DING-DONG
 CLICK
 “Hey, I’m ready for the big game! I picked up the beer you asked for.”
 “Keith! I’m so glad you came!”
 You quickly envelop your friend and visitor in a big, strong hug, causing him to drop his pack of beer to return the favor. Even through his jacket and his shirt, you can feel the bumps of his rugged muscles. Bald eagles like him are known for being big and buff, but he’s truly jacked, feeling as solid as marble in your hands. The first time you felt it, long ago, he almost pulled away. He said it must have been strange that there wasn’t a gap between his torso and your arms that time. But of course, you didn’t mind.
 He looked almost nothing like this the first time you met, way back in 4th grade. He was such an awkward little thing back then, as thin as a twig and his feathers all ruffled. You quickly found that both of you loved football, and still do, but whereas you’re a diehard Dragons fan, he likes the Knights, their biggest rival. This did not stop you from willingly interacting you with each other, and between lunchtime arguments over which teams and which players were better, a friendship blossomed.
 Middle school came and went, not much changing other than both of you hitting puberty and growing maybe a few inches each. You’d still come over to each other’s houses after school to play video games or watch sports. High school, however, caused Keith to undergo a complete transformation. His interest in the gridiron compelled him to sign up for your school football team, and he made it onto the roster. He underwent a complete transformation almost overnight, gaining a ton of muscle weight and growing almost a foot taller. You remember he’d show off sometimes, flexing his biceps, and you’d smile and blush and call him a dork. Even after not playing for a few years, he still hasn’t stopped going to the gym.
 “Uh, could you let go now so I can carry this in?”
 But you’re spacing out again. You sheepishly release the eagle from your iron grip, and watch him give a reassuring smile as he picks up the 12-pack with both hands and enters your home to place it on the table. He believes he’s here to watch a pro game, and not just any pro game either. The Knights and Dragons have tied for number of championships since you were kids, and this year, they both made it to the conference final. Whoever wins gets a ticket to the league championship game, and, assuming they beat the other team, takes the lead in the rivalry. It explains what both of you are wearing: Keith dons the orange and black jersey of the Knights, while you proudly wear the Dragons’ green and red. However… you don’t intend to actually watch the game. Or rather, you don’t intend for him to watch the game with you.
 Back in high school, you’d go to all of Keith’s games, and you’d think “Damn, he looks sexy in that uniform.” At first, you thought you might just be developing a crush. Then, those thoughts got a little… stranger. Pretty soon, you were having uncomfortably detailed daydreams about spit-roasting eagle, grinding eagle into hamburger, basting eagle and roasting it in the oven, even swallowing eagle whole sometimes. It wasn’t long before you realized: you weren’t in love with him, you wanted to eat him. You were a predator.
 For the longest time, you thought it would never happen. He was your friend, and even if he did trust you more than anyone else, you didn’t think he’d exactly spring at the opportunity to die in someone’s gut. After all, would you? But all that changed in junior year. You loaned him some money for lunch one day, and he couldn’t pay you back, so he handed you a small bit of paper labeled “I.O.U.”, allowing you to exchange it for absolutely any favor from him, no matter how outlandish. You couldn’t get too upset about losing your money, because you now had the perfect opportunity to put the birdie in you belly. For years, you’ve held onto it, waiting for a good time to remind him of it. You’ve considered eating him on multiple occasions. Senior prom, college graduation, Thanksgiving one year, twice on Christmas Day. It never felt like the right time, though.
 Today, you figure, is. Your two favorite teams are playing each other, and you’ve heard of the peculiar tradition some people have of eating an opposing fan before the game as a good luck charm. You use the IOU today, you have a nice meal to dine on during the game, and a better chance of Dragons victory. You watch him place the beers down, then bend over and point his ass directly at you when he realizes his shoe is untied. His fan of white tailfeathers is splayed upward, out of the way, almost as if he knows you’re staring. You decide that as soon as he gets up, you’ll let him know about your decision.
 “Hey Keith, can we talk about something?”
 “Huh? Oh yeah, of course! What’s on your mind?”
 You almost want to respond with a clever comment, like “Actually, it’s what’s in my hand.”, but his surprised look upon seeing the old slip of paper between your fingers indicates that he already understands. The IOU isn’t anything special. Apart from the text scribbled in pencil, it’s also labeled with a crude doodle of the eagle’s head, and yours on the other side of it. Seeing it for the first time in years, he chuckles boyishly. “Geez, I kinda thought you would’ve forgotten about that. I made it forever ago!” He quickly figures out that you intend to hold him to those terms. “So, what do I owe you, then?”
 What you say is as blunt and straightforward as possible. “Well, what I really want is to cook you up into a good barbecue.”
 If Keith’s face feathers weren’t white, you’d clearly see how pale he turns in reaction to that remark. He takes a step back, as if he’s worried you’ll pounce on him and gobble him up right now. “Uhhhh…” he chokes out. “Are you sure? I mean, there are other things I could do for you. I could-“
 “Don’t care. I want you in my tummy.”
 “…The game starts in just a few hours. Can’t you just wait until then?”
 “Nope. I’ve been waiting to use this thing for 8 years, and I’m not waiting a second later.”
 Keith’s expression at this moment is so uncertain. He looks so torn. He’s got a decent job and a beautiful body, and all the time in the world ahead of him to settle down and start a family, if he so pleases. He doesn’t want to throw it all away just to sate someone’s hunger for a few hours, especially just before the biggest game he may ever see. However, that someone has been his best friend for over a decade, and he’d hate more than anything to let them down. Besides, he is obligated to follow through. “Ok, ok, fine.” Keith concedes, defeated.
 “Perfect!” You say, licking your lips as you head into your kitchen. You return with a knife with a strange curved blade, placing it in the bird’s hand. “Go into the bathroom and strip, then use this to shave off all of those pesky feathers.” You explain. “If any of the quills are still in your skin, pluck ‘em out. Can’t have any fluff or quills in my game day barbecue!”
 “…Ok.” The bald eagle, usually a very proud bird, blushes and sheepishly heads for your bathroom. You hear a loud click as he makes sure to lock the door behind him. You yell one last condition through the door before he starts. “Oh, and try to be quick about it! You gotta be on the grill in a certain timeframe if I want you to be prepared before kickoff!”
**
**
**
You’ve always known Keith to be an efficient person, so it’s no surprise when, only 15 minutes after you hear the door lock, it unlocks. Out steps a shell of his former self. His beak and his talons are still as yellow as before, but the brown and white feathers that once coated his muscular, masculine body are now gone, leaving only pink skin where they used to be. You can now admire his toned muscle in all of it’s naked glory, as well as, for the first time, his thick, long pink dick. He obviously doesn’t like you staring, his face as red as a tomato.
 “Oh, you look just perfect, like a good slab of poultry! Thank you so much!”
 “…A-Anytime.”
 You give the eagle a quick dusting of salt and pepper, making him cough and sputter, and his eyes water. Then it’s onto the best and most important part: The barbecuing itself. With extreme reluctance, he closely follows you into your backyard, wondering if anyone is looking at him. Before you two is a very big, rectangular charcoal grill. It’s especially long for a grill, able to handle “twice the steak”, which is more of a codeword for “you can cook anthros on this.”, seeing as it’s obviously an appliance meant for preds. You’re quick to light the grill, seeing the bright orange flames dance, just barely licking through the grate. You turn to Keith. “Well? Anything you want to get out of the way quickly?”
 “…You… You’ve always been my closest friend, and… if I have to feed anyone, I’m glad I get to feed y-mmmmffff!?!?”
 He’s interrupted by a crisp red apple being jammed into his beak, keeping any more words from escaping his mouth. “So you don’t dry out too much.” You explain to him. “Onto the grill you go, then!” With some slight hesitance, he climbs onto the grill and lays his body back first onto the hot metal. You see him wince as the heat of the fire fully kicks in, but he quickly gets over it, putting his hands behind his head to cushion it. Already, you can smell Keith’s meat starting to cook, sweat and grease dripping down his form, his cock erect as his eyes look at you with resignation.
 It’s evident from the eagle’s boner that he is getting at least some enjoyment out of his predicament, even if it’s involuntary. For you, though, the situation is completely asexual. You’re not pleasured by this at all, looking at him with hunger rather than lust as you press a small spatula against the scorching steel grill. He’s not a fucktoy, he’s food. And what kind of freak is turned on by food? You lick your lips, admiring his hot, sweaty body, already starting to change color near the bottom from the intense fire, and slap the spatula against one of his abs, drawing a cry of indignation from his beak. “Mmmggrrrff!!”
 “Whoops, sorry.” You halfheartedly apologize, grinning as you continue holding the red hot surface of the spatula against his muscle, steam emerging from it. You can see the condensation on Keith’s face, the tears pooling in his eyes as he bites down hard on the apple, weathering the pain. You leave it there for a few minutes, a nasty-looking browned imprint of the cooking tool burned into his skin. “Yikes, quite the burn you got there. I’d offer some ointment, but that’d taste disgusting with poultry.” The helpless bird moans, leaning his head back.
 A an hour goes by. You keep brushing his body with your dainty little spatula, watching as he steams and sweats and groans, writhing lightly, but not making any attempt to escape his situation. He could easily get up off of your grill and leave if he wants to, nothing is restraining him, but he just lays there complacently instead, waiting for unconsciousness to take over and relieve his pain. He’s so helpful to you, in fact, that he makes a muffled statement through his apple gag informing you that it’s time to turn him over. Obviously, your spatula is way to small to flip him on its own, so you just poke him with it a few times until he turns onto his stomach, his arms crossed beneath his beak as he stares ahead with a deadpan, slightly irritated expression. Such a helpful little slab of meat.
 The eagle lets out a high pitched whimper at first. You initially think it might be the relief of the (fairly) colder air on his back, before you realize he must be pressing all of his weight on his dick, which is itself pressed against the grill. Ouch. You can see he’s cooking up nicely, though. The back of his body is no longer pink, becoming a nice, dark color, and you can’t wait to get that shade on the rest of him as you stare at the grease flowing down the sides, fueling the flames. You brush his head, calling him a good little birdie as your spatula slaps his asscheeks, causing them to wobble and steam. Your surroundings are now covered in thick, hazy gray smoke, billowing up into your face and stinking of charcoal and poultry. You love the smell, it reminds you just how much power you have over your soon-to-be-former friend. You’re ending Keith’s life in the most degrading way you can think of over a dumb slip of paper he wrote up when he was a teenager, and better yet, he’s letting you.
 You can tell his time is running out. His eyelids are drooping lower and lower, and his buckets of sweat aren’t even hitting the coals anymore, instead evaporating as soon as they appear. You know it would be a bit too cruel to just let him perish in silence, so you give him a little “parting gift”. You walk over to the side of the grill, then lean over, planting a firm kiss on his forehead. It’s as hot and greasy as you imagined it would be, and you find yourself smacking your lips of the flavor. “You taste good… for a Knights fan, that is.” You tease. “Still, you’re the greatest and most delicious friend I could ever ask for. I’ll never forget you, Keith.”
 His very last bit of energy goes straight towards the blush that shows up in his cheeks. With a quiet shudder and a slow shutting of his eyes, he gives out his death rattle, then moves no more. Your game day meal is coming along perfectly. You lick your lips as you poke and prod the fresh corpse with your spatula, eagerly waiting for it to finish cooking…
**
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**
“It’s a packed house here tonight as the defending world champion Knights prepare to take on the mighty Dragons for the Continental Conference Championship! With me here is…”
 You ignore the commentator on the TV as you stare at the wondrous sight in front of you. Usually, during a football game, you’d have a ton of snacks laid out on the table. Chips, dip, wings, and all sorts of other goodies, enough to feed a family of four. Often afterwards, you and Keith would be absolutely stuffed, your stomachs full and rounded. This time, however, there’s only three things on the table: two 1 liter bottles of cola, and Keith.
 You can’t stop drooling over him. Your buff bird friend has been barbecued to perfection, his skin covered in grill marks and cooked a delicious caramel brown, steam wafting from his abs and pecs. His body is bent into a strange sort of “roast turkey” position, his toned wings folded behind his back, his thick, meaty legs spread apart and folded at the knees. Between them, on his pelvis, lie his genitals, with quite an amusing addition. You noticed his dick had poked up a bit from rigor mortis, and the erection, combined with the color, reminded you of a very literal kind of wiener. Therefore, a white hot dog bun is wrapped around his cock, holding onto it tightly.
 As kickoff approaches, you ready your knife, and carve off a thick slice of his abdominal muscle, placing it onto your paper plate with a thud. The meat beneath the skin is rich and light brown, lightly stringy, but very thick. You take a bite. It’s… It’s like nothing you’ve ever had before. Keith is kind of like a chicken, but he also has notes of turkey and goose, and a fair amount of spice. It’s just as you suspected: your best friend is delicious.
 As the game wears on, you carve and cut off more and more of the bird’s body, muscular meat vanishing down your throat bite by bite. Every edible bit of him is consumed, with generous chugs of cola to wash them down. As you watch the players rush across the screen, it appears your sacrifice worked. The Dragons dominate the game from the first quarter, not giving the Knights even a fighting chance. By the time your team has won by an astounding 37-17, Keith is nothing but a pile of white bones sitting on the table, picked clean. That is, if you don’t count the hundred or so pounds of softening meat and 2 liters of soda bloating out your middle.
 Feeling warm in a way you never have before, you rub your groaning, gurgling belly, your hands brushing over the circumference of the round dome. Your green Dragons jersey is barely able to handle it, stretched tightly around what used to be your handsome friend. You can already tell it’s going to take the rest of the day to work through your feast, and once you do, the weight will hang from your body for a long, long time.
 You lie back on the couch for the next few hours, too full and lazy to move, watching reruns of old sitcoms as you digest and belch loudly. You fondly reminisce on good times spent with Keith. Cheering the eagle on at his football games, taking him as your senior prom date, pulling all-nighters with him in college. He was such a genuinely good person, always knowing just how to make you happy. You wonder if he might have even been in love with you, and never gotten the chance to admit it before… well, this. But it’s too late to change the past now. He’ll always be by your side now, forever and ever, until the day that you die.
 You get an alert from your phone. The results of the other conference final have come in, and your team is playing the Privateers for the championship. You smile, letting out a low burp. Your hot-as-hell coworker is a Privateers fan. The gears start turning in your head…