bathroom from years of heavy boot treads. There was a washer and dryer beside the door, both metal and yellowed with age.

“Full bathroom,” Don explained, “but you’re sharing well-water and septic with the house, so don’t go crazy. No hour-long showers! Fuckin’ teenagers,” he mumbled with a side-eye.

Tom nodded obediently and peered into the bedroom at the end of the trailer. It was almost a mirror image of the living room on the other end, only instead of a couch and TV cabinet, it had a bare twin bed and a dresser.

“There used to be a second bed in here,” Don explained, “we normally have two farmhands working in shifts during calf season. But since it’s just you for now we pulled it back into the house. We also pulled some linens out of the spare room, Claudia’s got them on the line now so they’re clean for you tonight.”

Tom nodded. He wasn’t sure how long he was going to be staying – maybe things would blow over with his family and everything would be fine by tomorrow, or maybe he could stay for the entire haying season and go home in the fall. School was out for the summer, the boar reasoned inside his head, and Don certainly didn’t seem to mind an extra set of hands around the ranch.

Days quickly bled into weeks. Tom’s daily routine was physically and mentally draining: He was up at dawn to help Don with the cattle, and then he joined the Oxbow family in the main house for breakfast. After breakfast he and Don had a chance to work on long-term projects or odd jobs before breaking for the afternoon, and then it was back to work again after dinner putting the cattle to bed and getting ready for the next morning. He and his friend Aaron texted back and forth or called in the evening when minutes were cheap, but aside from that he didn’t really have anybody to talk to, at least not anyone his age.

He did, however, meet the other “strays” Don was referring to. At the table with them during meals were a pair of equines – donkeys, specifically – a woman almost old enough to be Tom’s mother, and a boy who looked like he was about kindergarten-aged, just like Tom’s sister Beth. Both equines had sandy brown fur, dark curly hair, and striking green eyes. The little boy’s ears seemed comically large, drooping almost down to his shoulders. If he ever grew into them, Tom mused, he was going to be a massive stallion indeed. The colt also had slightly darker stripes along his arms and face that were just barely visible in the indoor light, something that Tom didn’t see mirrored on woman that he assumed to be the boy’s mother.

The pair said little during mealtimes, but the woman always helped Claudia clean up after they were done while the colt scampered upstairs. Occasionally he heard talking or shouting in an unfamiliar language from upstairs if he and Don were working inside. Don never formally introduced Tom to the pair, and Tom never summoned the courage to ask, so they existed in an awkward silence, occupying the same space but barely interacting.

It was early July, the start of haying season, when Tom finally took initiative to find out more. Haying season was a grand affair – the farm had hundreds of acres of hay and alfalfa that needed to be mowed, raked, baled and then transported for storage. If the weather was right and the fields were fertile, sometimes they could get two or even three cuts, which meant doing the whole process over and over again. The Oxbow cubs and grandcubs usually came back to the ranch for a few days to help out, and Don always hired a bunch of schoolcubs like Tom for extra help as ‘hayhands’ for the summer. This year was no different. 

One morning Tom caught the tail end of an argument between Don and the mysterious donkey-lady, and her heavy accent and broken English confirmed she wasn’t from around here. The younger colt clung to her legs, his tail swishing back and forth with anticipation. The stripes he noticed earlier were much more visible in the summer sun, thin strips of dark fur that lined his arms, legs, and face, contrasting with a bright orange shirt and light blue shorts. Curious, Tom thought, he’d never seen a donkey with stripes before!

From what Tom was able to gather, Don wanted the little colt to help out with the haying and the equine woman was having none of it. But the little colt’s body language showed an eagerness and an excitement that Tom was compelled to take advantage of. Against his better judgment, he stepped in.

“I can show him the ropes,” he offered, trying to convince both Don and Maria, “didn’t we have some of the grandcubs helping to stack the bales on the trailer last year?”

The donkey colt looked up to his mother, then over to Don, and then looked Tom up and down, puzzled. They had sat across from each other at dinner for almost a month now but hadn’t said a word, and Tom assumed the pair just didn’t speak enough English to be comfortable in a conversation.

“Excuse me,” the colt finally spoke up, still staring at the boar, “Where’s your fur?”

The mother equine was quick to respond. “¡Oye!” She snapped, giving her son a brisk tug on the ear, “¡No seas grosero! ¡Eso no se pregunta, mijo!”

Tom laughed, looking down at himself in his plain brown shirt and baggy shorts. He crouched down and offered his arm for the colt to feel. “It looks weird, doesn’t it? My fur is just just really, really short. It’s like peach fuzz!”

The little colt reached out to hesitantly run his fingers along Tom’s bare skin. “It tickles,” he grinned.

“So whaddya think,” Tom asked, still crouched to address the donkey boy directly, “want to be our stack boss? You get to ride on top of the trailer and tell us where to throw the hay!”

The assurances of someone closer to the colt’s age seemed to sway his reluctant mother, and he could see the giddiness in the foal’s eyes as she started to relent before she finally cracked with a resigned sigh and a nod.

Don snorted. “Working for a potro,” he teased, “first time for everything!”

“¡no soy potro!” the colt protested.

“Well what’s your name then, stack boss?” Tom asked as they corralled him into the back of Don’s truck to meet the crew in the first field.

“Eduardo Augusto Garcia,” The colt recited proudly, puffing out his chest.

“Thomas Sizemore,” Tom replied, “but call me Tom.” He shook the foal’s hand formally, then shooed him up into the truck bed and warned him to hang on before getting into the cab with Don.

“So,” Tom began, now that they were alone, “what’s their story?”

The spaniel shrugged. “Same old, same old,” he replied, “Maria and Eduardo Garcia, mother and son on the run from who-knows-what. Maria’s easy on the eyes, handy in the kitchen and leaves every room cleaner than she found it. I told her as long as she’s willing to help out, she and her boy are welcome to stay as long as they like, same as you. But that doesn’t mean her kid gets a free ride – Everyone’s gotta pull their weight around here.”

Tom looked out the back window of the truck at the kindergarten-aged colt as Don talked. He was crouched down and hanging on to the side of the truck bed, the wind blowing his curly hair. He seemed so innocent, the boar couldn’t imagine what a kid like him would need to run away from.

The haying itself went as well as could be expected. The crew consisted of Don Oxbow at the wheel of the tractor with whatever attachments were needed for the job, while Tom, Eduardo, and the assembled crew of hired hands and helpful neighbours raked the mowed hay into windrows. After the field was mowed, Don swapped the tiller for the baler, and Eduardo watched wide-eyed as the giant machine drove around, sucking up mountains of loose hay and spitting out tightly-wrapped bales.

The group broke at mid-day to devour a smorgasbord of sandwiches, wraps, and salads crafted by Claudia and Maria, and then everyone went back to work to load the bales and bring them home. When they got back to the field, the teenage boar hoisted the little colt up and set him firmly on the trailer. “Alright, stack boss,” he grinned, “we’re gonna toss the bales up to you, and you just have to put them on top of each other like really big building blocks to make sure they don’t fall, yeah? You just tell us where you want us to throw’em!”

The donkey colt nodded eagerly, standing tall as the trailer started to wobble into motion. He rolled the bales into place as Tom and the other hayhands lobbed them up, and then climbed higher and higher onto the pile until Tom and the others couldn’t throw the bales high enough. “¡Ira, ira!” Eduardo squealed, shrieking with glee over the noise of the machinery as he climbed and stomped on the bales, “¡soy un gigante!” 

“It’s the attack of the fifty-foot potro!” Tom shouted back.

The process repeated when it came time for the hay to be stored, with the nimble colt clambering over bale after bale to help stack them in the loft as the rest of the crew hoisted them up.

Eduardo clearly loved it. Whether it was the independence, the authority, or the attention he got from being part of a team, there was definitely something awakened in the little colt that day. Tom loved it too, seeing the little foal so happy made the boar feel like a big brother again. 

That night, after a chat with the Oxbows, he made a phone call to his family and then another few calls to his friends Aaron and Kelly, letting them know he was going to move to the ranch indefinitely. His parents seemed only too happy to start cleaning out his room, loudly proclaiming that they were going to turn it into a nursery for baby Patrick. They didn’t even seem to care that staying to work on the farm likely meant he wasn’t going back to finish school in the fall. After the decision was made, Aaron and Kelly picked up the stuff his parents set aside, and drove them out to the ranch in Kelly’s car. They even managed to pick up his video game console and a few movies.

From then on, Tom and Eduardo were a team. The little kinder-colt helped out with chores as much as his age would allow, and he stuck to Tom’s side like glue. The older porcine never talked down to him or called him by his full name, instead shortening it to “Eddy” or, more frequently, “potro”. Don even started to give the colt an allowance (over Maria’s protests), further cementing the equine’s independence. There was a part of Tom that wanted to take their brotherly relationship a step further, but he was still sore from being caught with his sister, and with Don or Maria never far away, the teenage boar never really had an opportunity to act on his urges. It was especially awkward when the chores turned from haying to milking, and he had to show his little protege how to clean the cows’ udders and attach milking cups. He had to make do with the photographs and home movies that Aaron and Kelly brought over to fulfill his teenage needs – pics of Aaron and Beth, or Beth and Patrick, even that video of Kelly giving birth in the school washroom that Aaron sneakily recorded.

When he wasn’t going through his old home movies or playing video games, he was exploring the myriad of channels available on the farm’s satellite TV. He found everything from cartoons to daytime dramas, and news to science fiction. He even found a channel that played nothing but game shows, and he often had it on when he was home for some extra background noise. 

During quiet moments, Tom started to settle in and try and make peace with his sudden shunt into adulthood. He mourned his childhood in is own way, and did his best to make peace with the isolation of adolescent farm life. He envied Aaron – the little porker managed to turn his perversions into a job and now he was babysitting for other families, bragging about his exploits via text message. He also started sampling the beer in the fridge – he found it foully bitter with a vaguely bread-like aftertaste, but it quickly started to grow on him. It made him feel warm and fuzzy on the inside, and he found that just a single can made it easier to take his mind off the trauma of his previous home life. Video games started to feel more fun after a drink, too, even if he definitely was worse at them. He also noticed that getting up for chores in the morning became a lot more difficult after a can or two, and he quickly learned to moderate his intake. He didn’t want to become a liability, not after the Oxbows had put so much trust in him. 

A few weeks later, it was time to go into the fields again for the second cut. Eddy stepped back into the position of “stack boss” with gusto, getting more comfortable with shouting orders in English, and even asked for an extra set of hands on the trailer when the stacks of bales got too high. Things were a little more crowded in the hay loft this time around, and Eddy took it upon himself to try and move some of the heavier second-cut bales. Tom warned him that the newer bales might be too heavy, then watched as Eddy immediately stumbled over a loose board and went down onto his hands and knees. The bale he was carrying fell and broke, and the donkey colt started to cry.

Tom rolled his eyes as he rushed to help. “I told you not to carry so much,” he reminded him. 

Eddy started to wail even louder.

“Let’s have a look,” the porcine grumbled. To his surprise, the foal turned away and refused to let him see. “I just want to know if we need a bandage,” he clarified.

“No!” Eddy sobbed.

“Whaddya mean, ‘no’?” Tom blustered, “I’m trying to help!”

“No!” Eddy repeated, wiping his arm across his face, “No, you’ll get mad! And then – and then you won’t let me help anymore! And then-”

“Holy smokes, potro,” Tom blinked, “take a breather! What made you think that?”

Eddy said nothing.

“I’m not mad,” Tom reassured softly, “I just want to make sure you’re okay!”

“B-but the bale-”

“-is going to be dinner for the cows tonight,” Tom interrupted, “it’s literally just grass, we can sweep it down into the wheelbarrow when we get a moment.” He put a hand on Eddy’s shoulder and leaned in, starting to see why the boy was so upset. “No one has to know,” he offered, “it can be our little secret. Between hermanos.”

“Between ‘manos?” Eddy repeated, blinking back the tears. 

Tom nodded, and Eddy finally turned his body and let Tom see the scrape on his knee. His brown-sugar fur was matted with red, but Tom knew it looked worse than it was, it just needed to be cleaned and bandaged. He looked up at Eddy and made a little ‘pff’ noise before patting the side of his leg to get him to turn back around. The equine’s green eyes glistened in the dim light of the hay loft, and Tom could feel himself getting dragged into them. He knew from experience that this was the start of a very slippery slope.

“Just a scrape,” he declared, “something a big stallion like you should be able to handle, no problem! Lemmie take you back to the trailer and get you patched up. We don’t even have to tell your mom!”

Eddy finally grumbled in agreement, and Tom quickly hoisted the leggy colt back to his feet before he could argue any further. The pair hurried back to Tom’s trailer, and Eddy immediately locked on to the big cabinet in the living room.

“Whoa!” He gasped, “you have your own TV?! And a Super Kitsune! Got any games?”

Tom groaned. He knew he shouldn’t have left his gaming system out, but part of the fun of living on his own was never having to clean up after himself if he didn’t want to. “Later,” he dismissed, making a beeline for the bathroom to get a cloth and some bandages. “We need to be quick,” he urged, “in and out before your mom notices we’re gone. If we’re late for dinner we’ll be in deep trouble!”

That seemed to motivate the lad. He followed Tom into the bathroom, and begrudgingly held still while the boar wiped the scrape clean with a wet cloth before patting it dry. 

“There we go! Tom beamed, “what a big, strong stallion, you didn’t even flinch!”

Eddy giggled, his huge ears flushing slightly.

Tom looked in the bathroom cabinet for some sort of kid-appropriate bandage, but all he found were plain ones in a variety of fur and skin tones. He made a mental note to get a ride into town to get some novelty ones next time he was able to go – he’d need something more Eddy’s style if he was going to be the colt’s nurse every time he got banged up.

“Alright,” he announced, “we’ve got a big, grown-up bandage for a big, strong stallion who throws hay bales around like skipping stones!” Eddy sheepishly stepped forward, and Tom leaned down to press the square bandage onto the donkey boy’s knee, patting it to make sure the adhesive stuck. He knew it was now or never. “Now we gotta get back to the farmhouse before dinner, but if you want . . .” the boar hesitated. Fortunately, the excited donkey boy spared him the awkwardness of trying to lead him on.

“Can I come over after dinner? And we can play Super Kitsune?!” Eddy’s eyes grew wide and round as saucers.

“You can ask your mom,” he clarified, “and if she says yes then you can come over and I can show you how big boys unwind after a hard day’s work. How does that sound?”

Eddy nodded as fast as possible, his huge ears flapping back and forth like bird wings. “Yeah, yeah!”

“Easy, potro,” Tom grinned, putting a hand on the colt’s head to still him, “you’re gonna take flight if you keep that up!”

“I can’t wait!” Eddy brayed eagerly, “Do you have any movies? I heard about this game one time where you play as a wolf with a sword! Or, or, or this game about a movie about aliens! Or-”

Tom tightened his grip on Eddy’s head and moved his hand back and forth, making him wobble and giggle mid-sentence. “You have to ask first,” he reminded him before steering him out of the bathroom and back towards the door.

The boys showed up in the nick of time for dinner, with Tom narrowly avoiding a scolding from Don and Eddy just shy of meeting la chancla. The equines spoke to each other in their mother tongue while Don, Tom, and Claudia made quiet conversation until Eddy blurted out “she said yes!”

The canines and porcine collectively stifled a giggle before Maria turned to Tom.

"Habla mucho de ti," she said, nodding to her son.

Tom turned to Eddy, expecting him to translate.

“Mamá says I talk about you a lot,” the boy beamed.

Tom could feel his floppy ears starting to flush. He felt the same way when his sister Beth used to show him her drawings, stick-figures of their family or of Tom’s friends. He missed them terribly, but it made him all the more determined to make himself worthy of the donkey’s chatter.

After dinner, Tom barely had time to tidy the living room before Eddy came knocking on his door. He was almost dressed like he was ready for bed – he still wore his bright yellow gumboots that he used for chores, but the rest of him was shrouded in a hooded, sky-blue onesie with a grey zipper down the front. The boar blinked, then realized he’d never actually seen Eddie wearing anything other than his barn clothes. He also wondered if the colt was wearing anything else under there, and tried to keep his eyes above the boy’s waist.

“C’mon in!” Tom ushered, and the donkey boy went straight to the couch, kicking off his boots on the way to expose his stocking feet. The older boar followed, shaking his head before turning on the TV and flicking on the Super Kitsune. Eddy’s eyes widened as the TV screen lit up with a pixelated logo of a white, many-tailed fox.

“Wow!” Eddy breathed, “What can we play?”

“Whatever you want,” Tom answered, opening up one of the doors of the TV cabinet, “you pick.”

Eddy leaped off the couch and shuffled his way across the carpet to the open cabinet, his green eyes flicking between the colourful labels on the grey cartridges. He quickly rifled through them and then looked to see what else was in the cabinet – he saw a spare controller and a slew of VHS tapes, some in proper packaging and others with generic handwritten labels. “You have your own movies?” The colt marvelled.

Tom grinned. He did, but that wasn’t what the colt was looking at. The colt was looking at the boar’s ‘conventional’ bootleg tapes, rented movies recorded (with Aaron’s help) onto blank cassettes so he could watch them whenever he wanted. The ones in plain sight were mostly sci-fi blockbusters and action flicks, the really juicy ‘home movies’ were in a lock-box on the bottom shelf – which Eddy immediately tried to open.

“What’s in here?” Eddy asked, turning to Tom with a pout when he realized it wouldn’t open. “It’s stuck.”

Tom’s heart skipped a beat. The little colt was so close. Inside that chest were the movies he and Aaron recorded – the ones that showed his sister Beth being taught how to finger herself back when she was four, or his friend Aaron fingering baby Patrick’s asshole when he was only a few weeks old. Seeing the little foal so tantalizingly close and yet so far away made him sweat. He wanted Eddy to see, but he also didn’t want to ruin the relationship that he and the donkey boy had only just started to build up.

“Those are special movies,” Tom cautioned, “para hombres.”

“¡soy grande!” Eddy protested, tugging on the drawer handle again, “I just wanna see!”

“Maybe later,” Tom relented, crouching down beside Eddy and pulling out a game cartridge, “if you can beat me in Fender Defender.”

Eddy was only too happy to take Tom up on the challenge. The screen flickered to life as the teen pushed the cartridge into the machine, and the room filled with the 16-bit sound of a revving engine.

“This is a racing game, sort of,” Tom explained as he pushed through the various menu screens and sat back on the couch, “you can pick your car and race each other or race by yourself against the computer, but you also get all these cool weapons you can use to blow each other up, like guns and rockets and laser beams.” He handed Eddy the other controller and started a race with just the two of them, and showed Eddy which buttons to push to make his car go, stop, and shoot. The pig won the first race handily, and then went back into the menus to set Eddy up against the computer on the easiest difficulty. “I’ll let you get some practice while I make us a treat,” he winked, rising from the couch and ambling into the kitchen.

He dug in the cupboards and pulled out some microwave popcorn, then headed into the fridge and pulled out two cans of beer. “Do you know what else will make you grande?” Tom asked teasingly, leaning on the back of the couch and dangling one of the cans in front of Eddy’s lap. “Special grown-up soda pop.”

The teenage boar cracked his own can and took a noisy, luxurious sip, trying not to wince at the taste. As he hoped, the little foal did the same.

“Blech!” Eddy gagged, nearly spitting up all over the carpet.

“It’s not sweet like little potro juice,” Tom warned, “this is a drink for grown-ups!”

“It tastes bad,” Eddy protested.

Tom stifled a grin. “Well, maybe you’re not big enough for it yet after all . . .”

As Tom hoped, Eddy protectively pulled the can away from him and took another drink, pinning his ears back and gritting his flat, equine teeth as he swallowed.

“See?” Tom grinned, “we’ll make a stallion out of you yet, potro!”

“No soy potro,” Eddy mumbled as Tom returned to the kitchen to make the popcorn.

The pair raced for a while, with Tom up on the couch and Eddy sitting cross-legged on the carpet. While the colt was trying his hardest not to crash, Tom was making up rules and dares to keep him drinking while trying not to make it seem unfair and also making sure he didn’t push Eddy too far. “Loser of this next race has to take a drink.” “If I lap you, you have to take a drink.” “Take a drink and you get to make up a rule.” “Take a drink and I’ll make us some more popcorn.” “Take a drink and we can switch to whatever game you want.”

When they got tired of the racing game, Eddy picked a colourful cartridge out of the cabinet, a platforming game where Eddy and Tom took turns. Eddy stayed behind on the easier levels to learn the controls and try to stock up on extra lives, while Tom pushed ahead to the more difficult stages. The drinking challenges had largely been abandoned; Tom thought Eddy could use a break after almost finishing his beer, and he also wanted to see if the donkey boy would start to drink unprompted. After a few levels, however, it became clear he’d need to push things along.

“What is it your mom says to you at the dinner table?” Tom asked, leaning over after he fell off a ledge on one of the more challenging levels, “like when you don't wanna drink your milk?”

“Oh, uhh . . .toma?” Eddy replied. He sounded like he was getting tired. Tom realized it was probably past his bedtime already.

“Yeah, that! ¡Toma! What if every time someone says 'toma' the other person has to drink?”

Eddy grinned impishly at the big pig. “¡Toma!” He brayed, “¡Tomatomatomatomatoma!”

Tom did his best to look shocked, then raised his can and chugged the rest of it before looking down smugly at the little donkey colt.

Eddy’s eyes widened, and he pinned his ears back and shrank down into the couch while trying to stifle a guilty giggle. Tom leaned in further, putting his hand on the back of the couch by Eddy’s head for support. The tension was palpable. With his empty beer in hand, Tom reached out to tap Eddy’s can. “Cheers, potro,” he challenged with a wink. 

Eddy took a moment to compose himself. He grimaced with determination, pinched his nose, and took several painful gulps before slamming the can down on the table and pushing it away. Tom wanted to slap the colt on the back but thought he might actually throw up, so he settled for a pat on the shoulder instead. “Atta boy,” he praised.

Eddy groaned and let out a noxious burp, eventually managing a weak, giddy smile. The pair tried their hand at the platforming game for a little while longer, but it was clear that the beer was starting to take its toll on both of them. Tom was losing more and more lives, and Eddy was having trouble getting them back on even the easiest levels. He was also getting squirmy and distracted, rolling over on the couch and giggling. Tom tried not to stare, but the way the fabric of the colt’s onesie flapped and swished between his legs was making him more than a little curious. Not to mention the reddish flush on those massive ears and that tired, intoxicated smile as his character fell off the ledge again, ending the game with a sad digital jingle.

“I feel silly,” Eddy grinned, falling over onto his side and narrowly missing the coffee table with his head. Tom lunged too late to try and stop him, grabbing onto his ears as he landed on the carpet, giggling.

‘You look silly,” Tom jested. The colt’s ears were soft and warm, like velvet. He had to let go before he started exploring further. “Alright,” Tom sighed, “I think it’s time we did something else.” He stood up from the couch, trying to keep from falling over himself, and staggered over to the TV cabinet. For all his bravado, he was still just a teenage lightweight, and the drink was hitting him almost as hard as it was hitting the colt rolling around on the carpet. He turned off the console and changed the channel to the satellite guide, trying to find something. The temptation to dive into his ‘home movies’ was almost overwhelming, but he didn’t want to shock the colt or worse, scare him away. So he flipped through the channels, looking for something medical or nature-related, a way to gently ease the boy into nudity and sex in an “educational” setting without jumping straight into his home movies. He found what looked like a wildlife documentary on animal migration, jumping from insects to birds to . . .zebras. Perfect. Maybe they’d show some mares in heat, or a stallion mounting his harem one by one, or maybe even a foaling if he was lucky!

Tom sat back down on the couch, remote in hand, and watched while the story of a young mare’s life unfolded onscreen. As the narrator set the scene, Tom felt Eddy climbing back up onto the couch, shuffling from side to side as he tried to get comfortable before he leaned against the larger boar and craned his head to watch. He was so close. Tom could feel the weight of the colt against his side, and he could feel that weight shift with every breath he took. Without looking, he moved his arm over the back of the couch and out of the way, allowing Eddy to nestle in. He wanted so badly to just drape his arm over the donkey boy, but he was afraid that if he moved too quickly he’d lose everything – again. So he waited, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. It didn’t sound like anything thrilling was happening on the TV yet, and the narrator’s voice was so soothing . . .

The first thing the boar felt was a light breeze under his chin. It was there and gone, like a faint gust from an open window. He also caught a whiff of something vaguely fruity and artificial. He opened his eyes and saw Eddy clinging to him, his head against his chest. It was the colt’s shampoo – he was so close he could smell it. His flat porcine nose flexed as he took another purposeful sniff and tried to identify it. Some sort of sweet apple, he thought. Was it apple pie? Caramel apple? Apple cinnamon? What a hilariously equine thing, he smiled, apple-scented soap!

And then the rest of his brain kicked in. He leaned down to look at the TV and saw credits rolling on the screen. The digital clock on the VCR was telling him that more than an hour had passed. The light outside had long since faded. “Shit!” he cursed, rolling over to try and rouse Eddy as quickly-but-gently as possible, “shit!”

“¿Donde . . . ?” Eddy mumbled, rubbing his eyes. “You said a bad word!”

Tom ignored him. “It is so far past your bedtime,” he urged, “we need to get you back before your mom gets mad!”  

Tom tried to budge the colt off of him, and Eddy sluggishly rose to a proper sitting position, his head still wobbling. “I feel all fuzzy,” he slurred.

“Maybe it was all that popcorn we ate,” Tom suggested. 

Waking up next to Eddy stirred something inside the boar, but it also brought up the nauseous feeling of being caught with his sister. He reminded himself that Eddy’s mom knew where he was, and that there was nothing for Maria to catch them doing because nothing happened. But the more he thought about it, the more he almost wished there was. What didn’t happen between him and Eddy just made him think more about what did happen between him and Beth. “Up we get,” he prodded, “¡Vamanos!” He was feeling more than a little wobbly and woozy himself, but he had to get this colt back home before they both got in serious trouble.

He continued to shoo the colt towards the door and helped him put his gumboots back on before taking his hand and leading him outside. The cool air made him shudder, and he was beginning to think Eddy had the right idea being all fleeced up. “I promise next time I’ll put something on the TV that won’t put us to sleep,” Tom grinned, only half-joking, “but you can’t tell your mom about the grown-up soda-pop, alright? It’s gotta be our secret.”

“Between hermanos?” Eddy asked hopefully.

“Between ‘manos,” Tom confirmed, patting him on the shoulder before the pair snuck around to the back door of the farmhouse. Eddy slipped in while Tom held the door to keep it from slamming, and then the pair waved at each other through the screen before Eddy crawled up the stairs and Tom walked back to his trailer, shaking his head. He took his time on the short walk home across the fields, taking a few moments to stare up at the stars in his half-drunk stupor. 

This colt was trouble, he thought to himself, at least with his sister Beth he never had to worry about trying to sneak her home by a certain time. There was so much else he had to worry about too, especially with the wound of previous experiences still raw in his memory. Was he going to get caught with Eddy, too? Was he going to get kicked off the farm the same way he got kicked out of his family home?

He cracked the door to his trailer, still lost in thought. Eddy’s beer can still sat on the table where he slammed it down with all his childish strength. Tom picked up the can and shook it lightly, hearing the metallic slosh of liquid inside. Not wanting to let it go to waste, he tipped the can to his lips and drank down the dregs, trying not to think of how Eddy drank from the same can only a little while ago. Would he have done something like that with Aaron’s drink, he wondered? Did it even matter?

With a frustrated sigh, Tom threw the empty can into the bin. He needed to clear his head otherwise he’d never get to sleep.

He grabbed some lotion and a roll of toilet paper from the bathroom and set them down on the arm of the couch before approaching the lockbox in the TV cabinet. He fished the key out from underneath a plant pot and unlocked it, gazing at his small-but-growing collection. He had the tape of his little sister’s birth, of course, and a few ‘play-dates’ between his sister and his friend Aaron. Aaron was even kind enough to give him a tape of one of the girls he was babysitting for, though it felt like he was rubbing it in a little bit. He grabbed a tape from the end, simply marked “Beth & Patrick” along with a date. Tom held up the VHS tape to examine it and then stuck it in the VCR, where it slid in with a satisfying ker-chunk. He looked to make sure the blinds were closed, then hit play.

There was a muffled rustle from the screen as the camera focused on a baby porcine that looked to be only a few weeks old, squirming on a carpeted surface and wearing nothing but a diaper. The infant had a dusting of light-brown hair that blended into their pink skin, and big brown eyes that seemed to be focused on the camera’s operator. The baby’s pig-like ears were big and wide, flat against the ground.

Tom sank into the couch and reached into his pants, his member stirring at the sight of his baby brother Patrick on the screen. The image blurred as the focus moved to his sister Beth, a preschool-aged porcine in a blue dress standing off to the side, looking curiously down at the diapered newborn.

Tom took his pants off completely and squirted a dollop of moisturizer into his hand as the cameraperson fumbled, reaching down with one hand to tear off the straps on baby Patrick’s diaper, flipping it open to reveal a perky little nub completely covered entirely by foreskin. He could hear himself breathing on tape as he stroked it with his thumb and forefinger, revealing the darker pink head of the infant’s cock before he motioned for Beth to come and get a closer look.

Seeing or hearing himself on tape always made Tom feel just a little bit self-conscious. It always felt like he was looking at someone else, and it made it that much more difficult to imagine himself in that space. He tried instead to focus on the real sensations he was feeling, like the rock-hard shaft in his moisturized grip as he stroked himself back and forth.

On the screen, the camera again blurred as Beth toddled closer and squatted down to get a better look at her baby brother’s private parts, reaching out to touch the twitching cocklet and his tiny, wrinkled scrotum. Her inquisitive touch made Patrick start to fuss, but cameraman Tom quickly distracted him by whipping out his own cock and wriggling it back and forth to draw his attention. The baby cooed and reached up for it, his tiny fingers barely big enough to fit around its width.

The sheer difference in size was enough to send Tom over the edge in real life. He grunted, barely grabbing the wad of tissues in time to soak up his seed as he came, his leg nearly hitting the coffee table as he kicked out from the couch.

He paused the tape and let himself breathe. Exhaustion was catching up to him, and he let out a defeated sigh as he realized that the next day was creeping closer and closer. He had some big questions to ask himself and some big decisions to make, but he needed to make do with what little sleep he could get before morning chores. He turned off the TV without bothering to clean up, and shuffled off to bed, hitting the pillow face-first.

The next day Tom met Eddy in the barn first thing in the morning as normal, thought the colt looked unusually dishevelled. His eyes were red and bagged, and his ears seemed like they were drooping. He was still dressed in the same onesie and gumboots he wore last night. Tom didn’t imagine he looked any better – between the beer, the stress, and the lack of sleep he was definitely struggling. But seeing the colt still put a smile on his face.

The pair were quiet over breakfast, until Maria eyed them both smugly. “Se miran cansados,” she commented, “¿se desvelaron?”

Eddy let out a tired “haww” as he shook his head.

“She’s talking to you, too,” Don pointed his coffee spoon at Tom without looking up, “she’s asking if y’all stayed up all night.”

“We fell asleep playing video games,” the pig admitted sheepishly.

“Who won?” Don asked.

Eddy and Tom looked at each other. “He let me win a few games,” Tom winked.

“Well, the cows don’t care,” Don replied sharply, “did you get all the milking liners sanitized?”

“M-most of them,” Tom stammered, caught off-guard, “I was planning to go back into the barn after breakfast and finish up . . .”

“Good,” Don nodded, “there’s a storm coming in and the cattle might have to stay inside for a day or two. So I want you to make sure we’ve got enough supplies in the main barn and lock down all the storage sheds. I can’t afford any hay getting wet this early in the year.”

“You got it,” Tom nodded. He wasn’t sure if there was actually a storm brewing or if he was just getting extra work as punishment for being slow and hungover, but either way it beat being grounded like his parents would have done.

“Make sure the generators are fuelled up, too,” he added, “bet you dollars to donuts we’re gonna lose power, and the crooks in town are gonna crank the prices through the roof.”

As it turned out, Don was telling the truth. The wind picked up around midday, and the horizon started to darken with clouds later that afternoon. Tom found time for a nap after lunch, and by the time he woke up he swore he could feel his trailer shifting from the force of the wind and rain. He found it oddly relaxing, like being rocked to sleep.

He and Don did one final round of checks across the property after dinner, and then Tom stayed in the main house where it was warmer to watch the news before he braved the weather to head back to his trailer. He knew tomorrow would be the worst – after the storm passed there would be fences to repair, more hay bales to move, the cows would be ornery from being cooped up, and Don would be in town all day restocking fuel and other supplies. He decided to shower and turn in early, anticipating a very busy day.

Later that night, there was a knock on Tom’s trailer door. It was so meek and apologetic it barely roused him from his slumber, and for a moment he wondered if he had dreamt it, or somehow misheard the rain hammering on the window. He looked at the clock radio by his bed, and saw the numbers 11:15 on the red display. They weren’t flashing, so the trailer still had power. He was about to go back to sleep when he heard the knock again, coming from the front door.

He knew it wasn’t Don, the old dog would have knocked much harder than that. He slowly rose from his bed, clad only in a white A-shirt and his grey boxer shorts, and shambled towards the door, rubbing his eyes. Even with all the doors and windows closed it was still cold. He unlocked the door with a soft click and looked down, seeing Eddy’s bright green eyes staring back up at him. The little colt was shrouded in a hooded, sky-blue onesie, his ears stretching the hood comically wide. His iconic bright yellow gumboots reflected the porch light like a mirror.

“There was, a-a-a-a thing, a thing, a bug!” Eddy stammered without waiting for Tom to greet him, “A big bug! With the . . . with the things!” Eddy flapped his arms like wings as he stammered, “and-and-and it was flying, and-and-”

Tom grabbed the colt by the shoulders, feeling the soggy fleece under his palms. “Potro,” he accused, speaking slowly, “it is almost midnight. Are you telling me you ran all the way out here over a bug?”

Eddy nodded.

“In the dark?”

Eddy nodded again.

“In the rain?”

Eddy kept nodding.

“Why didn’t you go to your mom?”

“She got mad and told me to go back to bed,” Eddy replied, looking back towards the house.

“Ugh,” Tom grunted. He had half a mind to do the same, but he couldn’t bring himself to send him all the way back to the house, not in this weather. “Get in here, then,” he sighed, dragging the colt up the steps, keeping one hand on his shoulder as he closed the door against the wind with a slam. Eddy tried to walk into the living room, but Tom held him back. “Not with your muddy boots,” he insisted, “really you oughta take off your jammies too, you’re soaked. I can toss’em in the dryer and get’em all toasty warm in a few minutes, how does that sound?”

Eddy took a moment to stop squirming, then looked back through the window, clearly unsure about stripping down in Tom’s living room. Tom rolled his eyes. “Look, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” he reasoned, “I’ve got a brother and a sister. And besides, we see the cows’ private parts all the time when we’re milking them! They’re always naked!” He continued to try and undress Eddy while he talked, running on sleepy big-brother autopilot. He pulled the zipper down to the donkey’s bellybutton, not wanting to go down too low, then started peeling the damp fabric off his narrow shoulders. He discovered those unexplained stripes on him really did go all the way up, lining his shoulders and upper back. He also discovered a new bandage on his elbow from scraping into who-knows-what. 

By the time the matted garment was halfway off, Eddy seemingly made up his mind about disrobing, and bent over to pull his boots off. Tom caught a peek through the open zipper and thought he was seeing things, but his suspicions were confirmed once Eddy stepped out of the onesie’s leggings – not only was the colt not wearing anything underneath, he was enormous down there. 

Tom quickly looked away to avoid staring. Eddy was almost as big flaccid as Tom was when he was fully erect – maybe not as girthy, but definitely just as long. He kept sneaking glances at the foal’s member swinging from thigh to thigh as he kicked off his soggy pyjamas, and the boar even caught a glimpse of the empty sac nestled between Eddy’s legs, almost entirely hidden from view by his stallion-sized shaft. He hoped the not-so-little potro was a shower and not a grower – he wasn’t sure he could handle being outsized by a cub less than half his age.

While Tom was trying to look away from Eddy’s impressive equipment, the donkey colt was staring into the living room. “Can we play more Super Kitsune?” he asked.

Tom shuddered, trying to shake away the perverted thoughts. “You’re supposed to be in bed,” he reminded him, “don’t push your luck!”

Eddy ignored him, stumbling out of his soggy pyjamas and wobbling towards the couch with all the grace of a newborn fawn. “How do you make it work?” he asked, fumbling with the remote control.

This time, Tom didn’t even try and avoid staring. Those long legs, his animated, brush-like tail, his lean, bony chest . . . he only snapped back to attention when Eddy tried to plop his wet bottom onto the couch. “Hey!” Tom snapped, “you’re still soaking wet, at least let me get you a towel before you sit down!” He grabbed Eddy’s onesie from the ground and turned his back to toss it into the dryer, then grabbed one of his bath towels off the shelf and lobbed it back towards the living room. “Sit on that,” he ordered, still in big-brother mode, “you’re gonna get the couch all wet!”

Just a few games of Fender Defender, Tom reassured himself as he leaned over the dryer, or maybe a nice boring RPG to put him back to sleep. Just something to keep him busy until the dryer is done and then we can all go back to bed. He let out a tired sigh as he heard the TV click on. He was pleasantly surprised, thinking the colt had figured it out, and then heard the familiar voice of his little sister echo through the trailer.

“Who’s that?” Eddy asked innocently.

“Oh shit!” Tom panicked, almost hitting his head on the shelf above the dryer, “Shit! Fuck! Goddamnit!” He’d left the tape in the VCR! He remembered now, and he didn’t remember changing the channel. It must have come up as soon as Eddy turned the TV on, and now he was watching baby Patrick get molested on-camera while his sister watched!

He had no idea what to do. He could rush in and turn it off, but he was afraid that that would just make him more interested. He looked back into the living room, trying to gauge Eddy’s reaction, and saw the colt just . . . staring. He didn’t seem scared or grossed out, in fact Tom thought he seemed more curious than anything. Tom took a deep breath. He could still salvage this, he thought, he just had to work with Eddy’s curiosity. He decided to let him keep watching while he slowly loaded the onesie into the dryer and set it to ‘low’ before starting it with a rumble.

“You got it to work?” Tom asked nonchalantly as he strolled through the kitchen and stepped behind the couch. Eddy covered his groin with the towel as the boar approached. “Oh, look at that!” Tom gasped, still feigning ignorance, “I was gonna show you this last time, but we fell asleep!” He leaned over the couch, looking down between Eddy’s legs at the bulge in the towel. “Is something wrong down there?” he teased.

“M-mi dese,” Eddy mumbled, “it sorta gets hard sometimes . . .”

“What’s a ‘dese’, potro?” Tom prodded.

“I don’t know the word for it,” Eddy admitted, “My . . . thingy?”

“What thingy?” Tom pressed, “your nose? Your tail?” He knew what Eddy was referring to as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, but he tried to make him say it anyways.

“N-no,” Eddy protested, looking around as if to make sure no one else was listening, “mi . . . ¡pito!” He spat out the word like it physically hurt to say. “Don’t tell my mom I said that,” he pleaded, “It’s a bad word!”

“I won’t,” Tom promised, “if you don’t tell her you were watching my secret grown-up movies! Deal?”

“Okay . . .” Eddy replied, still looking apprehensive.

“Atta boy,” Tom grinned, patting the back of the couch, “I’ll get us some grown-up juice and we’ll watch it together, ‘kay?”

Eddy remained glued to the screen while Tom hurriedly grabbed a can of beer from the fridge and cracked it with a percussive hiss. On the TV, baby Patrick’s little finger-sized shaft was starting to twitch on its own, the cameraperson releasing his grip momentarily to demonstrate to Beth, who was still observing intently. 

“See what they’re doing?” Tom asked, nodding to the TV as he sat down beside Eddy on the couch, beer in hand.

“They’re . . . rubbing it back and forth,” Eddy answered, squirming and pushing his hands between his legs as if trying to push his stubborn erection back down.

“Ever done that when your pito gets hard?”

“N-no . . .”

“Wanna learn how?” Tom offered, reaching out a hand to move the towel. Eddy shied away.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled, torn between looking at Tom, the TV, and his own groin, “mamá said I shouldn’t let anyone touch me there . . .”

Tom grinned. “Works for me,” he replied with a shrug, “how about I just take your hand like this,” he reached over to grab the back of Eddy’s hand, covering it with his own, “and you touch yourself there instead? You’ll be doing everything yourself like a big boy, and I’ll just be sort of helping you along!”

Eddy still looked unsure, so Tom pushed his hand a little closer, sliding it under the towel.

“It would be a lot easier if I could see,” Tom suggested, nodding to the TV, “look at that little piggy on the video letting it all hang out!”

On the TV, the cameraperson was trying to show Beth how to stroke baby Patrick’s little shaft. She was clumsy and forceful at first, and every once in a while an arm reached out to grab her wrist and gently correct her before retreating back behind the camera.

Eddy hesitated, but he didn’t seem to object to Tom feeling under the towel. The boar could feel Eddy’s pulse through the base of his member, and he couldn’t resist running a finger over the colt’s tight, velvety sac before returning obediently to the back of his hand.

“You certainly feel all grown up down there,” Tom praised, looking down between his own legs and pulling down his boxer shorts to let his own cock up for air. “I think yours might even be bigger!”

Eddy brightened, looking at the boar’s thick rod before he finally pulled the towel off and revealed his own. Tom considered himself above-average for his age, or at least bigger than his friend Aaron. But this donkey boy almost had him beat, at least in length, and he was what, Tom thought, six years old? A full decade younger than he was and already catching up where it counted. He could see Eddy’s foreskin straining to contain the head of his shaft, and he might not have even been fully hard yet.

Eddy grinned, looking back and forth between the two.

“Damn,” Tom marvelled.

“You said a bad word again!” Eddy accused.

Tom rolled his eyes. “You started it,” he reminded him, “remember we’re not telling your mother any of this, so it’s okay. Now scoot closer and I’ll show you what to do about that troublesome pito of yours.”

He shuffled closer to Eddy, almost pulling him into his lap before reaching around his back and placing his hand over the colt’s again, guiding it to the base of his staff. “Now up and down,” he instructed, jerking the foal’s hand gently up and down along his length, his little hands perfectly sized for the task while Tom’s seemed large and awkward by comparison. “You pick how fast.”

Eddy struggled to find a comfortable rhythm, switching between jerking quickly, slowly, or sometimes stopping completely until Tom got things moving again. Aside from the occasional reminder, the boar stayed true to his word of trying to let Eddy do at least most of the work. 

Meanwhile, the porcine infant on the TV screen was left to fuss while the cameraperson focused on Beth, who had grown bored and distracted trying to please her baby brother. The cameraperson beckoned her closer, lifting up her blue dress to reveal her training pants before pulling them down and exposing her completely.

“What’s that?” Eddy asked, freezing in place as Beth’s bare pink nethers dominated the screen.

“That’s what girls have instead of a pito,” Tom explained, “I’m sure you’ve got a word for it.”

“I’ve never seen that before!” Eddy blinked.

“Yes you have,” Tom grinned, “you see them every morning when we milk the cows, silly! They might look a little different, but all the cows are girls, too!”

“Wow, really?” Eddy gasped in wonder. Tom could see the boy’s horizons expanding as he spoke. Suddenly there were so many more options on the table, so many possibilities he’d never considered before! Tom made a mental note to schedule some “extracurricular” chores in the barn next time Don wasn’t around. He was going to make Aaron so jealous!

The cameraperson on TV appeared to have shifted his attention entirely to the little pig-girl, rubbing their larger fingers gently along her slit while she stood patiently, keeping her dress lifted as if she’d done this before. Tom could tell Eddy was very into it – he stared at the screen, breathing through his mouth and had almost given up on stroking himself, allowing Tom to take over almost entirely, dragging the colt’s hand along his length.

“Keep going,” Tom encouraged while the figure on TV tried to divide their attention between a needy tot and an increasingly fussy baby. Boar and donkey colt watched as a finger on the screen gently pushed between Beth’s folds, zooming in as they started to flush before he pulled his finger out and returned his attention to the baby on the ground, rubbing his thumb and forefinger around the head of his tiny member.

Eddy tried to do as asked, but he was clearly having trouble focusing. “It feels so . . . tingly,” he huffed, looking down at his own member and then back up at the screen. Every time he started to slow down, Tom took over, stroking faster and faster until Eddy put his other hand on top of Tom’s, biting his lip. “It feels- It feels like . . . !”

The colt let out a feral bray as his member throbbed, shooting blanks at first before a clear, watery fluid oozed from the tip, the last of it spurting out as the colt’s orgasm ebbed away. Tom stroked a few more times, squeezing every last drop and making the colt shudder in bliss.

“How was that?” Tom grinned.

Eddy giggled nervously, clearly overwhelmed by the new sensations. He looked down at his sticky hands and the spot on the carpet where his shot landed. “What was that?” he asked innocently, “did I pee?”

“No, no,” Tom laughed, “you didn’t pee. I’ll clean it up tomorrow, don’t worry about it!”

Eddy looked around, up at Tom and over at the screen, as if he’d forgotten where he was. He looked back at the screen just in time to see Beth clumsily scoot closer and try and straddle baby Patrick before the cameraperson fumbled to stop her and dropped the camera. “What happened?” he pointed at the screen, “why did the picture go all fuzzy?”

Tom rolled his eyes. “I’ll explain later,” he dismissed, nodding towards the dryer. “I’ll bet your jammies are done if you want to get back into them and head back home.”

Eddy didn’t reply.

“Or,” Tom raised an eyebrow, “you could stay here. It’s still nasty outside, and you look all tuckered out!” Tom was more than a little haggard himself, he realized, nearly two days straight with this colt up in his business had really wound him down. He wondered how he ever managed to live with a sibling, much less two of them. He rose slowly from the couch, his own member still at full mast, and grabbed Eddy’s onesie from the dryer as well as the spare set of blankets from his closet. He didn’t even try to hide his arousal – he didn’t feel like he needed to hide anything from Eddy anymore. He tossed the blankets on the couch and laid down on one end, while Eddy fumbled and rolled back into his pyjamas, leaning against him. He wasn’t sure who managed to fall asleep first.

Another knock at the door startled Tom awake, and he could see the amber light of dawn streaking through the blinds as he rubbed his eyes. He had an intense feeling of déjà vu before a second, harsher rap on the door forced him upright. He double-checked to make sure he was decent before rolling off the couch, while Eddy sat upright and rubbed his eyes.

Don and Maria were standing outside the door, arms crossed.

Maria didn’t wait for an explanation before unleashing the wrath of a worried parent: “Que estabas haciendo afuera tan noche,” she scolded, “¡Dios no lo quiera, algo te pudo haver pasado!” She pointed her finger at her feet and Eddy lowered his head, moving towards her as if in a trance. “No se que castigo te voy a dar, per vas a verlo cuando llegemos a la casa. ¡Vamanos!” She pointed towards the house and Eddy obediently started to trudge in that direction, his ears and face sunken.

Tom didn’t understand most of what was said, but he inferred that poor Eddy was in a heap of trouble.
 
“. . . Is he going to be okay?” Tom asked Don after Maria stomped home after her son.

“He made his mother worry,” Don shrugged, “back in my day that’d be a whuppin’ for sure.” He stared off at the pair before waving his hand dismissively. “But parents these days are too soft for that. He’ll be fine. You, though,” Don accused, “what the hell was he doing in your trailer in the middle of the night?”

Tom was quick with an explanation. “He ran into the trailer because there was a really big bug in his room or something,” he replied honestly, “I was still awake so I offered to throw his jammies in the dryer and send him back home, but by the time they were finished, this little potro had fallen back asleep on the couch and I didn’t wanna move him.”

Don folded his arms.

“I really am sorry to worry you both,” Tom apologized, “you can promise Maria that if this happens again I’ll turn him around and send him right back to bed.”

Don paused, stifling a wag of his short, amber tail as he savoured the awkward silence. “You’re too old for a beating,” he began, threateningly, “so let me give you a piece of advice: That boy trusts you. He risked a whuppin’ from his mama just to get to your front door because he thinks your trailer is a safe place. Do you know what that means?”

Tom stood silently, almost afraid to answer.

“It means you don’t ever abuse that trust, you hear? Because that’s the kinda trust that don’t grow back after it’s gone.”

Tom nodded gravely. Don made Eddy’s trust sound like some sort of curse. He supposed in a way it was, but not more than any of the other responsibilities he’d been shouldered with. He wondered if Eddy would tattle on him, tell his mother about what he saw on the TV, or the things he learned about his own body. Tom had to remind himself that if Don was right and Eddy really did trust him, then he’d keep it a secret like they agreed – between hermanos.