When someone says "Just five more minutes", it never is just five more minutes.

Charlie kept cuddling Jess' tail, gently petting the soft fur, breathing in the fox girl's scent, completely lost to the world. Some tourists passing by the café looked at the girls with varying degrees of bewilderment, particularly as Jess felt her face heat up, turning a lovely shade of red that matched the fur on her ears and tail. Not surprising, of course, seeing as the constant gentle touch on her tail made sure that a certain feeling she usually did her best to circumnavigate kept building within her.

And through the touch of her best friend, no less! This was... no one had ever told Jess that this was possible, to feel like this from another woman's hands! To want to slide from her chair, hug Charlie close to her body, and maybe... go even further... But then again, hadn't Jess felt similar with Cathy? Even held hands and hugged her friend and colleague? Was... was this strange tail turning the southern belle into a sinful, promiscuous pervert that lusted for anyone that touched the voluminous, silky fur?!

"Ch-Charlie, uhm, Ah think... it... it's starting to get dark..." Which wasn't strictly true, but the sun was starting to set. But Jess, shying away from the intensity of these heretofore unknown sensations, wanted some time to breathe, to think without building arousal clouding her mind. "C-can we... go to mah apartment?"

"Oh! Ohmigosh, I'm so sorry!" Charlie sat up straight so quickly she almost bounced upwards a few inches, letting go of Jess' tail as if it was burning hot. And even if the Texan could calm down now, the main thing she felt was... regret. "I don't know why I... it's just, work today was... intense, and I guess I needed to unwind? Please don't be angry I touched your tail..."

"Ah'm not," Jess smiled. It had felt nice, and knowing it helped calm Charlie in turn helped the southern belle. "Ah mean, it's just an accessory..."

"Uh, what? No way." Jess felt her stomach drop, making good headway towards the center of the earth. Charlie so matter-of-factly not buying what everyone else had? "It's real, right? It has to be, it feels warm, and it moves so lifelike..."

"Well, yeah, but Ah... it's just, uhm, electrodes?"

"Right. Next you're gonna try and sell me a bridge in the Sahara." Giving Jess a half-lidded stare from where she was sitting, Charlie raised an eyebrow. "You caught it, right? Whatever's making the rounds right now and changing people?"

"Wh-what?" There's more like me?! "Y'all don't mean... what do y'all mean?"

"Come, I'll tell you on the way." Getting up, Charlie extended her hand towards Jess and helped her up. Not that the Texan would have needed the help, but with her mind abuzz with questions and possibilities, she took the offered hand as if on autopilot and kept holding on as they began to walk towards her home. That is, until Charlie continued talking. Shaken from her thoughts, Jess let go, Charlie holding on to her hand for a fraction of a second before opening her fingers with what seemed like a hint of ****. "Okay, you're one of quite a few people that got changed. You wanna know why work was intense today? First thing in the morning, we get a guy coming into the ER screaming bloody **** about how his co--his dick's gone."

Charlie always toned down her language to be less crass, knowing Jess wasn't totally comfortable with overtly sexual terms due to her upbringing. As they walked on, the nurse went into one of her decompressing rants that Jess had listened to so often back when they had met almost weekly.

"We of course think 'Well, damn, hope he put the thing on ice so we can sew it back on', but no! He doesn't have anything with him, and there's not even any blood on his crotch, but hey, it's a slow day, so we humor him. Get him into an examination room, he drops his pants and... well, he has a fully functioning vagina, it looks like. First thing we think is trans man, of course, but he swears he's a man, born and bred, and this morning, he still had a dick. Further examination shows no mastectomy scars, we finally pull up his file and indeed... according to that, he's a normal guy. Only not so normal anymore, what with his entire plumbing changed. Well, otherwise, he's healthy, so we send him to the psych guys for an eval, with a trip to the OBGYN to see if there's anything wrong with the new stuff. And while we still think 'what the actual fuck', we get the next case!"

Gesturing animatedly, Charlie tried to keep her voice down so no one nearby heard much of what she said. The boardwalk was rather empty, it being a weekday, but there were a few locals enjoying the last rays of the sun and several tourists on the search for a place to eat dinner. Charlie wasn't quite violating HIPAA thanks to the lack of details in her story, but it never hurt to be careful.

"So much for the slow day. Over the next hours, we not only get the usual stuff we see in the ER, but a lot of weird shi--stuff, no offense. Your tail is awesome. But we got a load of strangeness... okay, I hope I'm not going to gross you out, but I need to tell someone. Just tell me when you need me to stop?"

"Sure, just keep goin'," Jess smiled. This reminded her of back when they hadn't sort of drifted apart.

"Okay. Thanks! Well, the next one's a woman with a weird, lumpy leg. Or so we think. She's weirdly awkward about it, and... okay, long story short, she seemed to have found the other guy's dick, inflated it and... stuck it above her butt cheeks, turning it into a prehensile tail of sorts. Aaand... she gets 'excited' when we examined her. Rob almost gets hit in the chest, he barely dodges the stu--oh god, I'm so sorry."

Jess had almost stumbled as the memory of... that came barrelling to the forefront of her mind before she could squash it. But Charlie was ready, pulling her friend into a tight hug and murmuring encouragements - against the side of Jess' head, of course, with her ears now so much higher up. But still, the fox morph wrapped her arms around Charlie's torso and her tail around their legs, shuddering as she tried to calm her whirling mind. And the safety of Charlie's hug helped considerably. A short while later, too short for Jess' tastes, she was ready to continue home. What she wasn't ready for was letting go of her friend's hand - the soft, warm digits felt like a lifeline to Jess.