A Foxy Christmas

Written for the TiF "What's In The Box" event.

Amanda had already been having a bad day - working retail this close to the holidays turned out to be horrible. So much for a nice easy job… If this kept up, she swore she’d go feral and bite someone. Ugh.
Slumping against the wall of the staff bathroom, she told herself once again I’m doing this for Loris. Though that once bolstering thought was wearing thin of late. He’d been getting… snippy. Distant. The fact she never talked about her past or family, a minor point of contention when they first got together, had turned into a wedge as he tried to organise a “proper celebration” for them.
Maybe she should have come up with something. A cover story. A fake background. But… surely lying would be worse? Why couldn’t he accept that she didn’t want to talk about it? That some things were better buried.
Then there was him wanting a dog. Amanda grimaced, a full-body shudder rippling through her. Just the idea of trying to share a home with such a terrifying beast…! A cat would be one thing, she could tolerate a cat. If he wanted pet ferrets, or chickens, or plenty of other animals she’d try and compromise on this. But no. He wanted a dog.
A big dog. A hound.
Amanda scratched at her arms and growled, pent-up irritation making her itch.
It stung how Loris thought she was making a big deal out of nothing. He had no idea how much she’d sacrificed for him! Then he turned around and wanted her to try ‘exposure therapy’. Or just therapy in general. Made a big deal about how it’d ‘help her too’, so she didn’t freak out when they ran into dogs… as if she wasn’t a master at avoiding the creatures!
Uggggh.
Was it all worth it? She wasn’t sure anymore.
Her phone pinged. Shit, had her manager clocked how many breaks she was taking?
Phew, no, it was an alert from that doorbell camera thingy.
Her soft exhale froze as she registered the figure in the photo.
No.
No, no, no! Him? How had he found her? Why had he tracked her down?? She’d paid! They were even!
But that silhouette… she’d never forget it. The lopsided, amateur felt hat pulled low over greasy hair which might have once been blond. The ragged bomber jacket heavily patched with odd scraps of fabric. Cargo pants stained so heavily there was no telling what their original colour had been, every pocket bulging with contents best left unknown.
His steel-toed boots, whose excellent condition and sheen looked utterly out of place given the rest of him, weren’t visible in the shot, which was centred on the plain cardboard box in his hands.
Given who it was… and the sly smirk she could just make out through his scraggle of a beard… that box could only hold one thing.
Amanda clutched the wall for support, her heart and mind racing.
If only he’d dropped this off before her lunch break she might have been able to…! Now she was trapped here until work ended. If she got out on time and if she ran all the way home she’d get there in time to… deal with this unwanted ‘gift’ before Loris got home.
Could she put something else in the box? No, no, that’d be more suspicious. And that trickster might’ve hidden additional ‘presents’ somehow! She’d have to destroy it. Utterly. She’d tell Loris that it’d been, been full of dog shit or something. A nasty prank. Yes, that should throw him off.
Shoving her phone away she hurried out to resume work. Had to be an exemplary employee. Had to give no reason for her boss to keep her even five minutes after closing!
But of course there was a huge crowd delaying the end of business! Unless - wait, was this his doing?? She wouldn’t put anything past him! And if he was trying to keep her here… he must want Loris to open the box!
Did that mean the box was a trap? No, it was probably what she’d first thought - an expose of her secrets. That monster was destroying her hard-won happiness.
She had to delay Loris in kind! Think, think… ask him to pick up shopping! Invent an urgent need for milk!
Though the message had gone through, he wasn’t reading it.
That meant he’d already left work.
Amanda rushed across the shop floor to grab her boss’s arm and gabbled… something about Loris falling off his bike. Thankfully her inarticulate panic worked in her favour and she was shooed out the door, still in uniform, to sprint for home.
Please please please…
Maybe he’d be riding slow, maybe he’d hit enough red lights, maybe…
The box was gone from the porch. Amanda skidded to a halt, chest heaving and lungs burning and legs shaking, and looked around.
Had someone stolen it? That… it would solve the immediate emergency, but if they realised what the contents meant…
Then the door opened and her world collapsed.
Loris’s expression said it all.
He’d
Opened
The
Box.
It was over.
The contents. Had he destroyed them? If she could seize them, she might be able to start over. Far away. Where he’d never find her.
“I… I’m sorry.” Loris held out a grubby sheet of paper. “I didn’t realise that… I think this is for you? I… wouldn’t have opened it if I’d known.”
Amanda’s gaze flicked from the letter - irrelevant now! - to the box she could just see behind Loris, sitting unguarded on the entryway table.
She could certainly dart past him and grab it… but then he’d be blocking the door. Was she fast enough to get through the house, unlock the back door, and revert without him catching her?
“Am… I… understanding this right?” Loris was staring helplessly at her. “This is yours?”
He picked up the box and held it towards her.
Grab it!! Grab it and run now it was her only chance!!!
But the look on his face - confused, conflicted, penitent - held her frozen like she was staring down headlights. She barely managed to nod.
“Oh.” Loris looked down at the fox skin. Its fur as vibrant as the day she slipped it off. “It’s so small. Were you, um, a baby?”
Amanda blinked, her brow furrowing.
“O-oh, that’s a stupid question?” Loris flushed. “Right, right, if you had been this’d be a, a puppy skin, right? Or, um, are they called cubs?”
Before she could answer he’d shifted the box to one hip and was frantically typing on his phone.
What
An
Utter
Dork.
A bemused smile curved Amanda’s lips and she slowly walked forward to take the box.
“Oh, thanks.” Loris said absently. His whole forehead scrunched up in his Serious Thinking expression.
It was… really quite endearing. One of the things that’d attracted her during that first proper conversation they’d had.
“Um, so, says here that ‘pups’, ‘cubs’, or ‘kits’ is all correct?” He looked up at her, apparently seeking her opinion. As if words mattered to foxes. Then he realised how close she was and said “Oh! Right, we should-”
He caught her elbow and pulled her into the hallway so he could shut the front door. “I-I mean, it’s secret? Right?”
“Yeah.” Amanda clutched the box to her chest like armour. And, if the worst came to it, all she had left.
“This’s… ok. Um.” Loris fiddled with his phone and bit his lip. “I, er, I understand now why you wouldn’t - why you didn’t want to talk about your childhood or your family or anything. And why you… didn’t share any holiday traditions, if you don’t - ah, wait, do you celebrate…?”
“No.”
“Right, right.” Loris stared down at the box. At her shed past.
Amanda felt her muscles tighten, ready at any moment to spring away and run. Run and run and climb and dig and hide.
“How did you get so… big? Then?”
She hastily swallowed the startled, relieved laugh. It was a perfectly reasonable question, after all. “Well, um, all foxes can take human shape briefly. We developed the magic to escape hunts. But it’s… imperfect, and we can’t hold it long at all. I paid a magician to help me become human properly.”
“A magician? Wait, was that…?”
“Yes.” Amanda cast a wary glance at the door. “I don’t know why he did this.”
“The letter said something about needing your true self to find happiness?” Loris scratched the back of his head and frowned at the sheet of spidery handwriting. “I guess you need your, um, fur to stay… balanced? Or something.”
That didn’t seem right. She hadn’t been feeling her shape coming undone at all…
“But… why did you want to become human? Were you in that much danger of being hunted?”
“Ah… no.” Amanda’s gaze dropped to the box, her cheeks warming. “I, um, wanted to… get closer to you.”
Through her eyelashes she saw Loris freeze, his face scrunching and his eyes widening as they flicked between her and her old skin.
He took a deep breath, then let it out. After two more attempts he whispered “That’s how you fell in the storm drain.”
“Y-yeah. When I heard you calling I thought that a fellow human would be more… I didn’t know you weren’t the kinda person to leave an animal suffering like that.”
“That…” A bemused smile crystallised out of his bewilderment. “Mandy, please tell me you didn’t date me just because I saved your life. It was noth- ok, so it wasn’t nothing, especially from your perspective, I get that, but it, I don’t know, it was the right thing to do and any passerby should have…”
“It wasn’t just that, no.” Amanda quickly assured him. “You were so nice and worried for me, I felt guilty about having to give you the slip. But I couldn’t stick around, much less let myself be taken to hospital! To try and make up for that I went to the magician and bartered for a disguise, so I could ‘run into you’ and reassure you that I was alright. And then, well…”
The fond, reminiscing smile on his face told her that he remembered that afternoon at the cafe just as vividly as she did.
She returned the smile and softly confessed “After getting to know you I didn’t want to give the disguise back. I paid to make it permanent. It’s been a bit of a struggle adjusting, but…”
“Aw, Mandy…!” Loris clearly wanted to hug her but didn’t want to squash the box. She put it back on the side table and happily embraced him.
This feeling - the warmth, the snug squeeze, their hearts fluttering against each other - it was very like at the start of their relationship. Though without the dizzying intoxication of being in heat. Looking back, she ruefully admitted to herself that had been a not-inconsiderable factor in her being so… impulsive.
Over the past few months she’d been kicking herself for making such a big decision under the influence, and it was something she intended to learn from. But right now, her regrets were washed away by relief.
He didn’t care. He was confused, and uncertain, but he didn’t care. When she nibbled at his neck and happily snuffled his scent he simply kissed her forehead like usual. Though with a thoughtful look in his eyes which suggested this revelation put her, ah, quirky behaviour in a new light.
“Ok, so…”
Amanda tried not to tense.
“…this is your first Christmas?”
“Uhh yeah I guess?”
“Then we should find out what kind of traditions you like!” Loris released her so he could lean back and beam in excitement. “Like… do you know about Christmas Markets?”
“Yeah.” Amanda paused, then in a heady burst of complete honesty added “I’ve skulked around their bins. Some of the leftovers tasted really good.”
Loris slowly nodded. His expression - slightly too neutral, crease between his brows, the way he was sucking on his upper lip - making it clear he was trying really hard to act like that was a normal response. Bless him. “Well, if you can get time off when it won’t be too crowded…”
Hating crowds was one of those quirks he’d never minded, it being one he shared, but her aversion probably made a lot of sense now.
“Sounds good.” Amanda smooched his cheek.
Ooh, that’s a thought - she’d need to smooth things over with her boss. Thankfully that shouldn’t be too hard. What was the excuse she’d given? Loris got in a traffic accident? Should be easy to explain away as “nowhere near as bad as it sounded”. Hopefully she wouldn’t get in trouble.
Problem for tomorrow.
Pulling her mind back to the here and now, where it belonged, she grabbed the box and trailed after Loris into the kitchen where he was scribbling on one of the lined sticky pads he kept on the fridge.
When he saw what she was carrying Loris pointed his pencil and casually said “I assume you want a safety deposit box for that?”
While Amanda wasn’t quite sure what that was (as soon as Loris bought her a phone she’d been routinely grateful for the ability to surreptitiously look things up), it sounded right. So she simply smiled and nodded.
Loris leant over to scribble on the “shopping list” pad, and over his shoulder she could read [Safety deposit box for Amanda A4(? measure) fireproof]. Reassuring. 
For now she set the box aside, and once again spotted the letter. Since she had room to breathe she picked it up - warily, not at all convinced things weren’t going to suddenly go horribly wrong.
The handwriting was abysmal, but months working retail had taught her to decipher worse. Sadly it hadn’t prepared her for puzzling through vague flowery phrases. But she was fairly sure she’d got the important points - that it wasn’t right to build a whole life on lies, and that now she’d gotten a proper taste of being human she should have to right to return to foxhood whenever she wanted.
And then, at the bottom, an offhand note far more exciting than anything preceding; [Taking it off again is the same process as the first time. Putting it back on is the reverse.]
Wait. Wait wait wait. Was this a trap? Or… had he really given her the ability to switch back and forth whenever she wanted?
Amanda stared wide-eyed at her old skin.
She wasn’t going to try it right now. Loris was happily babbling plans she really ought to be listening to, and if it was a trap she’d want at least forty-eight hours free to try and get it fixed, and besides today had been stressful enough already.
But.
The thought of getting her sense of smell back… of having a tail again… of gallivanting through back gardens in the crisp night air without a care in the world…
Being able to dabble in that whenever she wanted would be a wonderful present.
Amanda grinned and turned her attention back to Loris’s sweet musings. While out in the garden a rumpled starling watched them, chortling with great satisfaction to himself.
A job well done.

Prompt was “Amanda and Loris have been drifting apart. When their doorbell camera records a scruffy man leaving a box on their doorstep, Amanda panics. She must destroy the box, but she’s delayed at work. When Loris returns home first, Amanda’s past catches up to her—and it’s the best thing ever.”