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The air smelled green up in the mountains.

Bertilak had insisted they'd have supper first, and talk on the back deck afterward. Gawain's explanation that he'd come a long way, didn't Bertilak know that? It took a day and a half by train and ferry and bus to get this far up the mountains? had been as effective as if he'd said nothing at all.

So the badger had served supper, some cheese and onion pie, and they'd cleared the table.

Then they'd done the dishes.

Then they'd gone out to the back deck, sat down in old wooden patio chairs, and the badger had opened a bottle with no label and poured himself a full glass and a much smaller glass for the dog.

Gawain had decided, after an experimental sniff of what must be liquorice and rotting christmas tree, he didn't want to know what it was, and had set it on the railing.

Bertilak had sat down again. And then they'd sat for what felt like an eternity while Bertilak just gazed off into the distance. Gawain would admit it was a lovely view: the steep forest, the lights of the town below that grew more visible as darkness descended, the sea beyond. It was mostly invisible in the night now. While this old man was looking at nothing, the dog fumed internally, he was sitting on hot coals waiting for another attack of-

Gawain felt his shoulders tense. He made very sure not to turn to look, but in the glass beside him on the rail, he could see the reflection of a wolfhound standing behind him. Rougher, darker fur than Gawain's, mud colored rather than gold. No curl to his tail, no lift to his ears. Tightly pressed lips, disapproving face, clerical collar, severe clothes. Old severe clothes, at that.

The Interrupter.

Any second the Interrupter would start talking, and he wouldn't be able to stop him, and the things he was about to say-

"So," Bertilak finally broke the silence, "Hear you're having trouble at college."

"Uh, yeah." Gawain did risk a glance over his shoulder. There was nobody on the back deck but him and the badger and the smell of the forest. "I finished my practicals and I've made contact with a patron, ahead of my class, but-"

"Who is it?"

"Who is what?"

"Your patron. You said you made contact."

"Oh, they're... something to do with thunderstorms. They haven't taken any of the names I've offered yet, they just... look at me." Gawain didn't mention he had a decent idea why his patron didn't talk to him. It would come up.

Bertilak took another sip of the overpowering drink. "Then you started having trouble. Percy called me, said you weren't showing up for meals, weren't showing up for exercise, you broke things off with the different fellas you were seeing. Said he was gonna send you to me."

"Professor DeGral said he knew someone who could help, yeah." Gawain tried not to sound small, and failed.

"Dunno yet if I can. Now, it's not unheard of for something to pop up where it's not supposed to be when you've first stuck a toe in the otherworld. All sorts of spirits, maybe, think they can do whatever they want with a shaman who doesn't have experience." The badger set his empty glass down, glanced at Gawain's untouched drink through an unimpressed eyebrow. "And from your lack of reaction to my saying so, I'd guess that's what happened. Am I right?"

Gawain was about to answer when the wolfhound was back. "As if it were any business of some drunken pervert! You're only suffering because that's the natural world's right and proper reaction to your twisted unnaturalness!" he shouted, looming over Gawain, thin lips pursed in acidic disgust. "He can't cure you of me because there's nothing wrong with me being here, you miserable reprobate! I'll spend the rest of your life rubbing your face in the truth you refuse to admit!"

Gawain felt someone gently pry his paws off his face and realized he'd clamped them there. Bertilak leaned forward and looked him in the eyes.

"Did... you hear that?" the dog gulped a deep breath. The wolfhound was nowhere to be seen, right now, but that had never stopped him before.

"No," the badger had an ear cocked, suspiciously, and glanced from side to side, "but I saw what happened when you did."

"It's..." Wait, no, not ready to admit that yet. Gawain changed tactics. "He's a wolfhound. Appears right the second when I don't expect him and just starts screaming the most vile, insulting, hateful things."

"Like what?" Bertilak's voice was calm, practical, as if he were talking about getting more wood for the fire.

"Like I'm perverted, and disgusting. He's called me... things I'm not gonna repeat."

"He just doesn't like you?"

"No, no, he," Gawain scrubbed his floppy ear with one paw to make himself focus through the anxiety. "He doesn't like that I'm attracted to... that I have... sex. With men."

There was a long silence. Bertilak stared into his eyes. "He knows that's why you're a shaman, though, right? That it doesn't work if you're hetero, right? That without being oriented the way we are, you wouldn't be able to see or hear him, he'd still be stuck in whatever homophobic hell he was in before he caught hold of you?"

"I don't know if he cares." Gawain slumped back in his chair. "He just rants about, like, how not sleeping with women is the same as murdering millions of people. Or hours-long lectures about how I don't deserve a chance to try to be a better person."

"He's got dedication, then."

"At first he just waited till I was with a guy." Gawain felt his voice turning resentful, but Bertilak didn't seem to object. "Soon as we're undressed or making out, boom, screaming at me. Once I couldn't have sex with anybody anymore, he would disrupt class. Then he moved on to whenever I tried to sleep."

"Well shit. Assume you tried wards? Banishing?" Bertilak got to his feet and stretched. Gawain nodded. "The university sacred spaces? And those didn't work or you wouldn't be here now."

Gawain bit his lip, trying not to blurt out impatient hope. It sounded like the old badger was finally moving toward the sort of solution he'd been promised, but he didn't want to say so in case the Interrupter had a rebuttal.

"Only sensible to test, I suppose." Bertilak took a deep breath, in through his nose, his gut pulled down as his lungs filled. Something about his muscles changed, it wasn't that they grew, it was that they seemed to be suddenly more full. The front of his shirt popped open, whether from his muscles or his breath or some other force, and written down his chest were glyphs, shimmering with the same soft green light as his eyes. Gawain hadn't gotten very far in that class yet, but he knew the big one near the center meant 'courage.'

Bertilak laid one hand on the string of tree lights wound around the deck railing. They flickered on, then burned steadily, one by one, till they were lit with the same soft green all around the house.

"Alright, should be as secure as I can make it." Bertilak said. The glyphs faded. He didn't bother to button his shirt again.

"That was... just to ward the house?" Gawain whined. The dog couldn't help thinking of some of Prof. DeGral's lectures, what the ocelot had thought of 'flashiness.'

Bertilak snorted. "If Percy wants a say in how I do my wards, in my house, on my land, he can come say it himself. So, where's whatever's haunting you?"

"I don't see him." Gawain said, "but he likes to wait till he can catch me off-guard. Or interrupt something."

"Well, then let's give him something to interrupt." Bertilak was suddenly very close. And his shirt was very open. And his eyes were very green.

"I... are you sure," and Gawain very much had a thing for older men, "that's a good idea?"

"I'm sure that you," said Bertilak, close enough that Gawain could feel warm breath move the fur on his neck, "haven't gotten so much as a handshake in months."

He had a point there.

Gawain closed his eyes and leaned forward into Bertilak's arms. The badger's lips tasted odd, almost green, must have been the drink, but Gawain didn't care, he pressed a hand to the badger's chest, and-

"Filthy unrepentant sodomite," bayed the Interrupter, directly into Gawain's ear it felt like, "the fact you yet draw breath is an unforgivable insult to nature itself!" He'd been expecting it and he still jumped, lost balance, upended the patio chair and went sprawling onto the deck.

"Huh." Bertilak scratched his chin, thoughtfully. "Still didn't hear or see it. Felt it go right through the wards like water through a sieve, though." The badger talked as if the dog weren't fumbling to right the patio chair he'd fallen from, which Gawain decided made him feel less embarrassed. "Best guess is it's someone or something with a connection to you in particular. You wouldn't happen to know who this is, would you?"

Gawain heaved a sigh and slumped on his knees, his forehead against the chair cushion. There was the question he'd been dreading almost as much as he'd learned to dread the Interruptor. "His name's St. Galahad of L'Ougres. He's my ancestor."

The hearth inside was made of green tile, and the fireplace doors were green stained glass. Gawain hadn't noticed while they were having dinner, but now that his attention wanted something, anything, to focus rather than the discussion he was having, the firelight flickering through them was beautiful. "He lived about five centuries ago," he explained, "he was a theologian and philosopher at the court of one of the last big renaissance popes, Aragorn the Something-th, I dunno, one of the ones commissioning lavish frescos and having all the conspiracies with dowagers or dukes or burgermeisters. The sort of thing you think of when you hear 'Renaissance Pope.'"

"So he's from the old church?" Bertilak had tossed his shirt over the back of the pine-colored plush sofa, and Gawain was doing his best not to look at the badger's, uh, stripes, because he could feel the Interuptor's hackles bristle when he did. "Explains the hostility, I guess."

"I recognize him from the pictures back home. Dad grew up Aperiostasic, and he SAYS he doesn't believe it anymore, but he's still got all the books about him on his shelf, and he's still obviously proud to be descended from 'a Literal Saint!'"

"Not that it did him any good," screamed Galahad, "you appalling deviant! I know exactly what you're thinking, trying to look as if you don't want to sit closer to him, cover yourself in his degradation, shame your father and your poor mother! Truly it would be better if you murdered them than dishonor them by-"

Bertilak noticed Gawain's frozen wincing and spoke a little louder. "You been over bloodline channeling yet, in any classes?"

"Perhaps indeed your perversion is the punishment for your father's apostasy!" commented Galahad.

"Uh, I think that's a junior-level elective." Gawain blinked, struggling to focus over the tirade of saintly abuse. "I hadn't thought much about those yet, then this started and I didn't see much point, since I probably wasn't gonna be back next year..."

"For fuck's sake, Percy!" Bertilak glowered at the rafters, as if the professor was going to be hiding among them. "You're not covering the basics? I swear, that man's got no business teaching, don't care how many books he's written. Anyway. Let's talk about bloodlines."

"Would that there WERE no bloodline," snarled Galahad, "connecting me to you!"

"Yeah, that would NICE, wouldn't it?!" shouted Gawain.

Bertilak blinked at him.

"Sorry, that was... to him. Not you. Uh. bloodlines, please."

"Ok." Bertilak lay back against the armrest. "When you meet your patron spirit, you're establishing a bond, right? When you give it a name, you're strengthening that bond, right?"

"Yeah, I know that much."

"Good to hear, because let me tell you I was seriously questioning Percy's credentials." Bertilak grumbled. "That bond's how you communicate with your Patron, accept power from it, experience things the way it does, even let it take over your body a little if you need. You meet more spirits, you make more bonds, you're able to channel them too."

"Yeah," Gawian nodded, "that's how you grow more powerful as a Shaman."

"That's one way," Bertilak corrected, "you grow as a Shaman. There's more than one kind of bond."

Gawain stared into the fire through thick bottle-green glass. "You're saying because he's my ancestor I already had a shamanistic bond to St. Galahad? Even before I knew I was a Shaman?"

"Do not presume to apply your degenerate heathen witchcraft," sneered the wolfhound only Gawain could see, "to my righteous admonition!"

"You got it." Bertilak said. "That's why he was able to get right through my wards, through whatever banishments and consecrations the university's got. As far as they know, he's your patron spirit, and you're the one calling him."

Gawain felt his ears flatten and his fur stand on end. "I'm calling him?!" he couldn't keep a puppyish whimper out of his voice, "I've been doing this to myself for months?!"

"Yes, yes!" Galahad gloated, floating over the couch, "at last you understand your guilt! Stop resisting and accept the depth of your sins, only then can you begin to work toward repentance and seek atonement, though it take all your remaining days!"

"You're not doing this," Bertilak contradicted, unaware he was doing so, "you're partway in the otherworld, always have been. That's where spirits are. It's not your fault nobody got around to telling you how to manage them till after one got his teeth into you." The badger reached to touch the dog's face, but stopped when Gawain hunched his shoulders and shrank away. "He didn't like me doin that, huh?"

Gawain shook his head.

"Well, how'd you like it?"

"I, uh," Gawian gulped, "I'd like-" he stopped mid word as if he'd bitten his tongue, turned and shouted over the back of the sofa. "You won't even let me SAY I like a man?!"

"Let not sin be spoken!" St. Galahad declaimed, "and let he that speaketh sin be suffered to speak no more!"

"We'll come back to that." Bertilak sighed. "Ok. So obviously some shamans get a talent for one kinda bond or another. Some can talk with anything--ghost, tree, landscape, fully abstract concept, some can project out of their bodies before they've ever even met a spirit, and some," he gestured to the hungry-eyed dog as if presenting him as a prize on a game show "can channel the spirits of their ancestors so hard they can't get rid of them."

"...fuck." Gawain breathed.

"You need that drink now?" Bertilak asked. Gawain nodded. "Sit tight, I'll grab it."

The drink still tasted like green liquorice compost, but the alcohol burn had at least chased that away after Gawain gulped it down. "So, I have to learn how... not to bloodline channel?"

"Hell no." Bertilak poured himself another shot of the intensely foul green drink, downed it with apparent relish. "If you've got a friend who's an asshole, the answer aint having no friends. You get other friends, who aren't assholes. They make him shut up."

"As if anyone" St. Galahad growled, though he wasn't visible, "who'd consent to being called 'friend' by a pathetic and debased sodomite would have the intellectual rigor or courage to stand up to one of the foremost theological minds of the Aperiostosic church!"

"I dunno," Gawain sank back surprisingly far into the worn sofa cushion, "pretty much all my Dad's family, Mom's too, were hardcore religious. I'd be worried, if I tried to channel anybody else on my bloodline, they'd, you know," he waved a derisive paw at the empty air, "take his side."

"Then it's a good thing," Bertilak sat closer on the sofa than he needed to, and leaned toward Gawain, "your own bloodline aint the only option you got."

"What do you mean?" Gawain asked, and 'why does it sound sexy' he didn't.

"Well, how do you get a bloodline?" Bertilak, holding eye contact. His eyes were greener than should have been possible.

"Uh, you need ancestors and descendants, so... a lot of people over the years have kids?"

"And what," Bertilak chuckled, "do people do first if they're gonna have kids?"

"Wait," the dog sputtered, "you're saying I need to have sex?!"

"You lay with someone, you connect to their bloodline, spiritually, and they to yours." Bertilak's voice was low and perilously close, Gawain could feel it tingle somewhere between his diaphragm and stomach, "just how it works." Gawain could smell the badger, his sweat, his fur, the woodsmoke, the forest outside, and even the strange drink on his breath which among the others didn't even smell bad, it harmonized somehow. "If you don't have anybody on your bloodline you trust to have your back, you're welcome to, you know," Bertilak got close enough to stroke Gawain's cheek fuzz and lay a hand supportively on the back of his neck, "try mine."

Gawain had enough time to realise he was desperately hard and that he had reached out to place his hands on the Badger's bare chest before an avalanche of unearthly screaming crashed over him and all he could hear was Galahad's relentless, wordless rage.

His eyes were shut, his paws were clamped over his ears. It didn't help but he couldn't stop.

St. Galahad of L'Ougres, the Interrupter, oracle of the old papacy, theologian, philosopher, and unashamed bigot, screamed fury at him, from what sounded like a thousand throats, from every direction at once. He could feel it in his bones. He couldn't hear over it, he could barely think over it. He wondered if it was possible for this to kill him.

But then Gawain felt large hands cup the sides of his face, and pull him forward, and he felt rough lips press against his. He pressed back, he grabbed blindly at whatever was in front of him like anchoring himself against a rushing flood, and opened his eyes to find himself clinging to Bertilak's chest.

The badger's face was all intense concern. His mouth was moving but Gawain couldn't make out the words. He clung tighter, even though that only made Galahad angrier.

But Gawain had done this exercise before, first day of class. Total awareness. Add everything to the story, in your mind, of what was happening to you right now. No matter what tried to grab your attention, don't let it hold. Even the distractions, just fit them into place, one by one, and eventually you'd be aware of the entire moment you were in, and everything in it, including-

"I said," Bertilak's voice finally broke through, "hold on! If he's angry it's because he's scared what you're about to do is gonna work!"

"I don't think he is, actually," Gawain fought not to shout over the cacophony he knew only he could hear, "I think that's just how much he hates the idea of me finally getting a man between my legs and some dick up my tail!" He maybe could have phrased it more delicately, but he was under a lot of stress right now!

"Uh, ok, well..." Bertilak fumbled for words while the dog clung to him, "this isn't gonna be terribly romantic, ok?"

"I... I know!" Gawain shouted, "I don't think he's gonna stop until I give up and leave!"

"People like that don't ever stop." Bertilak's eyes went distant, for a second, "He's gonna keep hounding you no matter what you do..."

"...so I might as well take a shot making him shut up!" Gawain kissed Bertilak, roughly, deeply, angrily. He heard Galahad's screams worsen as he felt Bertilak's hands slide up under his shirt and down to undo his jeans.

He found himself not caring.

He kicked off his jeans, he let Bertilak pull his shirt over his head, he lay back and let the badger's naked weight press him against the couch, he ran fingers through striped fur like a rock climber searching for tiny handholds.

"I don't know if I've got time to be gentle," Bertilak said into his ear.

"Don't bother," he replied.

"This atrocity, this abomination," St Galahad had apparently gotten back to actual words now, "this changes nothing! This is a sin before God and the fact you disagree is proof of your execrable reprobation!" Bertilak grasped Gawain's shaft, gave it as much teasing and stroking as he could while his other hand found its way between the dog's cheeks to prepare him. "And if you think piling sin upon sin will amount to anything against the power of truth and goodness then your iniquity truly has rotted every last rational power-"

"What the fuck," Gawain heard another voice bark the instant he felt Bertilak's cock press inside him, "do you think you're doing?"

Part of Gawain was in a far green country. He couldn't have said what time it was. Skies above were dark and star-filled, but the earth around him was lit like it was noon. Behind him there was a hill, covered with linden trees, and in front of him was a still lake, full of water lilies and rushes. The grass he lay on was thick and soft, like a worn and comfortable sofa.

"It's a rough time you're having of it, then?" said a voice, somewhere to his right. The same one he'd heard interject. That's right, he was... Gawain blinked. He was having sex, wasn't he? He could feel it, as if a long way away and in slow motion, Bertilak was mounting him right now... wherever Bertilak was. Wherever he was.

He looked to his right. There was a badger there, sitting on a stump. Naked, which seemed... perfectly reasonable, actually. He looked a lot like Bertilak, but not quite the same. Older, shaggier, different stripes.

This other badger reached down, pulled Gawain up into his lap, which was when Gawain realized he was also naked, and pulled him into a kiss. This fellow was strong, too, and the erection now poking Gawain in the thigh was thicker than Bertilak had been. And he didn't seem at all surprised about anything going on, so when Gawain got the use of his mouth back he was pretty confident about saying "...you're Bertilak's ancestor, right?"

"Great great grandfather, lad," the badger grinned at the dog propped against his chest, "though strictly speaking I'd be your ancestor too, now. That's how that works." His hand wrapped around Gawain's cock and gave it a playful squeeze "Cuthbert, at your service, though last I checked on Bertilak he was the one getting serviced..."

"What, I don't know-" Gawain was cut off when a second forceful kiss filled his mouth.

"Easy, lad," the ancestor whispered, "you enjoy yourself, and let us take care of the interruption."

"-what's happening!" Gawain gasped, "Oh! Ooohhh..." he added, suddenly fully aware again of what was going on between his legs and how deep inside him Bertilak was.

Galahad's furious sermon continued to rage throughout the cabin and echo around Gawain's ears. Bertilak's face was buried against his chest, and the badger's tongue was busy with one of his nipples, so if the badger had any comment he didn't get to give it before-

-Gawain found himself in an attic room. The double doors at one end were thrown open wide to a balcony, and a slow cool wind washed in through them. The long acres of young cornstalks outside rolled like ocean waves, and overhead heavy thunderclouds turned the sunlight itself green.

He was lying on his back again, on a calico quilt of all different shades from jade to emerald to olive. He couldn't have said where he was, but that didn't matter. Someone's arms were around him.

"Hey," a soft voice said, and Gawain looked over his shoulder. A possum, about his own age, lying with his arms around Gawain, his hands lazily exploring the dog's body. "Hangin in there all right, man? Don't worry, drought's gonna be over soon. We'll take care of that."

"Hey," Gawain moaned, though whether because Bertilak had picked up the pace or because this fellow's soft hand had found his groin he couldn't have said, "shouldn't you be... a badger?"

The possum laughed. "You didn't think you were the first other bloodline Bertilak," he ran a thumb over Gawain's cocktip in punctuation, "you know, 'connected to,' did you?"

"Fuck, don't stop," Gawian gasped to Bertilak, back on the sofa.

-He raised his face from a viridian silken divan and brushed aside several layers of covers, translucent, all of them, and thin enough that they might as well have been spiderwebs. Dark feathers cradled his shoulders.

"I don't know if I can imagine," said the grackle in whose lap his head had been resting, "how you must have suffered. You're beautiful, and irreplaceable, and you deserve so much better." The grackle laid a hand over Gawain's mouth the second he opened it "Don't deny it. You are, and you are, and you do." It was difficult to see what color his feathers were. Not only were they brilliantly iridescent, but the light in here--some kind of vault, perhaps a church, perhaps a night club--was a thousand subtle slowly shifting emerald hues. He wasn't technically fully naked, he had draped over his shoulders and wound round his legs the same sheer green sheets in which Gawain was entangled. The dog wouldn't have known where to start extracting himself if he'd wanted.

He didn't.

Soft feathers stroked the dog's shoulders and face. "We're not going to let him abuse you any more. I promise." The grackle's voice was quiet and low and achingly earnest. "Just a little further, and it's finished."

"I'm almost there..." Gawain moaned.

"I think we can agree," the ocelot wore only a long unfastened bathrobe, "that this is a little awkward." It was the color of tart apples, looked amazingly comfortable, and completely failed to distract from the fact that this man looked uncannily like his advisor. "Nevertheless, whatever strength and assistance I might offer?"

He talked like him too.

They eyed eachother across the green comforter, printed with pinecones--a little faded where the sun had crossed it--as the bed was the only place in the tiny apartment for either of them to sit. The wall in front of him wasn't so much a wall as the slope of the roof overhead, save where a single dormer window interrupted it with a view of a familiar city outlined against the faintly cyan, high summer false sunset. Gawain was sure that if he got up and looked out, he'd be able to see the university from here.

"This was their flat, for three years," the ocelot said, drily. "My great-nephew and, well, your current paramour. They would lie in that bed together, watching the city lights well past midnight, talking about theory and practice and what they would do with their degrees. I had high hopes for them as a couple, you know, but it didn't last. Too different in their approach to the art, I suppose, and so the more they respected one another the less passion they could find for one another. It can happen like that."

Most of the books on the little shelf by the window said 'Percival DeGral, ShD' on the spine. Most of them were bound in shades of deep emerald.

"But the thing to remember about our art," the avuncular ocelot continued, and his style of lecturing was very familiar too, "is that even if it does not last, a bond once forged is a source of strength forever."

His eyes, when they met Gawain's, were full of bashful honesty, and Gawain could easily imagine Bertilak, younger, less set in his ways, becoming very lost in eyes that looked like those.

"Provided, of course," the ocelot held out a paw toward Gawain, "we choose to accept it."

Gawain reached out, clasped the offered hand, and-

-Someone's lips were wrapped around his shaft, and Gawain cried out in surprise as a tongue outlined his sensitive tip.

"Having fun?" laughed the raccoon, raising his head from between Gawain's legs to grin at him.

"S-sure," Gawain managed to breathe, and he managed to get out "but it's going faster... than I... can keep track of... where I am... or who-" before the raccoon's head dove back between his thighs, enveloped him, and speech escaped him again.

"It goes faster than you expect," said the armadillo he was sitting next to. Their legs dangled from the side of a boat, into a turquoise river, under an impossibly large moon. He clapped a leathery arm around Gawain's shoulder and pulled him close, stroked the raccoon's ears between the dog's legs. "Don't worry, you'll have plenty of time to get to know all of us. We're yours now, you're ours. Just enjoy the ride-"

-Gawain almost gagged.

Someone's cock was in his mouth.

He knelt on a carpet of moss, so soft and deep his knees sunk more than halfway into it. The bison looming over him had one leg over his shoulder, one hand atop his head, and was looking down an enormous chest, sternly, like a disappointed, implacable, unstoppable elder god. The bison's hair was the same color, the same texture as the moss. The redwoods towering over the clearing were so high he couldn't see any top to them. The bison humped his face lazily, unhurriedly, as if he were alone here, and Gawain was wordlessly grateful that he wasn't using his actual physical jaws to do this.

It would have been terrifying if it hadn't been the hottest thing that had ever happened to him.

The bison looked down at him, and winked, cheekily, for just a split second-

-And he was back on Bertilak's sofa, belly soaked, and Bertilak lay atop him and inside him as well, still and satiated and panting for breath.

"This is an affront to all nature! This is violence against life itself!" St. Galahad continued without any sign of stopping. "But see how your foul and unnatural sorcery turns against you, for it brings my spirit, my words, my truth to denounce you! Surely this proves above all else that every twisted thing you do is doomed to defeat itself!"

Bertilak's shoulders were hunched, and he seemed to be wincing, as if hearing something distasteful.

"I am as eternal as my righteousness and I will hound you forever, pervert, until you are cast into the outer darkness where-"

"You know what?" Gawain said quietly, as he pulled himself to his feet. "I think," he could feel others behind him? Inside him? "you," they were boiling in his veins and in the air around him and he felt his feet leave the floor. "Need," if he'd been able to see himself he would have seen his eyes shining green and brighter than the sun. "To SHUT UP!" a whole crowd of other voices said with him, no, through him, they all came out of his mouth, and he FELT the words hit Galahad like a thunderbolt and then the Interruptor, his ancestor, was fleeing and fading and gone, like a meteor burning out in the night.

Gawain felt himself hang in the air a moment, naked, humming with power. Then it was gone and he collapsed onto the sofa, narrowly missing Bertilak.

"Holy shit!" commented the badger.

"Yeah," nodded Gawain. His chest heaved. It felt like he'd just run some kind of sex decathlon. "Could you... hear him, at the end?"

Bertilak nodded. "Soon as I was inside you, he started laying into me too."

"Oh shit, I'm so sorry," Gawain said.

"YOU'RE sorry?! After HOW many months putting up with him yourself?" Bertilak shook his head. "Important thing is, it worked."

"It... it did." Gawain said, to himself, or maybe more accurately to the crowd of ghosts he could now dimly feel, at the very edges of his perception, waiting their turns to get better acquainted. "It did! He's gone!"

Bertilak only had the one bed. Gawain spent the night under a familiar green comforter, more faded now, since its days in the little attic room, and ragged at the corner from getting stuck in the washing machine, in Bertilak's arms.

In the morning, after a little more sex, purely for enjoyment this time and because he had gone unfairly long without, Bertilak walked with him to the bus stop.

"I'm still amazed it was that simple," Gawian said.

"I'm still amazed," Bertilak grumped, "at all the things you're apparently not getting taught. Percy's gonna get more than a sternly worded email."

"Well," Gawain fought to keep his tail from wagging too hard, "at least I know where to come if I need another practical lesson."

Bertilak laughed. "My door's always open for you. And my bed." They kissed, as the bus rounded the corner and headed for the stop. "We've got common ancestors, after all."

For an instant, reflected in the bus window as it came to a halt, they saw a wolfhound. Thin face, old clerical clothes, sour tight lips, frightened eyes.

They both glared at him.

He looked sheepishly away, and said nothing. And then the only thing in the reflection was eachother.