Tammy flicked an ear as the familiar sounds of the forest she lived in gradually woke her up.

She stood to stretch her four legs, as one did, only to yelp as her lower belly twisted with discomfort. The sharp jab pulsed through her limbs, up her spine, and ended in her skull.

The red fox collapsed back into the grass, squeezing her hind-legs together as another spasm jolted through her. Slick heat dribbled down her hind legs, the miniscule relief confirming she was voiding her bladder from the pain.

Tammy lay there, panting, eyes squeezed shut and ears flattened as everything overstimulated her. Nothing made sense. Her thoughts were a jumbled mess.

The last thing she remembered was sniffing a strange worm, a jab of pain on her poor nose, then blissful darkness.

Something… is wrong.

Foreign, yet familiar memories flooded her. The crash. Losing Flora. Desperately wriggling her way into a local creature’s reproductive system. Relief at being compatible, at least physiologically. Neurologically was another matter.

Tammy’s stomach clenched painfully, the revulsion too much for her to handle. She regurgitated the hare she had eaten earlier, and then dry heaved for another few seconds, trembling hard. Her body had been taken over. Her womb, the precious place where kits were grown, invaded.

Or, she had invaded? She was Tammy, wasn’t she?

The fox let out a keening wail, curling in on herself and clutching her head with her paws. Never had thoughts felt so clear yet so cloudy. Never could she ruminate on so much that didn’t make sense yet made all the sense in the world.

Why can’t I… feel anything?

Tammy didn’t understand. Why had she thought that? It was agony. The spasms coursed through her belly and spine, and her poor backside ached like it did after a particularly rough knotting. Of course she felt it. Why did she think she couldn’t feel anything? She felt everything.

A soothing chill suddenly spread throughout her belly, banishing the pain wherever it touched. Tammy nearly melted with relief.

I’m so sorry. Something went wrong with.... We’re not supposed to be… should help until the damage...

We?

Tammy’s eyes widened in sudden, terrifying realization. She wasn’t Tammy, she wasn’t the creature wriggling about in her womb. She was the result of an attempted complete melding, one that failed partway for reasons unknown. It had left her mind intact, yet different, changed. Sapience where before there was none.

A sapience relied on by the symbiote herself. Yet where most of her higher thought was processed through Tammy’s neural filaments, the core of her being, the sentience in the sapience, was all the fox. All her.

Tammy opened her eyes again and looked at her right paw. It was familiar. She knew it was her paw. It felt like her paw. Flexing her toes, unsheathing her claws. She nibbled and licked her pad, and closed her eyes as the taste of dirt, grass, urine, and multiple other complex flavors lingered on her tongue.

She remembered being a fox for her entire life. The simplicity of thought. The complexity of her emotions despite the inability to fully unpack them. Plenty of stressful confusion and an equal amount of cautious curiosity. It was all so fresh. Bright.

She was her. Not Tammy. Her.

Who was she?

You’re both of us, Tammy, the true Tammy, said. Not so much a thought, but a sensation of thought. A voice forced into her mind. If the meld failed in the way I assume it did, you’re using my external synaptic connections to experience my memories, but I’m not able to interact with your mind properly. My filaments had to be more aggressive spiraling their way up your spinal cord to make their way up to your brain, since something in your neurology is making the psychic connection weak as well, but even that closer melding isn’t enough. It’s supposed to feel fluid. Both ways. Instead we have your experience as a result.

The implications sent Tammy’s fur on-end. She knew exactly what was supposed to happen. She was supposed to have been taken over fully, with only a dull, happy contentness left over. If they were truly compatible, if the psychic side of the connection worked, if the physical connection was perfectly two-way, she would have remained non-sapient. Just like Flora. A happy, dumb existence, while the real Tammy used her brain to puppeteer her body any way she seemed fit.

Tammy had never really considered the implications from the host’s side, but now she was forced to experience it.

The fox let out a sigh. Identity crisis aside, the fact she could ruminate over things at all was a huge upgrade. The closest thing to an internal, conscious debate she could remember engaging in was trying to decide whether to stay in her den for the winter, or find a new, safer one away from the tool makers. 

…Tool makers?

Tammy stood up, fully alert. Her legs wobbled, and her sex throbbed despite the numbing agents coursing through her underbelly, but the urgency of her realization forced her on her feet. 

Humans were tool users.

Humans were sapient.

Humans had a civilization.

And Tammy’s spaceship was right there, crashed in the middle of a forest, barely half a day’s walk from one of the humans’ larger settlements. One of their cities.

She had always known humans to be different from other animals. Strange, bipedal beings that wore what she now knew to be clothes. Dangerous, yet their dwellings usually presented opportunity. Such as all the food they tended to waste. Or the occasional chicken from the local small farm, if she was feeling particularly bold. 

They could have noticed. They might come here to investigate. But, more importantly, they might have the tools to fix our ticket home.

Tammy looked in the direction of her den wistfully. No mate. No kits, not for lack of trying. No real life beyond immediate survival.

Home… home sounded good, even if she would never experience it with Flora again.

“We need a plan,” she tried to say aloud, only for a garbled mess of noises to escape her inferior voicebox instead. She growled in response.

Speaking our language isn’t a priority anyway. Perhaps we could learn a human language in the future if we believe communicating with them would help, but for now, we’re quite hungry. We did just spit up our breakfast and my body in particular is quite weak.

Tammy grimaced at the thought of eating, but had to concede the point. Their real body—Tammy’s real body, not hers, was still weak. As much as her identity was in crisis, she still cared about Tammy as much as herself. As Tammy?

You’re giving us both a headache. It feels strange thinking of a name that isn’t ours or Flora, but a name for our body would make things less confusing, and will help us with our identity crisis. How about Crimson? Since our host’s fur is a beautiful shade of red.

Tammy sat on her haunches and looked over herself. Scruffy and dirty as she was, she was quite red. And it was a simple enough name.

She rejected the idea, however. Tammy was the only name she knew. Confusing as it could be, it was her. Them. Crimson could be the body, the fox before everything, but Tammy did not think she could ever adapt to anything other than Tammy. 

Hm, fair enough. I feel the same way, so of course you do as well. What about shorting it to Tam? We’ve always liked that nickname, and many of our friends back home use it. It’s still our name.

We are both Tammy, but going by a nickname makes sense, She agreed, focusing a thought for the first time. It was difficult without access to psychic organs, as she had to assume Tammy would receive it, but the ping told her Tammy had understood.

I’m starting to feel our body. It’s a little numb, and I don’t believe I’ll ever be in control given how strange this species’ spinal cord is, but so long as I can feel everything eventually, I don’t think I’ll mind being in the backseat for a change. It’ll help distract us from losing Flora…

Speaking of distractions, Tam’s vulva was beginning to itch. Better than the sharp pain from before, but that didn’t make it any less annoying. 

She let out a soft whimper and lifted a hind leg to give her irritated mound a lick, not even fully cognizant of what she was doing until her tongue was already gliding between her plump folds. It had been completely by reflex. An instinct ingrained in her, only questioned because she had the mental capacity to second-guess herself.

Tam was from a… civilized society, after all, or at least it felt like she was.

But then the itch became a pulsing ache, and Tam ignored her doubts and went all-in on slurping at her spade, shuddering with delight as the slick warmth of her tongue soothed the irritation.

That feels pleasant, the alien within her womb thought. Such plump genitalia for a female species, sensitive too from the little I can feel. It appears the pain relieving chemicals I injected have a libido increasing effect on this species. At least there’s no major pain and pleasure still seems to be, mhm, functioning well.

Tam had not been intending this to become a masturbation session, but now that she thought about it, she never had masturbated as her previous, non-sapient self. The stray lick or two, pleasant sensations to ease her heats, but never the intentional pleasure-hacking that many species engaged in, though mostly males from her observations in the wild.

It just never crossed her mind.

Until now.

I would suggest we take it easy for our bodies to heal, perhaps search for something to fill our bellies first, but my egg chamber is engorged after edging myself earlier by accident, and our body appears to be in heat. So long as you’re gentle, and wouldn’t mind sucking on my ovipositor to dispose of my eggs safely, we could masturbate for a few minutes? Just a quickie.

Tam answered her other self’s suggestion by slurping her sex into her mouth, and then whining into her folds as the warmth and pressure of her maw nearly overwhelmed her. She’d never done this before, sucking herself off like she had a penis. Licking, slurping, sure, all to clean herself, and to soothe some particularly brutal heats, but never this kind of active assault.

We’re clenching quite a bit around me! It’s… intense. Keep it up, I’ll extend my posterior so you can stimulate my ovipositor, though with how deep our tongue is getting, I’m almost not sure that’s needed. Better safe than sorry though.

Better safe than sorry indeed. Symbiotes were taught from an early age that they were naturally an invasive species, and could easily destroy entire alien ecosystems all on their own. One stray self-fertilized egg was all it took. And she could tell that Tammy, her symbiote, was absolutely going to self-fertilize.

It was important she gulped down every drop. After all, while symbiotes could survive digestion, their eggs could not.

Digging her tongue deeper into herself, Tam felt something stiff yet squishy wriggle against her. The contact sent a powerful jolt through her insides, stirring on what could only be Tammy’s worm-like backside to stretch itself toward the exit of her vagina. Eventually her tongue was pushed out entirely by the plated backside, the reminder of the alien inside briefly sending a flicker of discomfort through the vixen that she stomped out with some effort.

This new state of existence was very confusing.

Both familiar and new, Tam had to see it with her own eyes, so she regretfully pulled away from her soaked, twitching vulva and observed the grub-like backside protruding from her entrance. Glossy black like a beetle, with a complicated, horizontal pair of armor-like ‘lips’ on the very tip, it looked unlike any genitalia the fox had ever seen. Which wasn’t many, granted, but she could faintly recall being curious of the smaller critters in the past, having watched a leaf insect deposit its eggs in the dirt.

A slender, slimy white shaft suddenly pierced its way out from that sideways slit, revealing equally white depths, the ovipositor reminding her a lot of said leaf insect, especially in the way it jerked and twisted about, searching for a nice, warm place to lay its eggs.

S-stop looking and make a seal with your muzzle, I’m close!

Snapped out of her observations, Tam leaned in and without hesitation wrapped her lips not only around the thin ovipositor itself, but also the back end of the symbiote’s abdomen. Knowing exactly where all the erogenous zones were. After all, she did have access to most of Tammy’s memories. She gently put pressure on the spot juuust behind where the sideways plates opened up into her cloaca proper, and pressed her tongue firmly against the entirety of Tammy’s quivering ovipositor.

The reaction was immediate. Streaks of hot, gooey eggs splashed across her tongue, the flavor surprisingly succulent to her tastebuds. To Flora’s tastebuds, eggs had tasted like almost nothing, maybe close to dirt. Now, however, they tasted so good that she had to wonder if they might actually be nutritious for her biology.

It was strange, though, the inability to feel Tammy’s orgasm as her own, but it made the experience sexier somehow, like she was sucking off a clone of herself, keeping a tight seal around the symbiote’s pulsating abdomen like it was a fox’s penis.

Not that she’d even done oral on a fellow fox before… It was a tempting idea.

Tammy was beyond words at the moment, staying completely silent save for a high-pitched, psychic squeal. Tam yipped in laughter at the noise, knowing from experience how pleasurable a good unloading could be, especially with how full Tammy had been before the trip. It made her wish she could experience the relief alongside her. Feel what could have been her own sensations.

With her vulva pressed against her snout, she realized that she could join in, and with an eager growl, Tam opened wider and slurped up her entire sex once again and began suckling it like a teat. She bent so far down between her hind legs, so eager to envelope herself in tight, squishy heat, that her nose ended up smushed against her buttthole, the earthy scent flaring her nostrils and sending her instincts to breed into a frenzy.

When she started to cum, it took her completely by surprise, especially due to the fact her only experience with orgasms were during a good mating. She growled around her lewd mouthful as she was wrought by contractions, the lack of a knot to clamp on only somewhat disappointing due to the trembling abdomen protruding from her folds, giving her something to squeeze on.

The sudden squeezing of Tammy’s abdomen reinvigorated the symbiote’s own pleasure, as her ovipositor suddenly spurted another volley of hot, gooey streaks across her tongue. The grainy texture of eggs made it clear they were still in the danger zone—usually Tammy would be squirting semen only at this point, she must’ve been more gravid than she thought—so Tam made sure to gulp it all down, growling loudly at how pleasant the suction felt around her twitching sex.

Eventually, the pleasure came to an end, and the moment Tammy’s squirts lacked any tell-tale sign of eggs, Tam released her well-sucked spade with a happy churr and fell onto her back. Tammy’s ovipositor continued to squirt, the thin shaft curling at the tip as sending thick, egg-free ropes across Tam’s still-twitching spade. 

That was wonderful, Tammy said once her squirts finally died down to weak dribbles, her psychic voice soft and pleased. I’ve never felt so emptied. And our mouth, oh! We’re definitely doing this again sometime.

Tam let out a lazy grunt in agreement. Alas, while the fox wanted to stay on the ground and sleep right then and there, she knew it wasn’t a safe place. There weren’t many wolves, but they did exist. Bears too. She couldn’t stay in one location for long.

Agreed. Let’s recuperate in our den. Our stomach’s feeling full enough from my, ah, eggs, so we can eat later.

Tam snorted at that. It wasn’t Tammy who had to go hunting later.

Hey, it’s our body, not just yours! ‘We’ is the most accurate description of that activity, same as ‘we’ just masturbated, and ‘we’ will have to sleep later if ‘we’ want both bodies to heal properly. Ugh, speaking of healing, I think you dented my cloacal plates when we masturbated. 

Tam rolled her eyes. Tammy would be fine or she’d be complaining more than she was. At worst, she might have to shed her shell earlier than usual. Which Tam was not looking forward to at all. Shedding wasn’t fun for the symbiote, and passing the shell could be painful for the host too.

You’re the one who likes it rough, Tam teased, and because I’m basically you, I’m all down for it~

Thrilled laughter filled her ears. You know what, being stranded lights years from home aside, I don’t think this will be so bad after all. As much as I love Flora, as much as I miss her and wish she were here, it will be fun sharing a body with someone I can actually speak to for once. Someone like me.

Someone as perverted as you, you mean. 

Another buzz of psychic laughter. Same difference~

She made it to her den under the big oak tree without incident, the two Tammys discussing all kinds of kinky thoughts the entire way there. As Tam crawled into the dark, cozy tunnel, Tammy blabbing about her horribly impractical idea of mating with another female fox so she could ‘extend her ovipositor into her and fill her with cum’, Tam finally growled out, As hot as the idea is, I’m exhausted. You’re exhausted. Let’s rest, okay?

Tammy hummed affirmatively. Fair point. I’ll be sure to keep our womb numb through the night while the swelling goes down. Masturbating shouldn’t have disrupted the healing process much, but it might have made us sorer.

Tam flicked an ear, the reflex completely useless for hearing psychic communication better, but it did show that she heard her. Less pain would be wonderful, but she wasn’t under any illusions it would happen after only a single night. At least the pain killers were doing wonders.

Yawning wide, Tam smacked her chops and curled into a ball in the dirt, nose buried under her tail to capture all the warmth that she could.

Sleep well, my other half. Whatever challenges tomorrow brings, we’ll push through them together.

Deleted scenes 
Breeding convo

Hey, it’s our body, not just yours! ‘We’ is the most accurate description of that activity, same as ‘we’ just masturbated, and ‘we’ will have to give birth if ‘we’ ever decide for this body to have kits like I know you still desire. 

Tam whined at the reminder. She did still want kits, deep down. It wasn’t exactly important to their goals at the moment, though, so she shook her head and huffed before standing up and making her way back to her den.

I’m not infertile, am I? she thought to Tammy after a few minutes of walking. 

I can’t tell, Tammy replied. This anatomy is alien to me. Feeling around here, everything seems healthy enough. Hopefully all those failed matings in the past were dumb luck.

You can make sure the sperm gets to where it should go, so that should help if it was bad luck. I will be going into heat soon, too, and I… I know gestation is hard on a symbiote, but I’ve always wanted children. I know you have wanted kids someday too.

This body can breed, but I can’t, Tammy countered. Helping you gestate is the least I can do for making your life so complicated, but we both know it’s illegal to reproduce using non-Hospes.

It’s only illegal