The Dogs: Litany - Episode I
It was very late afternoon that Sunday, the September Sun languid and broken through the blinds, and Andrew was in the kitchen, cutting up chicken for a dinner, on the bamboo board he had bought at Publix the last time he had gone there with Bligh and Cody - next to it was a bag of flour, some shakers of spices they had gotten from that family-owned Italian deli down the street, and his phone, with its insistent blue light telling him that his brother Stephen had texted him for the third time that day. From the living room over the tall separating counter floated in sounds of a football game - the Browns at the Ravens, Bligh in a state of quiet tension as he watched his team play. He was naked, save for his cap, as was Andrew...nothing unusual, it seemed that barely after the first few days of living together they, with Cody, had decided to forgo the use of clothes in the house, the unspoken honestly toward each other about being abhuman, furred and tailed and fanged, the great secret that dwelt in their apartment. Andrew should have been used to the sight - he should have been used to seeing his friend naked, he had seen him naked more times than could be counted since they were children growing up - but every day when he woke up in the bed the three of them shared, in between him and Cody, Andrew found himself in love again with both of them, transported, if only for a moment, when the day had started and begun anew. Bligh - Bligh still dazzled him. After two decades, nearly - Bligh, his best friend in the most literal sense of the word, his deepest connection even compared to his own brother to the pieces of West Virginia that they were made of...Bligh still dazzled him. As he continued to slice the chicken breast, piece by piece, to drop into a sandwich bag of flour and shake about after seasoning in a bowl and refrigerating to let it set up, he found himself drifting to what had happened a month before, when the world and everything in it, but him especially, seemed to hinge unwieldy on the faintest of fragments - he slowed his motions with the knife against the cutting board as he remembered, quite without meaning to, how he used a knife like it to try and kill himself...his last defiant act as a human, his last despicable stand against the happiness he had since found. It was not an abrupt thought, but it caused him to act abruptly - he stopped what he was doing as his eyes came to the sink, where they rested, a sense of impermanence, cosmic and gravitational, creeping into him...a helplessness, that so much could have easily have been lost that day, now more than a month past, made him deeply uneasy. He felt his ears flatten and his tail - no longer new to him, an accepted part of him, something Bligh and Cody had taught him to be proud of - grow still. His sudden, unwelcome introspection did not go unnoticed. "Hey - hey y'aight?" Andrew jerked his head to look up at Bligh's worried expression from the couch where he was lounging. "Yeah," he answered - a smile of relief coming to him. Bligh, Cody - his life, their lives, as a pack of dogs - was a reality, tangible, palpable. "Y-yeah, I'm fine." Bligh half-nodded - Andrew saw his eyes, icy blue, the color of ocean which polar bears swim in, regard him gravely for a moment before turning to the television, and Andrew frowned, back to the quick labor of slicing up the corpulent chicken breast into manageable pieces, as he wondered to himself about the state of Bligh's emotions, and how tense and nervous he had become - how, since the wild theory Cody had himself put forth had been proven true with a bulging tummy, Bligh had discovered he would soon, become a father. Cody had hidden his pregnancy in the depths of an old Abercrombie hoodie that Andrew had brought with him from West Virginia, where the weather was more suited for it - he had hidden it because the world would not understand it, as much as Cody himself could rejoice to the idea, as he much as he knew his place in the universe as that which creates the mystery-miracle of birth...he had hidden it even as he continued to go to work, every day his lithe, toned skater's stomach becoming just slightly more stretched and distended with the progeny that Bligh and probably Andrew had provided. It was something he, Cody, had always wanted, very much in spite, or perhaps because of, being born a human male and enjoying being born that way - the role play he and Andrew used to do that masked his desire to serve Andrew and become a vessel for someone he truly loved and was grateful for. But now that he was a half-dog, as Andrew and Bligh were also, he was no longer human - and the strange possibility for him to be actually pregnant had slipped from fantasy to reality. There was the question of what was growing inside of Cody - if they were half-dog children identical in form as the three of them, or if they were normal infants...or if they were puppies, juvenile dogs, fully formed canines. Bligh had opted for the latter because Cody had, on faith, said it to be so, and Bligh had inferred it was an instinct none of them could, or even should, understand. It was left to Andrew to do something anathema to his nature - believe something, assume something, with no scientific evidence at all. But that was the point - he, too, was about to be a father, his and Bligh's offspring dwelling in the body of someone who had been born male. Sometimes he thought this was the case - sometimes Andrew would be bothered at the thought that whatever what was growing in Cody's stomach was all Bligh's, and not his...that his own seed was too diluted, too late, or both, for Cody to carry his young. He, after all, was the savior of the boy from homelessness and misery - and by rights, at least to most people, whatever was inside Cody should, necessarily, only be Andrew's alone. But he, Andrew, was no fool - he still knew his destiny, his choking strands of DNA too tightly bound around the neck of his reproductive capabilities. He was still physically strong - the years being out of playing football had been kind to his body, he was very fit - and he was mentally strong, about to graduate in December cum laude from the University of South Florida. But he could not overcome the last mocking laugh of karma that echoed out of the valley of the Greenbrier River - his four-hundred year old Lightfoot family name. There was a chance, a chance that bothered him too much if he considered it too long, that it would be Bligh, alone, responsible for the continuation of both of their family lines, for their respective generations of doom. There were days Andrew was not sure this would really work - he would catch himself craving the chocolate which would now poison him, he would get too irritated at having to buy Drano for the amount of fur clogging the shower drain, he would cut his lip on one of his fangs, he wished he could go swimming again without the killing fear that someone would see his furry lower half and his tail and his ears... But then he would see Bligh come home from his new job at the car mechanic's shop down the street, his brow slick with sweat and his hands filthy with the grime of automobile innards, his face in a scowl from the interminable heat and stress of working all day...a scowl which disappear when he would raise his head and see Andrew waiting for him, melting away into a grin, grateful and relieved, with his fangs peeking over his lips. He would see Cody, too, when he would come home on cooler days from his job at the Green Room, the skateshop where he had worked for most of their relationship, throw off the hoodie that hid his pregnant body, and run forward to hug him, that solar powered smile luminous at Andrew's touch. They were worth it - for Andrew, they were worth it. And if they could work as hard as they did for him, he could make it work, for them, as well. But perhaps the crystallizing disconnect from his old life to his present one after barely a month was still too much - because he was thrown out of the worries and the memories and the resolutions deep inside his own head with a shooting sting from his finger as the knife's blade bit into it, straight down, leaving a deep, bleeding cut. He cursed in profound irritation - but he barely had time to look up when Bligh was beside him, hand wrenched from him so Bligh could see, the blood trickling down his finger as the cut from whence it bled sealed itself scarlessly back into skin. Andrew stared at where the cut had been, the only evidence that any violence had taken place the drying trickle of blood that painted his finger a faint scarlet...his eyes trailed from it to meet Bligh's, seeing his mouth curved into an embarrassed half-smirk. "I...uh..." "Dude I'm okay - you forget that happens?" His smile was wry but kind. His accent, living with Bligh, had settled back into the amniotic Virginian border noises that he heard his father and brother use - he sounded different, he sounded more, he thought some days, like he was supposed to. Bligh hesitated, prefaced by a nervous titter. "I, uh...jest heard ya--" "And I'm fine - don't have to worry about infection, neither - same reason..." Andrew put his hand behind his back and came forward to gently kiss Bligh on the lips. "Would you - would tell me what's wrong?" he asked softly. "You been so tense..." Undeterred, Bligh took Andrew's formerly injured hand by the wrist, grabbing a paper towel off the roll on the wall as he did so - Andrew let his arm slacken as it was led to the sink, watching bemusedly as Bligh wetted down the paper towel and gently, tenderly, washed away the blood from his finger at last. As a final gesture, he took the still-wet finger and kissed it - their eyes met for a moment, and Bligh seemed as though he was forcing a smile, the smirk that he would have given not quite reaching up his face where it should have been. The expression faded as he tossed the damp mass of paper towel over Andrew's head, into the open closet to plunk squarely in the trashcan...his eyes followed it before returning to meet Andrew's. "Yew - yew know why, man..." he said in a low voice. "I wanna hear it," Andrew answered, matching his volume. Bligh opened his mouth to answer, but shut it, shaking his head, looking away. "I...I--" "C'mon," Andrew urged, wiping the residual moistness on his hand into his leg fur as he took a step forward to kiss him on the cheek. "We need to talk about this." Bligh's eyes did not move from where they had fixed on the floor below him. "It's...Cody, man. He shudn't be workin." Andrew smiled, putting his hand into Bligh's coal-black beard to ease his face so that their eyes came back to meeting. "I know," he said gently. "But he ain't gonna stop, dude, he's - he's always been that way, he wants to work, he wants to - to help out, to help us out--" Bligh shut his eyes, sighing irritably. "But he dun hafta." He shook his head again. "I'm workin, and yew got yer Granddad's money--" "Then explain that to him," Andrew answered, still gentle - he knew, he sensed, that this had festered for far too long. "He'll be home soon we - we can talk about it." His smile brightened. "As a family." "If'n he'll listen - last time I tried that he wudn't hear a word..." He shook his head again, and pulled Andrew into a hug. "This is new fer me, man." "What, you don't think this ain't new for me too?" Andrew chuckled, his tag giving a slight wag - he slid his hands to Bligh's shoulders, kissing him. "I thought you told me - the first day, you - you told me not to worry." He cocked his head with a small smile. "What happened to that?" "That, uh--" Bligh sniffed. "That was afore I - afore, uh, we--" "Knocked him up?" Andrew finished for him. Bligh coughed - he pulled out of the embrace with a titter that was audibly mortified. "Y-yeah - that." The half-smirk that had come to his face with his strange little laugh vanished, returning back to a worried frown. "I was - I was okay with the, yanno the idea, man, cuz - it was all - new at first but shit, man - this is real." "It wasn't real before?" Andrew asked, the small smile never leaving as he folded his arms, the chicken forgotten for the time being. "It was - o-okay it - yeah but--" Andrew chuckled again, running a hand through Bligh's feathery hair to cease his best friend's struggle with words. "I get it, dude - I get it, trust me, I - I'm right there with you..." His smile finally faded. "They're my pups too--" His subconscious overtook him, and he finished the sentence with the hesitant truth he had been dreading to reveal. "--at least I hope they are." Bligh balked at the remark. "What, that again?" "Maybe," Andrew said at once with a shrug. "It, uh - yeah." Andrew let out a mirthless laugh. "I think about it - uh, still." Bligh took Andrew's hand out of his hair and put it on his chest, amidst the forest of chest hair he had awoken tickled by every morning - Andrew could feel his heart beat, the strange canine heart that he had not been born with.. He seemed to begin to say something, but Andrew spoke first: "You - know--" he began. "Um - I was just thinking about this but, listen - if - they're not - mine, if they don't look like me, if they have..." He looked into Bligh's eyes - diamond dust, blizzards over the taiga, every balefully beautiful image of a mythic wonderland of cold Arctic purity. "...your eyes, and not mine - I don't care." "Yew sure?" Bligh replied, his voice soft. "Yew - mentioned that a couple o'times - n'right now, too, that - that they might be all mine--" "I know - I know. But it's, um - it's okay. They're yours - and - I don't love anybody else in this world, more than I love you...and Cody." He stopped, suddenly annoyed, but smiling. "And Stephen too - yanno, kinda obligated." Bligh sniffed. "When yew gonna tell em he gonna be an uncle?" Andrew shook his head - Bligh had given voice to a question that had vexed him, rather suddenly, for the past few days, as reality had set in, and the texts his brother sent him grew more exasperated and insistent on seeing him. "I - fuck dude, I dunno." Bligh pulled him into a quick hug. "S'okay," he said, trying to reassure him. "It'll happen - n'when we gotta be ready fer it." Andrew sighed against Bligh's warmth - the mixture of musk in his nose and the softness of body hair and fur on his hands calmed him some, and let he himself be washed away in his presence, to let go, even for a moment, the exacting fears that had waxed ferocious because his scientific mind could not know, could not observe. His tail wagged slowly, bumping into the cabinets below the sink. "And Drew..." Bligh said softly, Andrew feeling the vibrations in his chest as he spoke. "I'm gonna have a talk with em and I ain't gonna hear no lip from em." He separated the two of them so that they were facing each other, eyes locked. "He needs ta know - no matter how much he wants ta help he can't be puttin the - our puppies in danger." Andrew nodded slowly, feeling his ear flutter in concern. "I - I know. I've been driving him to work so he don't get overheated, and - I mean today, it's been cool out--" "That ain't enough," Bligh declared. "What if he - man, what if he fell down, or some--" "Okay," Andrew stopped him, catching his breath as a new, utterly foreign sensation yet maddeningly familiar feeling crashed into him with Bligh's words - protectiveness, the panic at the thought of his puppies being harmed. "Okay - okay, yeah, we'll - we'll do this." "Y'aight?" Andrew glanced away, shaking his head. "Just you - talking about - him and - what if something happened--" "I'm sorry," Bligh blurted, taking a hand to Andrew's face. "Drew, I didn't mean--" "It's fine," Andrew said, rubbing Bligh's hand. "You're right, you're - really, really right. I been - kinda on autopilot, just adjusting to everything, but--" "He's showin--" "Yeah, yeah, um - I dunno - I dunno when he's due..." His eyes searched Bligh's face. "Could be...anytime, yanno." Bligh nodded gravely. "Yeah..." "So we, uh - we gotta make sure everything is - everything is perfect for him and help him when he...when he--" "Whelps," Bligh finished for him in a murmur. Andrew opened his mouth to protest that the term was wrong, but stopped, swallowing back what he wanted to say - it fit, however grotesque, it fit them, the three of them...Cody was not giving birth to human infants, he was whelping, as a dog would. "Yeah - he - yeah," Andrew managed. He gently pushed Bligh's hand away, chuckling to himself as the absurdity, the categorical surrealism of the moment, this moment, all the moments that had preceded it and all the moments that were to come amidst the three of them, reached a point he could no longer bear. The chuckle turned into a laugh. "I can't believe I'm having this conversation," he murmured as Bligh's eyebrows furrowed at his reaction. "Can we - can just take a minute to talk about how fucking strange this - all this is?" And now Bligh, picking up on Andrew's cue, smirked, peculiarly confident. "What, we gonna be dads?" "Yeah!" Andrew exclaimed. "To - to dogs!" Bligh managed a low cackle, pulling Andrew into another hug - Bligh was like that, he was a hugger, his grandfather had been a hugger too - gripping tightly, pressing them together in mutual adoration. Andrew expected Bligh to say something, some affirmation, but there was none - and he realized this was all the affirmation he was willing to give, the only thing that could be done, that could be said, in the absence of words. Bligh nudged him back, gently, and Andrew could see curling in his mouth was something new, something furtive. "Hey..." he began. "Yanno - if Cody can have puppies..." Andrew raised an eyebrow. "Y-yeah?" He glanced to the chicken, the knife that cut him still laying next to it on the bamboo board, before he slowly shook his head, glancing back to Bligh. He froze at what he saw - the curve had grown, the furtiveness had become something tangible, a lechery, tinged with dark humor. He laughed, a nervous, breathy wisp. "Bl-Bligh, c'mon--" But Bligh neared back to him - Andrew felt against his groin the growing pressuring of Bligh's penis...he looked down to see it fully emerge, each beat of Bligh's heart bringing forth the glistening canid virility that he had been so repulsed by a month ago and yet had learned to love, had learned to lust, the transcendently eldritch beauty of the tapered tip, the swollen knot-- "C'mon man, I'm feelin it..." Bligh took a single step forward so that they were once again pressed against each other - Andrew found his breathing quicken, and he swallowed back his abrupt arousal in a single gulp as he struggled to find his voice: "Hey - y-you were feeling it when Cody went to work--" "Now I'm feeling it again..." His voice was unchanged, the action of a request - firm, like the baculum in Andrew's penis that guided it to stiffen as well, tapered, pointed, his knot, fatter than Bligh's but coupled to a smaller shaft, slipping out of his sheath as he felt his best friend intoxicate him, musk and warmth and security and love, there in the kitchen, with the dim roar of the football game on the television as sole accompaniment. His defenses at once became nothing, and he grabbed Bligh by the back of the neck, his hand inside his soft mane of hair, and kissed him. Bligh's mouth tasted disgusting, a noxious mixture of still-unbrushed teeth and nicotine, but Andrew was used to it, he did not care, it was Bligh's tongue that was inside his mouth and he enjoyed it for what it was. Wordlessly, he felt Bligh take a hand and stroke the area about his navel, pressing a palm to it, and he knew what Bligh was thinking - why, he could not venture, he could not guess, with all the fear and anxiety that Cody's pregnancy had produced, why Bligh would fetishize the idea of doing to him what they both had already done to Cody... In the moments where they continued to kiss, Andrew considered the thought - it was impossible not to be aware of the raw power that Bligh's penis and testicles held, the divine secret of masculinity, the ability to warp someone's body in new ways with the simple act of intercourse. He had already, with that same penis, transformed them from humans into half-dogs - but that was a novel ability, never to be replicated anywhere else. Getting Cody pregnant was the most ancient thing that a male, of any species anywhere, could do - perhaps it was that, in addition to superior size, Bligh was proud, keenly proud, of his own penis, of his own testicles, their larger size, their superior fertility. Or perhaps - they stopped to catch a breath, and Andrew flashed a punch-drunk smile at him, his tail happily awag with the break from preparing dinner, rewarded with a titter and a wet lick across his lips - it was because Bligh, taking the idea of family a step further, wanted to put down roots in Florida, wanted to create a family of his own...not merely the family of he, and Andrew, and Cody, but a biological family as well. He loved Cody, but his pregnancy was an accident - he loved Andrew, had said so and acted so in ways that, still, maybe always, dazzled. Was it that Bligh wanted to share something with him, something sacred that would bond them even deeper than near-twenty years and becoming a different species? Andrew gasped aloud - the thought, only latent and a distant possibility until now, shook him, excited him, as nothing approximating had before - he could bear Bligh's offspring... The thought was overpowering, and his tail was sent into a frenzy of wagging as the too-familiar fullness in his groin appeared - gripping Bligh's sides and shooting his head up with a powerful, immodest moan, a volley of precum erupted from his penis, spurting into the forest of Bligh's body hair on his abdomen. The sudden burst broke the spell - Andrew shut his eyes, sucking in a mouthful of air and taking a step back, flush with embarrassment, as the sound of Bligh's cackle filled his ears. "Dammit - dammit Bligh!" In the melting heat-haze of his arousal, leaning onto a counter lest his legs gave way, he saw Bligh taking his fingers and stroking them into the silky sable body hair that covered his chest and abdomen to obtain the stray pearls of fluid, his penis still magnificently out. "Mmm," said Bligh with an unkind, lecherous snicker. "Too good fer ya, Drew?" Andrew took several more breaths, all broken with the broken, embarrassed laughter of afterglow, before he could answer: "C-C'mon Bligh, I gotta make dinner--" Bligh cackled. "Nuh uh!' "N-no--" Andrew leaned harder into the counter, trying to be serious. "Bligh I have raw chicken on the damn counter--" "Well that ain't my fault!" Bligh's cackle was raucous. "S-stop!" Andrew said, trying to whine. "Dammit Bligh!" Another snicker - less unkind, but still with a hint of surreptitious sexuality. "Aight - aight, fine..." Bligh moved from the kitchen, back to the living room, stopping to watch bemusedly at the counter as Andrew tried to regain himself. Andrew tried to glare at him, but his face crumpled into more helpless laughter, and he heard Bligh do the same. "Fuck - fuck you, Bligh--" "That's the idea, ain't it? Cept I'd be the one fuckin yew--"
Andrew, with a defiant, playful grin, returned to his station at the cutting board and took the knife back in hand. "You're so horny lately!" Bligh shrugged, the lechery reappearing in his smirk. "I work hard all week, maybe I wanna little--" "Tail?" Andrew guessed, his tongue going into his cheek, feeling his own tail start to wag. Bligh's long, malicious snicker was the only answer he gave - and Andrew shook his head, sighing, but still grinning. "Dammit, Bligh..." With a final laugh, his composure regained, he looked down at the chicken breast and, trying to concentrate, made another slice to it - he looked back to Bligh, who was observing with interest. "Ya like that board?" "Yeah, I do - thank you for getting for me." "Well shit, the Pup picked it out--" "I know, but it was a present from both of y'all, right?" "Yeah, yeah purdy much." "Yeah he - probably heard me say I needed a new cutting board, um, awhile back..." Andrew chuckled to himself. "He, uh - first guy I been with who actually listened to me, yanno?" "He loves ya a whole lot." Bligh tittered. "We both do, man..." Andrew smiled again, feeling the warmth of being loved by the two people he cared most for in the world spread over him - Bligh smirked at him, tittering. "Hey..." Andrew motioned with his head to the television, still surrounded in the ambient roar of the televised stadium and the inanity of the color commentary. "You're missing the game." Bligh shrugged, smirking, folding his arms across his chest on the counter. "S'aight. I can stand here n'talk ta yew." The smirk grew larger, and a fang popped over his lip as he tittered to himself. Andrew sighed with a smile. "Suit yourself then..." He made one final cut to the chicken breast and laid the last piece in the bowl, the bottles of seasonings - basil, marjoram, paprika - waiting patiently nearby. "What, uh--" He paused, suppressing back the memories, like a stir of echoes from a dream one has freshly awoken from, of how he, Bligh, and Cody came together. "What you do with that knife - the one that had the--" "Yeah, one I had the poison on - that's Pappy's knife, man. I take it with me everywhere - put it back ere when me n'Cody got Checkers the next day - that was a dang good burger, too..." He sniffed. "I still got it in the glovebox, warshed it off here last week." Andrew stood with both hands on the counter - he tilted his head and gave Bligh a closed-mouth, mocking smile. "Wh-what?" Bligh tittered, suddenly offguard. "Just - remembering how you left me at the house, paralyzed - like that!" Bligh tried to literally shrug it off with a smile that failed to failed to hide an old shame. "Man I thought - thought there was enough on the knife ta keep ya - keep ya..." He did not finish - Andrew knew what he meant, how problematic and how awful it sounded, when verbalized. "...why ya - why ya bringin it up now, man?" "Just occurred to me the other day - never told me what those herbs up on the mountain were - you said Pappy used to use them to slaughter hogs?" Bligh nodded. "Y-yeah - they grew back on our--" He corrected himself, a flicker of grief crossing his face. "--my property back behind the house where - right up there on the mountain, bout half-mile up." "Where the mountain lion was..." Bligh smirked - the two shared a moment, eternal, wordless, the mutual recollection of a time when they were young, and Bligh had saved Andrew's life from one of the elusive mountain lions that still prowled the West Virginia wild. It was another glimpse of forever, transience within the intransience, and it made Andrew direly uncomfortable - and he cleared his throat, abruptly awkward. Andrew thought for a moment, his eyes drifting down to the counter, letting his ears go flat. "So they were endemic to the mountainside?" "Yeah. Back when Pappy used ta raise hogs he use ta gather em, or - what he told me anyhow - and that way - make it so they wudn't feel nuthin when him and his brothers slaughtered em...said it was more humane." "I see..." His eyes flicked back to Bligh. "How come I ain't heard of it til now?" Bligh tittered, a little sarcastic. "When did yer family ever need ta raise their own food, Drew?" Andrew chuckled, taking the point, feeling his ears right themselves. "Well - we did have the cows--" "Them's other people's cows!" Bligh cried with a cackle. "Yeah, yeah I know..." "And there, too, ya gotta think - weren't on yer side o'Tempest, only grew on the mountain - Pappy's mountain..." Again Bligh's face reflected a grief, a sadness, that not yet settled - the pain of losing the grandfather who raised him too fresh. "Mmm," Andrew intoned in response after a moment of respectful silence. "Um...yeah, just got me thinking, how - what kinda plant would cause paralysis with high temperature as catalyst, entering through the dermis..." He shook his head. "I know the State of West Virginia considers hemlock to be invasive--" "Hemlock?" Bligh repeated, with a quick breath of recovery. "Dun that shit kill ya, though?" "Yeah, exactly - so this - but hemlock, see, causes major paralysis too. And that's the best I can think of - maybe - what's growing there is some sort of undiscovered species." Bligh tittered again. "C'mon now, Scientist-Man..." "I'm just saying..." Andrew smiled. "By the way, speaking of hemlock, you ever been to Cricket?" "What, out near Smithers? Yeah, I had a second cousin lived there--" Bligh glanced away. "Shit, what was her name..." "Anyway, I heard this - uh, it's like an urban legend - there's a diner, up yonder, and it's called the American Grill?" Bligh nodded. "Yeah, me n'Ricky Jack ate there the one time - Sheila!" he cried suddenly. "That was her name - Ol Crazy Sheila, swore up and down her lawnmower was gonna kill her." Andrew's ear twitched with an eerie feeling that belied logic at Bligh's words. "Well...did it?" "Nah," Bligh tittered. "But she nuts, I think they put her in a mental hospital cuz she was gettin so bad." Andrew frowned. "That's a shame." "Yep," Bligh said with a small sigh. "Anyway, what yew sayin about it?" "Yeah - yeah, Pa's lawyer, uh - Arnold-something, he died here awhile back--" "Snodgrass?" Andrew laughed. "Bligh, what - how did you remember that?" Bligh smirked. "He weren't jest yer daddy's lawyer, Pappy took em on ta settle some inheritance once." "Really..." Bligh nodded. "Yessir. He was a good man--" He paused. "Seems like all the good'ns are leavin..." "Y-yeah - yeah." Andrew frowned. "Now that you mention it..." "Anyway, what was yew sayin?" "Right, uh - so Mr. Snodgrass, when Pa had him over for dinner when I was still in junior, he tells this story which - it's weird, I've heard this story other places, too..." The memory of Arnold Snodgrass, with his brisk words flowing over a Kanawha Valley accent in tandem with his dark darting eyes, his dinner beneath him forgotten in the immediacy of one his many stories, played faintly in his mind's eyes before he shook his head, shooing it away, to finish: "...anyway, Mr. Snodgrass said that, um - there's this group of men, come into that place, sit down, have coffee together, right? It's like a ritual - happens every year." "Yeah?" "And they all wear these heavy overcoats and ties - the ties have to be green - and they meet once a year, like I said, um - September, I think." "This month," Bligh muttered, apparently impressed. "What's so special, though? Jest a bunch o'guys sittin round drinkin coffee." "Yeah, that's the thing - I said speaking of hemlock. They sit around drinking coffee late at night, talking for hours and hours and hours about - life, death, the universe, immortality, that kinda shit - but what they do, and here's the thing - they add hemlock to their coffee at the beginning, and then an antidote at the end." Bligh's eyes widened in astonishment. "The fuck?" Andrew laughed - he felt his fangs pressed into his bottom lip and moved it, subtly, so that they were proudly out in a toothy grin. "Hand to God, that's what Mr. Snodgrass told me - that's what I heard." "Yew...yew believe em?" Andrew's laugh softened to a chuckle. "I mean - everything we know, now, about the - um - kinda weirdness that was going on in Tempest, and - Lord don't you remember all that Mothman stuff?" Bligh sniffed. "Shit..." "That Braxton County shit, too, and that bigass jail in Moundsville - and dude, you know me, I'm not - super convinced about any of that, but..." He paused. "It don't sound too outlandish." Bligh stared at him for a few seconds before he, too, flashed a grin, full of his own fangs. "Ya ever - jest git the feelin our whole dang state's haunted?" Andrew beckoned Bligh's sight to his own tail, which he wagged for effect. "Sometimes," he said with a small smile. There was a brief lull in the conversation, a span where the Gothic glories of West Virginia were allowed, as though by acquiescence to a silent demand, to flourish, a ghost, summoned and then flown away, to remind them that even in the tropic charm of Florida they, half-human creatures of fur and flesh sharing a direct lineal kinship from some as yet unexplored mystery of the Greenbrier Valley, were pure children of their roots. Bligh, whose attention from the football game had become entangled with the dark turn of the back and forth between he and Andrew, broke the new silence at last: "Yew, uh - yew dun mind me keepin ya company, do ya?" "You just letting me talk you up cuz you want sex," said Andrew playfully. Bligh balked, feigning offense. "Scuse yew, Lightfoot! I's jest standin here tryin ta talk ta my husband, I dun need this!" Andrew raised an eyebrow, but his tail began to wag. "Husband?" he repeated back. "Well yeah...dun yew think so?" Andrew searched Bligh's eyes, which glinted gelid in the fluorescent light of the kitchen before smiling back at him - he felt his ears twitch, his face flush, his tail go still. "You uh...you never s-said that before, though. I - I mean we - we just been - yanno, doing what we been doing, and not really--" "Callin it what it is?" Bligh shrugged. "Thought it was time. Yew, me...Cody too." Andrew chuckled - bashfully at first, then happily, taken aback at the moment. "Wow..." he said at a brief length. "Wow." "What?" Bligh asked with a bemused titter. Andrew shook his head. "Nothing, I just...um...it - it makes a lotta sense." "Dudn't it?" "Y-yeah - yeah. It does." "I mean - weren't ya gonna propose ta Cody?" In the vast seachange of a month, Andrew had nearly forgotten the promise that he had made his brother, Stephen, keep secret - that, the day he got his bachelor's degree, he would give Cody a ring in a tiny box, and ask him a question... The sense of cosmic impermanence crept into him again as he realized that world - hollow, meaningless beneath the saving graces of how much he and Cody loved each other - was too far away to even consider anymore. But the memory lingered - and Andrew sighed with a slow nod. "Y-yeah - yeah I do." "So why not now, man?" Bligh shifted where he stood, his ears going halfway flat as his smirk faded slightly. "Instead o'just - yew n'him it'd be - all three o'us. Not jest family, man, but - married. That - that sumthin ya want?" Andrew sought Bligh's eyes one more time as he nodded again, gravely. "Yeah...yeah, Bligh I - I do." Bligh tittered happily, grinning, his fangs coming out. "Awesome, man - fuckin awesome." Andrew smiled, looking down at the knife in his hand and the chicken he had still yet to finish cutting. A thought - a shameful thought, which made him blush as his ears hesitated, summoning a familiar stirring in his sheath, occurred to him, and he voiced it as carefully as he could. "I...but I'm still your bitch, right?" Bligh's eyebrows met over his nose, his smirk tinged with something new and dark. "Do what now?" "You uh - you heard me," Andrew said, trying to be assertive, but a nervous chuckle escaped him. "I - wanna know--" "Yeah." Bligh cut him off with a low cackle, with a grin that took up his whole face, fangs and all. "Oh Hell yeah. Yer still my property. I still own yew." Andrew shut his eyes tightly as he felt his ears flatten and his tail start to wag again as Bligh cackled again, louder this time, and his face go hot to the touch with embarrassment - and gratitude. "Oh god - oh man--" He heard Bligh's incessant titter as he opened his eyes to see him smirking slyly. "Hey..." Bligh said softly, leaning back, relinquishing his hand's hold, his arms folding before his hairy chest. "Tell me sumthin - what - why yew like that so much? I mean one time yew said it's cuz nobody ever called ya that afore..." Andrew moistened his lips, surprised at how sheepish he was becoming, before he answered: "Don't - don't you like it?" "Yeah man, I do - I try ta live it. I try ta - keep yew as close as I can, n'do what I can fer ya..." The smirk faded into a line of tender seriousness across his mouth. "Take care o'yew best I can." "Because you were scared I'd leave again," Andrew hazarded. Bligh nodded, seeming reluctant - Andrew smiled at him, looking into his eyes, the way he would when he needed to reassure either him or Cody of something deeply important. "I'm never gonna--" "I know, man..." Bligh seemed to force a smirk. "I know." He sighed somewhat, his arms coming back down to the counter. "But that dun answer my question." Andrew glanced away - his ear twitched as he tried to search his feelings, to come up with something more than the first thing that had sprung, fully formed, into his mind, something that bore a more profound meaning...but perhaps there was none. All of it - the paramount security, the immeasurable safety, for both him and for Cody by indirect extension, was indeed encompassed in something so simple: "...because I love you that much." He saw Bligh's eyes light up, and he let the remark sink in for a passing moment before he continued: "I love you - that much to - let you own me. To be someone's property and--" He smiled, feeling an odd weight lift from having spoken the truth. "--let you care for me...like that. We might be - m-married now but I--" "I git it," Bligh murmured, his grin returning. "I git it man." "I love you," Andrew said, now grateful. "I love yew too, Drew." An awkward pause fell between them, and Andrew took a deep breath as he willed his erection, which thankfully Bligh could not see, to cease its growth at the notion that he was still Bligh's - that, against all sense of decency or any kind of American equality, Bligh owned him, as one would own land, and cherish it, protect it, the same way. It was strange - in the way they acted almost everywhere save the bedroom, no one would ever know that this arrangement, which Cody was still not privy to, even existed. They acted - all of three of them - as equals...and yet it was not so. He loved Cody nearly more than anyone - but even he could not break the hold Bligh had over him. Very strange indeed - but strangest of all was how pleased Andrew was with it. Cody was his, and he was Bligh's - the latter, far more brutal, more primal, more canine, than the former. Andrew smiled at Bligh, chuckling - Bligh smiled back at Andrew, tittering. Andrew tried to swallow back his emotions as he took another slice off the chicken breast, trying to change the subject: "What - who - uh, who's ahead?" Bligh craned his neck, his hair moving with his head in a feathery cascade, before jerking back with a satisfied smirk."Ravens," he said. "Yanno, we - uh - hadn't talked bout - serious stuff--" "I know we haven't talked about it, we, um--" Andrew sighed, a little heavier than he expected. "We haven't talked about anything serious like - like that since you...since you came down, actually." Bligh frowned. "That a bad thing?" "No, I - I actually would say it's a good thing because shit has gone...really, really well." Bligh nodded, his smirk growing. "Yeah...yeah yer right." Andrew took another cut of the chicken breast before glancing to Bligh with a small, knowing smile. "You're still missing the game." "I told ya I wanted ta talk ta yew." His smirk turned into a grin, and Andrew chuckled, conceding. "Alright - I don't mind." Bligh leaned in to see what Andrew was doing. "Fried chicken, right?" "Yessir. Just like Ma used to make." "Oh Hell yeah!" Bligh exclaimed. "Yer Mama's chicken was the shit! Even Pappy said so." Andrew raised an eyebrow, feeling his tail wag behind him. "Really? Pappy said that?" Bligh nodded again. "Yes indeed. Ya dun remember?" "Eh," Andrew intoned. "Try not to think about her too much..." "Mmm...sorry," Bligh said, frowning. Andrew smiled, trying to be reassuring, even as he felt his ear flutter. "Hey - dude it's fine." He looked back down at the cutlets of chicken breast assembled neatly in the bowl. "Just uh - felt like a little taste of home tonight, yanno?" "What, yew feelin homesick?" "Well..." Andrew shrugged. "Just, like, this time of year it gets - like it's supposed to be - to be cool, yanno, when the weather turns and--" "Football weather," Bligh murmured slyly. Andrew chuckled, making another cut at the chicken. "Is that what they call it? Fucking - hoodie weather I heard, people from up north who, uh - who move down here from like, Jersey and shit." He shook his head, his ears flattening. "Football weather...you mean - you mean the time of year doing two-a-days and having Coach Anderson scream Richie Rich at me every five seconds?" Bligh scoffed, cackling. "Oh c'mon man! Yew know ya miss it!" "Kinda - just some days." "Zat why yew didn't do football in college?" Andrew studied Bligh for a moment before sniffing to himself. "You really wanna why?" "Yeah." Andrew's ears flattened as he paused, taking a deep breath: "Because - you weren't there with me." Bligh's eyebrows came together. "What, we weren't on the same team, so ya--" "Yup, couldn't do it." Bligh smirked. "Quarterback only as good as his guys up front - Coach said that all the time." "And I'm a guy up front..." Andrew shrugged. "I mean I - if you weren't gonna be who I was giving the ball to...didn't seem worth it." "Yew serious?"Andrew nodded - Bligh let out a low cackle, shaking his head. "Never told me that..." "Never came up," Andrew said with a roll of his eyes. "I asked ye once afore, though--" Andrew shook his head with a sheepish smile. "Well I - I wasn't sure you were - how you were, so--" Bligh's eyebrows met over his nose once more. "Yew think I'd take it the wrong way or sumthin?" Andrew nodded. "S-something like that..." "Nah man - I woulda understood."It was Bligh's turn to shrug, adding a quick titter. "Means a lot though." He sighed through his nose. "Though I still miss the two-a-days - yew me n'Dan'd go to the Dairy Queen, remember?" "Yeah I remember." Andrew thought a moment. "Least two-a-days meant cooler weather - season's changing." He frowned. "Ain't got that down here." Bligh nodded slowly. "Yeah...I's - I's thinkin the same thing, ta be honest." Andrew raised an eyebrow. "Really?" "Yeah man. It's - it's kinda weird gettin all hot n'sweaty and it's...September." It was Andrew's turn to nod. "I mean shit, Cody's lived here his whole life - he's used to it, but--" "We ain't," Bligh finished. Andrew nodded. "Yeah - yeah he told you he ain't ever seen snow before." Bligh let out a long sigh. "Man...yeah that do bother me a lot." Andrew sniffed. "I know - dude, I know - me too. The day you came, actually he, uh - we were talking about that he basically only seen the - the trees turn once in his whole life." "Yeah I remember yew sayin that..." Bligh frowned, shaking his head, his ears faltering. Andrew glanced to the pieces of chicken awaiting him in the bowl, naked and pink and slimy - the chicken breast had yielded its bounty, and was ready to be floured. He turned to another drawer behind him and pulled out a sandwich bag, holding it up for Bligh to see. "Wanna help?" Bligh grinned. "Ya sure?" Andrew smiled. "Yeah dude." He beckoned with his head. "Come help me." "Aight..." Bligh's arms slid off the counter as he paced briskly in front of the television, then back toward the kitchen a low snicker in his throat. "Ravens still ahead?" Andrew guessed. Bligh nodded. "Yeah man--" He threw out his arms and thrust them behind his head, jutting out his torso in a deep stretch - Andrew felt himself flush as he watched him, the hard, lean, sinewy muscles, that summoned a new stirring in his sheath that he willed just in time to cease...aroused by the very notion that such a beautiful, lithe creature called himself his husband. With a final half-cry, Bligh's arms fell to his sides as he appeared at the kitchen. "Sorry man, little tense sittin so long--" "It's, uh--" Andrew swallowed back a grin. "It's cool." "Aight, so what we doin?" Andrew turned back to the chicken, sandwich baggie still in hand. "We'll we're going--" He was cut off as he felt Bligh's arms around him from behind, and the soft silken bristle of Bligh's body hair graze his back, at once enveloped again by the preternatural warmth and the primal scent of ineffable safety his half-canine body gave off - Bligh's face, the thick black beard, gently scraped Andrew's bare cheek and dug into his bare shoulder. "Yeah?" Bligh said as if nothing had happened. Andrew tried his best to look Bligh in the face, chuckling the entire time as Bligh answered him with furrowed eyebrows and a knowing smirk. "We're - going--" Andrew, still chuckling, took a fork that had been lying unused next to the bag of flour, and stabbed a piece of chicken with it. "--to make fried chicken." "Mmmkay," Bligh murmured. "And...first..." Still wrapped in Bligh's arms, still with his beard digging into his shoulder, Andrew reached into the open sack of flour to retrieve the plastic measuring cup that been resting inside it - full of flour of already, Andrew dumped the white powder into the bag. "Gotcha flour right here--" "Mmmhmm," Bligh intoned. Having dropped the measuring cup back into the flour sack, he replaced it in his hand with a fork next to his knife on the cutting board. He continued: "Now we..." He stabbed a slice of chicken in the bowl and nudged it into the bag. "See?" "Coulda jest picked it up with yer hands, man." Andrew could feel the rumble of Bligh's words against his back. "Y'ain't gonna git sick from it." "Yeah, yeah I know--" Andrew eased out of Bligh's embrace so that they separated, regarding one another - he held up the plastic bag, now near-filled with flour where the piece of chicken had been submerged, pinching the corners with his fingers and thumbs. "But this is how Ma did it." Bligh nodded. "Aight." "And then--" Andrew's tail wagged as he chuckled to himself again, and Bligh tittered back to him. "--we gonna shake it, see?" He shook the plastic bag back and forth for a few seconds, peering into it to ensure the piece of chicken was coated with flour. "Okay - and now--" He moved back to where he had been cutting the chicken, and using the same fork from before, stabbed the cutlet once again and laid it into the bowl next to the other, still flourless pieces. "Do the same thang fer all of em?" Bligh guessed. Andrew nodded with a grin. "Yup!" "Aight well then lemme try." "Okay - your turn, then." "Aight so first ya take the chicken--" Bligh reached into the bowl and pulled out a cutlet - Andrew tapped him on the wrist. "Dude - dude c'mon, use the fork!" "We ain't gonna git sick, Drew!" Bligh retorted, dropping the chicken into the bag of flour. "Yew c'mon," he said with a smirk. "It ain't like--" "Why do you think the flour stays on the chicken?" Andrew asked, tilting his head askance. "Because it doesn't end up on my fingers - because I use a fork!" "Well s'in the bag now, what yew want me ta do?" Andrew rolled his eyes, putting the sandwich bag in his hands so that they were both holding it - he let out a light sigh and smiled at Bligh, who smirked back. "I want you to shake," he commanded. Their tails seemed to wag in unison, and Bligh let out a happy titter, as they took the bag they were both holding and, as Andrew ordered, shook it back and forth. "Alright - okay, yeah I think we're good," Andrew pronounced - he leaned some to indicate to Bligh he should take the bag, which to his immediate dismay Bligh opened from the top and removed the floured chicken...with his bare fingers. Bligh held up the piece of meat and wiggled it. "Lookit! Like a dang ol worm!" Andrew chuckled. "Bligh cut that out and put it in the bowl--" Bligh did as he was told - he returned in front of Andrew, his smirk suddenly mischievous."Ey - ey lookit me!" He held up his hand, wriggling his fingers, the tips white and greasy from having touched the floured raw chicken - he bared his fangs for effect. "I'm a slime monster, I'm gonna slime ya!" "We ain't five no more Bligh," Andrew said, unamused. "Don't try to pull that shit like that, you're gonna end up spreading salmonella--" Bligh made a skeptical frown. "No I ain't!" "Lab Safety 101!" Andrew answered, unyielding. "I said go wash--" "Nope!" said Bligh - lashing out a finger to smear a bit of flour and grease onto Andrew's nose. Andrew cried out in surprise - he recoiled, his ears twitching in near-panic, clapping both his hands to his face. "Dammit, Bligh! Why--" Before he understood what was happening, he felt his hands on his face thrust away by the wrists, and something moist licking the chicken's residue from the tip of his nose - he made an abortive noise to protest which was further overridden by this same invader, Bligh's tongue, deep in his mouth again. He stumbled back awkwardly until his back was to the sink - Bligh's hands relinquished his wrists, and the tongue withdrew, slurping wetly past Andrew's lips. It was here that Andrew knew he was helpless - pinned as he hated to enjoy being, against Bligh and his fur and his mischief-drenched sexuality...he felt Bligh's penis, too large, too powerful, fully erect, pressing against his lower abdomen, tickling one of the supernumerary nipples that helped define him as a new species, incessant, needy. "Bl-Bligh--" Andrew managed - he swallowed hard, feeling his penis slip out of his sheath to match his new husband's. "C'mon - why ya gotta--" Bligh snickered, low and almost evil, as he withdrew, taking a step back, giving Andrew some space. "I'm jest playin round, man..." He snickered again, taking a finger to rub the underside of the knot on his pigeon's blood-hued shaft, slowly and seductively. "Less yew wanna hit the bedroom real quick..." Andrew drew in several breaths before he could answer - after this first month together, he had been liberated sexually in a way that eclipsed even in the halcyon days of his freshman year of college, away from the twilit homophobic decadence of Tempest...he felt his most depraved with Bligh, when this creature of the wild, this perfect woodwose, supplied him with the strange canine semen that looked, felt, smelt, tasted, so utterly divorced from its human counterpart. Bligh knew it. He knew that Andrew wanted it again - and Andrew wanted it now. He knew Bligh was playing, but he was playing because he knew how easily Andrew would give in, how the dynamic that had come together since they were teenagers - Bligh the leader, Andrew the support - would come back together, and Andrew would happily surrender to him, once more. There was a vague awareness of the task before him he had not completed - making dinner - an awareness that vacillated between being pressing and being utterly unnecessary. "I - uh--" Again came that same strange little laugh of Bligh's, as he took another step back, his tail swishing commandingly behind him. "Y'aight there, Drew?" He smirked, and the evil he had hinted at was complete. For a second, a fleeting second, Andrew was stricken with a crawling awe - he remembered, still bitter, still jealous, the first night Bligh had arrived and it was Cody, not he, who tasted of what rebirthed them into the new tribe of half-dog men, how impossible he had looked as Cody knelt before him nursing at his cock, like some unthinkable canine fertility god from an antediluvian tradition of nighted creatures that yowled and barked at the Moon... "I'm fine," Andrew said simply, even as his ears refused to stand back up - the compulsion to mate, so much pressure and so much heat, had overwhelmed him too readily for a Sunday afternoon - he didn't want to tell Bligh, but it scared him to feel this way, to dive so deep into places he did not want to admit existed. He mustered a grin, and chuckled - to Bligh, and at himself - he straightened and stepped forward, letting his tail wag as he planted a long kiss on Bligh's cheek, his beard soft but bristling against his lips. Bligh maneuvered his head so that their eyes met. "Yew sure? Seemed like yew were bout ta--" "I do," Andrew cut him off gently, his hand in Bligh's beard. "Just - not - not right now, okay?" His arms slid down to Bligh's waist, giving enough space between so that their penises, now both slowly retreating back to their respective sheaths, did not touch. Bligh nuzzled Andrew's face, and gently licked the corner of his mouth - as a dog would, a behavior Andrew had surmised was new and instinctual to him. "Yew teasin me, now..." Andrew chuckled. "Dude - we got stuff to do." "We do?" Bligh smirked. "Yeah," Andrew answered with a small smile. "We do." He motioned with his head to the still-waiting chicken. "We still gotta do that - I wanted you to help, if you - if you didn't wanna go back and watch the game..." Bligh seemed to consider it, glancing away, still smirking, before he gave one his quick, decisive nods. "Game's gonna be over soon anyhow, Browns ain't gonna come back from that, not long as--" He tilted the bill of his cap slightly, tittering. "I'm wearin this." "Oh yeah, good luck charm--" Andrew raised an eyebrow. "But you never take it off..." Bligh shrugged. "Sometimes I do." "When you go to bed--" Andrew chuckled. "Do the Ravens lose when you go to bed?" "Ey now, watch it." Bligh tittered again, pulling Andrew into a quick hug - they kissed again, and as Andrew separated, his ear twitching in a safe, humble happiness, he moved back to the bowl of chicken and the cluster of spices that sat near it. The two returned as they were, Bligh hugging Andrew from behind, never once letting go even as Andrew's tail kept happily wagging apace in the space between Bligh's legs. Some length of comfortable silence passed, interrupted only by the occasional space when Bligh would kiss Andrew on the cheek or titter as he shook another piece of chicken in the bag - it took only a few minutes for all the chicken to be floured. "Now I'm gonna season these..." Andrew murmured. He moved his head to regard Bligh, the icy eyes that pierced everything they saw soft and affectionate as they squinted with his smirk. "You're still missing the game." He felt Bligh shrug. "Dun matter - I like doin this with ya." Andrew chuckled, turning back to his task. "What, watching me do this is better than watching the Ravens?" Bligh's mouth came warm against his ear, which faltered as he heard the words: "Any day o'the week, Drew..." Andrew chuckled again, his tail swishing happily with the abiding coziness. "Okay," he said after a soft sigh, "watch me now." He took the shaker of paprika and dashed into the bowl, a fine crimson powder - then the pepper, the metal tin making a hollow puckering sound as he squeezed it - and now the delicate herby fragrance of the basil and the marjoram. All the smells of the seasonings were richer, deeper, far more aromatic to Andrew's evolved half-dog nose, as human and as normal though it appeared, than it could have ever been when he was merely a man. "Now I know you've seen me do this--" "Yeah? So what?" The seasoning done, Andrew nudged Bligh back to take the bowl before him in his hands - he shrugged. "I dunno. I guess I - still not used to you being all--" He grinned. "--affectionate." Bligh let out a low, bashful cackle. "Man - Drew, c'mon now--" "We couldn't do it - we couldn't do it back home, yeah, I know..." He made his way to the refrigerator and put the bowl full of seasoned and floured chicken on the bottom shelf - the refrigerator door shut, he turned back to regard Bligh with another grin. "I like it this way though." "Yeah?" Bligh smirked. "Ya like me - cuddlin yew while ya cook?" Andrew rolled his eyes as he leaned against the fridge, his tail thumping against it. "Well you weren't really helping like I wanted but--" Bligh tittered, Andrew shook his head. "But yeah, that was - that was nice." He smiled. "Nice chill Sunday." "Yup." Bligh put his arms behind his head, frowning some. "Back ta work tomorrow, man." "Yeah, back to school," Andrew affirmed. From the counter next to the freshly deployed spices came an angry buzz from Andrew's phone - the latter shut his eyes in irritation. "If that's Stephen again I swear--" "Want me ta check it?" Andrew shrugged. "You're closer, sure..." Bligh stopped in mid-reach to look at Andrew askance. "Dun even care?" Andrew opened his eyes again, shaking his head irritably. "He's been texting me nonstop like - goddam, the past week my phone has been blowing up because of him." "Yeah, ya said..." Bligh frowned. "Thought he'd quit by now." "You know him - he's not gonna - he's not gonna quit just by himself." Bligh's frown deepened. "He still goin on bout hangin out n'stuff?" "Yes!" Andrew cried, his ears flattening in exasperation. "What part of I'm busy doesn't he get?" Bligh smirked knowingly. "Y'ain't that busy, man." "He doesn't need to know that," Andrew answered with a shrug. "I'm just - I'm not ready to..." Bligh grasped the phone, looking up at Andrew with a sudden worry that they both - silently, wordlessly - shared. He paused there - the air had become uncomfortably tense very abruptly, and he nodded slightly, murmuring, noncommittal: "Yeah." He swiped to unlocked the screen - Andrew watched as his mouth opened with a grin, and a titter, that was broken in half-breath...the grin faded into a frown, which became the grimace of emotional impasse, all within a few seconds. A cold feeling crept into Andrew as he saw Bligh's reaction - his ears still flat, his tail grew still as he neared him. "Hey - hey what's wrong?" Still grimacing, Bligh held up the phone so that Andrew could read. It was a text from Cody: hey andy im really sorry im gonna be late today tim wants me to stay and do some extra invenytry i love you and bli tho more than anythin!!! "Invenytry?" Andrew repeated back incredulously, before correcting himself: "Inventory." He sighed, a hot blast of air. "Fuck - fuck" "He gonna be all there night," Bligh murmured, handing the phone to Andrew. Andrew sighed, again, another gust of irritation, training his eyes on Bligh, through Bligh. "How the fuck could he be so fucking irresponsible?" Bligh folded his arms, his mouth bunched up in a corner as he was so wont to do when frowning deeply. "Well - like ya say, he wanna--" "No," Andrew cut him off, "no, fuck that, there's a fucking line. I know he wants to - to help out and pay his own way but I'm--" He made a useless gesture to the refrigerator, to the mess of flour and spices on the counter opposite them, before shaking his head - he was losing his cool, he knew he was, he was unable to think in this moment of slow panic. "What - what time is it--?" He jerked the phone to his face - the text from Cody was still there, the apologetic tumble of words in plain black on the LCD screen. "Whattya - whattya wanna do, man?" Andrew considered the question - his glance darted from the phone, to Bligh, back to the phone, before he shook his head, a brisk motion that made his frown furrow deeper and deeper. "Fuck," he pronounced again, at a loss. "Wanna go git em?" Bligh suggested, still the same low murmur. Andrew ran a hand through his hair with his free hand - it was longer, he felt, than he usually let it get, but it made hiding his ears easier now...it was a passing thought, and as it came to him there was a surge of fresh outrage, that Cody, someone he trusted more than anyone except perhaps Bligh, and who trusted him the same way, would be doing something like this, that he would breach, willfully, even if it was not out of ignorance, the secure enclosure they had built for themselves. "He's - fuck if he's gonna--" Andrew shook his head again, feeling his ear twitch, slapping a hand to it angrily. "I don't wanna be like that, though - don't - don't that make me some kinda stalker or--?" "He pregnant with my kids, Drew." Andrew was somewhat taken aback by the remark - he noticed Bligh's eyes, glimmeringly icy, were boring into the linoleum, and there was a silent fury to his gaze, and to his words. "Pups," he corrected himself, under his breath, and then, so that Andrew could hear: "I dun care what it makes ya - this ain't - this is--" He seemed to grow emotional for a moment, his mouth moving in a way that Andrew had not seen for a very long time, as though he might lose control and weep. "Fine," Andrew said, inflecting the word with finality. "Fine. We'll - we'll go pick him up." He sighed one more time, trying to stave off the twisted evolutionary urges that he knew he was having, the primal desire to protect the offspring of his mate, that widened even further the gulf between him and the humans he was once lived as one of. "We, uh--" Bligh coughed, hard, as though he, too, was trying to steady himself. "We could, uh - jest tell - what's his name?" "Tim," Andrew answered quietly. "And - Gabby. Husband and wife - they, um - they run the Green Room together..." Bligh nodded, but Andrew suspected he wasn't even listening. "We can tell em, he - he gotta somewhere with us, yanno, it's important n'stuff--" He paused, his gaze drifting back to meet Andrew's. "I told ya, I ain't gonna have no lip from em. I love em, but--" He stopped, as though wanting Andrew to finish... ...and Andrew wanted to, he wanted to say And he's pregnant with your puppies, and not add the rider that the puppies, the kids, the offspring, whatever they were, likely were not, and probably never could be, Andrew's also. He wanted to say that and not admit that, now, in this moment, he felt he was losing himself even further from what he wanted to be only a few months ago, that he still was not adjusted to anything Bligh had thrust upon him in the most horrifically literal sense of the word, and that he was suppressing this, all of this, and this was one more lie he was unwilling to tell, having lied to society as a whole by appearing on a campus of 48,000 people as one of them, when every morning he looked in the mirror, and bared his fangs, and moved his ears, and wagged his tail, and it became painfully, dolefully obvious that he wasn't... All he could do was nod. Bligh was right - he didn't want him to be right, he wanted to protest and say that what they were doing was creepy, possessive, unnecessary...and it would have been were they, all three of them, still human, still incapable of reproduction as males. But they weren't. They were different - and he was still, and would always be, too much in love with Bligh, with Cody too, to stop wanting not to be different. He nodded again, trying to seem more decisive. "Yeah - yeah, um - you - you go get dressed - turn - turn off the TV, lemme clean up a little and we'll drive over..." Bligh nodded back in turn, and turned to leave the kitchen - but not before hesitating, looking back at Andrew with something like an apologetic look in his eye. "I - I love yew, Drew. Thank ya - thank ya fer doin this." Andrew smiled back - genuine, spearing through the fear and the mounting alienation. "I love you too, Bligh." Bligh smirked - Andrew could see a fang pop out over his lip, before he moved swiftly to the couch to retrieve the remote to turn off the television, taking a spare second to appear satisfied at the score with the Ravens still ahead, and then, with the same speed, came to their bedroom to find some clothes to put on. Andrew was left alone in the kitchen - he gathered the spices into one arm and folded back the top of the flour sack, feeling, as he had not since Bligh had reappeared in his life, dreadfully, unavoidably, alone.