FSE

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The grass beneath him was coated in a fine silver of frost on that December morning, the breath that escaped from his mouth made him look like a dragon - a haughty dragon, with his head held a little too high and his smile a little too smug. His hair was a refined Kennedyesque coif, his hands warmed in the pockets of his Abercrombie fleece pullover his mother had bought him in Charleston...his eyes filled with the calm contempt of a twelve-year old rich kid, for everything that he saw - everything but Bligh.

"Where'd ya find em?" he asked of his best friend.

"Out on the road near the ol church, that one that got the creek goin through it. He looked lost..."

Bligh - his pubescent cracking voice, with a shock of too-long black hair hinting at how he would look for the rest of his life, not wearing a shirt as he was so wont to do despite the ambient chill - was kneeling by a magnificent-looking wolf-like dog, stroking its scruff with a look of admiration and almost wonder - the dog, in turn, sat tranquilly on its haunches, as if sizing up Andrew with its heterochromatic brown and blue eyes.

Andrew leaned to give the dog's cheek a scratch, as he liked to do with his brother's Beagle back home - the dog responded by nuzzling Andrew's hand and giving it an experimental lick.

"Well he seems friendly! Are ya keepin em?"

Bligh nodded enthusiastically. "Uh huh! Pappy said I could. But he need a name."

Andrew rose. "He does? Ya haven't named em yet?"

Bligh shook his head. "Nope - I wanted ya ta do it."

Andrew blushed - a strange twinge of emotion, something he was only then beginning to understand, vibrated in his heart. He smiled in gratitude as he coughed nervously.

"M-me? But--"

The dog laid down on the frosty grass, only to roll over - Bligh, laughing, gave the dog an enthusiastic belly rub as he looked back up to Andrew.

"Yeah, you! Yer my best bud, I wanted ya ta name em. So - what're we gonna call em?"

Andrew beamed. "W-well - okay. Um..." He frowned in concentration, kneeling down once more to get a closer look at the animal. "He...he looks big and strong. So sumthin - strong, too - like...Zeus?"

Bligh cocked his head. "What? Zoos?"

Andrew shook his head rapidly. "No - no, that dun fit. So, hmm...how bout - Duke?"

"Whattya say then, Duke? Ya like that name, fella?"

The dog seemed to know and acknowledge: rolling back over to stand on all fours, tail wagging, he let out a bark that sounded as though it were a joyful affirmation.

Bligh, rising, erupted in a happy cackle - the strange sign of happiness that would change little year to year. He looked to Andrew with a grin. "Reckon he thankin ya!"

But Bligh, and his smile, now faded - burned into blackness, the final image from a dream one has at last awoken from...deep blackness, and from that blackness, piece by piece, came the present:

"Andy - Andy? Wake up - please, please, wake up, please! Oh god - Andy..."

Andrew heard the words and, groggy and woozy, slowly opened his eyes to the sight of two figures, one smaller than the other, shadowy and amorphous.

At a brief length the vision sharpened, and there they were: Cody and Bligh, looking down at him, Cody fit to burst with worry and Bligh frowning deeply - both of them had the pointed, canid ears from what Andrew had hoped was a nightmare, and Cody's would periodically falter with a faint twitching movement, as though in worry.

They were naked - Bligh still had on his Ravens cap, but other than that, the animal attributes of furred legs, too-many nipples, and plump sheath were unmistakable on both of them.

At once, Andrew was awash with shades of the rage and horror from the night before, and he tried - but failed - to articulate them.

"Y-you...you..."

"Hold still, Drew." Bligh held up the crumpled Hershey paper accusingly. "Did y'eat the chocolate?"

"You...!"

"Did. Y'eat. The chocolate."

Andrew nodded reluctantly.

"Ya need to throw up?"

Andrew shook his head, but as he did so he felt another painful spasm in his belly, and he leapt up to spew the remaining contents of his stomach - mere bile, at that point - into the sink above him.

As he finished - turning on the faucet to wash away the remaining vomit, and guzzle what he could manage to get the taste out of his mouth, he felt a gentle pressure on his back, and he turned his head to see Cody - fuzzy ears and all - studying him worriedly.

Andrew coughed hard and, suppressing another gag, spat out his panicked cry: "F-fucking shit it's real! You're still - you're all f-fucking monsters!"

Cody recoiled as if Andrew had struck him across the face. "Wha? Andy it's--"

"Stop it, Drew."

With his arm, Bligh silently directed Cody to stand aside - he came forward to impose over his bewildered best friend.

"We ain't monsters, Drew. We ain't - we ain't human, but we ain't monsters."

"Then what are you, Bligh?" A thought occurred to him, and his eyes widened. "Are - _are_you Bligh?"

He felt his body tense up defensively, arming himself against the imagined threat of an imposter - a terrible lycanthropic doppelgänger in the guise of he who had been his best friend.

"Drew, stop--"

"How do you know me? How do I know you're really Bligh?"

"Andy, it's really him," Cody said, pained and embarrassed. "It's really me too, come on..."

Sensing Andrew's game, Bligh tried to reason with him:

"Your mother's name is Margaret."

"Too easy," Andrew shot back, expecting it. "Coulda looked that up in the phonebook."

"Your middle name is Nicholas."

Andrew rolled his eyes. "Same thing!"

"Fine, asshole. When we was nine we went turkey huntin and a mountain screamer came outta nowhere and was gonna jump out at ya and I shot em with Pappy's rifle. Happy?"

Andrew froze - he stared directly into Bligh's eyes, past the frosty-blue he had come to know as semaphores of safety and trust as a boy, into the dark pupils, where he found, his instinct rising to tell him so, that the truth was far more terrible than the lie he had told himself: this was Bligh.

And Bligh was not human.

His tension released in the form of a low moan - he nearly collapsed but caught himself on the counter, turning to stare in the sink where he had vomited minutes before. He jerked back around, shaking his head, feeling the hot welling of tears, looking up at Bligh whose mouth twinged at the sight of Andrew, reduced to this.

"What the Hell happened to you, Bligh?" was all Andrew could manage. "My fucking god, what the Hell happened to you?"

Bligh frowned, still in eye contact with Andrew - he hesitated, then shook his head, what he wanted to say apparently not adequate enough.

The three of them stood there, like that, for all of a minute -Andrew's mind rendered completely blank with shock, he seemed to have lost how to properly gauge time. It felt like an hour, then, before Bligh broke the silence with a low question directed at the other two:

"Can we at least get out the kitchen?"

Andrew nodded quickly, still not yet recovered, and followed Bligh as he paced away.

Cody came next to him and stopped him, beseeching wordlessly with a plaintive expression that spoke of abyssal regret and heartfelt concern...his eyes, the iridescent hazel that had looked at him that day at the gas station with curiosity and the peculiar opportunity of hope, looked like a dog's that had been scolded, and his ears, flat on his head, behaved the same way.

It was too much - Andrew, his mouth quivering, had to look away.

The trio came to the living room, Cody and Bligh taking opposite sides of the couch while Andrew, still fitful, remained standing...on the floor about them were discarded clothing from a few moments before: Bligh's jeans and flannel mingled in with Cody's purple Volcom shirt - Andrew's workout pants, his Tampa Bay Bucs toboggan, both of which Cody had evidently been wearing.

Another awkward silence had descended over the three of them - after some length as he gathered both himself and his thoughts, it was Andrew's turn to break it:

"Tell me - tell me what you are," he said with grave deliberation.

"I ain't--" Bligh held up his arms, as though turning himself in to be guilty of a crime. "I ain't human n'more."

"I can see that..." Andrew attempted to be dry. "Then what do you call yourself?"

Bligh shrugged. "Dawg. I feel like a dawg. I look like a dawg--" He tittered - a very short little laugh. "Smell like a dawg..."

"Not - not a wolf - werewolf, like - all that stuff you used to love--?"

"I like dawg. I always thought me and Duke were the same after - after this happened ta me. So - dawg. Not weredawg or nuthin, jest - jest dawg." He looked down and rubbed his sheath with what looked like pride. "So much better than a human..."

"And you - have the ability to turn other people into - what you are - dog - with your - uh, your cum."

Bligh glanced up at him, a small twinge to his mouth. "Yeah."

"You infected me."

Bligh winced. "I dun wanna say it like that, but--"

"You started the process."

"...y-yeah. Uh - yer - allergic ta chocolate now, ain't ya?"

Andrew nodded. "Almost killed me..." he muttered.

"Ya gotta - ya gotta ball at the bottom of yer dick?"

A hot flush came to Andrew's face, and he nodded again.

"Then yeah - I started the process, like ya said."

His worst fears confirmed, Andrew went numb - he shuddered, looking beyond Bligh and Cody and the couch, out the window and into the palm trees outside his apartment. The raking August sunlight seemed so far away, so impossible in this new, mutated world.

"Why," he started again flatly, "did you choose to do this to me gradually? Why not just - do what you did to Cody?"

"Ya woke up too soon and - the poison on my knife the first time didn't have as much as the second time. I wanted ta...do it when y'were fully awake..."

"Why?"

"To...watch ya change. With me. There."

Cody looked to Bligh, as though the very thought exhilarated him as well - Andrew regarded Bligh with a frown, before continuing:

"How did this happen to you?"

It was Bligh's turn to sigh. "Remember I got hurt real bad and couldn't work for like two weeks?"

"Yeah like a year and a half ago." Andrew's focus returned, still tinged with anxiety. "I was worried as fuck. You - got attacked by a--" He stopped as he remembered. "Oh god."

Bligh tittered mirthlessly. "Yeah. That's when it started."

"By a what?" Cody asked.

"A - a big animal..." Andrew took a deep breath as his anxiety slowly abated. "But you never said what it was. What could it have been? I mean a mountain lion - no, they only live in that one place - maybe - a wolf? A werewolf? Were_dog?_"

Bligh shrugged. "Never found out. Sumthin sprung me back in em woods. Scared the shit right outta me..."

"What woods, again?"Andrew asked, in a tone that spoke of a private knowledge.

"Goin past the creek and into them trees, near where it gets flat, out past the old church."

He doffed his cap, throwing it to the floor, letting his ears spring free - he gave them a thorough scratch, enjoying the new freedom.

Andrew thought a moment, then nodded slowly, cocking his eyebrow with a mixture of skepticism and amazement. "Yeah he told me that too...and he never specified why, and it would creep me right the fuck out when I was a kid..."

"Ain't tellin what yew'd find in em woods--" Bligh quoted - and Andrew nodded, the same speed, in agreement.

"That's what he'd say, yeah..."

Cody's gaze seemed faraway, and Andrew wondered if he was trying to put together in his mind a place of wild forests where monsters dwelt - he was obviously unused to the new additions and changes in his body. As he stared out the window, he would brush his hand over his nipples curiously, shivering each time, his sheath stirring and the tip of his penis poking out and retracting.

He stopped, however, to ponder aloud: "Do you remember what it looked like?"

"Naw, naw - came up behind me - claws shredded my pants. Plus it was dark, so yanno..."

"You never told me!" Andrew protested.

"Would y'have believed me? Hell it don't seem like ya do now - Cody didn't."

Andrew's eyes shifted to Cody, who shook his head.

"I've studied biology since I was twelve, Bligh - this don't make any fucking sense. Bodies just don't change like that, DNA don't just--" He stopped, going over his failed speculations from a few hours before once again. "And then - how? What mechanism of action? Bacteria? Virus? And how could it be - transmitted? Cuts? Bites? Scratches?" Andrew's face grew pale at the suggestion. "This - this could spread to someone else. Anyone else. We don't know what the fuck this is, this--"

Bligh sniffed as though amused - Cody and Andrew looked at him almost on cue.

"The fuck is so funny?" Andrew demanded.

"Don't try t'overthink this one like ya do everythin else."

Andrew sneered

"Um..." Cody spoke up. "Well...you're - you're the one who had it first. What do you think caused it?."

"Uh," Bligh laughed in spite of the situation. "No it - see, it - uh--" He blushed, coughing nervous. "Reckon it was - uh, the way he had his...way with me."

Andrew was aghast, his sneer replaced with horror. "Oh, fuck."

"What?!" Cody cracked up at the idea. "No! C'mon!"

"Pappy always said there were strange things in that particular part of them woods. He never told me what, he would jest say strange things...but I - I really don't think he knew about, yanno, werewo--um, dawgs that - uh - make em - make em one o'them..."

"Just like you did to Cody. To make him one of you."

Cody and Bligh, almost in unison, turned to Andrew's humorless face, before looking back at each other with an awkward knowingness Andrew immediately picked up on...the two of them, Bligh and Cody, remained silent, as though one was waiting for the other to say it - but their silence gave Andrew the answer he was looking for, and, rolling his eyes in exasperation, crossing his arms, turning his back to them.

"God dammit--" he hissed at himself.

He heard Cody from behind him hesitate: "Andy - I'm really--"

"I don't wanna hear it. I just - all I could do - was just let it happen, sitting there, with your paralyzing...stuff you put on that knife..."

He ran his fingers over his hair, trying not to collapse in hysterics, as he turned back around to see the pair looking away from each other as though in shared shame.

"Cody when - when were you gonna tell me you were a zoo?"

"A...a what?"

"A zoo. A zoophile. Wants to suck off a dog--"

The boy's face went red. "Why would I ever tell you that?"

"Because I am your boyfriend and I deserve to know."

"Please don't hate me," Cody said - so meek and soft it barely registered to the room. "D-don't hate me, for that--"

"He was scared," Bligh defended him. "And don't yew think he had the right ta know that his boyfriend used ta be a Goddam drunk?"

A sudden flare of sexual jealousy, mixed with the outrage of a blown-open secret, fired in Andrew's chest as he saw them - both sets of their new ears either twitching periodically or flat like dogs who gotten into the garbage.

"How fucking dare you," he hissed - he trained his gaze on Bligh, who glanced at him in tandem.

"Suckin off dawgs ain't quite the same as suckin down vodka like it's fuckin water, is it, Lightfoot?" Bligh sneered. "Crawlin out from under hangovers like a goddam roach--"

A too-long, mercilessly awkward silence elapsed between the three of them - Cody's eyes were still hurt, but there was a subtle sense of confusion in them, and as Andrew glanced to them he knew that hiding the truth from the boy about his past was a mistake that had festered for well over a year.

"I'm over that," Andrew finally answered - coldly but defensively.

"But yew ain't over this..."

"How the fuck you expect me to be?!" Andrew roared. "Don't - don't even begin to feed me your shit about it being all about you and me. You wanted him. Ever since I showed you what he looked like - you said so! You wanted to - change him into - whatever--"

His words failed at him as Bligh interrupted:

"No, Drew - no. I wanted yew. I - I've always wanted...yew."

"You're lying! You lied to Cody to make it seem--"

Bligh glared at him. "Have I ever fucking lied t'ya, Drew? Once?"

Andrew rolled his eyes. "Until we got to be outta high school? Never. Now? All the fucking time." Bligh dodged the insult with a shrug. "And I didn't say me, I said Cody--"

"And why the fuck would I lie to him, neither?"

Cody looked at Bligh, then to Andrew, as they spoke to each other.

"Because you were trying to steal him and would have told him anything!"

Bligh rose from the couch to stand before Andrew - he shook his head in disbelief. "I don't believe what I'm hearin. Did livin down here make yew retarded?"

Andrew swallowed hard - he was out of line and he knew it, but he still could not fully accept Bligh's version of events.

"F-fine, maybe you were telling the truth, but - but I heard what you said to Cody, but that ain't the same thing as - the way you acted. You punched me in the fucking jaw--"

"Because there was so much shit I pented up, Drew! I jest wanted ya back. But - ya seemed happy here. Ya found ya somebody, settled down and--" His voice dove into a hoarse whisper. "Where did that leave me, man? And then - when Pappy died it was like ya left all over again..."

Andrew immediately moved forward, and for a moment forgot his fear and bitterness, instinctively putting his arm to rub Bligh's shoulder - his hand smarted at first, because he was now aware for the first time how hot Bligh's body was, as though he had a fever...or, Andrew reasoned, because whatever transformation he had undergone had altered his human physiology, elevating his body temperature to one similar to a canine's...

"I didn't wanna be alone n'more, Drew..." Bligh motioned to himself. "Alone - like this. And I remembered what happened with Dan, and then I figured maybe if we - yew - Cody--"

Andrew recoiled somewhat. "What - Bligh what the fuck are you--?"

"I...wanted to...bring us all together somehow..."

"So it was - this really was what you wanted to do all along..." Andrew withdrew - it was his turn to look sad. He knew what Bligh was asking without him actually asking it, and he shook his head slowly. "No, Bligh, I - I can't - not now, not like this..."

Bligh's ears went flat. "You don't - wanna be together?"

This was the dilemma that Bligh had not counted on - Andrew saying no. His face reflected that: a mixture of distilled anguish and defeat, the ears still flat.

"Yer really gonna reject me now...?"

Unwilling to see his friend so totally dejected, Andrew reached up to play with Bligh's hair, the same color as the coal his grandfather once extracted from the earth.

"I hate you so much so right now," he answered, in the same whisper.

His fingers moved from Bligh's hair to his ears, which flicked, gently, at his touch. They were thin, velvety-soft, they reminded him of Duke's ears when he had last seen him...

"Naw - that ain't true--"

"Yes," Andrew murmured defiantly as he pushed Bligh away. "Yes it fucking is. You fucked my boyfriend in front of me." His eyes trailed to Cody on the couch, who crossed his arms at his stomach and looked away, discomfited.

Bligh sighed, his ear twitched, and his face grew sad with shame. "Ya weren't - s'posed ta see that--"

Andrew's eyes widened. "Are you - are you serious?"

Bligh seemed to be losing his nerve. "I didn't - man those herbs were s'posed ta knock y'out completely--"

At this Andrew scoffed in absolute disbelief. "You mean to tell me you used some poisonous plant and--" He laughed, a high-pitched tone of near-panic. "--you didn't even know how it worked?!"

"I never used it on a human before!"

"You used it twice, dipshit! And the second time, you left me here - alone." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I mean - why did you even put me in the room if I wasn't supposed to see it? Even if you didn't know, why the fuck would you risk it?"

Bligh hung his head. "Dammit Drew - aight, fine, I fucked up, I fucked up real bad--"

"I'd say so," Andrew said, dropping his hand to his side.

"But - man I jest wanted - I jest wanted yew ta see what I--" He lifted his eyes to beseech Andrew's. "What we could - become..."

Andrew stared at him. "Why--?" His voice was barely audible, deadened with latent shock, and he answered slowly. "Bligh, why - all this--?"

Bligh nodded. "I was tired of bein alone," he half-whispered. "I didn't know what ta do - Pappy died, I - I snapped, man, and I thought--"

Andrew pulled Bligh toward him to quiet him, their foreheads meeting.

"Then why the fuck didn't you tell me?" A nervous laugh escaped him. "Bligh I woulda done anything for you. Anything. And I still would. But--" He shook his head, half-smiling, amazed as he felt a familiar warmth spread over him. "Why the fuck am I forgiving you?" He had risen his voice out of the whisper so that Cody could hear him, leaning back to look Bligh in the face.

"Because if I'd told you woulda been okay with stayin in Tempest and never gone to Florida?"

The remark took Cody aback, and he looked at Andrew in frank surprise. Andrew felt his boyfriend's eyes train on him but tried his best to ignore it, swallowing and nodded slightly.

"I - I g-guess..."

"I jest, I - I been so mad. So - fuckin - angry since yew gone."

"At me," Andrew guessed.

"...yeah. Well and - m'self, I mean like ya said if I'd told yew--"

Andrew sighed. "Look - Bligh, don't - I can't - believe I'm saying this, first off, but - I can't really blame you. I can act like a jackass to everyone else in Tempest but you, you didn't - you didn't deserve it." He frowned - he felt his lower lip tremble. "But Bligh - you pulled the biggest load of shit I have ever seen another person do. Seriously. I should kick you out now and never speak to you--"

He was cut short by Bligh, who moved in for a silencing kiss. "But yew wudn't," his voice was a breathy whisper Andrew strained to hear. "And ya know ya wudn't."

Andrew was helpless - the feelings he had suppressed since he had known he was at least gay in the dim mists of he and Bligh's shared childhood, which seemed fine to ignore for so long because he had just assumed with nothing to correct him that Bligh was heterosexual, came flying back to him, enveloped him in a warm cocoon of total certainty.

The schoolboy crush, the closeness, the memories - everything made sense. This made sense. Whereas last night was a relentless mindfuck where_nothing_ made sense - now, in this moment, everything made sense.

"Bligh..." he breathed.

"Yeah Drew?"

Andrew felt his eyes glaze. "I love you. You've done something terrible to me but I - I love you."

"Aww."

Bligh and Andrew's heads both snapped to Cody, who smiled sheepishly. "S-sorry...it was just cute to me. You guys have been friends since forever, and..." He shrugged. "I, um...I love you too, Andy."

"I love you too, Cody."

Bligh turned back to Andrew to nod in affirmation. "He sure do. Talked about ya near nonstop when we went out."

Cody smiled at being mentioned.

Andrew considered the thought. "Did he...huh. Where did you guys go, anyway?"

"Just drove around," Cody answered. "Um, we gave you the bed when you were...knocked out. We slept out here. Then we got up and we went to Checkers--"

"You left me?"

"We - we figured ya had a while ta wake up--"

Andrew raised an eyebrow. "You left me - you really don't know how that drug on your knife works." He unsuccessfully suppressed a sneer. "Do you plan anything?"

Bligh laughed nervously at the accusation. "I - uh--"

Andrew shook his head. "Whatever. What else did y'all do out there?"

"We - talked about stuff," Cody answered.

"What stuff?"

Cody bit his lip, one of his fangs sticking out slightly. "He - well, really, we want..."

His voice trailed off - Bligh, who had been watching him, finished for him.

"The three of us, all together."

Andrew opened his mouth in surprise. "I - I don't - all three of us in the same - relationship?" He was flabbergasted. "That's why - you turned Cody, to show me..." Bligh nodded enthusiastically, but Andrew glanced away, still aghast. "A different species - and a relationship--?"

Bligh took him by the shoulders and kissed him. "Try it - try me."

Andrew saw Bligh's tail begin to wag - but it was Bligh's eyes that captured him...they were an impossible color he had never seen in another person - a brilliant, terrible, ice blue, that spoke of a sky beyond a sky, of winters in a frosted Nordic land where auroras danced in curtains of light, of pure frost-strewn rivers, of lakes whose faces went eternally unmarred by ripples, but instead always reflected the softly crawling clouds.

He had always known Bligh's eyes were beautiful - but now he was free to acknowledge it, free to know it. From those eyes emanated familiarity, trust - loyalty. A loyalty, Andrew knew, that he had not shown Bligh.

The same monster that had destroyed Andrew's life was also Andrew's greatest friend in the entire world, who was closer as a brother than his own brother. The same monster - Bligh, that was his name, Bligh - deserved this. It was the least Andrew could do.

He leaned in and kissed him in - gently at first, but then with rising passion, as the last of his barriers melted, and he gave into Bligh, the boy, the man, the best friend, the dog.

For a moment, Bligh was all he needed, and the laughable follies of Florida, of grad school, were jettisoned, and in that pure moment, Bligh was his whole world, just as he had been many years before.

He could resist no longer, and as he moved his hand over the row of nipples and into the forest of luscious sable chest hair, he became Bligh's.

Cody slid off the couch to crawl on all fours to eye Andrew's crotch...Andrew reached down to rub his ears, as he had to done to Bligh, feeling their pleasant velvet touch in his fingers.

Seeing what was happening, Bligh shook his head at Cody, reaching to ruffle the boy's hair - from under his breath, Andrew could hear the same delighted cackle that meant supreme victory emanate from Bligh's throat.

"Naw - naw, lemme at em, Pup. He owes me."

Andrew and Bligh moved to the floor, Cody - slowly, watching the action - doing the same, closer to the couch.

Bligh wasted no time undoing the buttons on Andrew's shorts, his penis tumescent and glistening from its sheath. Andrew was still a little unnerved by its appearance - the experience was still too novel. He had, like many people - if Kinsey, who Andrew had read for his Abnormal Psych class, was to believed - passing thoughts of what could be categorized as zoophilia, but nothing consequential or concrete, mere curiosity. Presented with what were essentially animal genitals now - whether or not they were attached to someone who still talked and acted like a human - he was unprepared.

But oddly-shaped penis or not, the owner was still someone he loved and trusted - and should, Andrew tried to reason, that override everything?

He had time to consider this, all of this, as Bligh, one hand still on Andrew's shorts, locked them in a passionate kiss. Bligh used his free hand to play with Andrew's ears as the latter had done to him - perhaps imagining Andrew with the large, pointed, velvety canid ears he now possessed.

The kiss tasted of stale nicotine, with the salty excess of sodium glutamate from the fast food Bligh had eaten - it should have repulsed him, it should have made him recoil, but the realization, the feeling, that the tongue was Bligh's, that it was inseparable from the man he loved, from the man who loved him...all he wanted to was kiss, and kiss deeper.

With the kiss, Bligh was attempting to swallow Andrew's remaining doubts, which were not dead, merely dormant, in the moistness of Bligh's mouth. Andrew could feel the resolve, to assuage any last resistance to the idea of Bligh and Andrew - and Cody - together.

They broke apart to look at each other - Andrew, still conflicted between old feelings of safety and love, last night's firestorm of red-hot outrage, today's avalanche of disquieting revelation, looked over his best friend, studying him. Without thinking, he reached up to stroke Bligh's beard, which enveloped his fingers as Bligh grinned - fangs and all - with soul-affirming happiness.

His tail wagged firmly behind him and, eyes still locked, Bligh slid Andrew's shorts down, and took to his knees, to gently lick Andrew's penis. The bulge that Andrew had noticed earlier - his newly forming knot - was firmer and just slightly bigger, which gave Andrew fleeting worry, quickly forgotten when Bligh cupped his fingers beneath it - it was an intensely erotic feeling, foreign yet familiar, that made him shut his eyes in near-overload.

Defenseless like this, he did not see Bligh envelop his penis into his mouth - but he felt it, and moaned aloud at an unashamed volume.

The pleasure oozed through his brain, even as he still tried to process all the information he had learned today - how Bligh could have been in love with him all this time, how something loping and hideous could dwell so close to what was essentially his second home as a child and teen, and how Bligh could endure it all, alone.

He imagined Bligh like that - alone, hideously alone and terrified of what was happening to him after his encounter in the woods...only Duke, and the dying ember of a love Andrew never knew, had kept him sane, kept him comforted. Duke, in a year's time would get hit by a police car and lie buried in the same woods where that horrid beast that did this to Bligh - that unknowingly set these events in motion - might still lurk in the mountain shadows.

He knew why Bligh had done it alone - he knew it because he knew his friend better than anyone. Bligh had grown up with no parents, with little money, with few prospects outside of the coal mine. And yet he kept up that hope that one day - and that day could be today - things would be better, things would be perfect.

That is why he endured it alone - he was a true coalfield boy, the scion of a line of coalminers, who had done much more with much less. Andrew's bloodline of ancient conquest and American aristocracy be damned - it was Bligh's genetics who were superior.

It was all true, then - Pappy's eerie warning, Bligh's protected secret - it was all true. And Bligh was right - would he be alone now, forever, in that old house, no family, no friends?

No - he would save him, Andrew thought - save him as he had Cody, save him as Bligh had saved him that day when they were in the waning years of boyhood, and Bligh had protected him from that mountain lion.

Awash as he was in the reverie of Bligh's mouth on his penis, he could still hear the silent cacophony of doubt that would not let him be. He did not know - he was still not sure. And maybe now was not the time, but maybe it was, maybe Bligh was right, but maybe he wasn't...

...his eyes drifted to the couch, where Cody, beneath it, was gazing with unrestrained lust at Bligh going down on Andrew.

He watched Cody - watched him move his hand up and down on the strange, alien penis he did not have yesterday, the other hand rubbing that knot at the base, in the midst of his silky-looking brown-tawny leg fur, all the way down to his cute, leathery-padded feet that were best now called hindpaws, as he explored the nipples that descended down his own torso. The sporadic spurt of precum would erupt from the pointed tip, and he would briefly pause to suck it from his fingers.

Andrew was entranced. Cody now possessed an enigmatic beauty that both surpassed and enhanced all the physical things that made Andrew notice and, ultimately, fall for him - his ten nipples, the furry ears, and legs, even the newly shaped genitals - they all had an ineffable sexiness that intrigued and fascinated Andrew whereas last night he had met them with horror and repellence.

There was something about Cody and Bligh's canid form that bespoke a wild and northern beauty, far removed from the half-tropic strangeness and charm of Florida. It was a beauty that was raw sexuality and wintry perfection - in waves Andrew thought it superior, as Bligh had seemed to preach, to any full-human.

The way Cody looked now - before like a puppy, now quite literally like a puppy - made Andrew's instinct to protect him irresistible. Half-dog freak or not, Andrew would do anything for his soulmate - even be like him, share in his physiological oddities.

And so for an instant, he wanted nothing more than to be like Bligh and Cody were now - to be primal, animalistic, the perfect synthesis of man and beast...

He imagined his penis evolving, and evolving beautifully, past the unfinished mark it had stopped at, his knot swelling crimson and strong, his shaft thick and virile, the tip tapered and fertile - and Cody, unable to resist, would beg him for puppies, and like stud-dogs he and Bligh could take turns mating him, so that his litter would have markings of both, and they would live, happy and secluded, somewhere...the two people he loved most in the entire world, and he, forever...

The fantasy proved to be the tipping point, and with a sharp gasp he felt himself climax - more intense than it had been in months, with more semen than he ever remembered producing.

The afterglow peeled away at his euphoria, at his certainty that bestial polyamory was feasible, at the idea that any of this was reasonable or decent...as Andrew became aware that Bligh was licking his lips, seeming to savor and analyze with this tongue - Bligh paused, then bobbed his head from side to side, as though considering.

"The way ya taste is changin, that's fer sure."

A muffled orgasmic cry signaled that Cody had also finished, perhaps the thought of Andrew becoming the same as he - this occurred to Andrew fleetingly - finally sending him over the edge.

A scent faintly filled the room - musky, woodsy, ineffable and yet familiar - it took a few seconds before Andrew realized it was Cody. Cody's semen - and he could smell it from barely five feet away.

"It is...?" he asked, distracted.

Bligh nodded. "Yeah. But it still ain't like us."

"Which is how?" A sick feeling formed in the pit of his stomach.

"S'weird - saltier, sweeter? More intense, pretty much - and yer, um, in the middle somewhere." His tail wagged, as though pleased.

Andrew reached down to grip his slowly wilting penis, with the more tapered head, again, curiously, the bit of foreskin that had grown in, seeming thicker now...

"I noticed when I woke up I could smell better," Andrew said. "I could smell you."

"Me too," Cody concurred, still scooping up his own semen with this fingers to eat what he could manage.

Andrew felt himself grow hot with desire at the sight - another side effect of the infection, he reasoned, was having one's sex drive explode with power, a rebound time just over a minute. But he steeled himself: there was a crisis here and he could not be distracted further.

Bligh nodded again. "I got that too. Bout...I dunno, a month or so after it happened, I got to be so good with smells I could tell where all the critters were on the property." He seemed nostalgic at the memory. "Jest me n' Duke, out huntin..."

Andrew sat up to put his shorts back on. "I know -I'm sorry, Bligh." He turned to Cody, who had finished, his penis very slowly retracting back into his sheath. Andrew hid a cringe. "Duke was--"

"--his dog, yeah, he told me."

The cringe he had been suppressing burst forth - nodding to Bligh, he tried to force a smile: "I guess you and he bonded pretty well, huh?" He rolled his eyes. "Fuck."

"S-sorry..." Cody offered.

"I know that look," Bligh announced with striding confidence. "Ain't no reason ta be jealous, Drew. Me n' Cody are buds now - ain't we, Pup?"

"Y-yeah! I mean I've gotten to know Bligh today and he's actually really cool - just like you kept saying he was..."

Andrew did not hear Cody - at the word Pup, he had let loose a dagger-glare at Bligh. The latter did not bend to what should have made him awkward or ashamed, and it fueled Andrew's rage that he would not yield.

The good feelings - the transcendent love, the bonhomie - was gone, replaced by a growing sense of cosmic wrongness that spread over Andrew's mind like a sticky web.

"Answer me this. Dan Dorsey killed himself, we - we talked about it a lot, he - blew himself up with a tank of propane - and - you mentioned something about him and remembering what happened to him--" Andrew swallowed hard, rising to his feet. "What did you mean."

Bligh frowned. "I, uh--" He cough. "Guess I shoulda explained more - see, uh, we...got drunk one night and he - yanno, he - wanted ta fool around - pulled my pants and ah, jest went ta town..."

Andrew noticed Bligh's sheath stirring at the memory - he glanced away, trying to deny his own arousal yet again.

Cody had taken up residence on the same corner of the couch where Andrew had been two nights ago - Bligh joined next to him."Your friend..." He was trying to put the pieces together as he spoke. "He killed himself because he..."

Unable to bear the thought, Andrew turned away from the two of them, feeling that same impotent grief he had felt the night before creep upon him - he held back tears.

"Because he couldn't handle turning into what - you are, what - I'll - end up as..." He took a heavy, choking breath - after a brief pause to regain composure, he continued: "I didn't - I mean Dan, I didn't even know he was...he was like that."

"Neither did I. And I thought he would stop once he saw it but...he jest - wanted it even more..."

He fidgeted on the couch as the ruby tip of his penis poked through. Cody, next to him, had fixed his gaze onto it, his own penis lengthening once again, and so soon after he had finished - it emerged, semi-hard to begin with and now full mast, from its sheath, producing a small and involuntary shot of precum - Andrew, his back turned, was blissfully unaware.

"Didn't his girlfriend die a week later?" he went on.

"Jenny Hartman - y-yeah, she did."

"Did you know her?"

"Naw, man. She weren't from the county, remember."

"Right. But what - um, what did she die of?"

"Uh..." Bligh seemed to think a minute. "She was in the hospital for a little - least that's what one o'the guys at the mine said, anyhow." He thought a moment a more. "Real sudden - I remember one guy, his girl was a nurse up in Charleston where she got treated, said she just - her liver, I reckon it was, jest shut down for no reason--"

Andrew went pale, his fist at his mouth in deep thought. "God- what if Dan infected her? And it didn't - change her - it killed her? It's - effect - is different on females--"

"I'm still alive," Bligh said. "So's yew. Cody too, man."

"But we're all male. If we were female...would it kill us?"

The question was rhetorical, but a hideous silence draped the entire room.

"We - we could kill people?" Cody asked worriedly.

"Drew I dun--" Bligh stopped, sighing his surrender. "Naw - yew - well yew didn't know all that well but she was - man she was obsessed with em. She probably jest...died of--"

"A broken heart..." Andrew swallowed back a fresh lump in his throat. "That kind of - despair..." He could not finish, as a feeling of utter dread griped him. "But - what - holy fuck. Cum might be one cause of transmission, but - what else? Could anything else do it? Mucous? Blood?"

"S'only cum that does it - one time at work I cut m'self right bad and it got all over a buddy o'mine - he's fine."

"Who?" Andrew asked with only half-interest.

"You dunno em, he works at the mine, so--"

"Ah yeah, that would be why."

"Well, he's still--"

"--normal," Andrew finished for him.

"...yeah."

"Human."

"Yeah."

Unable to control himself any longer, Cody, staring longingly at Bligh's half-chub cock, descended on it hungrily, causing Bligh to gasp in pleasant surprise - Andrew spun around in time to see it happen at the sound, and felt his chest compress with a mixture of voyeuristic sexuality and jealousy.

"Why..." Andrew whispered, partially to himself and partially to Bligh, as his stare traveled from the Cody's depravity to meet Bligh's own eyes. "Why is he--"

"He...might be - uh, hungry," Bligh answered, stroking Cody's hair. "The way we taste is - I was tryin ta tell ya this - it's different, it's..."

"Addictive?" The pit in Andrew's stomach hardened in escalating anxiety.

"I mean - I eat my own constantly. It's good shit. Way better than a - a human's, I guess ya could say..."

"And his - ah - his - your - ah, bulbis glandis--"

"Do what now?"

"Knot, the knot."

"Heh, yeah? Always usin those fancy science words..."

Andrew coughed. "It ain't supposed to - deflate like that so suddenly. And when you and Cody--"

"Don't ask me - I just go with it."

"And you - you want me - to have that, too. To taste as you do. Look like you do. To not be human anymore..."

Bligh's expression - for one getting his cock sucked - had become intensely sorrowful. "We could have this," he whispered wetly. "We could have all this. The three of us..."

Andrew slowly backed away. The absurdity of the situation had reached a final, crushing weight, and everything he had been holding back - the catastrophe that he had felt befallen him - was about to erupt as a poorly-controlled volcano.

Part of him wanted to continue to forgive Bligh, to understand his smoldering years-long grudge, and why that came surging through in one heinous rampage of cum and collusion - part of him wanted to accept what Bligh had done to Cody, because he was just trying to bring he and Andrew together the only way he knew how.

It was dastardly, it was desperate, some would even call it evil. Andrew, in pieces, wanted to acquiesce to it, to recognize the ingeniousness and serendipity, to acknowledge that this really could work, and work well, the best of both worlds more deeply bonded by a dark sexual secret...

...no. This was madness.

This would have been a life built on lies, on deceit, on the primal call of his homeland that still threw out its black maw to swallow him in Oedipal rage - back to the womb he was birthed from, back to the dead-end non-future of West Virginia.

Bligh had ruined everything, Bligh had infected him with something so insidious it must have, in its origin however many centuries or millennia ago, been the product of the most diseased mind and the most perverted fantasy.

And now Andrew was a part of that. He too, was a monster. One way or another, the infection would spread through his body and destroy it, there was no cure, there was no going back.

As full of misery and rage Bligh had been when his life been turned inside-out, it was Andrew's turn, and for the same reason. The forgiveness was gone - the memory of sex and affection filled him with nigh-hysterical revulsion. His mind was shrieking at him to end this, to end all of this, and purify himself - there was only one way out.

"Have what?" he finally asked, licking his lips as he felt his throat suddenly dry up. "A threesome? A - what, triad? Polyamory?" He raised his eyebrows skeptically. "You honestly expect me to believe--"

He laughed - a mocking, hateful laugh, the voice of his mother, haughty, Mid-Atlantic despite being in the thick of hayseed lowlifes, reserved and clipped in his take-down of the situation.

Cody, startled, stopped his blowjob to look up - Andrew moved to lock eyes with Bligh.

"You honestly expect me to believe," he repeated, "that could ever work? That, what, we just live together and forget about all this, this - do you see what you've done?" He pointed to himself. "Do you know? Do you know what you've put me through?"

"Drew, I'm--" Bligh seemed at a loss for words as the situation rapidly became undone from his control. "I'm sorry but - I - jest wanted to be with yew, and make yew - like - me--"

"You've infected me!" Andrew angrily corrected. "You basically date-raped me, how the Hell am I just supposed to lie down and just - and just be okay with that? All the fuck you've done since you've gotten here is destroy my--" He looked at Cody and, seeing him sitting on the couch, his new furry, pointed ears twitching in concern, felt something for him he never had in his entire life: scorn and contempt. "--destroyed everything I've worked for. I've _ever_worked for."

"Well then fuck what you worked for, if it means you shittin all over our hometown! All over me!" He rose.

"Fuck what I've worked for?" Andrew sneered. "You already have, you filthy goddam animal."

At this remark Cody looked fit to sink through the floor, cornered like wounded prey on one side of the couch.

Bligh looked floored. "No - ya jest - jest now, ya said ya forgave me--"

"I can't - no. It - this - it's too much. It's too fucking much. Rape, lying - what's next?"

Bligh's face crumpled in anguish, unwilling to keep up his defense against Andrew's assault any longer. "God - dammit Drew, I said I was sorry, yew said y'understood - can't ya jest - ya jest acted like--"

"Well we can't Bligh. It can't be. You're a monster and you made Cody into a monster - so have him, if you want him. Take him if you want him - he's yours!" Bligh bore Andrew's harangue stoicly, his sad frown unyielding. "He wants to see the fall leaves - Tempest's got plenty He'll fit right in because now he's just like you! You've made him that way, you - selfish - psycho - stalker!"

"Andy!" Cody cried, looking lethally stricken.

Andrew jerked his head to stare his boyfriend down coldly - Cody burst into tears.

"I've had enough," Andrew breathed - in a sweeping gesture he spun on his heel and made his way to the kitchen.

"Drew, wait, c'mon--"

"Fuck off, monster."

"Don't--" Bligh growled with supreme irritation. "Come the fuck back here!"

"I can do what I want, inbred hick."

"The fuck did you just call me?!" Bligh's outrage had reached a peak, as he walked after Andrew with an angry demand in his gait."The fuck did you just call me, you hoity-toity cocksucker?!"

In a single motion, Andrew ripped open the knife drawer, spilling its contents to the floor, and he retrieved the largest knife that met his eyes first - a carving knife he had bought last year for the express purpose of cooking a proper Thanksgiving dinner for Cody.

He held the knife up like a sword in Bligh's face - his arm shook, unsteady in rage and resolve.

"Bligh. Go home. Go back to Tempest. Take Cody. Leave me to die."

"No, Drew..."

"I won't live as a fucking monster. Dan couldn't do it and I--" The words came out in a hot hiss. "He had a lot less to lose than me_._"

"No! Andy - no, no!" Sprinting from the living room to the kitchen came Cody, fresh tears welling. "Please Andy - don't hurt yourself, don't hurt Bligh, I--" His desperation made him only half-coherent. "I can't be without you, Andy - I - I'm sorry I had sex with Bligh he was just - I - you saw him, it's me, I have a problem, I used to - he was like me, we - I - we - he understood me - but - I love you - I've always loved you so - fuck - Andy - I'm so sorry, just please!"

Andrew had nothing to respond with. He closed his eyes, imagining Cody human again, imagining him in the sunlight at the gas station that perfect first time, the picture of him flicking off the camera at Clearwater Beach that was still the wallpaper on his phone - the memories of the past year called to him, called for him, as he made up his mind as to what needed to be done.

"Cody," he whispered, his voice like bones bleached in the tropical Sun. "I want you to know something - you saved my life, okay? Back then. And I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. You were it. I was going to propose at graduation..." He opened his eyes, fixing them on the half-canid monster that his boyfriend had become, whose hazel eyes had brimmed over with tears. "I will always love you. I'm sorry. No matter what you look like..." He turned the knife around in his hand to point at his abdomen.

"Andy please - don't do this, don't--"

He smiled weakly, and repeated: "I will always love you."

"No!"

Cody thrust forward, trying to stop him, but Bligh held him back.

Andrew shut his eyes once more...and jammed the knife into his stomach.

The pain was immediate and savage. He clenched his jaw, struggling to recall Cody, still standing, shirtless, in the sunset - the most perfect, beautiful memory he could imagine.

He wrenched the knife downward and let out a primal scream of agony, the memory in his mind's eyes torn into by his self-inflicted pain - but he kept his eyes shut, until his body, weakened, fell to the kitchen floor, his beloved Cody's mournful sobs echoing over and over in his ears.