The Dogs: Litany - The World Enslaved In An Unlimited Moment
Stephen's eyes fluttered open, he lurched forward - on the edge of a couch, cloth, against his skin, and the pinching of a bunched up shirt underneath him, where the fuck was he, how the fuck did he get here? His head seemed to almost try to detach itself from his body - he threw a hand to his temple, then one to his chest, feeling his heart palpitate, making his sternum near-vibrate, an uncomfortable pulsing knell that signified he drank too much, familiar with, but never used to. His bladder, swollen, screamed at him, the full trifecta of waking up with a hangover. He sucked in a breath, and sat there, in the darkness, the edge of the couch - whose couch? His eyes darted - living room, small, not much on the walls, wait, a big television, Wii underneath it, DVR, 1:18 in neon-blue digital numbers. Then he remembered. There was a sweeping blur of memories - reaching the apartment after getting wasted in the hot tub, hearing Bligh and his brother argue, words that he had been too far gone to register cogently. And then Dakota - no, Cody, that was what he wanted to be called - there was Cody, holding him, being firm and patient as he propped him up on the couch as he got sleepy, so sleepy... He must have passed out. "O-oh fuck - n-no, not like this..." he murmured, rising, stumbling, near-falling, righting himself just at the precise moment to avoid faceplanting onto the carpet. He felt a rush of pain to his head, and he buried it, again, in a free hand. "Aww f-fuck--" "So yer finally up." Stephen jerked with a start at the source of the words - behind him, draped in shadow in the open sliding-door of the patio, was Bligh, a purplish ghost framed against the yellow-orange lights of the parking lot beyond him. His hat was on, his long hair a cascade of crow's feathers down his neck, liquid in the half-darkness - the only illumination in his face was the ember of the cherry of his cigarette, stuck in the corner of his mouth. "H-hey! Jesus Bligh, you sca--" "Keep yer voice down." Stephen sighed. "S-sorry--" "Been waitin fer ya ta wake up - ya were out cold, Drew n'Cody's gone ta bed." He wanted to say something in response, but found a new, gripping shortness of breath - and an unwelcome queasiness in his stomach. "Uh - uh--" He saw Bligh's arm come up, pointing. "Bathroom's right yonder. Dun ya dare wake em if ya gotta throw up." The last words were distant in Stephen's ears as he paced quickly to the bedroom door, opening it with as much carefulness as he could muster before actually panicking...he slipped inside, a few steps later he was in the bathroom, Dakota - Cody - and his brother, as Bligh had said they would be, sound asleep, spooning together in the bed, somewhere behind him. On his knees Stephen went, gripping the toilet, to await the awful moment when his stomach would revolt against him, the price he paid, awful and exacting, for what he was sure everyone else would call addiction - he never thought about it too much or too hard, he was only eighteen, he hadn't learned things like how to take back words and labels and be himself, no, he just drank too much because it felt good and it made him forget the meat-puppetry of living the life he had been cursed with. The bathroom tile chilled his skin despite the pleasant ambient temperature outside - chilled the skin of his shins and feet and knees, the porcelain, too, chilled his arms. Well, fuck all this - he was probably an alcoholic. Drewseph was probably right to shepherd him into his house...to let him vomit in his toilet... ...but he didn't. Nothing came. The urge to throw up faded - an ebbing wave. It was closing in on half-past one in the morning on a Monday, and Stephen Lightfoot's face was slowly emerging from an open toilet seat. Several long, deep breaths followed - he'd done worse, before, he'd done much worse, this was actually an improvement, this was actually okay, if he could drink like he usually did and not make a complete cock out of himself in front of the people who had practically raised him and their polyamorous third. He stood up, he undid the belt his brother had given him and pulled down the shorts his brother had also given him, and let loose a torrent of dehydrated urine that gave off the telltale reek of acrid butter. Several moments went by before his bladder was completely emptied - all the while his head pounding unmerciful, again, not as bad as some nights, but still wretched, still unrelenting. The last droplets of urine fell into the toilet-water, and he blinked, in the darkness of the bathroom - his hand closed around his penis with a faint frown. He would have to go out there, back into his brother's room where he and Dako--Cody slept...all three of them slept, he suspected. Stephen was different from them, now - he had no tail, no doggy-ears, there was a faint nag that he didn't belong here, this was their life, their polyamory, he was intruding, he was just the little brother, the stunted genius little brother who drank too much and was an asshole to people so that he could defend himself against something they could never understand...he didn't deserve anything, especially not them. A deep sigh - no, fuck off with those intrusive thoughts. Drewseph loved him, that stupid, irrational love encoded into him because they shared DNA, even if that DNA was, now, altered, mutated, mutating, maybe, still, as he stood there alone in the dark. If he could just - if he could just stop his own regret at having hurt Bligh and having forcibly separated them years ago, maybe...maybe he could feel normal here, maybe he could feel welcome. But it never stopped - he gave up Bligh for Drewseph, he surrendered him as he surrendered nothing else, he always got his way, his Pa had seen to that and as soon as he was old enough he, Stephen, had seen to that also. The only thing he ever lost was Bligh. And if he could get over that, his own regret... His own regret - his own attraction... Drewseph did not know - he knew the gist of it, the minimum, he had guessed the passion and the pain but he did not know the abyssal depths which he and Bligh had treaded together. Stephen's memories of he and Bligh's relationship always made him flush - they were uncomfortable memories, like an exhausting dream that lasts too long, making one more tired instead of rested. He was sixteen and Bligh was twenty, it was probably illegal but the notion of consent was laughable - Stephen initiated it, Stephen wanted it, and at all times Stephen knew what he was doing. He would ride Bligh so hard and so often he'd spend embarrassing amounts of time on the toilet shitting out what Bligh had given him - sucked him off so much he'd get stomachaches. And then, playfully enough to mask the morbidity of his condition, he kept coming back. His belly would be gummed up with Bligh's cum and Bligh would enjoy the very notion that Stephen was addicted to it, being the bitch in the bedroom that he never really evolved from. Every part of his body Bligh annexed: mouth - stomach - anus, driven by the irresistible notion of dependence, dominance, giving orders and having them carried out, what got Bligh off harder than anything else. They'd be watching a movie when Stephen's parents were out of town and he'd feel himself getting antsy, ornery for another dose of his dick, too big for its own good. They were both complicit in this carnival of horrors that lasted seven long liquid-stained months. Dirty, sticky, filthy sex. Perverted, debauched sex. The stuff animals do - and now Bligh was an actual animal, the irony could not have been more theatrical. But he, Stephen, it was he, of all people who stopped it, who broke Bligh's heart, because he knew, as it bothered him more and more - back then, and now here in the present - he was intruding on something that did not belong to him. Bligh was Drewseph's, Drewseph was Bligh's. Bligh deserved Drewseph - not him, not Stephen. As much as Bligh had been nearly a father to him, he and Drewseph both raising them as a son, almost, they could not be together as his own brother and Bligh needed to be together. Stephen was Bligh's outlet for unquenched sexuality, a balm to ease the interminable loneliness, even when he was mere substitute for the flesh Bligh craved but could not taste. It bothered Stephen - it bothered him so much it ate at him and ate him, and at last he yielded to it, one night when they met outside Bligh and Pappy's house and Stephen had leaned against the grill of Bligh's truck and, the entire time, could not bear to look him in the eye... As much and as delicious as what they had was and indeed could have been, it was not to be. And things were never the same afterward - never. It was little wonder indeed why Bligh had not wanted to see him and said he did not trust him, how he had changed from his grandfather's funeral, when last Stephen saw him, only two months ago...the hurt was refreshed by his presence, the memory of them together a lethal threat to what he really wanted, really needed - Drewseph. But then, this, all of this - back came the shorts, back came the belt - was because his penis was still human, the average healthy size, circumcised, everything about him, unlike Drewseph and Bligh and Cody too, was... He paused as pressed his palm to the bathroom door. "...human..." he whispered to himself, finishing the thought outloud. That wasn't true - and Stephen had to tell them, tell all three of them, the truth. He didn't want to - the words wouldn't come to him at the hot tub like they needed to, so he didn't tell Drewseph, not yet. Maybe Bligh first - or Cody... The bathroom door was opened, slowly, gently, to keep at a minimum the requisite squeaks, and he slipped out, just as he slipped in. He did not tarry in the room, he did not look back to his brother asleep under the covers wrapped in that angelic wunderkind he had plucked off the street - back he went to the living room, rounding the corner to the kitchen, stuck his head under the spigot and let loose some cold water. He drank and drank until he felt bloated with it, water, the universal solvent, he was in desperate need of hydration and he did not care how much it took until he felt well again...at last he stopped, turned off the water, wiped his mouth with his bare arm and took a step to slouch back against the oven. His head hung with a series of final breaths, feeling the hangover pain in his temples carry on apace - he could still feel his heart beat too fast, but it was finally slowing down...only to reaccelerate as he heard a familiar voice, once more: "Ya didn't flush." Again with the upward head-jerk - Stephen let out a hot, exasperated sigh as he saw Bligh's inky form near him. "I didn't - need to, and why the fuck do you keep sneaking up on me?" Bligh made a noise, faint, that queer little laugh. "Yer brother said that too..." "Then maybe - you oughta quit doing it!" Stephen answered irritably. "How bout yew - come on out ere n'join me, Stevie. Have a smoke. We can talk some." Stephen, well in spite of himself, felt uneasy at the idea...the very mention put him on edge, made worse, far worse, that he could not properly see Bligh in the dark of the living room, like Bligh was a ghost, and this house was haunted. "That - gotta tell ya, Bligh, that sounds, uh - a little ominous." "Do what now?" "It sounds bad," Stephen went on, rolling his eyes. "Really? You don't know what ominous means?" "I know what it means--" There was a faint, gliding shift, and Stephen guessed Bligh had put his hands in his jeans, a defensive gesture. "I jest dun get what yew meant by it." "I'm still--" Stephen held on to the words, kept them in his mouth, curled them back with his tongue, he wanted to quell this anxiety, this creeping sexual jealousy, this growing existential shockwave. "Are we - are we okay?" "Yeah man - I'm past it. We jest gotta - know where we're at, yanno?" "Yeah," Stephen agreed, more honest than he was used to being. "Yeah - we do." "C'mon out," Bligh said again. "I got some Reds." "Alright," Stephen said with a small nod. "My shoes still out there?" "Yup." "Okay." He watched Bligh - a phantom gliding across the living room - pace away to the patio. He waited a moment, trying to gather himself, trying to persuade himself that this was fine, that Bligh's dashed-off answer was something he actually meant... ...he hated being sober. If he was drunk he could attack, deflect, but now he was sober - hungover, the worst kind of sober. He moved, slowly, out of the kitchen, following Bligh's path, picking up and putting on the shirt that he had been sleeping on, cold in places where he had dried himself off at the hot tub. Normally he would go shirtless - in imitation, he knew, when he thought back on it, of seeing Bligh do the same, year after year. But now was not the time for that - he was sober, vulnerable, this cotton shirt would be the only armor he could afford. Still, he hesitated before coming to the doorway of the patio. "Why yew waitin, boy?" came Bligh's voice into his right ear, louder now that he was outside. Stephen glanced to where the sound of the voice had come from - there was Bligh, seated, leaning back, in one of the plastic patio chairs that were separated by a small wooden table with an ashtray atop it. He was shirtless, one arm up so that a languid hand draped over the bill of his Ravens cap, a fresh cigarette lit in his mouth. "I - I ain't, just - little bit of a hangover still..." He could see him much more clearly out here - the half-Moon high in the sky, the lights of the parking light, they gave Bligh an outline, contours of his thin, hairy body which Stephen knew, had merged with, more than once, when it was younger, when it was less hairy, less like who he was now. He was a figure of supreme confidence, of being at peace with himself in a way that seemed almost enlightened - there was a pride in this casualness, beat-up jeans that terminated in great black furry footpaws that the neighbors, all asleep or all blinded by the hazy darkness, could not detect. Stephen had said to himself, and to Bligh, a little too often, that they were over and that they were better as a best friends - most of the time this was true. Most of the time. But now - now was not one of those times. Bligh did something he did not expect - he smiled...no, he never really properly smiled, he more smirked, and his fangs, which Stephen had noticed and Bligh had passed off as something he always had when really they were the indicator of something deeply weird, deeply beautiful, made an appearance over his lip. "Yew finally up," Bligh said with that little laugh he always made, that tittering noise. Stephen shrugged. "Yeah - did you - stay up this whole time?" "Yep." The cigarette moved in his mouth with the word. "Drew told me ta do it n'I did it." The hand came down from his cap to grasp the cigarette and, puffing, he exhaled a new plume of smoke. "He's worried about ya." Stephen gave a mirthless chortle, taking a seat in the other plastic chair. "How bout that." "I figured yew'd be fine - weren't I right?" "Mostly," Stephen answered. "You gonna gimme one?" "Ya wanna?" "I do." Bligh reached into a pocket to procure the promised pack of Reds - finding a single cigarette, he handed it to Stephen along with his Zippo which he took from his other pocket. The pack of Reds went on the table. Into Stephen's mouth went the cigarette, up went the perfect wick of the Zippo's fire - he handed the lighter back to Bligh, and nodded his thanks. "How you been?" Stephen said, trying not to be awkward. "Been aight," Bligh answered, taking his first drag. "Gotta job not far down the way there, fixin cars." "Who with? A big company?" Bligh shook his head, blowing smoke. "Nah - little place. They treat me right, pay's good too - made a couple o'friends, even." "That's - that's good." Stephen tried, and failed, to relax. "So you, uh - you got you're life set up here, then..." "I s'pose, yanno, yer Grandad's money makes sure we ain't hurtin none so Drew can go ta school still, but - I wanted ta work too, bring some money in fer us - fer the family..." He took another drag, exhaling slow, taking his time with the bombshell he needed to drop: "S'weird...I, uh - really did never think I'd - be a dad." "I - yeah," Stephen rejoined hesitantly. "Uh - how - how is that?" Bligh looked at him, the crooked smile becoming knowing and sly. "I dunno, man - yew tell me how it feels ta be an uncle." Stephen sighed, frustrated already with the direction the conversation was taking. "I - I haven't - I dunno, dude." Bligh nodded, moving on. "So how yew been? Since Pappy passed - last I saw ya?" "Been about the same," Stephen murmured after a short pause- he half-hissed the last word, feeling a pang of the hangover hit him again. He leaned back in his chair, watching the shadow-draped jungle of palms in front of them. "No boyfriend - girlfriend, neither, um, there was a guy in Autumn Term - uh, right when school started - that led me on I still see around campus, yanno--" "Dang," said Bligh with what sounded like a sympathetic frown. "I'm sorry ta hear that." Stephen made another mirthless chortle, near the same noise as before, seeing in his mind's eye the face of the boy - bored, brunette, douchebag - he had not mentioned to Drewseph because after three weeks of being used for sex it hardly seemed worth it. "Cute kid - not - as hot as you are and, uh - not at all in Dako - uh - Cody's league, but..." He sighed, the cigarette burning patiently in his fingers. "Uh - short, big dick, it was weird he was like an inch shorter than me and still hung--" He stopped - he glanced to Bligh who, in mid-drag, had his eyes turn worried. "I like em big," Stephen muttered. "I like to get hurt going in - literally--" His voice dipped yet lower. "...and figuratively." Bligh's eyebrows went up after a short, dubious pause. "Ye talkin bout me?" Those eyes of his, perfect ice blue, seemed to twinkle, they seemed to have some hidden excitement in them, but they revealed nothing. Stephen shrugged, trying to be demure, trying to seem disinterested. "What - what if I was?" Bligh moistened his lips, his gaze distant, away, somewhere Stephen could not see. "Damn funny way o'startin a conversation there, Stevie." "Yeah, well!" Stevie said back curtly, trying to deflect the iciness that had clenched his bowels at Bligh's answer. "I - just telling the truth." Bligh said nothing for several painful seconds - finally he shook his head, slowly. "I ain't bout that life anymore, Stevie - I'm married, man. Ain't like it was afore n'yew - yew should know--" "Yeah, yeah, I do know, that I could - turn like one of y'all, big goddam deal...least I'd feel like less of a stranger in my own brother's - fucking house." Bligh exhaled smoke through his nostrils - his expression did not change. "Yew mean that?" "Have I ever lied?" "Plenty o'times--" "To you." Bligh conceded the point with a frown. "Aight, fine..." "Exactly." "Well, man - look here, Stevie...I'm the wrong guy ta ask - cuz I love bein this way, every - every fuckin bit of it, but--" The cigarette went to his lips for another drag. "It do get little bothersome, hidin all the time...can't let nobody see, or else..." His voice trailed off into another one of his strange little laughs. "Well I done told ya." Something about the way Bligh was speaking made Stephen feel - small. It was as though he was dismissing him, isolating him further, closing a gate that he thought he was still able to open. He held his own cigarette up, taking a quick, rapid drag, before answering: "Ya told me a lotta things, Bligh - like that I'm a mistake." And with that Stephen retreated into the plastic chair - deflating. He felt himself become, at once, sicklier, weaker, he was himself again, he was not the Stephen Lightfoot that threw his macchiato back at the Starbucks barista who made it wrong or sent Snapchats to pretty girls whose boyfriends hated him because he was so obnoxiously a perfect third wheel or seduced straight boys amidst pounding dubstep beats with the scent of raspberry Smirnoff on his breath in unconscious but crystallized imitation of how his brother used to do the same. No. He was the Stephen Lightfoot, his father's favorite, scrawny and unhealthy and pale, always a nose in a book, who only talked to his Beagle and cried alone in his room because all the kids picked on him so mercilessly there was scarcely a day he didn't come from school in tears, and all his family's wealth and power and evil, no matter how it was deployed, only seemed to make it worse... ...he saw Bligh swallow back something in his throat he evidently did not expect. "Stevie," he growled quietly, "let it the fuck go." "Nope!" Stephen exclaimed back, undaunted, with a headshake that carried the rhythm of the turning of the Earth, fortified against Bligh's command. "Nope - nope, nope - called me a mistake in front of my own fucking brother--" His eyes opened and he was smiling - that deforming, taunting, ghastly smile that he used whenever he knew he was right. The tears came immediately - thick, disgusting, whiskey-scented tears that streamed down his face, twisted and mocking, with his Joker-like smile. And then just as it appeared - it vanished. The smile collapsed, suddenly, into a downturned frown, and the picture was complete: Little Stevie, asthmatic and lonesome and miserable at his own life, was there, in front of Bligh, football star, monstrous in his physical perfection. Bligh did not move - not an inch of give to the instinct that Stephen knew he felt, to hug him, to hold him like he used to. "Then the fuck would yew call it, Stevie? Huh? Ya won't let it the fuck go - tell me. Fuckin tell me." For the first time in a minute, maybe two, Stephen was aware of the lit cigarette in his hand. He stared down at it, the rising smoke that must have burnt his eyes and assailed his nose - he let it fall to the ground, and in a single, silent action, thrust his foot back into one of his Pumas, waiting for him by the sliding glass door, to stomp it out. He looked up at Bligh - still reclining, still regarding him with the oozing confidence of a king in his castle, an esteem of oneself that Stephen knew he never faked. He wiped the tears from his face on the back of his arm. "Something - I miss, okay? Something I wanna happen again." Bligh seemed impassive, but the twinkle - that was the only word to describe it, as stupid as it sounded being in the eyes of such a magnificent, predatory creature - reappeared. "But it can't--" "And again," Stephen pressed, "and again."
"Stevie, God dammit..." There was a bemusement, a quaver in the two words like a laugh about to build. Stephen's eyes bore into the patio. He could not bear to look at Bligh, as he said it, even as he needed to say it, an admission of guilt, what had been welling and had been suppressed in a ruthless regimen of quashed emotions, now free to run as a flood - and all because Bligh had used one word, and one word only: mistake. He needed to say it - at last: "I wanna ride that dick til I shit out my insides." He shut his eyes, he braced himself - but he heard that same stupid laugh, that high-pitched cackle that Pappy would make too. "Are yew fuckin serious?" "I - yes?" Stephen jerked his head to see Bligh, discarding a cigarette in the plastic ashtray. "Why - why--" He gritted his teeth, feeling a new outrage build inside him. "Don't you fucking laugh at me." "I ain't laughin at yew--" "Sure as fuck sounded like it." "I ain't, though, I--" He stopped, sighing, as though sensing the need to be serious. "Jest came outta nowhere, Stevie, c'mon." Stephen yielded the point reluctantly: "Probably." "I mean - why you - why want me of all o'sudden? What happened ta - jest bein friends, like we was?" Bligh enjoyed getting to the point faster than most - it could, and did, often grate on people more used to being more diplomatic, more subtle, in their speech. It didn't bother Stephen - but hearing it made him smile which came out in his answer: "I - I just got...jealous I guess." He glanced to Bligh, who nodded slightly. "Well, uh - Stevie, I still dun see how ya could call what we done anythin but a--" "Don't say it." Bligh frowned. "Well why not?" "Because you loved me, Bligh," Stephen muttered - the last word, that name, sacred and profane, cracked in his throat, overcome with a weakness that Stephen felt and Stephen despised. "Y-you loved me and you - yeah, I wasn't the one you wanted and I - I knew that, but--" His eyes searched him, vainly looking for some crack, some flaw in that impregnable façade of alpha male noblesse. "I still made you cry - that day - because y-you still loved me..." Bligh seemed to ponder it - the very idea that he had loved Stephen in a way beyond the obligation of being the brother of his best friend. Stephen's heart, its hangover-palpitations eased at last, tightened in anticipation of what Bligh would say - so very much in spite of Stephen himself, usually in the cloud of an alcoholic buzz that draped his emotions with an aloofness that was almost sociopathic in its encompassing majesty. But Bligh did not answer - not directly: "So - ya still love me? Even though I - n'Drew too, uh, dun think y'ever met the Pu--uh, Cody afore now but--" Stephen stopped him, the clingy desire for acceptance warped immediately into annoyance. "Why the fuck both of you gotta act like this..." Bligh leaned forward some. "Wazzat now?" "Drewseph - he pulled that shit too, he - didn't actually come right out and say it but he didn't, like, he didn't need to - he just acted like it..." "Acted like what?" Bligh, perhaps agitated at another turn the conversation had taken, reached for another cigarette from the soft pack. "Like--" The cigarette was lit, the flame illuming Bligh's face, briefly, the rugged handsomeness draped in the coal chincurtain. He saw, in the instant it took for the fire from the Zippo to appear and then be snuffed, what he had missed, what he had loved, what he had craved and kept silent about it for the distant hope, now come to full fruition, that Drewseph would take the prize that, once, belonged solely to him. Once again Stephen felt the need to be as honest - cuttingly honest, to himself. "Like anything y'all - my brother, my brother or - you, fucking you, Bligh, could ever - do, be, say - big werewolf, weredog whatever--" He exhaled, harshly, his frustration fresh. "Like anything - anything - could make me stop loving y'all, or that - you couldn't trust me, with - with what you really are, whether gay or - dog...people..." "Man, Stevie, would ya think bout it, though? I's jest so fuckin scared that--" "I know what you're gonna say," Stephen interrupted. "I know, I fucking know." Bligh seemed offended. "Do ya now?" "You were scared that anything weird - how are you now, or me and you, or you and Duke - and Drewseph would just toss you the fuck out--" Stephen threw up his arms to demonstrate. "Outta here. Because fuck everybody else but when it comes to him--" He chortled unkindly. "You lose your damn mind!" Bligh took the accusation - damning, accurate - with a stoicism Stephen thought rather unlike him. "What - whattya want me ta say, man?" Stephen knew at once what he meant - the inarticulate gulf that lay between them, a rawness, a vulnerability that Bligh dared share with no one else. "Y'all were..." He cleared his throat, taking a deep breath. "Y'all were arguing about something when I was passing out--" "Yeah, bout whether we was gonna let yew stay or not." A coldness burst through Stephen that quickly forged into a defiance - he sneered. "Cuz I'm a mistake, right?" Bligh shook his head. "Ya weren't no - it wudn't no mistake--" "Damn right it wasn't, you stupid dog." Stephen was answered with one of those cackles whose sound and texture was sufficient unto itself to belong to the Lynch phenotype - Drewseph had taught him that word - and Stephen had realized his intended insult had easily backfired. "Whatever..." he groaned. Again Bligh shook his head. "Nah - nah, Stevie, ya gotta understand." He was being serious, and Stephen shot him a wary glance. "Ya showed up just outta fuckin nowhere, I mean I dun think--" "And I'm sorry for that." Stephen almost shuddered - even now, sober, defenseless, it was still anathema for him to admit wrong, to do the unthinkable and actually apologize. "Well - thank ya." "No problem," Stephen answered, near to under his breath. "Usually--" Bligh snickered softly to himself. "Usually he jest g'long with what I wanna do--" Stephen rolled his eyes. "Oh Jesus, yeah, for how fucking long has he done that? Won't listen to anybody else - but soon as you say something--" "Man, dun--" "Since I was little," Stephen pressed. "Definitely since I was old enough to realise--" "Aight, aight." "Like that time you wanted him to spelunk in that old church where you found Duke and he kept saying no until you convinced him and then when you did he ended up stepping on that rusty nail and Pappy yelled at you--" "Stevie." Bligh's eyebrows were furrowed - there was a quiver in his lips like he wanted to smile at the memory, but was fighting it. And Stephen rolled his eyes for the second time. "Just saying..." Bligh shook his head. "Well, tonight - tonight, man, he weren't gonna listen ta me fer nuthin..." His expression was, for a moment, enigmatic, impenetrable - he seemed at a peculiar crossroads between annoyed, bemused, and proud. "Yew were gonna stay the night with us n'that was the end of it..." Stephen's mouth went agape. "He - he did that - f-for me?" "Well, Cody too - but it was Drew, man, it was - yer brother, yeah." "What..." Stephen was stunned - he wanted to say more, to justify it in his head, the guilt of being so selfish and such an aberrant asshole in the house of someone who would give him the house to sleep in...but before he could, Bligh went on: "But - still, Stevie, man - it was so fuckin sudden, y'understand? I weren't ready, and we - us three needed time, man, we needed time ta tell ya--" "That y'all were--" He gestured from Bligh's canid feet to his hidden ears. "Like - like that?" Bligh nodded. "Yeah, man." Stephen sneered again, his flushed gratitude for his brother forgotten in the moment. "I kinda doubt you were ever gonna tell me." "Now that ain't true--" "Oh yeah?" Stephen sniffed. "Anything that'd fuck up you and--" "That ain't true." Bligh leaned in over the side of his chair. "Dun call me a liar--" "Anything," Stephen finished forcefully, "that would fuck up my brother and you." He sighed, feeling a weight lift off of him with the words. "Even at my expense." Bligh retreated back to his chair - a rare sight, and a Pyrrhic victory, as he had been beaten. Stephen regretted it almost at once, he had not meant to hurt Bligh, merely to defend himself - and at this Stephen suppressed his own guilt. "Guess, uh--" Bligh cleared his throat. "Guess I'd be the one who should be apologizin, then..." Stephen looked away with his hollow satisfaction, which dissipated into nothing as he realized that Bligh was not breaking the abrupt silence that fell before them, the never-ending crickets the only accompaniment to their tension. "What..." Stephen looked back to Bligh, his arms behind his head, pensively off somewhere - he came back to meet Stephen's gaze. "What am I to you?' "Yer..." Bligh seemed to think a minute before giving that crooked smile he always made. "Yer my husband's brother - my brother-in-law - yer - yer family, man." A feeling of warm security should have cued, should have spread over Stephen and negated the omnipresent anxiety, even in the midst of his hangover - but it did not. "You promise?" Bligh's crooked smile grew. "Yeah - Stevie. I'm sorry, I - I said what I said, did I did, aight?" The smile faded. "Why yew worried though?" Stephen swallowed hard - this was it, this was the moment. He had to tell Bligh - first. Then his brother, and Cody too. They'd understand, they'd understand completely. "Gimme - uh, gimme a cig, and um - lemme light it myself." "Uh--" Bligh seemed dubious. "Aight - y'okay there?" "I dunno," Stephen murmured without commitment as he procured his heretofore phone, still in his pocket from where his brother had retrieved it for him from his locked car. With his phone in his lap, he took Bligh's offered cigarette and put it to his lips - up came the Zippo, with a lighting fire. He took a deep, solitary drag, trying to steady himself. Handing the lighter back to Bligh, who was eyeing him with what looked like a mixture of suspicion and concern, he pressed the button on his phone, his arm down so that the sudden flush of light was focused on one particular area of skin. He exhaled a cloud of smoke - and, cigarette in his fingers, jammed it into his flesh. The pain was immediate, it drowned out Bligh's horrified reaction that Stephen could only barely registered - it was a hornet with a fiery sting shoving its weapon into him, it was bright and furious and his lips pressed together to stifle what should have been an animal cry of pain. But he did not close his eyes - he watched it, he watched it and he knew Bligh did too, the ghostly screen of the phone showing what Stephen had dreaded revealing to anyone, anyone at all, even the ones who knew him best: Where there was an angry, messily cauterized, marred circle of burnt skin, in mere few seconds, moved, merged, and vanished - healed, completely, as though nothing had ever happened. Stephen had expected some universe of quiet to pass, some epiphany between the two of them - something, anything, other than what actually happened: Bligh, and his stupid little laugh. "Well ain't that sumthin!" The remark seemed altogether too casual for a back-and-forth of something so shattering, and it took Stephen a moment to realize the gravity of what had just been said - he stared at him. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" He felt crushed by a instant hopelessness, sliding his phone into his pocket. "Don't - don't you know what this - fucking - means? I heal - I heal, I'm not - I'm not human." Bligh nodded. "Well that's the thing man, I do know whatcha mean - lemme show ya--" The Zippo clinked open and a flame appeared to reignite it. The cigarette went to his mouth to take a quick puff - then down, down to his upturned arm to be pressed into the smooth skin. He winced - "Shit that smart!" - and, as Stephen had done to him, held up his arm. Stephen acted as though on autopilot - out came his phone from his pocket once again, and with a click of a button he could see the nasty blister that the flame had made. But in the time it took for Bligh to put out the cigarette in the ashtray - it dissolved into nothing, replaced, second by passing second, with new skin, so that it looked like nothing had been there at all. Bligh's arm stayed there, pale and clammy-looking in the light of his phone's screen - Stephen stared at it, all the noise in his head to a cosmic silence. "Oh - my fu--" Bligh must have detected the mass of emotions that quivered inside Stephen's words - his arm withdrew back to its place on the arm of the chair and he nodded at him in concern. "Hey - y'aight?" "I--" Stephen had no immediate words, no direct parallel, in his vocabulary, for how deeply bewildered he was. He could only say what he immediately thought: "I wanna - I wanna freak out right now." "Well why? Y'ain't no freak--" That little laugh again, and then: "Not if I ain't one." "That's--" Stephen swallowed hard, his words bursting out of him unfiltered, his phone going into his pocket for a final time: "T-that - that's why I wanna freak out. I told - yanno, I told Drewseph that, I - I said I really wanna freak out, seeing y'all like - how you are..." Bligh's gaze never left his - there was a strength in it, there always was, that lent itself to him, that made Stephen feel he could continue. "Think - think about it, Bligh, think - think about I must feel, knowing - knowing there's people like me out there." "Me n'yew - n'Drew - Cody..." Bligh winced, an action that looked abortive and malformed, like he had tried not to do it but couldn't resist. "Dan..." It was barely a word at all - but Stephen grasped its meaning at once. He smiled, his panic subsiding - he could not help it, even when he was sober, the idea of a secret revealed, of the truth triumphant, was too delicious not to celebrate. "Dan?" he repeated. "Little Bear?" And Bligh nodded back, quickly, like he wanted to move on - but Stephen could not. He pressed: "So you two--?" "Yeah." "And then he changed - like Drewseph and--" "Yeah," Bligh said again - he fidgeted reaching for another cigarette, which brought to his fingers to twiddle in his discomfort. "Yeah, he - yeah." Stephen's eyes darted to the wooden railing, trying to fit together the chronology of the years that his brother had been absent in Tempest - with each passing half-second was a new revelation, how it all finally made sense, why Bligh seemed furtive and distant even after they had supposedly reconciled, why his hat never came off, not even at the funeral...and Dan Dorsey's suicide... Was he - he, Stephen - the cause of all of this? Had he just enjoyed being with Bligh, had he not, for the first and probably only time in his life, listened to his conscience and broke it off with him - would Bligh not have finally been sexual with his dog, who turned him into what he was now? Could he - he, Stephen - who thought himself so insignificant, stunted, in his private life, have actually caused a major change in the world? Had he served a purpose beyond even himself in the universe? The occultation - Bligh's new species as eclipse to the insights that Stephen thought he had into his life - was at last revealed. The tearing of the curtain had started with Drewseph taking off his hat - but there was an inner narrative in it, beneath it, that roiled putrescent underneath the quaint little mountain-valley town they all called home, once. "Is that why..." he murmured, his eyes coming back to Bligh."Is that why he killed himse--" "Can ya not?" Bligh growled, quietly. Stephen was not about to be bested: "I'll do what I want." Bligh snickered. "Y'always did, why quit now?" The cigarette between his fingers went to his mouth. "Because I can't die, and I don't give a fuck." "Can't - die," Bligh said back. "W-wait - holy fuck." The new cigarette was limp in his mouth, and it fell as the last syllable escaped him, caught, luckily, against his hairy chest, one-handed. "That - s'why yew - s'why when ya wrecked--" "I shoulda died," Stephen finished for him. "I shoulda died - um - yeah." "Stevie..." Bligh leaned forward. "Stevie - man--" "Hold on," Stephen murmured - he shut his eyes. "Hold on. You know - all I remember--" He stopped. "No. No, that's not right - I remember every - every little fucking thing..." The memories flew to him - he swam in them, as he had swam in the drink that night, the nihilism, in retrospect it should have been a lifechanger, that rockbottom to bounce...but it wasn't, Stephen knew it wasn't, it just made things worse. "You know what I did, Bligh?" He chuckled, a laugh that got away from him and vibrated unsteady into the night air, amused by his own the way he could vocalize this. "I laughed." "Ya - ya did?" "Yeah - yeah I did. I laughed - and laughed - and laughed..." The last word disappeared into a whisper so faint even Stephen could barely hear it. "I...I was alive..." He paused, trying to remember the ebullient flashes in his brain that night, trying to make the same sense of them now that he had then. "I was alive. Alive - and - I could feel myself heal. I could--" He clapped a hand to his side, which had gained a creeping ache below his ribcage in psychosomatic sympathy. "There was - a huge, huge gash right here - uh - I was - launched outta the windshield and it sliced me open on the way out but, I...I don't really remember that..." He stopped. "I just remember - feeling it seal, yanno, even when it hurt like nothing - else I've ever felt before and there was all this blood on me but--" He shook his head, finding he could not believe his own words. "There was...other cuts and bruises, I just - hurt all over, and my fucking neck, and I couldn't feel my legs - then I could feel my legs..." At last Stephen could speak no more about it - all he could see in his mind's eye was not the streetlamp-illumed parking lot or the looming blackness of the jungle beyond...all he saw was the mangled wreckage of his Pa's Mercedes, in front of him, piled into the tree, and him, sticky with blood, in agony but ambulatory, laughing, laughing so hard his lungs started to ache in tandem with everything else... Bligh jerked him from his triggered illusion: "Ya coulda called me," he said, a whisper, an offer, an apology. "Even though we - we was done, yanno, ya coulda--" "No," Stephen answered, the same. "I think...on some subconscious level - I needed it." "Dun say shit like that--" "Everybody needs to die--" He glanced to Bligh, his eyes like plucked gems, sad, so sad, so perfect. "I - I said I shoulda died?" He shook his head. "Nah - nah. I actually did. And it was my time to die - yanno? My time to drop the fuck out of this world, and - realize shit wasn't normal." "But yew - why yew sayin yew died though? When ya didn't--?" "Didn't Duke kill you, in a way?" "Wha--?" But then Bligh seemed to know precisely the line of logic Stephen had followed, and for it, had no rebuttal: "Oh - uh..." "Yeah." "I - yeah." "Mmmhmm." A silence lapsed, and the tension rose between them - Stephen stared off into the night, hands between his legs, listless. He heard Bligh sigh through his nose: "Well - I'm-a tell yew what, I'm glad he did." "What?" "Duke - killin me, like ya say." Stephen shot Bligh another glance with an amused little chortle. "You've said that." "I stand by it," Bligh declared - he sat up, leaning in some, looking at Stephen with new intent. "I told yer brother that, uh - when he had ta see me the first time." "How'd that go?" It was nonchalant, as nonchalant as Stephen could manage. And Bligh gave another little laugh - mirthless as it was. "He, uh - he took it a lot worse n'yew did." It was Stephen's turn to laugh. "I figured - I really figured. Dr. Drewseph can't explain something? I can't--" He laughed again. "I can't even fathom." "But that's - that's why ya were okay with it, though cuz yew--" Bligh smiled, crookedly, that smirk like his grandfather used to do. "Ya were already weird yerself." A warm feeling, the first thaw in the iciness of still feeling as though he were an outside in this place, Stephen could feel, slowly, moving all over his body. "Uh--" he managed with a sheepish smile. "Uh - y-yeah..." "Lemme ask ya sumthin," Bligh seemed to press, "how ya think this all happened? I mean, yanno yew - yew bein like y'are?" Stephen stared at Bligh for several seconds before shaking his head, slowly. "I - dude, I - I don't fucking know." Bligh nodded - he spat over the railing and sighed, uncomfortable, through his nostrils, once again. "Dang, Stevie..." came the mutter, noncommittal but worried. Stephen leaned back some - his head up at the roof of the patio. "Yeah - yeah, pretty fucking much. What's life, then, Bligh? What the fuck are we? If we can't die - never get sick - always heal?" Bligh snickered, a mocking sound from the corner of his mouth. "Son, I ain't high enough--" "Neither am I, and I think that's why I'm askin..." "I ain't got answers like that," said Bligh, relaxing back into his chair. "I used ta - yanno, back when I'd listen ta Pappy n'believe every word." "You did believe every word," Stephen rejoined. "Just not - any o'that God-and-Jesus stuff - after a bit." "Any God ain't gonna let Duke into Heaven ain't a God I wanna know." That was Bligh's answer - he looked sad again, sadder than before, and out of a respect Stephen was at times only ambiently aware he actually possessed, he remained silent so that Bligh could, he guessed, reflect, on the dead grandfather who raised him. Stephen allowed a space of silence - to elapse before he heard Bligh spit again, and then continued: "Walker too, right?" Bligh nodded. "Yeah, man - Walker too." "Sorry he hated you." "Well--" Bligh looked as though he was forcing a small grin. "I think he was just protective of ya, yanno." He seemed to think a moment. "They ever - talk t'each other?" "Who - Duke and Walker?" "Yeah." Stephen sighed. "Some -Walker was - I guess kinda fearful of Duke, he--" "Afeared?" Bligh cut in. "Afeared o'Duke?" "Not - that's not the right word," Stephen said. "It's more - he thought Duke was more important than he was." He nodded to himself. "That's the idea I got." "Important...how?" Stephen shrugged. "He wouldn't tell me - just that Duke was important, and - uh - a leader, pretty much." Bligh scratched his chest, shaking his head slow. "Shit jest keeps getting weirder..." "Bout that--" Stephen began, dredging up as he said it a full month of speculation, a preponderance of a strange childhood as microcosm of a stranger life. "I have a theory." Bligh was waiting for him to finish, his hand still in mid-scratch. "Yeah?" "Um - yeah. I called, uh - no, Drewseph called me last month and - pretty sure he told you everything--" "Bout the weird people who used ta live in Dog's Creek, yeah, I remember." "Right, yeah, but he did tell you about Papa Sandoro?" Bligh shifted his footpaws. "Saying Walker gonna - protect yew or sumthin? He weren't all that clear bout it, honestly." "Sorta - uh, he said - Papa Sandoro said, or I guess I should say I heard him say one time, that Walker would give me all the protection I..." The final word faded to nothing as the memory came back to him: standing at the head of the stairs, tracing his fingers along the ornate carving of the solid oak banister, and in the dim light of the downstairs hearing Papa Sandoro's crisp words in his gravelly voice, which Stephen would have never pay attention to had not heard the name Walker - who was curled and asleep waiting for him in his bed. His hand, an involuntary gesture, went to the necklace, wrapping around Walker's tooth, what he carried with him always, having never once taken it off...his head jerked to see Bligh was watching him, waiting for him to finish. "If I - spent all my time around him like I did - they - what if they got me that dog - to protect me from - what Duke did to you?" He saw Bligh's eyebrows raise, then furrow, before a grin, slow but inexorable, crossed his face. In his throat quavered one of his odd little laughs. "So what yer sayin is..." "We're the same - but we're different." Stephen swallowed, hard - he had to choose his words carefully. "Me and you - both spent all that time around dogs and - the dogs made us something...different." He paused. "I never - liked Walker the way you liked Duke...though..." Bligh shrugged. "Yep," he said, matter-of-factly. "Nothing wrong with that," Stephen added, surprising himself how steady he was, how willing he was to accept something so abhorrent. "But - it was a one-time thing, right? That made you change?" "Mmmhmm," Bligh intoned. "Only took but the one..." "So - one time - and Walker being near me - over a period of...however long it was..." Stephen looked into the crawling shadows of the trees beyond them. "Made us - the same, just - different, too." Bligh seemed to consider the idea for a minute - a flick in his eyebrow and a quick nod suggested he was concluded in his thinking. "Yeah - yeah I s'pose that'd be bout right - everythin I heard about the dogs in Tempest ain't bein - normal." "Well they ain't - and I could talk to them, too - that - that sure as fuck ain't normal..." Bligh reached for the pack of cigarettes next to the ashtray and, procuring one afresh, held it to Stephen, first, to offer - Stephen shook his head to decline, so that the cigarette went in Bligh's mouth instead. A sudden flame from the Zippo, and it was lit - a single puff prefaced Bligh's continuation: "So why didn't Pappy do that fer me? Why didn't yer daddy do that fer Drew?" "No fucking clue," Stephen answered - honestly. "Maybe Gus just...didn't wanna believe any of it, even if he knew about the rumors he was still - Christian and all - and maybe Pa knew about it and knew was something was - really fucked up with our town...and only wanted to protect me. Drewseph would know about how that shit works, but - maybe - I was the variable, he was the control..." Bligh's cigarette hung, the cherry bright, as his eyes, glimmering and gorgeous, narrowed. "What are yew sayin?" "What I just said," Stephen pressed quietly. "Gus didn't believe it - nobody who had a dog was suspe - susp - dammit what's that word?" "Susceptible?" "That - yeah, actually." Stephen couldn't help but chortle. "Yeah, thank you!" "G'on with it," Bligh muttered, unamused. "Y-yeah - so nobody who had a dog nearby, I guess, a slow buildup of immunity, yanno, like getting vaccinated, was - susceptible - to uh...to being like y'all are." Stephen paused so that the words would sink in. "Think about Gus, think about the man he was, he wouldn't believe no town legend bullshit - not unless he saw it firsthand--" "That time we ate dinner with y'all..." Bligh murmured in a cloud of smoke. "Tellin yew Walker was special--" "My theory," Stephen repeated, holding up his hand to make the point. "Pa told him. Pa got hold of him, so that when you found Duke, Gus - he...probably thought it was time..." Stephen felt himself frowning, a strange, alien guilt overtaking him. "But just in case - me and Drewseph were the - experiment - to test and see that it was real, if having a dog from the county - yanno, made you...immune." Bligh nodded, seeming to follow along. "Drew called it a sickness afore--" "It fits, don't it?" Stephen moved to the edge of the chair to look down at the floor again, his mind ablaze with broken memories, waxing melancholic as he realized all of them, to a one, involved he, and Bligh, and Drewseph...and Walker, and Duke. The silence was sudden, it was as though there should have been more to the thought, and yet there wasn't, it was all that there was, floating in dark, nameless spaces. Bligh nodded, again, slower this time, more grave, more serious. "I can - I can see that now." "Yeah." "Well why - why our town?" Bligh held the cigarette in his fingers, pointing at Stephen. "Why our dogs gotta be - all weird n'carryin some kinda - disease ta make people turn--" He pointed to his feet. "Like this?" "Uh--" Bligh took a drag - the exhale came out his nose, his most useless talent. "What, cuz y'all granddads' granddad killed a buncha weird people way back in the day? Some kinda - curse?" He threw a skepticism on the final word that he was not known to have, and it jarred Stephen somewhat to hear it. "Probably," said Stephen. "But that sounds stupid and mundane and there's probably, like, something--" He paused, trying not to laugh at this crucial juncture. "S-something way, way more fucked up than that." He smiled. "You're the one who watches all those werewolf movies - you're the expert." Bligh allowed himself a slight curve in his mouth that looked like bemusement as he puffed on the cigarette. "Well, that bein the case, then - I reckon yew right, we are the same - kinda." The bemused look turned into one of his smiles - crooked, on his face, a smirk. "Y'ain't gotta tail or nuthin..." "Could I get one?" Stephen was surprised he had said it aloud, and Bligh's face reflected his own surprise for probably the same reason. "Uh - huh. I mean - shit, man, yew want one?" Stephen hesitated - once, then once again. In the midst of the rush - the jealousy, the alienation, the confusion, the rejection - something, a deeper intuition perhaps, called at him, wordless, to say that this, this precious precipice upon which tottered he, must be retreated from. "N-no, I - I shouldn't, I really shouldn't." Bligh took a long drag, shrugging. "Well lemme ask ya sumthin - yew still got that weird place on the back o'yer neck?" Stephen reached behind him to the place Bligh spoke of - a patch of hair, lighter than his hair, and softer in texture to it. "Y-yeah? Drewseph called it - uh - Poliosis? He says - he used to say it was a natural thing, but..." He shook his head. "After everything we talked about I...I dunno." He looked to Bligh. "It's soft - and white - like Walker's fur..." "Can ya smell real good? Cuz we can--" "Nah, I can't smell shit, most of the time - and I don't have sharp teeth, neither." "Still though - maybe yew dun need a tail..." Bligh grinned, and Stephen could see his fangs glint in the ambient sodium-vapor parking lot light. "Maybe yew dawg like me - already." Stephen weighed the idea - long ago his brother had told him to gather evidence, and data, and observation, before making a conclusion. That was years ago - and in the time intervening Stephen had never used that advice for much. But now he could. He was not normal - this he knew less than an hour ago. But would it also mean he was, too, not even human?
Back his hand went to Walker's tooth, clutching it tightly. His brother had no intuition - his world was the scientist's world, one of infinitely elegant but harshly exacting beauty, one that only based things on proven fact, and left no room for feelings...perhaps Stephen put too much stock on his own feelings. But were they ever wrong? Knowing he could talk to Duke and Walker, knowing something unspoken and profound was occurring between Bligh and his brother - when was he ever really wrong when he trusted, in a cliché so nauseating he wondered if he should head back to the bathroom, his heart? And what did his heart say now? "Not the same but different," he thought aloud in a low voice, "but just - the same." "After everythin we talked bout - yeah, man, I'd say so!" Stephen stared at him, trying to make sense of this revelation, this epiphany, what should have occurred to him long ago, even if he had never seen what Bligh had become. He had no words. There was a joy, if it could be classed as joy, that he was not as different from his brother, or Cody - or Bligh - but with it a fear, the fear that Bligh had spoken of, being caught, of being destroyed by a world that could not understand them...him, or the other three who shared a condition that been inflicted on them by happenstance or design. "Even - even if - I am...." He swallowed hard for the third time in a brief span of time. "And I want - I want to be. You can't - don't - don't you dare fucking tell Drew," Stephen said - his voice had on an admonition of absolute finality, a chill of death cooler than the evening around him. "None of this. None of this - I have to tell him myself." Bligh was silent - Stephen could see him in the darkness staring at him, he could see him viewing him anew, as something different, some new person that the years they had known each other did not provide for. "Promise..." Stephen heard himself whisper hoarsely. "Promise, like - like I had to promise not to tell Drewseph you were coming--" "I promise, Stevie..." Bligh murmured. "Dun worry." Stephen shut his eyes, muffling his own laughter so that it sounded like a chortle again, a warm feeling, an elation, hearing Bligh care, hearing Bligh promise him, again. "Oh, dude - holy shit." He heard Bligh cackle softly. "Yeah - yeah man." Stephen opened his eyes and rose slowly out of the chair. "I'm getting tired again, dude - uh - I think I'm gonna go back inside if that's alright..." Bligh stood up the same, stretching some. "Me too, man." Before Stephen turned to the sliding-glass door, a thought, intrusive but dreadfully germane, possessed him, and he hesitated, once, then twice, before he could speak it: "I...hey, listen." "Yeah?" "When - when I was at the pool - sure he told you..." "Who, Drew? Yeah he said ya snuck in--" "That's not--" Stephen laughed, at himself, his eyes drifting to the patio floor. "Yeah, okay that's not important though, see - I just wanted to tell you what I told him." "About?" "I, um, told Drewseph that, uh - I basically told him I was your - your silver medal." "Do what?" "Your - you only fucked me because you couldn't fuck him." Bligh folded his arms across his bare chest, leaning back, regarding Stephen askance. "Ya believe that?" "Yeah, Bligh I do - why do you think I dumped you? I knew - I knew--" Bligh stepped forward. "Stevie - yeah, that's how it was when we was first doin stuff but - man--" He grinned, his normal wolfish smile made irrationally animal with those fangs - his hands came down, a little rough, on Stephen's shoulders. "Yer yew. I shoulda - I shoulda told ya this and Drew this too, man - but I loved - still love - yew - everythin yew is - short li'l, scrawny li'l Stevie." "Be serious," Stephen hissed, even as he loved hearing Bligh say it. "You're teasing me don't - p-please don't tease me--" He felt a hand, Bligh's hand, underneath his chin, and gently, firmly, his head was raised - to meet Bligh's lips. They kissed. Stephen was unprepared for it, he made a sound - "Mmm!" - that vibrated against Bligh's tongue, inside his mouth, that familiar qualia-cluster of how Bligh's mouth tasted, the cigarettes, the ambient musk that he did not have when they were together but that fit him, the man...the dog. "Still doubt me?" he heard Bligh murmur in his ear. Stephen took in a breath, his eyes meeting Bligh's, those impossible gemstones that would unnerve some people because of how piercing they were, how they seemed to miss nothing they beheld. "No..." he whispered, his voice trembling, losing control of even his most basic defenses. "N-not - not if you're here, not - if Drewseph and Cody - I--" "Shhh - s'okay--" "Why do you think I wanted - why do y-you think I m-moved here, and n-not Tech?" Stephen knew he was crying now, he could feel the tears - still faintly scented like the half-bottle's worth of whiskey he had put away before - hot on his cheeks. "N-nobody - nobody else would understand m-me--" He let down his last, most intimate defenses - he threw his arms around Bligh and buried himself in the soft body hair. The body was warm, far warmer than it had been when they had been lovers, best friends - that must have been another change, Stephen thought, just fleetingly enough that it made Bligh all the more precious, all the more lucky he, Stephen, was to know him...to be like him, even in a small way. But even with that, all of that, he was familiar with this - how this felt - many times, sexually, sensually, but even with the memory of the kiss he felt this was platonic, this was brotherly...fatherly. The tears came easy, they moistened Bligh's stomach, the tears of vulnerability, acceptance, the emotional earthquake of being dimidiated in between the reality Stephen thought he knew, and the terrible, awful, plunging strangeness of the darkness that gathered in some forgotten pocket of West Virginia, that had flung forth on the world the four of them, alone, except for each other. Bligh held him the entire time, a span that he could not measure, five minutes at most, but an eternity enough for both of them to accept each other as old lovers, renewed friends. At a final length Stephen nudged away, wiping the residual tears with his hand. "S-sorry - f-fuck--" "S'okay Stevie..." "I just - I just got--" "I know, man." "Ya still tired?" Bligh asked gently. And Stephen nodded. "Y-yeah." "Aight then - let's go inside." "Aren't you gonna - um, join Drewseph and--" "Nah." Bligh grinned at him. "I gotta make sure yer okay." Stephen laughed - he laughed heartily, he laughed genuinely. He laughed, as perhaps he had not in years, happily. "Okay - okay - let's - yeah, let's go inside." In they came from the patio - Stephen resumed where Cody had put him on the couch - Bligh took up the spot on the other side. He had no way of knowing the immense importance such a piece of furniture had - where the bonds were forged and the past forgiven between his brother, and Bligh, and Cody. He had no way of knowing that, now, a smaller but similar drama was being enacted - between he, and Bligh. And now the two of them regarded each other in the dark. Stephen shifted where he was, getting more comfortable in the couch cushions, and he heard, faintly, one of Bligh's strange little laughs, as he crossed his footpaws at the ankles, settling in on his end as well. Stephen smiled. "You - you gonna sleep there?" He saw Bligh nod. "Yup. Now that y'up n'aight and y'ain't dead, so - I done my duty fer the night, yanno, like yer brother asked." "But--" Stephen hesitated, realizing with a flush of mortification how emotional what he was about to say was going to make him. "You're - you're my - my brother too." A space of fleeting silence, and then a cackle, that noise of triumph and delight, from Bligh: "Yeah - yeah, yeah I am." "S-so--" Stephen was failing to guard his elation. "I'm - I'm really family?" "I said it already but - yeah, man. Yew was always family, Stevie. I - I was jest wrong and dumb--" Stephen saw his arms come up and his hands tuck under his head. "Aight?" He had said it a different way, probably the only affirmation Stephen should have needed, before...but he needed to hear it again, he needed to say it, explicit and implicit, for Stephen to feel whole, for Stephen to feel welcome. A surge of love, potent and hot welled up inside him - in that moment, he wanted to cross the line as Bligh had crossed it, but go further, he wanted to get something other than a vague promise that he, too, could have a tail, and be equal amongst them, and begin, again, with Bligh, what he ended years before. But he did not. All he said was: "I love you, Bligh." And with one of this little laughs, Bligh answered: "Love ya too li'l bro. I'm-a git some shuteye now - I'll see ya in the mornin." "Okay - well, night, then." "Night, Stevie." Stephen watched him, for how long he could not be sure - watched the faint luminosity of his eyes vanish as they shut, and listened as the breaths grew less and less shallow until they became the sonorous rhythm of sleep, that emerged even after that as a comfortable snore. It was to this sound, and to this sight, bleary in his nightvision, that Stephen shut his own eyes, and found sleep too.