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He was twelve again - just old enough to get wise to his Pa and everything he stood for, still old enough to know that Bligh was the most important person in his life. Even little Stevie, his own brother - ten years old, pale and gaunt and morbidly quiet to everyone except that impish Beagle that he was almost literally never without - could not compete, even as he followed his older brother around everywhere, that strange little dog of his ever in tow.

Stephen was sitting next to him - they were both polished and pristine in their Lacoste collared shirts, the embroidered alligator with its gawky rictus across their breasts. Walker, the Beagle, sat at Stephen's feet, and next to Stephen himself was their willowy, perpetually worried-looking mother, Margaret - they were in the dining room, sitting at the enormous oval cherrywood table on matching chairs, and Bligh was across from him, next to his Pappy.

The two of them, next to each other, offered a comical contrast - the grand old man, and his grandson. Both of them wore a plain button-down, which had been neatly ironed; they looked alike in the way that a Pomeranian resembles a lion: Bligh's wide-eyed look, his usually messy black hair combed for the occasion, next to the weathered, grey-headed, salt-and-pepper chinstrap-bearded visage of his grandfather, it was only in the shape of their faces that there was betrayed a family resemblance. In their eyes, however, one could readily tell they were related - that shade of blue Andrew had never seen before and never seen again, the gemlike color of polar ice water.

The dinner before them, on an antique white linen table cloth with borders of elaborate Venetian point lace, was a pair of ducks that had been coated in a heavy sauce hollandaise, on a large bone china platter decorated with a pattern of vibrant English roses, inlaid with delicate gilt. The ducks - roasted - were surrounded by little blackened pearl onions and covered with aromatic sprigs of basil and rosemary, next to three other plates that followed the same antique design as the platter: golden-brown dinner rolls, mushrooms bursting with Gruyère arranged in a circle around a crystal dish of jellied cranberries, and asparagus crusted with pepper and sea salt, drenched in melted butter. For dessert, still hot, in a modest place so as to not draw attention from the main course, was an apple crumb pie, a light steam drifting temptingly from its surface.

His mother had prepared all of this - she might have been a pushover who taught Andrew everything a woman should not be, but at least she was indisputably a culinary prodigy, another bullet-point to the laundry-list of talents that were left utterly wasted by being Andrew's father's wife. Even the way she ate was meek, the fork in one hand, the other hand clutching a necklace, so as not to get food on it: a white-gold chain that terminated in a Roman denarius from the time of Vespasian framed in a matching metal, perhaps silver - a memento of a trip to Milano before Andrew was born, a bombastically expensive trinket in a part of the state where just under a quarter of the population lived in abject poverty. Her doleful deep blue eyes, which Stephen and Andrew both shared, darted to her sons, and to her guests, and then to her husband, in a steady subroutine.

On the wall behind Andrew and Stephen were oil paintings of their great-great-great and great-great-great-great-grandfathers in matching solid oak frames, eternally facing each other in demure apathy - it was easier to call them, in their dress coats from the Nineteenth Century, by their names, but it was more fantastic, more impressing, for them to be identified by how many generations removed they were from the current one...there was an uncomfortable power in the sheer deathlessness, through the decades and the centuries, of the Lightfoot name.

To Andrew's right, at the head of the table, with the low evening light of late February that sparkled with the thawing snow on the trees outside surrounding him, sat, enthroned, his father, Archibald Roland Lightfoot, the current head of the dynasty that alternately blessed and blemished eastern West Virginia since, probably, time immemorial.

There he was - his father, wearing that smug, satisfied smile.

He was a preened hypocrite, his wheaten hair, going silver at his age, perfectly coifed and combed over, wearing a fitted collared shirt from that country club he played golf with Jim Gilmore at, and his fine smooth hands with thin, agile fingers came together over the plate, next to the long fluted Waterford glass full of liquid-gold chardonnay.

Andrew felt a latent disgust looking at him - a very strange sensation, the future intruding in on the past...he was seeing this in his mind's eye, somewhere...

His father was saying something to Pappy - his head was cocked at an angle, the sunny smugness even in his words:

"Enjoying the duck, Mr. Lynch? I had a man from Saint Mary's - Middle Island, a sandbar up yonder there - I had a man shoot them for me and send them down here. He tells me they're better than the ducks down in these parts."

His voice was wide and grand, like Clark Gable's Rhett Butler, devoid of the strange inflections of Appalachia that his children spoke with, or the unsure Mid-Atlantic mountain half-twang of his wife - his mouth was full of Virginia, it choked on it, his very tongue could have been the Stainless Banner that flew over Richmond in 1863.

"Zat so, now?" Pappy murmured politely back to him with a smirk - the old-timer rarely smiled, rather, he would curve his mouth to one side. "Ah, though I recall, Mista Lightfoot, state o'West Virginia forbade shootin them ducks, them as bein endangered up that way--" The ice blue eyes trailed from a fork full of duck-meat, casually, to Andrew's father to add, slyly: "--or so's I recall, now."

At the word endangered Andrew perked up, and just as his father was about to answer, he spoke: "H-hey now that ain't true, is it, Pa? If they endangered--" He laid the fork he was holding on his plate.

At this, Andrew's father let out a hearty laugh - the insidious smugness that seemed to define his being infecting even this. "No, no! I believe Mr. Lynch is mistaken - surely there are enough ducks in this state to go around." He leaned to his son with a twinkle in his eye that seemed, however brief, to actually be something resembling actual love. "My boy here's into animals, you know--" He leaned back to pluck his wine glass and point it insistently at Pappy, and with a wink: "Our little treehugger."

"Now Archibald, don't tease Andrew about what he likes," Andrew's mother admonished between bites.

"Well he's right ta love animals," Pappy said. "All God's creatures, sir. He made them afore He made us."

"And He gave us dominion over them," Archibald rejoined gamely. "So that we may hunt them as we please."

Pappy sniffed, seeming bemused. "Huntin's jest fine, sir, but only them animals as can restock what we take - good as this meat is - ah, compliments to the chef--" He turned to nod at Andrew's mother, who gave a small, sweet smile. "--it ain't right to hunt em if they can't come back easy. That's selfish."

Archibald seemed impressed - which meant he wasn't, Andrew knew him well enough to easily see - and he took a small drink from his glass. "Not sure if I agree with you, Mr. Lynch - God made Man and Man made guns, seems we were meant to have the upper hand. Seems also to me that if animals can't defend themselve, well - that'd be God's will too."

Andrew and Bligh shared a glance - Andrew's worried frown, still struggling with the idea that the bird he was eating was endangered, was met with Bligh's uncertain shrug - and a quick look to Stephen, always absolutely silent and absorbed in his own inscrutable little world, revealed that even he found this quiet battle of wills interesting, with both eyebrows half-raised in dull surprise.

It was so like his father's strident arrogance to intrude on the provinces of someone's expertise - and God, and what God did and did not do, was certainly the expertise of Pappy, the preacher and the minister and, most importantly, the Christian.

And yet, the old man was undeterred:

"Well Mista Lightfoot, the Lord God was very clear that we should be stewards o'the world, which means fish o'the sea, fowl o'the air - ah, now, in Leviticus--" He reached for a sip of ice water, and as he did so Andrew saw Bligh looking up at his grandfather with something like wonder. "I beg y'all's pardon," he continued, "but ah, in Leviticus we read The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me. Now - what that means fer us is the Earth ain't really ours, we jest borrowin it til the Lord Jesus returns..." The smirk reappeared. "We gotta take care o'what we been given, Mista Lightfoot - ducks n'all - because that's what the Good Lord expects." He turned to Andrew with an approving nod, and a surge of pride overtook him as the icy eyes swept over him. "Yer _boy_here got the right idea."

Archibald had been bested - a small flick in his right eyebrow let Andrew know that he would have to yield, a rarity in his tyrannical world.

"I don't quite recall hearing that preached on Sunday--"

"Then maybe I will Sunday next." He cackled - a rattling, dirty laugh, like a worn-out diesel engine. Bligh tittered through a toothy grin, and smirked, the first time Andrew had ever seen him do so, before turning back to his food, locking eyes with Andrew a brief instant as they both nodded to each other, in silent triumph that Andrew's father had been beaten.

"We don't go to the same church, Mr. Lynch, but I'm sure I'd enjoy it all the same..." The smugness had evaporated from Archibald's face - replaced with a stiffened smile which in turn faded into nothing as his lips met the wine glass once again.

His wife, Andrew's mother, smiled, politely, but continued eating as if nothing had happened - Stephen, however, seemed to study the two Lynch men, Bligh in particular, for some further seconds before he, too, returned to his food, now and then sneaking a bite to the dog beneath him.

A small, awkward silence fell over the table as the gathered group, save Andrew, all resumed eating - it was left to Andrew, alone, to lean back some in his chair, reaching for his napkin to wipe his mouth as his mother had taught him.

The argument - the dreadful cosmic parlor-game that batted back and forth in his head - once again clamored to life, whether Pappy's faith, whether his father's faith, were correct...or whether the empirical and the observable was, instead, the answer, that there was no God, no Jesus, no need for waiting around for Whomever, with a capital W, to return to collect his rent on the land being leased out to the puny humans of the Earth. It was bitter and brief, this crisis: Christianity meant Pappy, and all he admired Pappy for, and for being - Christianity was his own father, and all the brutality that he was, and wrought upon others. And then, too, there was the call of science - a scientist - and how, the older he got, the more and more it flew in the face of his old religion...

Luckily this all did not last long, because Pappy, finishing a dinner roll, and with a dab of his napkin, answered Archibald's discreet notice of defeat with a remark that jolted Andrew from the sudden introspection:

"Besides, Mista Lightfoot - fer a man who believes the Good Lord gave us - dominion, as ya say, over the animals with no, ah, responsibility attached - ya let ya boy there have a dawg." A strange look came over his face as everyone at the table looked at him. "A dawg from Tempest."

Stephen - at all of ten years old afflicted with a severe allergy for taking shit off people, straightened himself fearlessly at Pappy's words.

For an instant - only a brief instant, little more than a flicker - Andrew's father looked extremely nervous. "I'm not sure what you mean Mr. Lynch," he said. "Walker's a fine hound, Sandoro wouldn't have given me anything less."

"Course not," Pappy replied gamely. "But I know yer familiar with the sayin round these parts - bout how a man ain't the master of a dawg from the creek, it bein the other way round..."

"I--" Archibald looked to his wife on the opposite side of the table, and they shared the same flicker of nervousness as before. "I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that saying, Mr. Lynch."

He tried to put a teasingly upward inflection on it, to make it seem like a good joke - but there was a falter, a fatal flaw in the sentence which made Andrew and Bligh both lift their heads in confusion.

A low cackle came from Pappy, clearly enjoying needling the much younger man who had dared challenged him. "Yew sure bout that, now?"

Archibald was clearly uncomfortable at this point. "As a matter of fact I _am_sure it's stuff and nonsense, Mr. Lynch," he said with a forced, mirthless chuckle. He took a small sip of wine to regain equanimity. "Best I can recall the creek is just a creek and the dogs are just dogs."

Andrew's eyes had become narrowed at the conversation. "So the dogs round here are - different? Like a - different species?"

His father seemed to stifle rolling his eyes. "No son, they're just regular old dogs."

"Ain't nuthin reglar bout Walker," Stephen muttered, annoyed - but only Andrew heard him.

"Ah, I wudn't be so sure, there Archie--" He cast an aside look at Andrew and Stephen. "S'what his daddy, y'all's Granddad, used ta call em - Archie." Andrew giggled.

Once more the nervousness returned to his father - and once more, it seemed to be inwardly suppressed. "And again, I say I am sure, Mr. Lynch - dogs from the creek ain't no different than a dog from any county in West Virginia."

"The creek?" Bligh repeated.

"Dog's Creek," Andrew said to him. "The one that runs through that old rundown church where ya found Duke."

"That creek..."

Andrew nodded. "Remember? They taught us that in school. This all used ta be called Dog's Creek afore it was Tempest."

"Oh right..." Bligh said back - Pappy laid a hand on the boy's shoulder, and he swiveled his head up to regard him.

"Andrew's a smart boy, Bligh. Y'oughta learn from em."

The two of them - Andrew and Bligh - shared another glance, and grinned at each other, Bligh tittering bashfully.

Archibald's smugness made an unwelcome reappearance. "Yes he is - that's my boy."

Andrew smiled politely at his father - trying to ignore the intrusive thought that he wished what he said, about being his boy, wasn't true.

"Now Mr. Lynch," Margaret said, picking at a stuffed mushroom, "I have to ask, and I hope you don't mind me saying, but you said you were concerned about Stephen here having a dog from Tempest but - now you let your own boy have that big lost dog."

Pappy seemed to think a moment before answering. "Every boy deserves a dawg - and that dawg needed a home. But, ah, I had ta pray on it," he said. "That dawg looks like a wolf, and--" He frowned, a palpable disgust crossing his face as he reached for his glass of ice water. "--wolves are the devil's creatures."

"Now that we can agree on," Archibald said with a nod. "Disgusting beasts is what they are..."

A look of crushing despair came across Bligh's face as the two men spoke - Andrew leaned forward, trying to get his attention and see what was wrong, but Bligh merely stared down at his plate, dejected, for no apparent reason. It distressed Andrew, seeing him this way - but there was nothing to be done.

"But ah, Miz Lightfoot," Pappy continued. "Now t'answer yer question, ah, it ain't that I believe the dawgs round here are bad - they jest different. Duke is different and so's - well so's yer boy's hounddawg, there."

Bligh furrowed his eyebrows at the idea. "Duke's...different?" he asked.

Archibald put his wine glass down, now visibly agitated - he took his fork to stab his roast duck to cut a piece off.

"Different's one way to put it," Margaret said with an uncharacteristically wry smile.

"Not now, Maggie," Archibald said in voice that carried with it a low admonition.

Bligh and Andrew shared still another glance, this one of confusion.

"Well there ain't nuthin wrong with my dawg, ya dumb ol man."

The reactions from the table were immediate: his mother let out a sharp "Stephen!" as Bligh shot him a deadly glare and Andrew balked at him, aghast.

Archibald's mouth was still open, a piece of duck meat before his teeth, as he laid his fork down with a sour look. "Stephen Archibald Lightfoot you will have manners to our guest."

Stephen was nonplussed. "Don't care - he's talkin bad bout Walker."

At the mention of his name, the Beagle under Stephen's chair seemed to stir, letting out an oddly perturbed-sounding berf.

"Stephen you stop that - right now!" his mother hissed.

But Pappy let out another cackle, undeterred by this upstart whelp - he looked to the ceiling above him, to the ornate, century-old Beaux-Arts electric chandelier that radiated light over them, the ghosts of old money haunting in the corona of incandescent shimmer.

"Ah, boy - don't mind this old man - I tend ta ramble sometimes. Yew jest love that dawg as ya have been. He jest..." He seemed to choose his words carefully, training his gelid eyes on Stephen, through Stephen, as he pondered. "...he's...special- understand?"

Stephen, placated, relaxed in his chair and, with a nod, resumed cutting up some asparagus.

"Special...?" Andrew repeated to himself, his eyes drifting to the table.

"Yes," Archibald said with a relieved finality. "That's what he meant - and I agree. Special." He smiled - and once more the smugness was back, and once more all was right with his narrow world.

The image of Andrew's father smiling began to dissolve and fade into nothingness, and the final word - special - echoed over and over as Andrew's eyes opened...in his bedroom, now awake next to Cody, whose tail he could feel draped over his leg.

He curled his bottom lip back to feel the sharpened edge of his canine tooth, bade the tail coming between his legs to wiggle, all to be sure...the dream was too real, too painfully and viscerally _like_reality.

He spent several seconds pressed against Cody's slumbering form trying to determine what he had just seen, the significance of dream-remembering something that happened so long ago...perhaps it was like the dream about not being able to find Bligh a few nights before, his subconscious telling him how much he really missed Stephen, his shrewd little fox of a brother, with that little devil-hound of a dog, long since passed...

His eyes widened. His dog. That was it!

Special - different - Pappy knew there was something wrong, something weird, something off_about Walker...and Duke too. And the way his parents reacted - his mother, _his father - they knew. They all knew that something was very wrong about the dogs that lived in that part of Adkins County.

What was it, then? What was so strange and wrong about the dogs there that all the adults already knew? What could it be? And if it was true, why would Andrew's father get a dog from Adkins County for Stephen? Duke, a stray dog who had lived in the abandoned church through which Dog's Creek itself ran through, had infected Bligh, turning him into a half­-dog - was Walker the same way? Was every dog? Was Stephen still normal - still human?

His mind raced, and he shook his head, trying to clear it.

Sitting up, he looked about him, his room, everything - the posters, the bookcase - was as it had been when he had gone to bed, the crystalline light of the Moon outside peeking in through the swaying curtains...where Bligh had been, there was an empty space in the bed, and a faint pang of loss rang through him, a new neediness that, as he rose from the bed gingerly to avoid waking Cody, as he had done the last time he had an upsetting dream, he realized was not new at all - it was the same feeling from years ago, mutated into something stronger.

He made his way out of the bedroom, to look for him.

He did not have to go very far - Bligh was seated on the couch, wearing his Ravens cap and jeans, hunched over his phone which glowed ghostly on his face, the only accompaniment the steady song of the night-insects and the broken moonlight through the blinds outside...Andrew could smell him before he could see him, the earthy scent, that gave him the fragile synæsthesia of home, and safety.

Bligh looked up as he saw Andrew enter the living room - he smirked, and it made Andrew smile, remembering the same way he had smirked in the dream...in his memory.

"Hey man," he greeted him in that low voice people seem to spontaneously adapt at nighttime. "I - sorry I'm out here, man I'm jest uh--" He stood up from the couch, putting his phone in his pocket before he scratched his furry chest. "Kinda, um - havin a nic-fit."

"Smoking's bad for you," Andrew teased with a soft laugh.

Bligh rolled his eyes. "Not now, Lightfoot--"

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding." Andrew chuckled again - he nodded to the front door. "Let's go get you some smokes, then. I'm up."

Bligh shook his head. "Naw - I was jest checkin on my phone, man - all the stores round here are closed." He smirked. "Asides, y'ain't wearin no clothes."

"I just woke up," Andrew said with a defensive chuckle. "And - shit, that sucks...well there's always morning, I guess."

Bligh tilted his head. "Yer accent's gone again..."

"Is it?" Andrew chuckled. "Well - guess it'll come and go from now on." He motioned downward with his head. "Listen - sit down, I - I wanna, um, talk to you if I can."

Bligh did as he was told, his eyebrows furrowing. "Sure - y'aight?"

"Y-yeah, I mean - considering..." He grasped his tail as he said it, and the two shared a glance - he sniffed to himself as he made his way to the couch. "I just - um--" He took a seat, scratching his ear. "I had a weird dream, and I'm kinda wired now."

"Dang," said Bligh, frowning - he moved to cuddle Andrew close to him. "What happened, man?"

"It wasn't anything bad I guess, but..." He sought out Bligh's eyes in the darkness - they had always been vaguely luminescent, a strange quality that he had noticed when they were little...they were easy to spot in the dark. He gave Bligh a small kiss, rubbing a hand through his beard. "I was just - remembering something that happened when we were kids."

"And wazzat?"

"We were having supper - you, me, Stevie, Ma and Pa..." He dropped his hand to his lap, looking away to the coffee table. "...and Pappy."

Bligh did not answer at first, but nodded, slowly, to let Andrew go on.

"And I saw you, and you were--" He stopped - he wanted to say something else, but after a few seconds realized that the first word he thought of was the best. "--so young." He laughed to himself as his glance returned to Bligh. "So - innocent."

Bligh smirked. "Shit man, I weren't no innocent kid - yew _know_that."

"Yeah well - that ain't the point, though, I just - it blew my mind, you...seeing you again, all those years ago--"

"Wait--" Bligh sat up some, his face becoming grave. "Yew weren't havin one o'them - super-real dreams again, were ya?"

"I always have them, when I dream - which ain't really all that often, but..." He patted Bligh's leg. "Uh - that dream I had the other night, where I couldn't find you - I was telling Cody this - that was the first, like, you know, abstract dream I'd had in ages..."

His voice trailed off as Bligh pulled him into a close hug - it was unexpected, and it took Andrew somewhat offguard at first, before he relented, and shut his eyes, feeling Bligh's warmth envelop him.

"Yew don't remember I bet, but - y'used ta tell me about them dreams all the time, how - how real they were, how ya were in a different place, and ye'd git scared sometimes and I - I jest wanted ta do this, Drew - every time..."

Bligh's voice was soft in Andrew's ear, and as he spoke, it grew more hushed, as if overcome with emotion - Andrew ran his fingers gently down Bligh's back, pulling away to kiss him on the cheek.

"Hey - hey, it's okay Bligh...I - I do remember, I do, but--" He paused, putting a hand to Bligh's face to look him in the eyes. "I'm okay - I have you, I have Cody, it's - it's alright."

Bligh nodded. "Aight..." He took Andrew's hand from his face to kiss it, never breaking the lock between their eyes. "Aight," he said again.

Andrew sighed, lowering his hand to the couch cushion, still clasped with Bligh's. "Like I - like I said, I saw you again - you, Stephen, me - well I didn't see me, but - we were all so young, and..." He didn't finish the sentence. "That's not, um, that's not why the dream bugged me so much, but - that - that's standing out right now, for some reason..."

"Well why?" Bligh's expression brightened. "What, ya mean y'ain't got no pictures of us ta remember what I looked like?"

Andrew sniffed. "I do - they're up somewhere. I only, um, I only moved here a year ago - um, last April, believe it or not, and uh, I still got shit in boxes in the closet."

"Well why did that weird y'out so bad?"

"That's not it - I mean it kinda is it, but like - you said, today, you said Pappy called wolves the devil's creatures, right?"

"Yeah..." Bligh seemed distressed at the very notion. "I dun - I dun like thinkin bout it--"

"But I remember - that dream, see, it was the first time he ever said it. We were - you, me, Stephen, Ma and Pa and Pappy - we were having dinner at the house, my house, and Ma had fixed roast duck--"

"Oh yeah - n'didn't yer daddy have ta pay a huge fine cuz--"

"The ducks were endangered." Andrew grimaced. "That dumb motherfucker made me eat endangered duck..."

Bligh tittered softly, nodding. "Okay, yeah, I got ya."

"Well um - while we were eating, Pa and Pappy got into this disagreement about animals and the Bible and stuff..." He paused. "You remember what you said about - maybe the dogs in the county were weird, maybe Stevie wasn't completely crazy?"

"Y-yeah...?"

"I think you're right - because - Pappy said -something about how, um, about how--" He looked away, shutting his eyes, trying to remember the exact wording. "--a dog from the creek - um - is the master of his owner, not the other way around..."

Bligh recoiled. "What?"

"And that's not all," Andrew continued, his excitement growing. "Pa and Ma, they knew what he was talking about, because they acted all uncomfortable about it."

"Oh fuck..." Bligh looked to the floor. "Oh man - I remember that too." A hand came to his mouth as a look of horror crept into his eyes. "I jest - blocked it out cuz that was when he was all on about wolves bein--"

Andrew leaned closer, putting his hand to Bligh's wrist, pulling it away from his mouth, squeezing it.

"Bligh - they knew. They all did. Ma, Pa, Pappy - they all knew that something wasn't right about Walker, and about Duke--"

Bligh stared at him listlessly, seemingly unable to focus - there was an unmistakable look of betrayal that made his gaze unsteady, as if he just been dealt a punch in the stomach.

"Then why - why did Pappy let me - take Duke in?" His eyes snapped back to meet Andrew's. "If Pappy knew everythin - how Duke was - how him n'me--" He shook his head slowly. "None o'this makes any sense, man."

"It don't make any sense to me, either. Did our parents really know that - that dog cum could--?"

"Naw - naw, I dun - naw." His eyes drifted to the television, where they widened in disgust at the thought. "Least I hope ta_Gawd_ they didn't."

"Then what were they talking about?" Andrew persisted. "Pappy called Walker - he called him special."

"Special?" Bligh repeated back.

"Yeah - that exact word."

Bligh looked back at him, still listless. "Well he - he was special. He was like Duke. Way, way smarter than any dawg I ever seen."

"What about the dogs y'all had before Duke?"

Bligh smirked - slowly, slyly. "Pappy got em from Cousin Bobby over in Summersville, Drew - they weren't from the county."

It took a few seconds for Andrew to react as he processed what Bligh had meant - he let out a epiphanic sigh, punctuated by a self-aware chuckle.

"Fuck me...how the Hell could they hide this from us..."

Bligh pressed his face to Andrew's. "We grown now," he said into his ear. "We need ta find out."

Andrew thought a moment, letting out a small sniff as he enjoyed Bligh's touch. "Stephen," he murmured. "Stephen..."

Bligh looked at him askance, his hand returning to scratch his nose. "Yew sure? What's he gonna know?"

"Stephen's good at picking up on things like that - yanno, eavesdropping and stuff. He's, um - he's been around my parents more than anybody else. Maybe he's already figured something out. Plus...he spent his whole life with Walker, basically. His first word was Walker's name."

Bligh cackled softly. "Seriously?"

Andrew smiled. "Yeah...oh, that kid." He shook his head. "I need to talk to him - about a lot."

Bligh laid back on the couch - he maneuvered his legs to lay them across Andrew's lap. "Whattya think he'll say?"

Andrew shook his head. "I...I don't know. I don't even know if he still wants to talk to me..." He looked to Bligh - a little ashamed. "Everybody...took me leaving pretty hard but I think it - I think it drove _him_crazy."

Bligh nodded, very slowly, a knowing smirk growing on his mouth. "Well the boy wudn't right ta begin with, but - Drew, man, I dun wanna rub it in, but - yeah. We did take it pretty hard."

Andrew frowned again. "Right..."

"S'fine, man."

"Yeah - now it is...because you're here." Bligh smirked at him - Andrew smiled weakly. "I'll call him tomorrow - I hope he'll--" He hesitated. "I hope he'll pick up."

"He will, man. Yanno he still loves ya."

Andrew raised an eyebrow in surprise, an involuntary feeling of relief making him warm. "He...does?"

"Yeah man, he's yer brother. When he came ta Pappy's - Pappy's service, he jest kept askin how yew been, cuz he figured I'd--" He furrowed his eyebrows. "I'd know more bout ya than anyone else."

"He was right, wasn't he?" He chuckled.

Bligh shook his head. "The point, Drew - he didn't give yew up...jest like I didn't."

Andrew shrugged away the remark. "You ain't him. The whole reason he went psycho and wrecked my dad's Mercedes was because - I wasn't - I wasn't there, to reel him in." He took a breath, studying Bligh's body for a moment - running a hand up his chest to stop over his heart, before he continued, his voice dipping into uncertainty. "If he still cares, I guess I could call him and things'd be fine, but - why - why does...everyone depend on - me?" Their eyes met as, under his palm, he felt the strong beats of Bligh's canid heart. "You did - Stephen did, Cody does. Everybody, dude - on me. Why the fuck..." He let out a small, bitter laugh, turning away to shake his head - noting that Bligh had not responded, he looked back to see Bligh's gaze had turned distant. "Bligh?"

It was Bligh's turn to shrug - slowly, as if the weight of his thoughts prevented him from moving with any quickness.

"Drew...y'always - growin up, yew were always the guy callin people out for cheatin, standin up to people when they were mean ta someone else..." He smirked. "People depended on ya - n'me too - cuz they knew yew'd - yanno, yew'd be there for them if they needed ya."

"They trusted me," Andrew guessed. "The ones who weren't pieces of shit and being mean to me, anyway."

"Yeah. That's why, man. That's why--" His face turned serious as his eyes hardened. "S'why I - started luvin ya I guess. That - well yanno, yew were the only one around." And then his eyes softened, and he smirked, in such a way that a fang peaked through over his lip. "But even if ya weren't...I woulda seen it - how ya were. How y'are."

Andrew made a motion with a mouth to reply, but stopped - the idea that people trusted him, the idea that people depended on him for anything, because they knew he could be turned to for help, was something he had quite literally never considered.

He had been the DD for the Sigma Chi frat at USF because a guy he was interested in at the time was rushing there - after awhile he became something like an extra brother, aloof from the drama and politics but still given a different kind of respect others (other dudes) could not ever expect. He had washed vomit and spilled rum-and-coke, sticky and putrid, out of his Grand Wagoneer, week after week, because he knew if any of the brothers who didn't live in the house were caught drunk in public walking home they'd be in serious trouble. He got nothing out of it - some of them were so wasted they didn't even know his name, years later, and the boy whom all this had started for he wasn't even Facebook friends with.

It was a lone example - there were others, that surfaced out of his memory like sandbars at low tide...and it amazed him.

"Th-thank you," Andrew managed at last. His tongue came out, that motion of deep concentration, rolling across his teeth, his new teeth that Bligh had given him, and his ear twitched very subtly with his thoughts. "But - dude, I - I just do - what seems right." He sighed, the same bitter laugh as before coming back. "Maybe because Pa - Pa did everything horrible to people, I just reacted to that? Maybe? I - I dunno." He paused. "I was told growing up, um - I was told growing up I looked like Granddad, and uh...from what I later found out, he spent a lot of time trying to improve the county--"

"He gave Pappy the money ta build the house."

"Y-yeah, like that. Like I - I don't wanna serve people, I just...wanna do the right thing. Like he did. So maybe I - I inherited it from him?"

Bligh tittered. "Maybe."

"Then..." Andrew smiled - some intrinsic, genetic hope illuminating him from the inside. "I can't let him down. Even though he's dead, I - I have to keep helping people."

He felt a heaviness inside him - something he was only latently aware of, something he had carried around with him since he was thirteen, since the years of being at last cognizant of his father importing endangered ducks for dinner and bulldozing graveyards in Mason County and blackmailing members of the governor's cabinet - he felt a heaviness inside him, suddenly, lift. He said nothing, at first - he sat with the feeling, staring at the wall above Bligh, then back to him, his smile widening as he laughed, no longer bitter, but relieved, as if, for the first time since they were boys, he was alive. His tail - that inescapable symbol of his new life - began to wag, harder and happier than it ever had.

Bligh, instinctually seeing that Andrew was happy, rose to pull him into a close hug - with a low cackle, he kissed him, Andrew's skin awakening to the delicious thrill of Bligh's silken chest hair meeting his own bare torso. But they pulled away - feeling the electric-like spark of old years together, and of new years apart, and now of years to come, crackle between them...they kissed again, deeper, letting the passion overtake them.

Andrew felt his penis - still new to him, less than a day - become stiff, with each circulation of blood another centimeter poking further and further out of his sheath. It felt stronger - the physical firmness from having a baculum was giving him a strange psychological feeling of more assuredness in his own sexuality, the immutability of his otherwise alien erection making him more confident in his new biology.

Down came Bligh's hand - he grasped his penis, giving it an exploratory squeeze around the hardening, swelling knot even as he remained unyielding in their deep kiss. The reaction was immediate - Andrew pulled back, letting out a moan that he knew was too loud, an abrupt fullness in his groin that was now, at last, becoming familiar prefacing a shot of precum that erupted like a gunshot out of his urethra, accompanied by a blast of musky odor. With his eyes shut tight, he did not see where it landed - he opened them just in time to see Bligh pausing to collect it off his chest.

"N-no..." Andrew whispered, panting. "Let's - can we wait?"

Bligh stopped what he was doing to look at Andrew with instant concern "Y'aight?" he asked - Andrew, fleetingly, considered that the phrase was Bligh's mantra, always asking if he was okay.

"Yeah," Andrew responded - he kissed Bligh's nose, a gentle graze of lips to skin, as he took his fingers to rub the precum into Bligh's chest hair. "I'm fine - I - I just wanna talk right now."

Bligh kissed him again, lingering in the infinitesimal space between their lips. "Aight..." he murmured, so low that Andrew could barely hear it. "Yew - ya still upset about that other? In the bathroom?"

"Not - I mean, kinda, but - I just - wanna savor this."

Bligh's eyebrows furrowed. "Do what?"

"Me and you - Cody's asleep, yanno." Andrew smiled. "If that's okay..."

Bligh let out another cackle - low, but sustained, he pulled away, grinning, his fangs on full display. "Yeah - yeah I git it."

Bligh fell backward, pulling Andrew with him to lay on top of him - as they pulled each other into a warm snuggle, Andrew smelled his hand, still very slightly sticky with precum, and made an experimental lick off his fingertips.

Bligh's smirk became more lecherous. "Ya like it?"

"I'm learning to," Andrew answered with a nod. "I like the smell better, anyhow."

Bligh gathered the residue of precum from the top of his chest to do as Andrew had done, and lick it from his fingers. "Mmm," he intoned with a snicker. "Yeah - it'll git better, trust." Andrew gave no response - the thought still scared him some, but with Bligh so close to him he decided to shove the fear away, knowing that he would be there for him when the time came.

A brief length of silence passed as they cuddled this way, Andrew washing himself in Bligh's redolence of earthy musk - the ineffable feeling of immense safety, of home - and the innate, preternatural warmth of their bodies. They watched each other, studied each other - it was not the first time they had been left alone since Bligh had come to Florida, but now they could take stock of each other more carefully...much more than they could back in Tempest, not merely as best friends anymore, but soul mates.

Andrew took Bligh's cap and, carefully, doffed it from his head - as his ears sprang up, he leaned awkwardly to put the cap on the coffee table, bouncing back to scratch behind Bligh's ears...Bligh, in turn, let out a long, wordless groan of pleasure that emanated out of his chest as he shut his eyes, his tail quivering in his jeans.

"Somebody likes their ears scratched," Andrew murmured teasingly.

"H-hey now" Bligh protested gamely - he bade Andrew stop with a gentle grasp of his wrist, and peck to his cheek. "Yew said ya - wanted ta talk. Whatcha wanna talk bout?"

Andrew released his wrist from Bligh's grasp, taking his hand to scratch his beard instead. "Why'd you stop me?"

In the half-darkness there was a pause, and Andrew guessed it was because he was blushing. "I jest - it felt too good."

"Too good?"

"Y-yeah - too intense."

Andrew chuckled. "Fine."

Bligh tittered bashfully as Andrew thought a moment before answering his original question.

"Um - you said I was someone people trusted right?"

"Yeah man. I meant it, too."

Andrew smiled, a small, happy laugh escaping him - his tail wagged, slowly. "O-okay - well, if you trusted me..." His smile faded. "Why didn't you tell me about wanting to be a werewolf?"

Bligh shook his head. "Drew - listen that was - I done told ya, man, that was jest sumthin fer me. I'm sorry I left y'out but..." He seemed to reconsider what he just said. "Well...maybe I shoulda told ya..."

"Yeah, you should have."

"I'm sorry, man."

Andrew pressed his mouth to Bligh's shoulder, letting his lips form a kiss there. "Don't be. I just wanted to know - if that's why - that's why you really blocked it out so hard...?"

"Yeah, yeah I did. He said it a couple o'times after that but - right then I jest think he was tryin ta one-up yer daddy."

"Probably..." Andrew said grudgingly.

"But man - Drew, I mean yer daddy was bad enough bein down on stuff all the time, but - I never wanted to make Pappy feel ashamed o'me, not never...and when he said that..."

Andrew frowned. "I asked you this before...you--" He cleared his throat. "You really wanted to be a werewolf that bad, huh?"

Bligh shrugged again. "Weren't that, exactly - I told ya, man, afore I met yew I - I didn't have no friends. I jest wanted ta be free--"

"--and run through the woods," Andrew finished for him with a wistful smile.

Bligh's eyes grew distant once again - this time, Andrew guessed, to somewhere else, somewhere far from where they both were. "Yeah..." he whispered.

A passing thought came to Andrew in the bare seconds of silence that followed, and he voiced it aloud: "Did you ever howl?"

Bligh snapped back to reality - he coughed, and seemed to blink in surprise at the question. "What?"

"Did you ever - howl."

Bligh tittered, an uncertain noise, tainted with embarrassment. "W-why'd ya ask sumthin like that?"

"Because you loved werewolves so much, and after you--"

"Yeah," Bligh cut him off, closing his eyes - he nodded, seeming as though he was trying to stifle a grin. "Yeah, I - yeah I did."

"Really? You howled...? Like to the Moon?" Andrew grinned.

Bligh coughed again, uncomfortable being put on the spot. He opened his eyes and nodded again. "Yeah - me n'Duke..."

"Wow," Andrew said. His mouth came to Bligh's chest, his face full of silky hair and the unyielding wall of his muscles. "You...wow..."

"Wh-what man?" Bligh fidgeted, his ears going from flat to upright and back again. "What's so--?"

"It's just you...you're...you've become - wilder, after I left."

Bligh stared at him. "Wilder..." he repeated back.

Andrew nodded. "More - animal-like. Besides the - uh - the obvious--" He reached from where he was to stroke the side of his ear. "You howled with - Duke and - grew your beard out, everything - you - it's hard to - to explain, except that you became more...wild."

Bligh smirked. "Ya think so?"

Andrew nodded, still pressed again his chest, his heartbeat faintly tangible.

Once again the imagery of the dream that had woken him returned, and he reflected on it - the opulence of the house and the decadence of the food - and how stark a contrast it was to the liberated, naturalist Bligh. A strange yearning resulted from this line of thought - a desire, pulling and tugging, to be free...

"I...kinda jest let it go after ya left. I guess - bein like that--" He paused. "Like - this - it's...who I really is."

"A beast."

Bligh shrugged. "A wolf. A dawg." He smirked. "We did this already--"

"Who could love - a beast?"

"Drew does," Bligh snickered happily.

"Yes, I do."

Andrew's tail wagged lazily as he drew himself up to Bligh's mouth - he kissed him, and nuzzled his beard, whispering warmly into his ear: "So teach me how to howl."

Bligh's head shifted to meet Andrew's, his face full of surprise. "Drew..."

"Me - and Cody. Teach us how to howl. And be wild."

Bligh looked him over - scanning his face, as though trying to see if he was being sincere - before grinning, slowly, with an accompanying cackle coming through his teeth.

"So we can be a family--"

"A pack," Andrew corrected. "A pack of dogs."

Bligh cackled - a loud, boisterous, triumphant laugh that he immediately stifled when he seemed to remember the late hour, and so through his teeth came hiss after hiss of happy, if stifled, laughter.

"What..."

Bligh shook his brisk briskly. "Jest - man that's fuckin perfect!"

"I know," Andrew said with a smile. "It's occurred to me before--"

"I love it, Drew." Bligh's grin, even in the dark, was invincible. "I - I really love it man."

"Well it's funny that you do because - you - being like that - and um, us being like that - it's one of two things you never told me."

"What was the other?"

"You being in love with me."

Bligh smirked. "Zat so, now..." He leaned up to run his tongue along Andrew's cheek, running his face - his beard bristling intimately, skin to skin - up to the latter's ear. "But don't I git a second chance?"

Andrew shivered - he panted hard, and attempted to regain his composure. "I - Bligh, please--"

"C'mon - don't my bitch git ta forgive me?"

At the word bitch Andrew felt a tremor of mental pleasure overtake him - he let out a whimper as he felt his penis stir to life again, and his ears completely flatten in submission.

"D-don't - n-not--"

Bligh snickered. "Why's that git y'off so much, anyhow?"

Andrew felt his face go hot, and was thankful the room was too dark, even with the Moon in slits coming through the blinds, for Bligh to see him redden so.

"I - nobody's - ever called me that afore--"

Andrew heard what came out of his mouth and was immediately mortified, but Bligh snickered again, this time unkindly. "Afore?" Andrew felt himself redden even deeper as Bligh pushed him up, raising both himself, and Andrew, so that they were face to face. "Hadn't heard ya say that in ages."

Andrew's tail wagged, but he still remained defensive. "I - I dun--" He turned away - Bligh caught his face and forcibly, with only the most token resistance, kissed his mouth.

"I love hearin my best friend - like he used ta be."

Andrew felt himself submitting, the urge to give into Bligh - as it had been in the shower, perhaps indeed as it been his whole life - creeping along the inside of his skin.

"You - y-yew - why - my accent's s-slippin--"

The hesitation was there, not like it had been before, on this very couch, when his speech had spontaneously - hideously - mutated, like a crab at Sanibel Island crawling out of its exoskeleton during its ritualized ecdysis...the progression was natural, an evolution, so as his body, now as his speech, and both under Bligh's influence.

Bligh tittered - he kissed Andrew again, deeper this time...they shut their eyes at the same time, but at some length in the kiss, Bligh paused, and they opened them the same way.

His hand was still holding Andrew's cheek, the icy eyes, the same eyes that Pappy had, going deep inside his own. The smirk reappeared - serious, this time - and his ears went flat.

"I love yew, Andrew Nicholas Lightfoot."

It was a profound statement, and Andrew was shaken by its profundity. He said it - his full name - the first time they had made love, and now Andrew understood why: there was a magic in it, a spell, an abracadabra to summon back the past and bind it to the future.

He felt his tail wag again - a faint judder beneath him gave away that Bligh's was doing the same. "I love yew too - Bl-Bligh Allen Lynch."

Bligh grinned - Andrew could tell where his fangs were, even in the half-moonlight that permeated the room, and he found himself drawn to them...they were, for the first time since he had seen them in the apoplectic nightmare of only last night, sexy - a thing of beauty. They were the physical embodiment of his wildness - his beastliness, his fantasy of running in the woods made petrifying real.

Before Bligh could reply, Andrew took Bligh's hand by the wrist once more - it was his turn to kiss, and he did so with such power that Bligh was once again totally supine against the cushions, his face monopolized by Andrew's mouth.

Several blissful moments passed this way until Andrew retreated some - he was smiling, suddenly confident, as he had, by this time, virtually pinned down Bligh in the cushions, and he rose, scooting down to feel the firmness straining the crouch of Bligh's jeans...Bligh, in turn, raised his head as much he could, smirking, his fang out, cackling in delight.

Andrew felt along Bligh's beard with his fingers, coming to his ear, where he paused - Bligh's face had adopted a suddenly vulnerable look as Andrew's fingernails grazed the back of his ears, a look that transmuted into shivering pleasure as Andrew scratched him there.

"H-hey - hey now - Drew that ain't f-fair--"

"Yew tellin me ta stop, Lynch? Cuz I'm a Lightfoot. Nobody tells _me_what ta do..."

He withdrew his hand - Bligh turned to him with an annoyed frown.

"That sounds like yer daddy talkin."

Andrew shook his head, firm in his conviction. "Nah. That's me- ya didn't lemme finish."

Bligh's eyebrows kneaded together. "Zat so, now?"

Andrew came down to breathe into Bligh's ear, which twitched as the words came to it, hot and earnest: "Nobody tells me what ta do - cept yew."

A hint of evil - an ingenious cruelty - curled into Bligh's smirk. "Cuz I own yew."

"Yeah - I'm - I'm yers."

He snickered again, louder than before, as Bligh attempted to shuffled off his jeans - but Andrew put a hand on Bligh's shoulder to stop him. "H-hey - Bligh, what--"

"C'mon, man," Bligh whispered.

"But Cody's asleep - n'yew said--"

"I know man but jest...real quick, okay? I love - I love em, ya know I do but..."

He seemed unwilling to finish, and so Andrew did so for him: "Ya jest want it ta be us right now."

Bligh frowned. "That...bad?"

Andrew thought it over before shaking his head. "At some point it'll be just two of us - or one of us - alone in the house. I figure - it's gonna happen sometime..."

"Yew sure?" Bligh's smirk was morphing into a frown.

"Yeah..." Andrew took a clump of Bligh's hair - soft to the touch - to play with it. "I can't...I can't deny..." He leaned in to kiss Bligh's forehead. "...this..."

A snicker - still dark, still evil - announced that Bligh was back in form. "Thought so..." he murmured tauntingly - he pushed Andrew off firmly so that they could regard each other once again, with Bligh's fang jutting out over his lip through his lecherous half-smile. "I knew my bitch cudn't say no."

Andrew whimpered at the word. "D-dammit - don't--"

"C'mere..." He pulled Andrew to him by his shoulder - their lips were touching, so that every syllable spoken ached upon the skin of their mouths. "Yew love my dick, don't ya."

"Wha--" Andrew shook his head. "I dun--"

"Cody said it. I want yew ta say it."

Andrew smiled coyly. "Why..."

He felt Bligh's tongue slather his lips, and he let out a small moan.

"Cuz he said it. Now my bitch gonna say it."

Several seconds ached on between them. "Ya know I do," Andrew whispered at last, his ears flattening. "But - dammit this--" He struggled with his words. "It's so fuckin new, dude. I'm - still...still scared."

"Yew been scared all day," Bligh countered. "Bout losin control. Bein sumthin different." He smirked - knowingly, as before. "Ain't I right?"

Without even thinking, Andrew nodded - he was too vulnerable to guard the truth. "Yeah...yeah I am."

"I was scared too. Scared outta fuckin mind, man."

"Then yew know, y'understand - that, when - when I think about it--"

He brought Andrew down so that he was once again laying on top of him, taking a hand to rub the back of his neck. He kissed him, gently and deliberately. "Dunbe thinkin, Drew - dun do that. Jest - let go," he whispered. "Cody did - he ain't scared. He said so. And he's lookin ta yew, man."

At this Andrew shut his eyes - a fresh eruption of guilt at the terrible notion that he could ever let Cody down splashed hot inside him. "F-fuck," he said. "How - how'd yew know? Other - other than what he said?"

"He don't talk much," Bligh answered, "but I seen - I seen how he act. He looks up ta yew, man." He tittered. "I really gotta explain that?"

"N-no--" Andrew sighed. "But he's so - I mean yew saw em go ta work even after - after--"

"Yeah," Bligh cut him off.

"He always wanted ta do his part, work as hard as he can, fer me - fer us..."

"He still gonna do that, man. That ain't gonna change."

Andrew nodded, Bligh's words assuaging his guilt some. "I guess..."

"Course now - he carryin my babies." He tittered, perhaps in spite of himself. "Well - mine n'yers--"

"Yew dunno that," Andrew said half-heartedly. "They could be--"

"Drew." Bligh pushed him back so that he could look him in the eyes. "Be real, man. We both know - ya said so. Yew were jest guessin but - man think...deep. What does yer heart really tell ya?"

A strange excitement - a heady alchemical mixture of how Bligh had dazzled him on the porch, and the pride he had felt at being different, in the kitchen, right before bed, stirred, deep inside him, somewhere in his stomach where it reached his chest and made it tighten.

"A family," he murmured to himself in frank wonder. "A real - a real family, a - new - species..." He paused. "Well, technically, not a new species so ta speak, it's a li'l more--"

"C'mon, Scientist-Man," Bligh with a teasing titter.

Andrew smiled sheepishly. "Sorry."

"Whatever we are," Bligh's voice had adopted that warm, comforting tone once more. "Yew - me - Cody...and the pups."

Andrew raised an eyebrow. "Pups?"

Bligh nodded. "S'what I - jest my instinct I guess."

"Yew reckon they gonna come out whole? Not - deformed or nuthin?"

Bligh nodded again, grinning. "I do, man. Cute little thangs, yanno - yers, mine, Cody's..."

He knew this was Bligh trying to reassure him, trying to ease his overly-analytical mind, haunted with the hideousness that lurked in the corners of reproductive science - he wanted to believe him, he wanted to, for once, instead of following facts and logic and reason, follow his heart, and believe that not only was Cody pregnant, but that something beautiful and precious grew inside him.

Andrew kissed him, deep and loving, as he rose back to lay on Bligh's thighs, his hand coming upon his penis, in the half-unzipped crotch of his jeans - the knot was beginning to bulge, sure and firm, within the soft, furred sheath.

"That's...that's what made em," Bligh murmured, his gaze steeled and serious.

Andrew expected him to at least crack a smirk - to, as he had been with Cody, become the countryboy to make good on a boast...but he did not. Instead, in the half-darkness, in the crackled moonlight that, Andrew guessed, in the forests of his private world, he would become a wolf to...he was decisive, his whole being too immense, in that moment, for Andrew to have denied him.

"Tell me - tell me ya love it, Drew."

Andrew gave the penis in his hand an affirming squeeze. "Yes," Andrew whispered, more sure of this than perhaps anything else in his very existence. "I love yer dick."

"Yeah," he answered. "I know ya do..."

Bligh's smirk returned, but it was not the confident, or debauched look that Andrew was expecting - it seemed, for the first time, sorrowful.

He didn't understand it - he never asked him. But as he gripped Bligh's cock, and felt the knot in his sheath bulge more and more until it slipped out, eminently powerful, once more, even at first sight - Andrew guessed.

This moment was connected to the moment that Andrew's brain had stored, for a decade and half, and played out for him in dream form that very night - there was a line from then, until now, through the years, of lies and misunderstandings and pulling-apart of hearts and words.

They were just kids once - they were just Pappy's grandchild, Archibald's son. They were nothing more than that, but all the while, without even knowing it, they were soul mates. It was namelessly ephemeral - a beauty that came and went, and yet was eternal, because it was perennial, like the autumn forests of the West Virginia mountains Andrew had lived amongst and dreamt of.

But Cody, asleep, was no mere supporting actor to this drama - he was so key, so integral to Andrew not being the alcoholic, directionless man-whore that he had slid into without Bligh to protect him from it and without Stephen to provide an example for. Even they, physically absent, was spiritually present - Cody more than Stephen, for were it not for him, being turned first...

Andrew gripped Bligh's penis tight, watching as he hastily muffled a cry with a powerful spurt of precum.

"F-fuck Drew--" he managed between broken breaths.

Andrew knelt to take the musky-smelling slime that had erupted into Bligh's chest hair into his fingers, locking eyes with him - even in this poorly-lit living room making sure that their eyes remained in place together - to make him watch as he licked it into his mouth, each motion of his tongue calculated to be excruciating.

Bligh watched him, his face absolutely expressionless with arousal - this what he wanted, Andrew knew. He wanted Andrew to stop thinking - he had said so - and thus, the fear to be salved, the doubts be eased. Animals did not think, did not use reason - Bligh had always been an animal. And now, he wanted Andrew - and Cody - to be, as he.

"Teach us how ta howl..." Andrew murmured, quickening the strokes on Bligh's penis with one hand as he took another to gather more of the musky precum, slathering it across his own face - his breathing had deepened as he felt himself being lost in the idea of making Bligh cum, of showing him how sincere this next phase would be. "Teach us how ta howl, Bligh," he repeated, his voice rising, leaning forward to lock their eyes together as his continued his ministrations, cupping Bligh by his knot and moving his hand up the shaft, then down to the knot, and back again, faster and faster. "Yew - n'me - n'Cody - n'the pups..."

He knew - as he had known, some hours before - that it would work, that putting in Bligh's head the mere thought of them howling together, and abandoning the cities, established civilization, the three of them and their children on an outer vanguard of humanity itself...that this would bring him to climax.

Bligh did not, could not respond - at first his eyes grew wet, glistening subtly in the moonlight through the blinds, as though overwhelmed by the very thought. And then, overstimulated physically and mentally, his face screwed up as though he was in pain - but Andrew knew if there was any pain at all it was an ecstatic agony, seizing him from his spine to his brain, still resolutely human even after the rest of his physiology was ruinously, beautifully, wildly canine.

Bligh's balls jerked upward, and his shaft swelled in Andrew's hand - Bligh gritted his teeth, fangs bared, as he tried to stifle the raucous sound of his own orgasm as Andrew masturbated him.

Mere nanoseconds passed as Andrew was himself gripped with invasive, utterly alien impulses - his tail went still as he saw the semen erupt from the tip of Bligh's cock, acridly musky, near-reflectively grey, like luminol, and at once was stabbed with a hideous sensation, as when he was trying to stay sober before he met Cody, an overload of rapacious cupidity - for the taste.

Even as Bligh was still cumming, in a single, swift motion, he took the tip into his mouth, where it continued to give forth its last drops of musky elixir. The taste was the same as he remembered it from the day before, at this very couch - the gaminess, the soupy-like warmth and texture - and yet it did not shock him, he expected it, and he craved it, as the junkie he was becoming, as the alcoholic he used to be.

With each successive swallow, the semen slid down his throat, into his stomach, where it was met with an immediate feeling of satisfaction and satiation, as though all along his belly had awaited this next aqua vitæ, this new secret to want and to crave.

A violent surge of soul-shattering arousal overtook him - he felt so free, in this moment, so utterly liberated and completely depraved, like an animal, an animal that Bligh_had made him into_, that he had no choice but to give in, and masturbate himself, as he had done Bligh.

He shut his eyes as he pulled off of Bligh's cock, which had slowed to a trickle of the cum he now found himself craving. His hand came to his own shaft, the newer, longer, far thicker, balefully inhuman shaft that Bligh, after all, had blessed him with, and the touch of his fingers to it was painfully pleasurable - he knew what was going to happen, his groin felt abruptly full, and a new volley of precum flew from his penis.

He was only a few strokes in - feeling along his own knot, hard and inflexible at the base of his penis, as yet strange to him, but as before, firm and sure where he, still, was not - before Bligh, taking in a deep, determined-sounding breath, stirred underneath him.

He was pushed down, gently but firmly, his head coming to the other arm of the couch as Bligh, up from the latency of having himself just climaxed, took Andrew's hand from away from his penis to suck it himself, kicking off his jeans in the process so that they were, at last, both naked.

Andrew made several confused sounds that were soon broken up into moans as Bligh's mouth nursed the head of his cock, and he savored the warmth and the wetness, his mind reeling in pleasure that was far more intense than the last blowjob Bligh had given him - indeed, any blowjob ever before now - until he could not hold off anymore, and came.

He reached down for Bligh's head, his hands becoming lost in the feathery locks as he thrusted into his mouth, throwing his head back as he felt every sinew of his body explode with pleasure and love for the best friend who had been with him, all his life.

At last his orgasm, too, abated - Bligh had drank down every drop, and rose, the back of his hand to his mouth as he was still swallowing the last trickles of semen, to look down at him, their positions now reversed from when this had begun. With one final gulp, it was finished.

The two regarded each other in the mutual afterglow, the exquisite, atmospheric euphoria in which they both dwelt, like a comfortable cloud.

"I liked that," Andrew murmured after some length in deliberate understatement.

Bligh nodded enthusiastically. "Y-yeah man! Me too!"

"Good..." Andrew's mouth twinged, however, with his nagging conscience. "But - bout what I said, I - I reckon this is the last time we should do this...without Cody."

"Yeah...I reckon so." He took a hand to rub Andrew's sheath with a titter even as his penis retreated back to its home. "Yer bigger n'me..." he pondered.

Andrew blushed hotly, feeling himself stiffen just slightly at the touch, and the suggestion. "N-not - maybe thicker--"

"Yeah, s'what I meant..." Bligh snickered, giving the sheath a playful tickle. "It's real sexy, though..."

Andrew laughed, unguardedly nervous, feeling a fresh erection come on. "S-stop..."

Bligh returned his hand to his side, rising from underneath Andrew to pull him into a tight bear hug. "Aight, aight..." He snickered again, running that same hand through Andrew's hair. "I'm so happy, man - happiest I been in ages."

Andrew kissed him, pulling away into a broad smile. "I'm glad, Bligh. And I'm - I'm happy, too."

Bligh grinned at him. "Ya did mean that, right?"

"Mean - what?"

"Bout yew - n'me, n'Cody--"

Andrew laughed. "Yeah...yeah. I did."

"Yew...still scared?"

Andrew considered the remark for a moment. "I - kinda still, yeah." He sighed. "But I - I can't be. Fer Cody."

"Yeah man." He grinned at him. "Jest like ya were afore...I was here for ya both."

He kissed him - they lingered, even as Andrew arose, taking a hand to stroke one of Bligh's ears, before he gently pulled away.

"We...we need ta go ta bed."

"Yeah - we got tomorrow, don't we?"

Andrew laughed, shaking his head, feeling a sense of coziness, a kind of cosmic stability, enrapture him, filling his soul with the warmth of certainty he had not felt in many months, perhaps not since Cody had first moved in. The feeling that had echoed into him as he lay drifting off to sleep the first time, returned - the invincibly victorious idea of optimism for the future, with both Cody and Bligh by his side.

"Tomorrow..." he repeated, pressing his face to Bligh's. "Tomorrow. Bligh - tomorrow I'm gonna be - I'm gonna wake up with yew n'Cody..."

"Every day after that too, now," Bligh whispered, kissing him on the nose.

"Yeah...but first..." Andrew laughed again as he tugged on Bligh's arm to get them to stand together off the couch. "There's tomorrow. First day."

Bligh grinned at him with one of his quick, decisive nods. "Yeah," he said as he knelt to retrieve his jeans, throwing them over his shoulder. He grasped Andrew's wrist, and back they walked to the bedroom together, holding hands, something Andrew felt that Bligh always wanted to do with him, for as many years as they had known each other.

As they stood in the doorway, Bligh kissed Andrew's cheek, and with a final, affirming smirk: "Tomorrow."