There were many reasons why Wallace never resorted to thievery in small villages. The towns were too small, the people too close knit. All it took for one to become suspicious in these kinds of places was to be known, since everyone in town could immediately spot a stranger and strangers were the first people looked to when things started to go missing. Additionally, your average peasant had somewhere between "nothing" and "less than nothing" worth stealing. Unless Wallace had a pressing need for a broken piece of farm equipment or a dozen-patched tunic, the benefit of walking away with anything was emphatically not worth the attendant troubles. More than all of that, however, it was just too easy. Doors without locks, windows that were little more than wooden flaps over a hole in the wall, residents that slept the sleep of people who actually worked for a living... had there been anything in those homes worth stealing, Wallace would have considered doing so beneath him. He might as well have stolen coin out of the paws of addled elders or small babes.
This is why it was so darkly amusing that, as he was preparing to slip out of the manor in the middle of the night, he realized that being naked made all of those problems so much better.
Being recognized around town did not mean much when you had spent the last couple of days hiding in an abandoned manor and you had no intention of letting any villager see you. The ratty tunics suddenly seemed like more valuable prizes, all of a sudden. And as for the difficulty, what could be more difficult than getting in and out of a town without anyone getting an eyeful of your naked body? He could smooth over any sort of casual spotting. Worst case scenario, he could talk his way out of things and then make himself scarce. It would be so much more difficult to do that when the first thing people saw was your plums and prod, in the cold night air.
It was perfect. As he slipped underneath a window on an out-of-the-way cottage and tested the flap for creaks, he wondered to himself why he had never thought of this before.
His pawpads touched the floor on the other side of the window, soundlessly. That was the one part of this excursion he was confident in, the one part of his work that was not affected by a lack of clothes. He always went without shoes, whenever he needed to move silently. That way, he could feel every suspect bend of the floorboards, every anomaly in elevation that might otherwise have tripped him up. He moved gingerly, eperimintally. His eyes had not adjusted to the sudden darkness he was thrust in, so instead he navigated by ear. Forward and to his right. There, he could hear an old married couple, snoring in two seperate keys that emphatically did not sound better together. Along the way, he had to pause when his footpaws brushed against a carpet, a chair-leg, a spinning wheel on the verge of collapsing from overuse. Like many peasant families, these people had scarce possessions, and even scarcer space to put it. Even so, it was a fair sight better than some of the boarding houses he had holed up in, in the cities.
By the time he had slunk into the bedroom, he had mostly adjusted to the light. Now, in the blue-grey shafts of moonlight peeking through the window covers, he could see the lump of blankets peacefully snoring away. He could also see his quarry. Slowly, carefully, one ear cocked towards the bed, he pulled the bottom drawer of the nearby dresser. It fought him, as he did so, but fortunately it was a difficulty he could solve by carefully jiggling the thing instead of having to use potentially noisy force. Snaking a paw inside, he pulled out the first clothing-like thing it fell on. In the dark, he tried to get a measure of what he had. Was that a neck hole he felt, or a waistband? Were those sleeves? No... no, leggings. He smirked to himself. Trousers. Perfect. He immediately closed the drawer behind him and made his escape.
That was the plan for what the rest of his night would look like. He would only ever steal one thing from each house. With any luck, they would just be considered mislaid, and nobody would think to ask about it until he was well and truly away from the village. After three houses, his bag was now filled with just about enough clothing for two. In the fourth, he instead decided to sneak a few hunks of cheese from the sliced wheel that had been left in the pantry. He ate his prize at the family table, listening to the sound of the owners sleeping and enjoying the perverse sense of peacefulness that surrounded him. However, he would not be able to try his luck a fifth time. Approaching the house, he had managed to get his paw on one of the windows when a noise from inside forced him to scutter away. It was only when he was hunched over around the corner, peeking around it like a feral creature, that he realized what he was hearing was the fitful squalling of a babe, awake and determined to make it everyone's problem. A second babe joined in, shortly thereafter, and then Wallace heard the belabored, incoherent mumbling of a mother coming to fix whatever ailed them. Aware that the neighbors might wake up soon, from this racket, he put himself behind some hedges and made his escape.
By that point the sky was beginning to lighten. Just beginning. Dawn was still a ways off; he might have had the time and the will to pull one more thing. Still, it was just as well. Wallace always had the time and the will to pull one more thing. He considered it one of his greatest strengths of character. The town watch usually begged to differ, but they were poor judges of character. No matter. Providence had seen its way clear to give him what he needed, and intervened before he could suffer the consequences for it. He would offer his thanks to no god in particular, as he scaled the fence and landed back in the courtyard.
He was halfway to the front door when it opened. Beckett must have been waiting for him at the window. Wallace had insisted that the dormouse get his beauty sleep, that he did not need to stay up on his account. Of course, Wallace might also have phrased his night's activities as "going forth to bring back deliverance" from their "horribly unclothed" state. In retrospect, Beckett might have been a little bit too excited to hear that. He was especially eager to get some cloth between him and the world outside, for reasons that had long since dried onto the floorboards.
"D-did you find them?" Beckett whispered desperately, behind the door. "Did you find some clothes?"
Wallace rolled his eyes, then unslung his backpack. "Listen, Beck. Just because I don't have a head for all that sorcery stuff..." He held up a bundle of cloth, with a victorious smirk. "...doesn't mean I can't do a couple of magic tricks, when you ask nicely."
The look of sheer, unbridled hope and joy that spread accross Beckett's face was of the kind normally reserved for a father meeting their infant child for the first time. "Splendid!" he cried. "Fantastic! Excellent work, Si..." He caught himself, with a blush. "...Wallace."
Still caught up in his triumph, Wallace was willing to let the "Sir" slide. At least, this time. He leaned back on one foot, tucking the bundle under his arm. The sound of morning birds started up, around them.
Beckett's smile faded, slowly, as the seconds dragged on and it was clear that Wallace was not about to move from that spot. "Um..." He fidgeted, behind the door. "C-could you maybe bring some of those over here? I'd really like to... you know, cover up."
And there it was. The question that Wallace had decided he wanted to hear from Beckett, ever since he had the idea at that one villager's kitchen table. And since the dormouse had been obliging enough to meet him in the front yard... His smile widened. "Actually, I think you should come out here and take them, yourself."
"What?" Beckett disappeared behind the door. For a second, Wallace thought he had gone completely to another room. But then, his tawny snout poked out again, slowly. "I-I-I can't do that," he whined, whiskers twitching. "You're out... th-the sun's coming out."
"Beck, I just put my arse where every man, woman and child in a village could find it, if they looked hard enough." His tone suggested that such a thing was an ordeal, but because Beckett's eyes were still hidden Wallace was free to express on his face how bracing he had considered the experience to be. He continued to chastise his embarrassed friend. "It seems only a fair trade that you experience a bit of that, before you get your hands on my treasures."
"But... but Wallace, I... I..."
"Beck."
"I can't do it. P-please, just..."
"Beck, listen to me." Wallace allowed his expression to sober a bit, but only because he saw more of Beckett's head emerge from the doorway. "Do you know how boys learn to swim?"
"What?" Beckett's face was fully emerged, his eyes doleful and his paw scraping up and down the wood of the door, idly. "I... I don't know. I mean, I do. I presume somebody teaches them how. I-is that what you...?"
Wallace shook his head. "No, Beck. You're ahead of yourself. The way a boy learns to swim is by getting in the water."
At first, Beckett did not understand. Then, as realization dawned, the fingers around the door curled into a fist, and his expression became less pathetic. "You... you mean, I should face my... m-my fear, don't you? I should acclimate to it like..." He looked away, realizing that his eyes were wandering down Wallace's body. "...l-l-like you have."
"That's right," Wallace lied, looking every bit the person who wanted their friend to face their fear and not at all like someone who just wanted to watch a twitchy and easily flustered mouse walk around naked in public for his own amusement. "It's all right, Beck. You're safe here. Nothing around us but woods, nobody here but me. You know I've seen worse."
Beckett squeaked, and retreated again. For a moment, Wallace was concerned that he had overplayed his hand. But then, the door opened further. Beckett's head, and then his shoulder and chest emerged from the entryway.
"Promise you won't laugh," he said.
"I promise," Wallace replied.
"Or touch me."
"I won't."
"Or tell any more stories about lewd friends you know."
Wallace sighed and rolled his eyes. "Beck. You have my word as a man. I will do nothing but hand you your clothes." He held up the bundle, for emphasis. "Now, come out here and claim them."
Beckett closed his eyes. He took a deep, deep breath. Then, slowly, he emerged from the doorway.
In truth, Wallace was not in a mood to laugh or tease, once Beckett had stepped out into the light. In another time, Wallace would not have given a creature like him a moment's thought. The two would have passed on the street, both on their way to somewhere else, and that would have been the end of it. Now, however, in the slowly reddening light of morning, with the sound of birds in the distance and a cool breeze through their fur, he found Beckett to be... handsome. That was the word that came to mind, anyway, though it could not be the most apt. Handsome was usually more dignified than the ball of nervous energy that stood before him. Another word that came to mind was "soft." The body of a man who was fortunate enough to be lettered, but not so fortunate as to feast on the peasant's tributes. Helping that softness was the fact that, as always, he insisted on curling into himself, making himself as small and round and vulnerable as possible.
Wallace smirked, just a bit, as Beckett padded down the stairs towards him. He loved this feeling, being taken in by another person's body the way wealthier men than him were taken in by fine art. He made a promise to himself that he would have to experience that at least once, in every city he visited from now on.
At the bottom of the stairs, Beckett paused. All the bracing breaths in the world could not keep the shudder out of his lungs. His paws had found their way between his legs, out of brute instinct, and now he stared down at them. "Should..." He looked up to Wallace, blushing. "...should I take my hands away for this? Expose my... m-myself more?"
Wallace blinked, snapping out of his thoughts. "Uh... you could keep them there. You know, if it makes you feel better."
"It doesn't," Beckett moaned. "It really... really doesn't make me feel better at all."
"Well, there's no need to torture yourself, Beck. Clothes are right here. You just gotta..."
Beckett made his way down the path at a speed that nearly made Wallace jump back in alarm. The only thing keeping it from becoming a full on sprint was the logistical hurdle of doing so with his hands against his thighs. It was an an effort of will on Wallace's part to quash the sheer animal fear of a rat who had only ever been charged at like that for bad reasons. In seconds, Beckett was directly in front of Wallace, at which point any dynamism the dormouse displayed was immediately replaced by yet more small meekness.
"Okay, I'm here," he whispered, lifting a paw up. "Please give me some clothes, now."
Wallace cleared his throat. "Well... good job, Beck. See, that wasn't so hard."
"Yes, it was. Clothes. Please, clothes."
"You know what? I'm proud of you, little mouse. You've got more guts than I thought you did."
Beckett thrust his paw forward with violence, his face incandescent under his fur. "Don't care. I don't care. Clothes. Now. Now give clothes. Clothes give clothes now please give please."
"All right, all right," Wallace turned the bundle over into Beckett's possession. "Get dressed before your heart gives out."
"Thank you!" Beckett unfurled the bundle and threw it in front of himself, while he got a measure of what he was holding. "Oh, sweet modesty! After days of this torture I can finally, finally... finally..." He looked down at the garment, then back up at Wallace. "This... this is a dress."
"Hmm?" Wallace had to turn around to fumble through his bag, mainly so he could avoid being seen cracking up. "Yes it is. Sorry, Beck. I had to grab whatever I could. I did not exactly have the luxury of choice."
"Is that right?" Beckett stared sidelong at Wallace, making a grim little note in his mind as he saw the rat produce a perfectly normal pair of trousers for himself.
"That's right," Wallace lied, already one leg in. He made eye contact with the dormouse. "Look, if you want me to go back out there, I will. I'll just take that back and-"
"No!" Beckett was already climbing into the garment. "No, just... let me..." His head popped through the neckhole, his arms through the sleeves, and in moments he was covered. The dress was a basic brown thing, clearly tight around the midsection, with a skirt that went down to just past the knees. He looked down at himself, so overjoyed to no longer be seeing his own genitals that he was beyond caring.
Wallace laced up his trousers and turned around. He smirked. "See? You look all right in that."
"Never mind that, now." For the first time, Beckett's voice had no hint of a tremble in it. "We have clothes. Now we need to do something about the person who stole our other clothes. I'm going to go back to my book and see if anything there can help me match her." He spun around, skirt whipping in the morning breeze, and began to march back inside.
He got halfway to the door when it slammed shut, in front of him.
Under normal circumstances, he might have blamed that on the wind. But when he felt the fur at the scruff of his neck stand on end, he realized something was afoot. He bounded the rest of the way to the door, throwing his paws on the handle. He struggled and clattered at it, while Wallace lazily brought up the rear. By the time the rat was on the bottom stair, Beckett turned back, panicked. "It's locked. The door's locked!"
"Clumsy mouse," Wallace chuckled. "You locked us out of your house?"
"No. I don't even think that's possible. It needs the key to be locked, and I didn't bring it with me."
That caused Wallace to sober, a bit. On an instinct, he took a few steps back and scanned the windows. "Ah, of course," he muttered. "And there she is."
Beckett came to join Wallace at the bottom of the stairs. There, in the window just to the left of the door, he spotted Dierdre. The bobcat raised one blunt paw and gave the two of them the most genteel finger wave she could manage, malice in her green eyes but sweetness in every other inch of her body. For a moment, the three of them stared at each other on their sides of the glass. Then, by way of explanation, Dierdre pointed to Beckett, reached her paws behind her back, and pantomimed the action of removing a dress. Beckett's eyes widened in horror. Wallace scowled.
"I guess it would have been too easy," Wallace remarked, picking at the laces of his trousers.
"Wh-what are you doing?" Beckett asked.
"Isn't it obvious?" Wallace shucked the garment off of his hips and stepped out of them. "She's got control of the house. Won't let us back in with our bits covered."
"But... but..." Beckett looked from Wallace, to Dierdre, then down to his dress. His thoughts went back to his spellbook, still locked inside. Then, with a pained moan, he reached behind himself and shimmied out of the neckhole of the dress.
No sooner was the garment bundled in his arms than the door opened, seemingly of its own accord. Dierdre, from the window, gave a demure, maid-like curtsy and grinned the grin of a predator.
Wallace shook his head. "We're playing by her rules now, Beck. Looks like we'll need to rethi-"
"Aaaaahhhhh!"
For the second time, Beckett was off like a shot. This time he was in a full sprint, his dress clutched tight to his breast, as he made a break for the open door. He managed to get himself past the threshold. Only himself. As soon as the dress approached the doorframe it squashed and flattened like it impacted a wall. Beckett felt the breath stolen from his lungs as he was punched in the whole of his chest. His legs continued forward into the house. The rest of him sailed backward, causing him to collapse onto his back on the porch.
"Beck!" Wallace rushed up the stairs and knelt down next to the dormouse. "Beckett, are you all right?"
Beckett coughed and groaned. "It's not fair," he squeaked. "It's not... fair!"
"Come on, man. Sit up. Sit up." With an effort, Wallace helped Beckett up. "Listen to me. We need to think of something."
"What, though?" Beckett recovered his breath, enough at least to remember that he was meant to cover his genitals. "I don't know how to deal with..."
"Not here. She's literally in the next room. Let's talk somewhere else. Can you stand?"
Beckett nodded and let himself be helped up to his footpaws. He protested, when he realized he was being led out into the yard, but Wallace was no longer insisting in jest, and he found himself cowed by the rat's sudden sobriety. He allowed himself to be dragged, one paw on his inner forearm. Wallace paused only long enough to pick up his discarded pants and backpack, before he walked them over to the fence. He picked a spot facing a corner of the house. No windows facing them, at least not directly. Then, he stood with his back to it.
"Keep your eyes open, Beck," he ordered. "Don't look at me, look at the house. Shout if you see her." Beckett swallowed and nodded. Wallace sighed. "All right. Whoever this Weaver girl is, she's got the better of us. We need to leave."
"But..." Beckett's eyes roved over the manor. "...my spellbook. All my things are in there."
"As are a few of mine. Don't worry. I'm not suggesting we make a break for it, now." Wallace looked over to the front gate, which at this point hung open. "If she can bar a door, she can bar a courtyard gate."
"So what do we do?"
"Give me the dress back." Wallace saw a protest coming on, and quashed it with a raised finger. "I'm going to go find a place in the woods to hide these things. Then, we'll go back, we'll come up with a way to escape. Once we're free of this house, we can go ask the villagers for help. There's a big church down there, and those guys have gotta know what's going on, up here."
"But... Wallace..." Beckett looked down at the bundle of cloth seperating his private parts from the world outside. "I can't... I can't do it, I..."
"Beck." Wallace put both paws down on Beckett's shoulders. "How do boys learn to swim?"
Beckett looked into Wallace's eyes. Then, he closed his. He took a deep breath, and then another, deeper breath. Finally, he lifted the dress up. "Do it. Before I lose my courage."
Wallace grabbed the bundle and, together with his pants, threw them back into his bag. "Not to worry, friend. You have plenty to go around." Tossing the bag back over his shoulders, he made for the fence and grabbed two pawfuls of vines. "I go now. I shall see you when I get back."
In times like this, with peace of mind cruelly taken from him at the last minute, stranded in the rising sunshine with no clothes, it seemed like the very last thing Beckett should have been of a mind to do was admire another man's body. Of course his eyes, treacherous little things that they were, would wander wherever they pleased regardless of how much it made his fur hot and his blood itch. He had no doubt seen more of Wallace's body in the past few days than he had any other man or woman, since the day the "fear" first settled in. In a dark corner of his mind, far away from the surface, he found himself strangely captivated. Wallace was an athletic sort, clearly no stranger to the act of climbing. As thin as he was, and as close to the skin as his black-mottled white fur was, Beckett could see every flex of the rat's powerful legs, the shape of his firm rear. It was strangely fascinating, the sort of fascination one feels when they watched a drake walking and noticed the muscles working just underneath their scales. He was fascinated, and more than a little bit envious. He could not remember ever climbing anything, as effortlessly as Wallace seemed to.
It was just as he was about to go over, one footpaw on the horizontal bar at the top of the fence, that Wallace looked down and noticed he was being watched. He followed Beckett's eyes, all the way up to his ass. At first, he thought to tease the dormouse. Then, as he got a clearer look at Beckett's expression, he found himself sobering. He had been expecting blushing, fear, uncontrollable spontaneous orgasms... all the usual things he had come to expect from Beckett, over the past few days. What he was not expecting was a look of... what would you even describe that as? Admiration? Affection? Was it even possible to feel affection for a man's ass?
Suddenly, he was aware that he was blushing. He, Wallace, was blushing. That could not be allowed to stand. He forced a chuckle out of him and humored his original instinct to tease. "Look at that. You're getting bolder, already."
Beckett squeaked, spinning around on the pad of one footpaw so he was facing the opposite direction. "I-I'll wait here. Hurry back. I..." Now facing towards the manor, the nervous energy returned. "...I don't think I want to go in there alone."
With that, all was right with the world. Wallace hopped down and landed on the grass on the other side. Then, he vanished into the woods.
Finding hiding spots was not difficult. Wallace had been stowing away things that were not his ever since he first learned that he could take things that did not belong to him. The trick was to find a spot you could always come back to, with landmarks you could commit to memory, and which did not look like it was trafficked very heavily. Difficult to pull off in a city, where every alleyway was the unofficial hiding spot of any number of guys like him. The woods, however? He was finding good spots before he'd even lost sight of the manor. A fallen, hollowed out log, a tree with especially dense foliage, a particularly large boulder with shrubs all around it... he was spoilt for choice. And, as it turned out, doing the search naked did not make it any easier, but it did make the whole process far more enjoyable. Once again, nudity improves everything.
He settled on a stand of shrubs, next to a small, weak-running stream. He could find this place again by walking straight from the section of the fence he had jumped, and it was so remote he did not even find game trails. He stood in front of his hiding spot for a moment, committing the sight of it to memory. Then, he pulled all the stolen clothes out of his bag and tucked them behind a particular shrub, in an unorganized knot of fabric. He nodded to himself, after his work was done. This would work. He turned around and prepared to head back.
Up the hill where he needed to go he saw a pair of bright green, slitted eyes.
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