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Andrew's sleep was deep and dreamless - it was a complete, nigh-comatose blackness, the absence of color and light that being exhausted brings, his brain and body shutting down from the strain it had endured over the past twenty-four hours.

He awoke from this nap only in a slow, gradual process, the waking world suffused slowly into his cocoon of darkness and warmth against the couch cushions. His eyes opened gradually, always threatening to close again - there was an unease with which he emerged from his slumber, a peculiar reluctance, as though his body was unwilling to move from where he was...

As he stirred, however, he discovered why - he had turned in his sleep, so that he was facing Bligh, his nose buried against his chest, and as he tried to move in place, his face was bathed in the softness of furry pectorals...with every breath he inhaled a deep dose of Bligh's scent.

He inhaled again - he took in the smell, the strength of musk backed by the inscrutable qualities of deep security...it was like he was home, without ever knowing what home was.

He moved his nose against Bligh's chest, down to his third nipple on the left side, his whole face full of the silky-soft forest of black hair - from the primate side of his lineage, before the further change of being part canid - in an action that felt natural despite, yet days before, its inherent alienation from the normal.

They were old friends, it was true, but their actions seemed so natural, as though they were old lovers used to each others' bodies, more than just old friends...there should have been some hesitation, some recognition of the improbable and the awkward, but there never was. It all just happened - from the moment that Andrew first embraced Bligh earlier that day, the first time, but not the last time, he forgave him - as it though this was as the everyday for them both, back in Tempest, as it was now in Tampa.

A curious instinctual urge overtook him, and he licked the nipple before him - the faint hints of light coming from the window in front of the couch down into the crevices of the space between he and Bligh, he could barely see what he was doing, and relied instead on tactile sensation only - his head went forward and he suckled, as puppy to his mother.

Bligh, evidently already awake, gave a startled, hushed moan, and his body stiffened, especially the muscles of his legs which Andrew could feel with his hands at his side, prefacing the inevitable release of precum, which splashed onto the lower part of Andrew's chest.

Bligh tittered, lightly - his voice, and his strange little laugh, came to Andrew's face in the form of a warm vibration from his chest...Andrew sighed, a pleasant feeling of encompassing shelter washing over him as he felt, and heard, Bligh's words:

"W-well hey there - looks someone's up."

"Y-yeah - hey..."

Bligh leaned back, tensing so that he would not fall off the couch, to look into Andrew's face - the latter squinted some, adjusting to the full light of the living room before smiling back.

"Sleep aight?"

Andrew nodded. "Mmmhmm..."

"Long day?" He smirked knowingly.

"Ah--" Andrew chuckled. "You uh, you could say that."

Bligh's face became serious and he shifted downward on the couch to press his forehead to Andrew's - his eyes, the gelid spheres that were always perfectly framed in his face, seem to dive into Andrew's own.

"Yew - y'aight?" His voice was low, barely above a whisper, as his ear seemed to twitch in tandem.

Andrew smiled softly, and he matched Bligh's quiet, intimate tone: "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well ya--" He took a breath. "This is a big - yanno, a big--"

"Change?" Andrew chuckled again. "Literally." He shook his head slowly. "No...Bligh, I'm fine."

"Yanno we - y'ain't human n'more--"

"I know."

Bligh opened his mouth to continue, but stopped, and took another, deeper breath - Andrew smiled at him, nudging him back slightly to feel along the soft matting of his new legs, the dense follicles greeting his fingers with the delight of warm fur...his own.

"I like it - I like being this way now."

"Ya...do?"

Andrew nodded - he glanced away as his head slowed its rhythm, probing himself, searching for the truth as fast as he could come up with it. "It'll - take some getting used to, y-yeah, but--" He shrugged. "I freaked out really hard - you know, today - because it was so sudden - so fucking weird, all - all at once, but..." His eyes turned back to Bligh, whose gaze had become earnest, bated with anticipation for Andrew to finish his thought - Andrew smiled again, sheepishly, embarrassed at how reluctant and resistant to this he had been up until now. "It's - you," he said. "I told you - dog or not, if I can be with you..." His smile became warm, nearing the triumph that, he guessed, Bligh dearly wished for him to feel himself. "I don't care what I look like or - or - if I ain't even human."

Bligh seemed taken aback for a second - but he recovered, cackling softly as he dove into a tight bear hug, nearly crushing Andrew in a victorious embrace.

"Aww Drew - I love yew so much, man." His chest juddered suddenly against Andrew's own, overcome with emotion. "More'n - more'n anythin man, I - I promise--"

"I love you too, Bligh." He paused, unable to move from Bligh's hug even if he had the desire to do so, before adding: "I'm glad I - I'm glad I ain't human, just like you..."

Bligh cackled again, muffled in Andrew's shoulder, shuddering slightly as he seemed to suppress a happy cry - a few more seconds passed like this, Andrew slowly becoming uncomfortable at the loving vice-grip that Bligh had him in, before the latter at last withdrew to look him in the face once more, grinning to proudly show his fangs.

"And yanno," Bligh began, "Cody - he'll - he'll be right happy too." He kissed Andrew's nose.

"Yeah," Andrew answered. "He's gonna lose his shit--"

Bligh's grin faded, his voice coming down in sudden concern. "But are yew happy?"

"Right now?"

"W-well--" Bligh tilted his head, as though thinking the idea through, his ears going flat at the same time. "F-forever, ya - yanno..."

"I'm--" Andrew laughed, a nervousness, an uncertainty, betraying him. "I'm happy - as long as you're here. As long as Cody's here - I can do this if you - if you two - if y'all are here with me."

Bligh's grin returned. "We always gonna be here, Drew."

Andrew laughed again - this time more confident. "Then - then I'll always be happy."

Bligh cackled - he nuzzled Andrew's face with a grin, leaving a small kiss on his lips. The two held each others' gaze for a few seconds - Andrew smiling lazily, Bligh grinning back -before the latter, let out a contended sigh.

"So whattya wanna do now?"

Andrew thought a moment before shaking his head, chuckling. "Yesterday I didn't have two boyfriends--" He loosened his left arm from the couch cushions to reach up and stroke Bligh's ear. "--or these..." He raised his eyebrows, the smile becoming uncertain. "I don't even know where we would start..."

Bligh frowned, his ears going flat. "I get it - I'm sorry, man I shoulda--"

Andrew shook his head again, a weak smile emerging. "Don't be sorry, Bligh just - I gotta take this slow, okay?"

Bligh's frown relented as he absorbed the remark, and he nodded back at Andrew, slowly. "Ai-aight, Drew. We'll take it slow."

An awkward pause descended on the two of them - Andrew, at some length finally sighed, giving Bligh's cheek a quick peck. "Let's get up, at least," he said.

"Aight," Bligh answered. He backed away slowly off the couch to let

Andrew emerge in tandem. Andrew found his muscles too taut from being in the enclosed space that he had been, even for only what roughly must have been half an hour, and he stretched, finding his new ears twitching with the sensation of his body's loosening muscles. Through his slitted eyes he saw Bligh yawn - his fangs came out, his ears laying flat, and for a moment he looked truly wolfish, like a lunatic beast from one of the horror movies he was always watching...Andrew watched him in curiosity, seeing how in this moment of unguarded intimacy Bligh the human had changed into Bligh, the half-dog. Andrew saw now that in the time of his sleeping, Bligh had taken off his shoes and his jeans, laying them gracelessly by the bedroom door, so that he could nap with Andrew naked.

Glancing down at himself, he saw Bligh's precum was still moist on his lower stomach, caught in the fine hairs that made up his happy trail going into his leg-fur, and he idly smeared it around his belly as he felt Bligh get closer to put his arms around him.

"Hey," Bligh murmured into his ear.

"Sup," said Andrew casually, chuckling.

"Ya sure yer okay, now?"

Andrew nodded into Bligh's arm. "Yeah...I'll be fine."

They separated - Bligh was grinning, and he gave a subtle head-gesture to the overturned coffee table next to them. Andrew glanced down to it, frowning.

"I sure hope the neighbors didn't hear that..."

"Ya didn't seem ta care at the time," Bligh said teasingly.

Andrew rolled his eyes, shooting Bligh a smile. "Help me pick it back up, will ya?"

The two of them moved to either side of the table and, locking eyes to work as a team, gently pushed it back into its original place before the couch. With a final shove back into the grooves it had made on the carpet, Bligh let out a satisfied sigh - he looked to Andrew, who nodded back at him on a job well done.

"Where'd ya get this, anyway? Ain't from yer house, I dun think."

"Goodwill, actually. Got it for cheap."

Bligh seemed impressed. "Looks pretty good for cheap."

"I hope so," Andrew answered with a small chuckle.

"So whattya wanna do now?" Bligh asked. "Ain't yew hungry?"

Andrew shook his head. "Nah - which is weird because earlier I was starving." He shrugged. "Happens, I guess - you go without food so long suddenly you aren't hungry anymore."

Bligh looked at him askance. "Drew are yew sure? Cuz I mean I can buy ya--"

Andrew shook his head again, smiling. "Bligh - please, it's fine." He chuckled. "But it's sweet you'd be worried about me."

Bligh smirked. "Don't I always?"

Andrew sighed - he paced from behind the coffee table to come toward Bligh...but he stopped. He had, offhandedly, looked down at his own feet.

The sight stopped him where he was - what he saw was what he had known was there, what he had seen Bligh and Cody have, but now that he himself had them...

"Huh..."

"What is it?"

"My - feet..."

He dropped down to the carpet to examine them more closely - rubbing a hand through the lovely-soft forest of wheaten fur that now grew over his legs, down to his feet which he brought as close as he could without straining his muscles.

"What about em...?"

"Keratin - pads..." He murmured both to himself and to Bligh, running a hand over the smoothed parts of his feet. "And toenails - claws - just like - a canid..."

Bligh joined him on the floor, peering curiously at what Andrew was doing. "Ya dun like the feet?" he guessed. "Yanno they fit right in yer shoes, so it aint't--"

"N-no, it ain't that - it's just...you have to wonder...why this form? Canine paws are meant for travel over long distances - it's an adaption, I mean, it ain't just for show."

Bligh nodded. "Makes sense. Me n'Duke used ta go out all night - my feet never got tired."

"Would they've otherwise?"

Bligh nodded again. "Yeah - they used to. Now they never do."

"I thought so. So by turning into--" He chose his words carefully. "Half...dogs - are we supposed to do the same?"

He laid his hands back to the floor and crossed his legs with a pensive look to the question - Bligh stared at him, somewhat aghast.

"What're - what're yew--"

"I'm just saying," Andrew looked into Bligh's eyes to get his attention. "That nature don't do shit without a reason. That's--" He struggled to put it into layman's terms. "Okay, so like, everything in nature - it has a purpose. Whether it's weird or fucked up to us don't matter - everything that a dog - um, a wolf has, like, okay, or a moth - let's use moths as an example."

"Moths?" Bligh repeated incredulously.

Andrew nodded. "Moths. Saturniidae - uh - like um - Luna moths--"

"The green ones?"

"Y-yeah, the green ones - they have big fluffy antenna, you know--" He made horns on his head to show him - Bligh grinned, bemused, leaning forward to listen to Andrew explain. "So they can smell better. The male moth emits a smell--"

"Like a...pheromone?"

"Right! And the female moth picks up the smell with her big fluffy antenna." He wriggled his fingers for effect. "And they're so big and fluffy, okay, because they have to be - if they were any smaller--" He drew in his fingers, as though they had been weakened by a sudden attack of small stature. "--she couldn't smell her mate!"

"Then they cudn't have babies..." Bligh completed the thought, seemingly genuinely fascinated.

Andrew clapped his hands, beaming. "Exactly! And if they can't_have babies - um, actually lay eggs, but whatever - the species dies out - which is totally _not in the interest of the Luna moths, obviously. So they're not just big and fluffy to be cute, even if some humans - like me--" He sniffed at his own aside. "--think they are. They definitely serve a purpose."

Bligh pondered the idea for a moment. "So...yer sayin everythin we have...the way we are..."

Andrew nodded slowly. "Serves a purpose. We're a different--" His tail thumped against the floor at the thought - a reaction he had not anticipated, which almost startled him. "Uh, um, a different species - and everything we have also serves a purpose."

Bligh's eyes widened, as though utterly mystified by the idea. "So the - the nips, the--"

"Cum," Andrew finished. "Yeah. Everything serves a purpose, evolutionarily - everything we have serves a purpose..." He frowned. "I'm going under the assumption that we - we're not mutants, we're an actual whole other species now."

Bligh nodded slowly. "We a lot different than...jest reg'lar humans."

Andrew sighed. "Precisely. But why...and for what...I dunno. We all have different numbers of these--" He pointed to his nipples. "For one. So maybe we are mutants - half-this and half-that, not really, um, favoring dog or human."

"Maybe we're what they thought werewolves were?"

"Yeah..." Andrew nodded slowly. "That's a possibility. But even then - why in Tempest, of all places? It just don't seem - I dunno - there's so many unknowns in this whole thing..."

Bligh rose, folding his arms, smirking. "We got forever ta find out, yanno."

Andrew looked up at his best friend - his boyfriend, his soulmate, and now his comrade in a nameless, ongoing, biological experiment - with a slow, satisfied smile. "Yeah - I guess we do."

"Ya haven't changed a bit, Drew - always tryin ta figure stuff out like a Scientist-Man."

Andrew blushed. "W-well it's what I wanna do with my life..." He stood to join Bligh, taking his tail from behind him to feel along with it in his hands.

Bligh snickered. "Ya like the tail?"

Andrew let the tail loose to have it wag behind him - he shrugged. "I - kinda do. But it's still pretty weird - like the feet - they're cool ­_looking_but actually having them..."

"Really? Man, it's my favourite thing!" He took his own tail from behind him and, coming close to Andrew, waved it onto the point where Andrew's skin transmuted into fur about his waist - Andrew let out a giggle at the ticklish sensation, planting a furtive kiss on Bligh's cheek.

Bligh gave a low cackle, grinning - his fangs, which Andrew shared, proof of his canine heritage, whether it was from a malformed mutation or an elevated evolution, were proudly out, sharp and ready.

"I thought it was your ears," Andrew said.

"Do what now?"

"Your favorite part - your ears..."

Demonstrating what he meant, Andrew reached up to stroke Bligh's black, furry-velvet ears - the latter put his head forward, his hair falling into his face, shutting his eyes at the pleasure from the sensation.

"You like that?"

Bligh nodded. "Yessir..."

"Feel good, huh?"

Bligh nodded again, smirking. "Yes_sir_."

Andrew returned his hand to his side - Bligh's head rose, his hair coming out of his eyes in feathery cascade. He grinned again, tittering.

"I'll keep that in mind..." Andrew said softly, smiling broadly.

Bligh cackled - he leaned forward, and Andrew caught his mouth, and the two kissed.

Their heads separated, and Bligh pulled him close to cuddle him as they stood - Andrew took in the warmth, the smell that, without having bathed, was wafting off of Bligh in aromatic waves with every breath they took together...he shut his eyes, and for a moment he was not in Florida, but in the dreamtime-fantasyland of a West Virginia that used to be kind to him, that loved him once, unconditionally, as Bligh, if the events of the past day had taught him anything, always had.

He sighed - the emotion was too vivid, and he was not ready to experience it. "I love you," in a whisper, was all he could manage.

"I love yew too," Bligh whispered back - he gently bumped Andrew so that they could come apart, and they were face to face once more. He smirked. "We need ta clean up, don't we?"

Andrew laughed - the melancholy dispelled with the light of his current reality. "Y-yeah - we do, don't we?"

Bligh tittered. "I'm a little ripe, man."

"Me too - probably." He paused. "Wait - do I have a smell? Yanno, like I can smell on you - and Cody--?"

Bligh nodded, grinning. "Yeah - I - I was gonna tell ya--"

Andrew was somewhat taken aback. "R-really?"

"Yeah man! It's--" He looked away, as if trying to put it into words. "It's - you, man. That's all I can--" He stopped, looking back to Andrew with a wonderstruck half-grin. "It reminds me of us bein together back home."

It was Andrew's turn to nod - slowly at first, but picking up speed as he understood what Bligh meant. "That's - that's you, too."

"Thought ya said ya cudn't describe it." Bligh's smirk became knowing.

Andrew shrugged. "Maybe because I hadn't--" He struggled for the right word. "--evolved yet."

"Evolved..." Bligh repeated, a hint of wonder attached to it. "Is that what we did?"

"I - I think so."

"Well..." Bligh tittered. "Yer the Scientist-Man. Yew'd be the one ta know."

"Believe it, then." Andrew smiled. "We've evolved."

Bligh nodded - the decisive nod of finality and satisfaction. "I like it! Fuck bein human."

Andrew chuckled at Bligh's mantra making a reappearance. "It'll certainly be interesting - but - we'll do it together."

"Yessir we will." Bligh grinned, motioned with his head to the open bedroom door. "Now we gonna warsh up?"

"Yeah - let's go. Get your clothes then - put em in the bedroom, we'll wash em later."

"Aight."

The two of them set about gathering their respective clothes - Bligh's flannel and his jeans, Andrew's jacket and his shorts, which he regarded, on the way to the bedroom behind Bligh, with a twinge in his mouth.

"Won't be needing these anymore, I guess..."

"Do what?" Bligh stopped to turn around to see what Andrew meant - the latter held up his shorts, clumsily half-folded on top of the jacket. "Oh--" He cringed. "Y-yeah - bout that--"

"It's alright..." Andrew muttered with a frown. "I guess I just didn't realize--"

Bligh looked up at him, stricken. "I - Drew, man, I didn't--"

"Hey--" Andrew silenced him. "It's fine. I just forgot when you said - you know, um, pants and hats..." He smiled as confidently as he could, the permanent nuisance of being unable to wear shorts in Florida pushed from his mind in the interest of keeping things civil.

Bligh was unconvinced. "Naw - Drew--"

"Bligh, please." Andrew's smile faded into a frown that bordered dangerously on frustration. "Really - it's small."

"If--" Bligh sighed through his nostrils, a creeping shame in his frosty eyes. "If ya say so..."

He turned back into the bedroom, and as he laid his clothes by Andrew's bookshelf - messily cramped with too many books - Andrew decided that the sudden tension was too much, and he should change the subject:

"Where's your knife, by the way?"

"Still in my pocket, why?" He turned again to answer Andrew as the latter tossed his own clothes by the closet.

"Nothing - I just wondered, because um - what did you say was on it, again?"

"Uh--" Bligh coughed, suddenly awkward, as he entered the bathroom first. "Some stuff from up on the mountain--"

"Yeah you mentioned that. Do you remember what it looked like, or--?" He shook his head as he also stepped into the bathroom, answering his own question. "Nevermind, I'd have to see it in person."

"Why do ya need to?"

Andrew shrugged. "Just to study it - whatever it is has really odd properties. And if just Pappy was using it..."

He left the thought unfinished as he turned around to face Bligh - but it was what was out of the corner of his eye that caught his attention. He turned his head, Bligh with him, to see his own reflection - in the mirror.

Bligh and Andrew stood together, watching themselves in the unyielding surface of polished glass, the same portal of truth that Andrew had peered into earlier that day - what Andrew saw was what he had known, latently, was there along - the eight nipples, the swaying tail, the bestial canid alienation below the waist, the fat, plump sheath and testicles larger than he remembered covered in the same wheaten fur that grew like a vast prairie all the way down to his padded feet...

The reflection was, after all, magically strange - it was, familiar to him in the backwards-view of how one dreams oneself, in the gauzy, immaterial realm of the senses...it was he, yes, but it was he as Bligh made him - no, it was as West Virginia made him. The thought was fleeting, rapidly escaping into nothingness, like the terminal knell that sounded the last echo of a magnificent symphony - and yet, it was there, and however faint, Andrew could hear it, and see it...he was now the mythology, he was the mystery, he was the creeping ghoulishness that haunted the lonesome places of his homeland. He - Bligh, Cody - they were monsters, in the truest, purest sense...the uncanny, the hidden, the abhuman.

But they were monsters - together. They were creatures, alienated from the spectrum of biology that he had, perhaps wrongly, deified so long ago - together.

Bligh had called him out of Florida - back to West Virginia. His blood, pumped now out of a fragile human heart but one of a vigorous canid design, boiled with a legacy of a native species, millennia upon millennia of superstition - and evolution.

He chose to believe this - he chose to believe, now, this was not some cheap malfunction of nucleic acids, but something deliberate, putting himself above humanity...with the two people who loved him more than anything.

He took a deep breath as he studied himself. "That's me..." He turned, away from the mirror, to meet Bligh's grinning face. "...with you."

Bligh cackled - he gave him another bear hug, wagging his tail, before motioning with his head to the tub. "C'mon then, let's get ya clean."

Andrew smiled, chuckling softly, feeling a sense of peace overtake him that he had not known in some years - Bligh's presence, Bligh's love, was a healing force to him, even now.

He opened the shower curtain and turned on the water, Bligh hugging from behind as he knelt forward to test the temperature - seeing that it was ready, he looked back to him and nodded.

"Warm up right quick, don't it?" Bligh said as he followed Andrew into the stream of water.

"Yeah," Andrew agreed. "Never had complaints about it, even with probably four or five units sharing the same water heater it still heats up quicker than back home..."

He wetted himself down, letting the shower wash off the stink and dirt of two straight days - of the sweat from being overheated in the Grand Wagoneer, of the misery and isolation of earlier that afternoon, of the putrescent confusion of the night before...the water was cleansing on a literal level, but he felt it clean him deeper than that, the layers of fat the built-up mercury-poisoning of his doubts, his years of hiding and running away.

It was Bligh's turn, Andrew signaled him with a smile, and he moved to the back of the tub. Soon Bligh's hair became matted and wet with as well, and it hung before him in a straight, black-glistening cascade - he glanced back to Andrew with slightly narrowed eyes, his face once again warping into a lecherous smirk. He knew what he was doing in their own private universe of the apartment bathroom...taking his hand, he arched his back slightly, sliding it down his body, each of the three nipples on his side, one by one, as though to count, in sequence, each iron-hard abdominal muscle covered, sable body hair. Turning to face Andrew, the smirk grew into an almost Satanic come-hither grin, charged with a deliciously toxic sexuality that seemed to radiate, darkly, from his whole body - the sable body hair, the sharpened fangs, the frosty eyes, the beard, the canine lower-half...it all combined into a picture of irresistible wickedness. His tail thumped against the tiled wall expectantly.

Andrew smiled back at him - weakly, brokenly, through hyperventilated half-breaths, his nascent dog's heart, thus far untested, fit to burst through his chest in a gory effusion of distilled lust.

"C'mere, boy."

The phrase was nothing at all - three words, compressed with Bligh's accent, which he, unlike Andrew, still had, into two words - and yet it spoke with the authority of a god in the heavens.

Like a force of irresistible gravity, Andrew drew close to him, the shower beating on Bligh's back from behind, and the two were locked into a deep, loving kiss.

Bligh's mouth tasted, as before, stale - in bad need of brushing his teeth, like a real dog's, or a wild man's who had lived in the woods away from civilization too long - but Andrew, also as before, did not care. His tongue entwined with Bligh's - and now Bligh would lick his lips - and now Andrew would plunge his tongue back into Bligh's mouth, nearly cutting himself on a fang - all punctuated by one of them, and then the other, in a broken pattern, tensing, a spurt of precum erupting, from their respective penises - this exalted state of erotic and romantic perfection dispelling the illusion of any time passing, letting the moment last in a perfect eternity between them.

But at last the two of them of them stopped - both, at the same time, a silent agreement that something should change, something should escalate. The two's eyes met in the misty haze of the water and the encroaching steam - Bligh grinned, a stunted smile that remained in stasis on his face.

Andrew glanced down - an offhand gesture - to be met with the imposing image of Bligh's erect penis, the knot fully engorged, veiny...impatient. He remembered the taste from when they were on the couch - curious, gamey, putrid, delicious - but these familiar words, familiar sensations, failed him to force the recall to describe it.

He wanted to taste it again - he remembered Cody's behavior, Bligh's remark about it being addictive...was this what he was feeling now...?

A scientist. He was a scientist - even, still, now, he was a scientist. And a scientist discovers by doing.

He dropped down to his knees, his hands on Bligh's legs, feeling their softness become slimy on his fingers with the oncoming water. It was here that he could obtain a fuller, more complete view - and the alienation that came from simply beholding such a thing...he found himself staring at it, at every centimeter, the lurid wet sheen, the crisscrossing veins, the size, the power...

...yes. Power. It was powerful. It was thinner than Andrew's own shaft, which was, he thought in passing from furtive glances, pleasingly fat - but it was far better, far superior, in an eldritch and ineffable way. It filled Andrew's vision - it filled his mind. Its shape, its biological design, lay on the other side of a vast psychological gulf - a gulf that was narrowing, rapidly, second by second, as its unbounded muskiness assailed his nostrils, drawing him in to no longer view it as an alien organ, but as the new normal of sexuality...he glanced to his own genitals, which he had studied, flaccid and protected in its sheath, in the mirror moments before, and with the memory of Cody's penis with Bligh the night before, the equation became complete.

The sheath, the fur-covered balls, the tapered tip with the os penis at the base, the slickness, the foreign color - they were all normal, now. They were not abominable or beastly or malformed, as he had thought only a day ago when he had first seen them. They were like - no, they were precisely - that of a dog's, and this strange dog penis was only strange because he had not been born with it - but it was his now, it belonged to him, and he would claim ownership of it, delight in it, take pride in it...just as Bligh had done with his.

He glanced back up to Bligh's - longer in length only, if mere visuals counted for anything, but still superior to his...to everything about who he was, human or not. In that moment, it was the most beautiful and perfect thing he had ever seen - and he meant, as Bligh had intended, to pay due homage and respect to it.

He gave Bligh's knot a hesitant, experimental lick - the flesh sweet with a faint tang of metallic musk behind it - before licking again, shutting his eyes as the passion fattened fiery, building, inside him...he wondered if the same addiction to the fluid that was derived from this penis, and his own penis too, so soon having befallen Cody, would take hold of him also...

...he would embrace it, were it to come, he decided. Cody had - Bligh had - there was no excuse for him not to, as well.

He looked up to see Bligh's eyes, icy, imperious, training on him silently, as the tongue went back into his mouth, and his own breathing became deeper, his sense of self beginning to fade like milk into water.

Yes. He would do anything for Bligh, this boy, this man, this dog, who would, in turn, do anything for him - had done anything for him - it would be heresy, blasphemy, for Andrew not to do the same, in return.

He found his eyes returning once more to Bligh's penis - the hypnotic spectacle of reproductive power writ into canid-human form still holding him under a spell.

"Ya want it again...?"

Bligh's voice was soft, almost too soft - posed as a question, it was commanding in a furtive and insidious way, in the same way that he had spoke to Cody the night before. Bligh wanted him to want it - that same softness in his voice betrayed an expectation of Andrew, an understanding that the only proper response was for him was to say yes.

He was dominating him - he should have expected this. He had guessed, correctly, on the couch, what kind of man - half-man, dog-man - Bligh was, sexually, psychologically...he should have expected to be on the receiving end of orders, and commands, even if they were kind, gentle, wrapped in the same sateen as the way Bligh's fur, though wet, felt against his bare skin.

But he had no immediate answer. He still grasped the shaft in his hand like some phallic imperial scepter, and with each beat of Bligh's heart he felt it pulse - power. Bligh had every right to boss him around as he so pleased, because his penis was so full of virility...fertility.

For just a flash, he could understand Cody's fascination with getting pregnant even if he was male...it meant, as Bligh had actually done to both of them, transforming one's own body in accordance with the wishes of the penis of another. But it would go deeper, even deeper than changing one's own species, because it meant bringing a new life into the world with it, so that it was the ultimate, supreme submission of everything about one's self - it was the most insane act of love anyone could commit to.

And for that flash - that white, lightning-like flash - Andrew wanted that with Bligh. He wanted to finish the promise of seventeen, going on eighteen years ago - and bear his offspring.

It vanished as quick as it came, drowned out in the cacophonic whirl of arousal and hormones, and Andrew blinked, coming forward to lick Bligh's tip again, slower, trying to savor the layered flavors that came with it - the odd metallic tinge, the musk, the sweetness of the flesh, the viscid texture that would have made him vomit not a day ago but now intrigued him irresistibly.

He felt Bligh's hand come to push his head forward - and now he dared resist, looking away as a thought, wriggling and alive, burst inside his brain. No - he had tasted him before - and as badly as he wanted that taste again, it could wait. This was the time for something else...something far worse, something far better.

Yet he hesitated - there was something still missing here, some piece of the puzzle that made this whole arrangement seem altogether too odd to be palatable ...but again Bligh's penis leered at him, and the overwhelming urge struck him again - the lightning-flash to give his body to Bligh in an unthinkable, impossible manner - and he slid away in on the wet bathtub surface, turning over, rising to all fours, moving his tail out of the way.

He waited a few seconds as Bligh readied himself, and at a very fractional length he felt hands wrap around his hips first, before Bligh's whole bodyweight was on his back - he felt Bligh enter him, felt the slick flesh of his inhuman penis work his way into his insides, shutting his eyes in anticipation, having not bottomed for some time, and very unsure of Bligh's strange shape.

He found, however, that something novel awaited him - something he had no way of feeling before now. All along his rectum leading inward were - undoubtedly, he thought in very fleeting passing, as part of his new species' phenotype, further proof that he was now completely divorced, biologically, from the bulk of humanity - pleasure receptors, like lights on a runway, that, with Bligh's welcome intrusion inside him, fired off along neurons in his brain, making him nearly convulse with wordless, nigh-orgasmic euphoria...his penis let loose a spray of precum, as though in celebration.

He felt Bligh spurt inside him, and he whimpered, mouth closed, as he felt his body tingle with pleasure. The knot was still in the way, and his anus would not yet budge - Bligh put his hand to Andrew's chest, his open palm doubtless feeling the strong, quickening beats of a canid heart.

It was in this position, all fur and flesh and tails and claws, that they looked no different from two dogs, one mounting the other.

But Andrew's anus was unwilling to give way before Bligh's large knot, even as the battle was ultimately a futile one - he could feel his hole, lubed however roughly and incompletely by the slick dog cock, slowly, inexorably, but excruciatingly, give way, half-inch by half-inch, as he stumbled forward, bent over, Bligh's arms around his midsection, grasping the new set of six other nipples for support.

At last his anus could take no more, and the knot, already stretching him, at last went in, and Andrew found himself tied with Bligh - feeling, as it came, shrouding over the immediate pain like a solar eclipse, a sense of relief, as though the very fact that his ability to serve Bligh, to give him pleasure, could bring him peace...it was a new feeling, wholly new, but it seemed instinctually correct, as though he should have been made for this very thing...

His thrusts were slow at first, but gained rapidity - accelerating far beyond what Andrew had ever been used to. He made a grunt of protest, but found Bligh reaching to his mouth, silencing him with his strong hand, as the thrusts continued, and the pain and pleasure began to elevate, intertwined together in an adamantine bond.

This was far more savage, far more animal, than Bligh had let himself be on the couch - this was Bligh, to use a hackneyed but infinitely appropriate adage, unleashed. He was past caring if he hurt Andrew, or if his penis was too big for Andrew, because he had changed Andrew, just as he had changed Cody, and like Cody, Andrew's new body was prepared, ready, and certainly willing.

His pace had gone from simple, if aggressive, thrusting into a jackknife cadence - the rapidfire movement of his hips at last befitting his canine physiology in a way he had not employed with Cody.

It was brutally painful - and yet, Andrew's head swam with a ringing euphoria, and he dearly wished as he would still like to live and breathe that it would never cease. He wondered, his thoughts like lightning, if this was the semen somehow taking hold of his mind - if Bligh's seed was a mind-altering aphrodisiac, or if his musk contained some insidious pheromone which would render him helpless, as a complete animal, as a beast in the field...but no, he realized as he bucked against Bligh's rapid, savage thrusts into his own ass.

This was he, Andrew Nicholas Lightfoot, thinking cogently and completely, as he submitted, as he began to put a disgusting kind of relish into being fucked like this, to desiring more than anything in the world to continue to being fucked like this, the idea of his life before this moment, before being changed - unwillingly, at first - into a superior subspecies of humanity, of being a USF honors student, Dean's List, Biology major, with his choice of grad schools that he was failing to make, of being from the scion of some storied Tidewater dynasty...at first quivering, then swelling, now bloating, finally exploding, until the jagged shards of that life, his former life, cut into his brain with the same ferocity as Bligh's penis lodged in his rectum.

This was his fate, this was his destiny - knotted, tied, in a state of coitus hysterically foreign to that of any adult human in the world, to the boy who had saved his life from the mountain lion that dreary November day.

This was what he was meant to do - he was meant, from the very night a mischievous black-haired boy had terrified him with a werewolf mask, to descend into oblivion, to willingly freefall, abandon his humanity...and be a dog.

It all went through his head - every memory, every recollection, crystallizing into a terrifying and monolithic truth: he had always been in love with Bligh...he had ran from this those years ago, all of this, but it had pursued, and overtaken, and overthrown him.

He knew what sounds these thoughts were having him make under Bligh's commanding hand, he knew they were as immodest and vociferous as he dared - and Bligh must have heard them, under the torrent of the hot shower-water, because he bit into Andrew's ear, perhaps too hard, or perhaps just hard enough for someone whose lifelong love had just imploded into a desire that could extinguish the very Sun itself, and whispered into it:

"Mine."

Andrew made a muffled, halting, hesitating ululation of confusion, uncertain if he heard it, his eyes opening like a lull in the hypnosis of this diabolic love-spell.

"Mine," Bligh repeated, the same whisper. "Yer mine, Drew. Y'were always fuckin mine."

The fullness in Andrew's groin reappeared with an abruptness that took him off guard, and, with a long and quavering moan, still covered by Bligh's hand, he cannonaded a spurt of precum that was of the same volume and consistency as a normal ejaculation when he was human.

"Ya know how bad ya hurt me seein you date all them boys?" His thrusts had slowed, but had grown angry, as though wanting Andrew's ass to the feel the pain Bligh's heart had for the years they had spent apart. "Y'ain't gonna have any dicks n'more. None. Just Cody's - but mostly--" His breath faltered, and then became briefly broken before recovering, and with a punctual thrust, he finished the fatal sentence: "--mine."

His hand moved from Andrew's mouth to the side of his hip, as he bore down further, letting Andrew free to, without muzzle - as it were - let loose another yelling moan of ecstatic agony.

"Say ya love me." His thrusts resumed their previous jackknife pace, and Andrew whimpered as the pain went on unabated, still hot, still relentless. "Say ya love me--"

"I love you!" Andrew screamed. "I love you, Bligh - I - agh--"

His mind was becoming more and more fractured, replaced with an ebullient, transcendent rapture that was tinctured behind his shut eyelids as a monochromatic white with a red, pulsing center - for these fleeting minutes, he was completely alienated from the entire universe, becoming Bligh's slave on an categorically autonomic level...he could only do as Bligh commanded him to do.

"Who owns yew?"

"You!" Andrew screamed again. "Bligh - Lynch - I - I l-love you more than - than - than any - anything--"

"Say it," Bligh ordered through gritted teeth.

"I - belong - to - Bl-Bligh--"

"Yeah ya do--" Bligh cackled, a low tittering that rose to the same triumphant and victorious cackle it had taken when Cody was blowing him, but louder, more complete, more final - as if his life was coming into a state of totality that nothing else could compare to. "Andrew - belongs - ta - me - fer f-fuckin - ever--"

The thought was the tipping point for Bligh, and Andrew felt his ass undergo one last expansion as Bligh's shaft swelled, and his cannon of half-dog semen fire into him, in tandem with a ferocious roar-like sound that seemed to come deep from the caverns of Bligh's throat - filling Andrew with the life-giving elixir that he, in this state of sexual perfection, wanted to crave and partake of for all eternity, burning like the mythical salamander in a fire of his own erotic cupidity forever.

Unable to control anything anymore, let alone his own body, Andrew followed suit. In one long, agonized sound - like a howl, but twisted and half-formed, very much as if a human tried to imitate a wolf - Andrew's balls jerked up, and he unloaded rope after rope of grey semen on the shower wall, his state of rapture reaching a peak of superhuman levels that traversed the very walls of his mortal existence.

His orgasm lasted for what seemed like a full minute, the unending splashes of semen that Bligh poured into him reaching again an unbearable level, indeed as though he might rupture from the fullness of Bligh's enormous cock and overly fertile load.

His sanity - the thoughts that were his own - returned, and he was once again aware of his own body, of the splashing water, of the hirsute, wet-furry grip of the male on top of him, of the knot in his ass. His heart was racing from the ordeal, and as the memories of what was said - the dark-pulse of infinite desire, the call-and-response of the master and the slave that he and Bligh had adopted, came back to him...he felt mildly sick, mildly embarrassed, but mostly in stark and utter disbelief.

The fullness inside him was almost too much to bear - there was so much cum inside him, and Bligh was enormous to begin with, it felt he would soon burst from the combined pressure. It was pain - but it was exquisite pain.

The two of them panted together in silence, the only interruption between them the steady fall from the showerhead...Andrew, fully aware of how their canine genitals were meant to function, made no attempt to move, lest he hurt himself or Bligh - the latter perhaps a larger concern, worse, indeed, that he should get hurt, Andrew heard himself thinking, in a revelation that both confused him and, yet, made perfect sense.

"Drew..." Bligh breathed atop him.

"Yeah - y-yeah Bligh?"

A low cackle escaped him, vibrating against Andrew's spine. "Thank ya."

"No problem," Andrew answered, at a complete loss of what else to say.

Another breathy pause passed, which Bligh also broke: "Ya - did mean it, right?"

Andrew knew what he meant - and he sought, in vain as it turned out, to find a way that, in fact, no, that was all just heat of the moment, his overtaxed hormones from the transformation run completely amok all over the synapses that controlled his normal behavior.

But...it was simply untrue.

He remembered that jealousy, that flash, so brief it was nothing more than the faintest meteor in the light-polluted sky of a city, that he felt with Cody, when he had felt, however fleetingly, that it was unfair for the boy to intrude on something he long wanted...

The lingering flames for Bligh had never died to embers. All these years they had been kept sacred in his heart, and now mutated to a canine's heart, stoked in a hidden altar like some forgotten Vestal temple, and his mind, which was still sharp and still human.

"Yes..." Andrew murmured, now trying to focus on the water, on the falling droplets from the showerhead, to ignore his own over-fullness, thankfully abating with Bligh's knot slowly deflating. "I absolutely - did..."

"I know ya did. I heard it."

Andrew cringed. "Don't tell Cody - please don't tell him--"

"He gonna see it soon, ain't he?

Andrew cringed - again, harder. "Oh god--"

"Not like ya can help it--"

Andrew moaned, mostly in pain now, as he felt Bligh's penis reignite.

"Ain't that right?" Bligh cackled again.

"Bligh - Bligh please now you know I can't help--"

"I know--" He slid down to lick the pointed tip of Andrew's ear. "And Cody'll jest have ta get used ta seein it."

"He can't_see me like th-this--" He felt his penis, heretofore slowly deflating, at once spring back to life. "I'm the strong one he - you know how he is, you even called him _Pup, he can't know I - I'm--"

"That yer a bitch?" Bligh cut him off - it was demeaning, unkind, but he still spurted a bare dribble of precum inside Andrew as he said it.

Andrew groaned - to his own disgust, he felt his own penis remain firm at the epithet. "No, d-don't - I'm n-not--"

"Yes," Bligh insisted with a deadly whisper, his arms, previously hanging at Andrew's sides, now encircling him - half to entrap him, half to love him, as Bligh's very voice seemed to also do. "Y'are." He cackled. "Who was always doin what I wanted ta do back home, huh? Who was always followin me round - goin outta his way ta be nice--"

"Ain't that what best friends do--?" Andrew offered desperately.

Bligh snickered unkindly. "Now I know that ain't right..."

Andrew sighed - a ragged, humiliated breath. The dream from the other night - Bligh always being in his heart - he knew he was correct, he knew from even when they were teenagers and Andrew had first felt that quiver of love toward the boy that this was inevitable...that this moniker, this hateful name, should be applied to him, in truth.

"I - know," he said, his voice full with the debris of his collapsing façade. "I've always felt safe with you - don't you know that?"

"Then I'm gonna keep ya safe..." His face slid down next to Andrew's, his beard grating harshly against his cheek, his arms around Andrew pulling tighter. "...forever."

The word was blackly malevolent, but it was infinite in scope - it rang in Andrew's ear with a thrill of euphoria clanging dissonantly with the amount of pain his body was in.

"Oh god, Bligh--"

"Cody's gonna see--" He reared back up, lurching forward - Andrew cried out in pain as Bligh's too-large cock invaded his insides as deep as it could go. "--how ya've always belonged ta me."

There was a pause between them - the sound of the shower seemed to grow louder even as it should have been dwarfed by the crawling screams of Andrew's thoughts, a swirled mixture of shame and arousal building in his loins and heart...his breathing was still broken, still coming into his lungs as though the very air around him had been torn into ribbons.

His throat clenched, and he emitted a squeaking whimper: the pain in his rectum, and his lower abdomen, the unceasing and unbearable fullness that was dammed by Bligh's knot - none of this, even taken together, was as painful, as relentlessly needling, as the guilt that swelled inside him even as his own penis began to retreat into its sheath.

Bligh had degraded him in a way that would betray the honor of most men on a fully visceral level - and yet he now embraced it, even in all the heady afterglow. Bligh had never given up - either hope, or possession. He was always his - always had been, now on almost genetic level. And after all that Andrew had labored to build - all that he had taken a sledgehammer to when he moved to Florida - he did not deserve this...he did not deserve Bligh.

"I know--" The words were a high-pitched cry, like a small animal who had gotten its paw stepped on. "I know I - I'm your bitch. I've - I've always been, and I - I - I'm so sorry I left you--"

He choked out a poorly-stifled whimper, and he felt, against his back, Bligh's breathing seem to change - from panting, dominating and aroused, to slower...confused.

"Drew...what--?"

"I'm sorry I left you," Andrew repeated, his voice distorted with a building sob. "I'm sorry I left you alone--"

"Shush now..." Bligh hushed him, reaching around to stroke his face. "Aight Drew, I'm here - don't cry now."

"I love you Bligh--" Andrew managed shakily, feeling his penis come back to life at the very thought. "You - y-you s-saved my life, remember--"

"I love ya too - and yeah, I remember." That comforting, reassuring tone - fatherly, gathering Andrew into himself - had returned, and he leaned down to nuzzle Andrew's cheek with his nose. "Thought bout that every day when ya left..."

"Me too, almost--" He snorted back a suddenly runny nose, feeling tears come to him that, away from the pounding of the shower, would not yet be washed off. "God, god - I've never told anybody that. Never..."

"Not even Cody?"

Andrew shook his head. "N-no - not even--"

"Ya can, yanno, I dun see the harm--"

"I want him to see," Andrew cut him off.

Bligh took a second to answer: "Do...what now?"

"I want him to see - to - he needs to know. He needs to know that whatever he is to me - I - I'm still your bitch."

A low cackle escaped Bligh, and with a great wince Andrew felt Bligh's penis, heretofore shrinking back, return to life with a ferocious passion. "Why zat, Drew?"

"I mean you - you weren't just horny or - something when you said that, were you?"

"No," Bligh said at once, rising off of Andrew's back but still gently stroking his face. "No, no - I was gettin carried away, yeah but - yanno that's why I asked ya if ya meant it too."

"Because - that's what I am. You own me - you own my--" He swallowed hard. "--m-my heart."

Another moment elapsed for Bligh to answer. "But dudn't Cody?"

"He - does. But..." Andrew sighed, feeling as though he was at last being honest for the first time in his whole life. "...only because I had to make room for him. You were always there. Every dude - every - hookup, every - all of those guys, before Cody. You owned it. You owned me."

Bligh's cackle returned - that same triumphant sound that announced that he had won - Andrew shuddered as Bligh's penis gave a small - but still, at his state of fullness, entirely too much - spurt of precum.

"I - I'm y-yours--" Andrew stammered, moaning. "F-fuck - oh god, oh god B-Bligh--"

"Shush...s'okay Drew..."

"Bligh - Bligh--" He repeated his name as though it were a warding enchantment, the very sound drowning his pain, reeling back his unremitting hurricane of pure sensation.

Again came Bligh's comforting voice: "Drew...I'm here, man. S'okay--"

"Hold me - p-please just hold me - and don't let go."

Bligh did as Andrew asked - his arms retained the tight embrace around him, as though to bind them together with his own skin.

They remained like this for some length - Andrew took in short breaths, concentrating on the feel of Bligh's arms, the heat from his mouth on the back of his neck...it eased the throbbing ache in his abdomen, still ceaseless from where Bligh, all eleven inches and his knot, had lodged himself within.

Occasionally - wordlessly - Bligh would lean down and kiss the nape of Andrew's back, and each time, each time Andrew would feel his lips against his skin, the bristle of his beard on his spine, he would moan...short, plaintive, barely audible. No other sound was given between them for these extended moments of tranquil, agonized bliss.

At last Bligh began to stir, shifting his furred feet beneath him, and he leaned into Andrew's ear:

"Drew - listen man I gotta - I gotta pull out."

"No...please don't."

"C'mon man my back hurts - I love ya but I can't do this n'more, okay?"

Andrew sighed sadly. "But you feel so good inside me - like this." He had reached a level of raw honesty with Bligh, at last, that reflected the way he spoke to Cody - he could be as blunt as he chose without fear of being judged, just as it had been when they were growing up.

"I know, man. I love it too--" He tittered, probably in spite of himself. "But this is really startin t'ache my back, now."

"Do you love me?"

Bligh seemed to stifle a mild scoff. "Didn't I jest--" He stopped, seeming to realize what Andrew needed to hear. "Yeah, Drew - I always have, man. And I always will."

Again Andrew sighed - not as sad as before, but still reluctant. "Okay - if - you're ready, go ahead."

"Aight - easy now--"

Bligh stepped backward, gingerly...his knot, at last deflated enough to safely come out, made a wet, sucking pop as it left Andrew's anus, and the latter held back a groan of disappointment as the pent up semen began to gush out of him, landing past his tail in a slow torrent to the shower floor. With the semen falling out of him with the speed, however brief, of a faucet, and Bligh's penis sliding out of him as the latter moved the rest of his body - inch by inch, out of Andrew's anus - the pleasure receptors in his rectum, fired off, one by one, individually, as the shaft and cum made their respective exoduses.

Andrew, immodest and in the moment, moaned, low and halting, as he was overcome with sensation - as Bligh came out completely, and the flow of semen slowed to a far more modest trickle, his knees became weak, and he slipped to land, harder than he would have liked, onto the slick, semen-drenched floor of the shower, yelping in surprise.

"Drew! Fuckin shit--" Bligh at once got to his knees

to put his face to Andrew's, putting them both in the direct fall of the shower-water. "Drew, y'okay?"

"I'm fine--" Andrew sputtered in the midst of being newly soaked. "I'm fine, I just lost my footing, is all--"

"Well ya gotta be more careful, man - I dun wanna see ya hurt, now."

"That's sweet," Andrew huffed. "Uh - b-but really I'm okay - would you help me up?"

Bligh did not answer him, but instead made a strange noise - something between a growl and the way he would usually titter - and he moved his face away, scooting back, to something unseen behind where Andrew now lay in a crumpled heap.

"Wha--?"

Andrew had only a spare second to let out his sound of confusion before he heard Bligh give a truly malevolent snicker, as he felt it - his tail roughly moved out of the way, and a warm, wet, wriggling intruder into his anus, setting off the pleasure receptors with electric-like shocks to his brain.

He had no time to prepare or understand - he was only latently aware, practically seizing from the spasms of pleasure his body shook with, that he was being rimmed, that Bligh's strange noise had to have been his own being right pleased with the handiwork of his powerful, knotted penis stretching his anus. His penis slid out of its sheath, useless and helpless to the depths he had willfully thrown himself down into, as Bligh continued his tongue's assault - it grew to be too much, and indeed reached a new peak, such that he could bear no it no longer, yelling, helpless, into the floor of the bathtub.

Out of his hole came Bligh's tongue - shoving Andrew over, he crawled forward until their faces were once again flush with one another...and then he felt that same tongue digging it into his cheek, slurping across his face, so that some of the congealed santorum formed a cutting half-liquid blade to brand him, once more, as Bligh's bitch.

The very idea - the very concept, the very action of being laid low like this, having his face branded had a further disrupting effect on Andrew's thoughts, and he whined, near helpless, feeling once more the rising flood in his loins let loose, through his penis, a misfire - so soon after cumming, only a small bubbling of clear, musky fluid.

A nibble on the tip of his ear - which flicked, involuntarily, a new action he had not expected out of a freshly-changed part of his body he had relatively little experience with - prefaced Bligh's verbal signet to what had just occurred: "I love the way I taste inside ya."

"G-god--" Andrew struggled to manage. "Oh - f-fucking - g-god--"

Bligh snickered. "Git up on now, lemme see ya."

Cautiously, to avoid slipping again, Andrew rose, slowly, reaching out and catching Bligh's hand for support...he found Bligh was pulling him, and with the other male's strong arm he made it up to face him, the smeared streak of semen still disfiguring his cheek.

Bligh tittered with a smirk, wiping away an errant clump of sable hair, a fang drooping over his lip, as took his thumb to wipe away the slime from Andrew's face - gathering it to stick in his mouth and suckle, swallowing with a loud gulp, as Andrew watched impassively, still saturated in euphoric, sexual buoyancy.

The two stared at each other like this - both seemingly devoid of any idea what to do or say next - for a brief length, which ended as Bligh's face curled into another smirk, the same as before.

Andrew opened his mouth with a perplexed half-smile before he realized why Bligh was smiling this way...a weak stream of hot urine arced from his magnificent erect penis, splashing onto Andrew's legs and painting his own crotch with the faintly fragrant liquid - acridly musky, far stronger than a human's should be.

He instinctively recoiled some, before Bligh caught him, and pulled him close - a brief but deep kiss.

"This is what dogs do," he murmured into Andrew's mouth. "Markin their territory--"

Andrew's penis shot to life amidst the wetness of urine and shower-water, and another squirt of precum, far stronger than just moments before, jetted onto Bligh's midsection - the latter took a firmer hold of Andrew's body and, as the stream of urine finally dissipated and receded, he took a free hand to Andrew's penis, who answered with a low cry.

"I own_ya," he announced, breathlessly. "Don't yew _ever forget--"

"You - y-you own me--" Andrew heard himself reaffirm, feeling as though he could finally be redeemed. "I - I - I love you, Bligh--"

It seemed as though Bligh wanted to finish what he started - to masturbate Andrew, to bring him to climax, now for the third time, on his terms alone...but he didn't.

Andrew blinked several times, trying to recover himself even as his head swam with broken images and sensory overload - he felt Bligh's grip on his penis relinquish, and his hold on his shoulder fall away, and he fell forward for a split-second, for Bligh to catch him, a tight embrace, with a mouth rushed to his ear:

"I love ya too, Drew - I always fuckin have."

Once again a silence befell the two of them, Bligh holding Andrew as the shower continued on apace - Andrew could feel his abused anus begin to slowly, by small degrees, begin to close and heal, and he wondered if the accelerated healing he had personally experienced affected even that area too...at some length, he could not tell how long, Andrew took in one final deep breath, and he nudged Bligh away to kiss him on the mouth and smile.

"Thank - thank you...that - was pretty amazing. I've never - never felt that good before."

Bligh gave a low cackle. "Yer welcome."

Andrew pinched Bligh's middle nipples with his fingers playfully - Bligh tittered back, shivering some from the touch.

"I do - I love you a lot, yanno."

"I know," Bligh replied with a nod. "And I love yew too, man." He smirked. "I ain't gonna get tired o'sayin it."

Andrew smiled knowingly. "Never? Cuz I'm gonna say it a lot--"

Bligh kissed him on the nose. "Never, man. Not never."

Andrew laughed - the same warm feeling, stronger, seeping into him as an accommodative part of his own psyche.

"So I - so I'm owned now, huh?"

Bligh tilted his head back as though to survey him, his smirk becoming proud. "Title and deed, Mr. Bligh Allen Lynch!"

"And you're - you're being serious about--"

He stopped as he saw Bligh's head lean forward, and his smirk turn near evil in its glee. "What, ya think I'm playin around?"

Andrew swallowed hard. "I - maybe?"

Bligh shook his head, the smirk fading some, but his face still sly. "Nuh uh. I lost y'once - I ain't ever gonna lose y'again."

Andrew considered it. "And that means...owning me? I'm your property?"

Bligh sniffed. "Y'object ta that?" The slyness wavered but did not fade.

"Not...not really." Andrew shook his head slightly. "I...owe you my life, don't I?"

Bligh grasped him by the hand to pull him closer, taking care to guide him cautiously so that he would not slip.

"Yeah," he answered. "Ya do. Course I never brought it up--"

"But you thought about it - you said so."

"Y-yeah - I guess I--" He snickered ruefully. "Guess I shoulda used it against ya when ya wanted ta move, huh? That time - with the mountain lion..." He shook his head before Andrew had a chance to answer. "But I know ya - wudn't've made no difference."

Andrew sighed, looking to the shower curtain in something like shame. "There's no - there's no way to - to know..."

"It don't matter now, though, do it?"

"No - you're right, it don't." Andrew thought a moment. "Is Cody your bitch?"

Bligh shook his head. "Nope. He's my - well I guess now he's my boyfriend, and yer_my boyfriend--" He cackled softly, tail wagging lazily at the thought. "--but yeah, naw, I only have one bitch..." He kissed Andrew on the nose again with a smirk. "Only one boy I want ta _own."

Andrew blushed, feeling his penis stir to life again. "Keeping me - that's - it's really that important to you..."

Bligh nodded gravely. "Ain't ever gonna lose y'again, Drew," he repeated.

"I understand," Andrew said back. "And...I want you to own me. I want to feel safe the way we--" A feeling of nostalgic sadness crept over him, and he sighed harshly. "The - the way we used to be..."

Bligh pulled him into a tight hug. "And we will, man - and it'll be better this time, dun worry."

Andrew sighed again, less sad, but with a lingering worry that crossed his mind in the meantime. "Hey," he began.

"Yeah?"

"If it's - if this is so important between - you and me, yanno, you'd - you'd never have you and me leaving Cody, would you?"

Bligh pulled back, frowning, insulted. "Yew serious?"

Andrew shook his head. "I...worry--"

"Don't." He kissed him. "It's us three, kay? Always us three." The frown morphed into a lecherous smirk. "But he is gonna hafta accept I own ya."

Andrew sighed harshly through a lustful blush. "He'll get it - or I guess - he'll get--" He cleared his throat. "Used to it."

Bligh snickered. "Sounds good. He'll see this alpha--" He pointed to himself. "--has a bitch waitin at home."

Andrew blushed a bit more, pulling Bligh into another hug - a fractional length of silence passed before Andrew laughed in relief. "I'm never calling you that, you know that right?"

"Call me what?"

"Alpha- for fuck's sake."

"Aww, c'mon!"

"No. Like this is Teen Wolf or one of your dang werewolf movies--"

"Werewolf movies?" Bligh slid back to look at Andrew in the face. "Yer livin in one now, boy."

"We're not wolves, though - we're dogs. All three of us..." He smiled.

Bligh smirked back at him, beckoning with his head for a kiss - Andrew leaned in, and their faces met directly in the pouring water. They lingered there for a full minute before Andrew broke it off.

"Hey - um...we should probably get going."

"We should?" Bligh tittered again. "Sure ya dun wanna stay in here with me?"

Andrew sighed, rolling his eyes at how happy the thought made him. "Y-yeah - I do, but - we can't, we gotta pick up Cody later."

"Aw, dang - well, fine." He kissed Andrew on the cheek before pointing - again, with his head - to the ledge behind them. "Uh - what kinda shampoo y'all got?"

"Do you need something specific?"

"Well, yeah - my hair gets tangled, yanno--"

"Still?" Andrew said, before reconsidering the question. "Well I guess that wouldn't change--"

Bligh cackled lightly. "Naw man - and I wanna keep it long."

Andrew smiled. "You should," he said, reaching to grasp one of the longer strands of his hair to play with it. "It's you - it's a part of you."

They kissed again - with his eyes closed, and his lips still pressed to Bligh's, Andrew fumbled behind him for what was on the ledge and handed the bottle to Bligh. "This okay?"

Bligh read the bottle over, a frown appearing. "Wha - Drew this is fer people with blond hair--"

"Oh, right, sorry--" Andrew took the first bottle and replaced it in with a second. "This is what Cody uses."

"Y'all use two different kinda shampoo...?"

Andrew rolled his eyes. "Seeing as we've got more than one store down here, yeah."

Bligh tittered. "They got y'all comin n'goin, huh?"

"It makes sense for us--" A thought to occurred to him, and he smiled, feeling his tail wag lazily. "Though - course now I guess we'll have to get a third, huh?"

"Well - we'll see how this'n works, aight?"

With his trademark smirk, he tilted his head back into the shower to wet his hair - in the light of the bathroom, it glistened like jet, all the way to his shoulders - still holding the bottle of shampoo with one hand. Seeming satisfied that his hair was wet enough, he took the bottle of shampoo he had just been handed to put a dab in his hand to lather up with - as the pink transparent liquid exited the bottle Andrew could pick up its effervescently floral scent with a highly peculiar intensity he never had previously.

"Mmm," Andrew intoned, "I can smell everything better...wow."

"Zat so, now?"

"Yeah - Cody was right - like, it was, um, already there this morning but now - yeah, like he said, it's pretty intense."

He picked up the first bottle he had handed to Bligh and, opening the cap, poured some of the champagne-colored liquid onto his head - it was highly aromatic, but more subtle than Bligh's own shampoo, delicately perfumed with layers of flowers.

"Awesome!" Bligh rejoined, eyes shut, his hair near-white with suds, as he poured more of the pink shampoo to apply to his beard. "That's one part I like s'much bout not bein human n'more - I can smell so good."

"You shampoo your beard?"

Bligh frowned gamely, eyes still closed. "Least I can grow one - peachfuzz."

Andrew chortled."You still on that?"

"Eee_yup!_"

With a delighted cackle, Bligh stuck his head directly under the showerhead to rinse his hair, flowing in a nighted wave of shimmering black - Andrew watched him, watched him rinse the lather out of his hair, brush his ears in the same way, to glean, silently, how he would have to perform hygiene on himself for the rest of his life. He ignored the shampoo already on his head, slithering coldly across his scalp, to watch the display.

When Bligh was finished - a grand flipping-back to leave his forehead bare and his sopping hair coming straight down to his shoulders - the two smiled at each other, Bligh leaning forward to give a kiss before, noticing the shampoo, he recoiled with an embarrassed titter.

"What the f--" He cackled. "What the fuck are yew doin, Drew? Warsh yer hair, man!"

Andrew felt his ears go flat as he did as he was told - with the palm of his hand smearing the liquid around his hair.

"S-sorry, I was just - watching to see how you did it."

"Did what?" Bligh teased. "Ain't ya warshed yer own hair afore?"

"W-well yeah, but not - these - ears..." He raked the shampoo through his hair, pausing as he thought better of it, and moistening his ears also.

All good humor left Bligh's face as he realized the significance of Andrew's comment. "Oh," he said. "W-well...yer doin it good, though." He stepped forward to stay Andrew's hands, putting his own on the tips of his ears to rub the soap in - Andrew shut his eyes, beaming.

"Th-thanks..."

Bligh kissed him on the nose. "Every mornin's gonna be like this."

Andrew laughed - his tail thumped against the tiled wall in delight. "I hope so." He moved past Bligh to the showerhead, where, as he rinsed off, he felt Bligh come up behind him to slide his arms around his chest - and, in his ear, barely above the sound of the water, a warm, plaintive whisper:

"Don't hope, Drew - c'mon man. Know. Every mornin. Us three."

Andrew's tail picked up speed, and as it struck the wall in rhythmic time he laughed - he was seized by a surge of joy that blossomed into euphoria, absolute completeness, and the laugh dipped into a giggle as Bligh's arms squeezed him still harder...he reached up to squeeze them in turn, letting the water roll off of him, rolling a tongue over his sharpened canines.

This was what was lost - the missing piece of the puzzle he had detected mere minutes earlier, and probably even bigger than that...the remaining fragments of doubt, the last residual drops of fear and turmoil at least dripped off of him, as though washed away by the very shower itself.

The two of them stood there, in this way - connected, now inseparable, with the shower's water as an aqueous signet to the pronouncement of a new life together.

The shampoo that Andrew had lathered into his hair, and onto his new ears, down to his groin and dripping onto his legs, then his feet, had washed away long before he at last decided to move his arms, subtly, to let Bligh know the time had come to part - as Bligh pulled away, Andrew dropped his head to let the shower wash the back of his head for but a half a moment, before he swung his head back to smile at Bligh, who was waiting for him.

"Are ya done?" Andrew asked.

Bligh shrugged. "I dunno, I mean are yew?"

"Well do we - um, do we wash our - yanno--" Andrew pointed to his legs. "These?"

Bligh leaned forward, smirking. "Them's called legs, Scientist-Man."

"W-well I mean--" Andrew hesitated, smiling to guard his honest nervousness. "They're new to me."

Bligh nodded, biting his lip so that a fang shown from his mouth once more. "Yup - yup they'd be that, wudn't they? Well - naw--" He shook his head. "Least I don't."

"Wash them?"

"Yeah. I mean they ain't gonna smell bad none, long as ya get em wet, they fine."

Andrew looked askance at him. "You sure? I don't wanna smell like a dog--"

"Now that--" Bligh grinned, coming forward to reach down and pull Andrew's tail so that he would come toward him. "Little too _late_for that."

The thought pained Andrew some - the alienation arose like a shadow in his mind again, the idea of not smelling as he used to, the idea of it being a permanent state...

But he shook his head - remembering the affirmation in the mirror. "I won't care if we smell - the same."

Bligh smirked. "We in this tagether, friend o'mine."

Andrew felt another blush coming on, and he gave Bligh a quick kiss before turning back to dial back the water to turn it off.

"Phew!" Bligh exclaimed as the shower ceased from overhead of them both and petered out from the bathtub spigot. "Well did ya have fun, Drew?"

Andrew opened the curtain to lead them out - as Bligh came behind him, following, he turned to catch the other male's hand into his own, and with a warm smile and a nod, said: "Yeah - yeah I did."

"Good," Bligh replied with his smirk. "We can do this every day if we want--"

Andrew paused with his hand on the towel-rack. "You keep saying stuff like that..."

Bligh's sheath stirred, and the tip of his penis poked through just slightly enough to catch Andrew's eye. "Because I want it ta happen like that, man--" His face became serious for a moment. "Don't yew?"

Andrew nodded slowly. "Yeah...yeah, I do. You're right..." He chuckled at the thought, once again feeling his tail wag.

And with that, he unfurled the large bath towel from the chrome bar where it had lain, undisturbed, since yesterday morning, and stood back from Bligh to fling it out with a fwoomp that echoed fleetingly - taking the fully deployed towel, Andrew took one end to wrap against himself, and another to do the same with Bligh, bringing them together so that were mere centimeters apart, face to face.

Bligh watched the display bemusedly - the sudden closeness and contact with Andrew made his penis stiffen and lengthen within its sheath, if slightly, but he seemed more confused than anything else:

"Uh, whatcha doin?"

Andrew smiled in his face, giving him a quick peck on the mouth. "We only got but the one towel - the other towel's dirty."

Bligh cackled in delight, his tail wagging beneath the towel. "Sharin a towel already! Shit man I thought ya wanted ta take it slow."

Andrew rolled his eyes, blushing some. "I didn't mean that--"

Bligh nuzzled his cheek. "S'fine. I dun mind sharin."

"Well good," Andrew answered teasingly, "because until we do laundry--"

Bligh let another cackle, taking the edges of the towel wrapped around the two of them to move them in a rhythmic drying motion, up and down.

"How long, um--" Andrew, suddenly awkward, took his tail in hand to rub against it the inside of the towel. "How long does it take to get dry, you know, with all the - um, yanno--"

"Hair?" Bligh guessed, taking a free hand to rake fingers through his own hair, flicking away the embedded water clinging to its jet-luster blackness.

"Um, yeah - I woulda said fur, but--"

"Yeah, naw, yer right, fur--" His hand returned to his side to continue the same rhythmic drying as before. "Uh - honestly man I just dry with a towel and after I put on pants that usually does it."

Andrew paused in rubbing the towel against the back of his legs to consider this. "Ain't that uncomfortable?"

Bligh shrugged. "Sometimes. Cold, sometimes, too. But only for a li'l bit."

"Yanno I'm - kinda relying on you to show me all how to - um, be - like we are."

"Hey man--" Bligh stopped his drying motions to look Andrew in the eyes."I'd be glad to show y'everythin. Sure wish I had somebody ta show me..."

Andrew frowned, feeling one of his ears twitch. "I...can't imagine what that was like."

"Wudn't easy," Bligh replied with a sigh of finality. "You dry yet?"

Andrew thrust his hand beneath the towel to feel around his legs. "Kind of? Little damp, honestly - are you?"

"Well--"

Bligh took his end of the towel and, in a quick motion, unwrapped himself to put the remainder up against Andrew, giving him a robust rubdown - Andrew felt his body stiffen, and then relax, unused to the sensation of someone else toweling him off, even if Bligh was the one doing it.

"There. That should do ya." He grinned at Andrew.

Andrew blushed once more, nodding back at Bligh appreciatively. "Th-thanks..." He unwrapped the towel from his body, bunched up in parts where Bligh had handled it, and put it back in its place on the chrome rack attached to the wall...the two, now finished, smiled at each other, Andrew's warm smile and Bligh's toothy smirk, as the door was opened - and they stepped back into the bedroom.

Andrew went first - he sat down on the bed, as was his habit after a shower...his new leg-fur still very slightly damp, and he worried in passing about leaving a wet spot on the comforter.

"Well that was fun," he said with blithe understatement.

Bligh tittered, giving his hair one final shake to dry, before turning away to the pile of clothes he had carried in from the living room to retrieve his jeans. "Ya dun reckon yew'll git tired of it now, do ya? Yanno, takin showers like that - both of us, all three of us."

Andrew waited until Bligh had turned back - jeans in hand before him - to shake his head with a sheepish smile. "No fucking way," he murmured.

Bligh cackled. "Good!" He coughed, and tossed his jeans over his shoulder but left his flannel on the ground where it was, kicking it with a frown. "Dang," he pronounced. "Fuckin dirty - jeans are aight but this shirt is done--"

"Well you've been wearing it for like, what, two days now?"

"Yeah..." Bligh's frown deepened at the shirt by his feet - the clawed, padded feet that still kicked at it idly. He paused before looking up to Andrew. "Afore I get dressed, uh - ya mind if I use yer toothbrush?"

Andrew shook his head. "Nope - go right ahead. Me and Cody share one."

As Bligh nodded back at him with a smirk and made his way back to the bathroom, a thought occurred to him, and he smiled to himself.

"Guess we sharing everythin now, huh?" Bligh called from the bathroom.

"Yeah--" Andrew answered absentmindedly, rising from the bed to retrieve something from the closet where he and Cody kept their clothes - pulling the desired shirt off the hanger and holding it up to examine it, he smiled to himself. "Funny, ain't it?"

He stood where he was by the closet, waiting for Bligh to return - he had only a few moments to idle there when Bligh walked back in, jeans still over his shoulder, smacking his lips with the satisfaction of freshly brushed teeth, of a cleaned mouth. He stopped as he saw what Andrew was holding.

His reaction was one of frank surprise - his eyes went wide as he took the shirt - a simple red flannel which still seemed new, from Andrew's hands.

"Ya kept it--?"

"Course I did!" answered Andrew with a grin, handing the garment to Bligh. "Why wouldn't I? You gave it to me, remember?"

Bligh held the shirt before him in amazement - he shut his eyes to put the shirt to his nose, inhaling deeply.

"Mmm..." he intoned. "Mmm - what's - it still smells - new?" He looked up to Andrew, one of his ears twitching slightly. "Ya never wore it...?"

Andrew shook his head, suddenly feeling ashamed. "N-no - but it never got cold enough."

Bligh smirked, raising an eyebrow. "Guess that makes sense - fuckin Flor-uh-duh- y'all never gettin real weather."

Andrew rolled his eyes. "So I've worn v-necks for three years, big fucking deal!"

Bligh tittered, shaking his head as he sleeved the shirt on. "Least ya kept it - that means a lot, man..." He straightened the shirt, as still yet unbuttoned, to gauge how it would look on him."Hey, awesome!" he cackled - Andrew smiled as he saw what Bligh saw. "It fits!" He looked up to Andrew in delight. "It still fits!"

"Well yeah," Andrew offered. "I ain't changed that much and - I mean I guess we can wear each others' clothes then, still."

Bligh grinned, his tail happily wagging. "Ya dun mind, do ya?"

"Why would I? We're together--" He felt his tail thump against the wall, his fang biting his lip with pure joy. "I want you to have it - it fits you, and - it looks..."

Bligh smirked. "Looks what?"

Andrew blushed, clearing his throat. "You look hot in it, okay?"

Bligh tittered once more, giving Andrew a close hug. "Thank ya, Drew - yer too good ta me, man..."

Andrew smiled into Bligh's arm, relishing the feeling of enclosing security that this moment provided for him. "Anything for you--" he heard himself say. "Cuz you'd do anything for me..."

He felt Bligh nod, and from behind him he felt the breeze of a rapidly wagging tail. "I promise, Drew."

They remained in this hug for a full minute before Bligh separated them, stepping back and nodding to himself. "Aight, now - ya wanna now how I get my tail in them jeans?"

"Yeah, actually - ya gonna show me?"

"Yessir! Now watch what I do."

"Alright--"

"First leg in--" Bligh demonstrated as he said it. "Then the tail--" He took the appendage in one hand and guided it into the jeans leg behind him. "See?"

Andrew nodded, still watching closely. "Y-yeah okay."

"Ya got it?"

"Yeah that - that's actually how I pictured it."

Bligh tittered. "Ain't hard." After putting his other leg in the jeans and zipping them up, he bent down to retrieve the pack of cigarettes from his other shirt's front pocket. He came back up and motioned to the open door with his head. "I'm-a go out ta smoke, that aight?"

Andrew nodded. "Y-yeah, that's fine. I'll be out in a bit."

Bligh made his way out of the room, but paused in the doorway, throwing a grin over his shoulder. "Hey - ya know I love ya, right?"

Andrew smiled in turn. "Yeah I do - and I love you too."

Bligh cackled - low, muffled by his teeth, fangs and all. "I been waitin fifteen years ta hear that..." He let out a final titter, and out of the bedroom he went.

Andrew, alone, made his way back to the bed, pausing to kneel at his now-useless shorts, his cellphone still inside the left pocket...he removed it and slid his finger across the screen to unlock it - still no calls, still no texts.

There was Cody - the facetiously askance smile, the two middle fingers all the way up, the beach, the ocean, the sunlight - as his wallpaper. He was perfect in this picture - there was nothing that could be improved on him as a human being in that moment.

But now he no longer looked like that...more importantly, he was no longer human. He was different - he was, below the waist, canid and bestial, and above the waist there were eight other nipples in addition to the pair that graced him in the picture, back then. In the distant dreamworld of the timeline from then, until now, Cody evolved.

There were semantics to this verb that emerged, inchoate, from the mere letters and syllables they were constructed from. It was important to use the right word - applying for grad schools, he should have known this - and yet even then it seemed too strange, too outré from the biology he adored so much with its infinite and yet ever-changing possibility, to be real. Even when the missing piece finally fit - Bligh loving him, and him loving Bligh, and doing so openly, and being together, and only because they were, at last, both no longer human - this still eluded him.

Perhaps it always would. Perhaps - the truest horror of this entire experience - science, his divine guarantor of universal existence, could explain quite very little, after all.

He had dismissed the Bible since before he was a teenager - he had taken apart the spiritual from his life so many years ago. Everything, far into the past, could be explained - everything was cells dividing, or the opposite, cells undergoing necrosis. Death was inevitable, but that was fine, because some billions from now, when the human race was safely billions dead, the Sun, so perfect on the Florida horizon, would wax hideous, and engulf the Earth. The rage of Apollo would mean the immolation of Gaia - but perhaps that was he was missing.

There was some kernel to all legends - so he was nagged at, in the elective courses he took, about Native Americans and Classical Mythology and feminist-shaded Literature - and perhaps this was what was what the Europeans screamed about in their chronicles, about boys into men, men into wolves.

Andrew kept staring at the picture intently, contemplating everything that had transpired in the past two days, these thoughts passing, fleeting, but improbably connected, like a thin strand of fabric that changed color as it was unwound.

Bligh had changed - Look like I changed any? Yes, he had - and Cody had changed - and he had changed. Evolved. Despite the drawbacks - the capricious, potentially lethal allergies, too many clothes in public, which would have been fine for West Virginia but would prove, Andrew guessed, inconveniently incongruous in Florida - it was, after all, an evolution, it was the next, best, step.

He would live forever - with Bligh, with Cody. He was no longer human, and it was a tremendous sacrifice to endure, and to continue to endure for what would be, in mortal terms, eternity.

But he was the better for it, because - so too were the people he loved, Bligh and Cody.

And now his eyes moved above him, past the picture of the past, to the empty doorframe, the bedroom door open. He should pass through it, he thought...he should continue this journey, he should leave everything in this room, the old picture that meant so much so short a time ago, behind him.

He should go out there, he reasoned, with Bligh - to leave everything, most importantly himself, behind.

He swallowed hard, and rose, off the bed. There were other things to do, first - find his old USF cap and tuck his ears into it, find his solitary pair of jeans, or perhaps khakis, depending on what shirt he chose, either to hide his furry legs, and his tail, from the world - but that was nothing. He would follow him - Bligh, as Bligh followed him, as well.

He sighed as he pressed the power button on his phone to return it to sleep mode - his life was nothing without Bligh, just as it was nothing without Cody. Hiding who - what- he had become, was nothing at all, so long as he could be with them.

He stood off of his bed, and moved to the closet to retrieve what he needed. He smiled to himself, feeling his tail - his tail - wag, slowly, lazily, as though it had all the time in the world...and so he would, after all.

Bligh was waiting for him outside, and Cody soon as well - and now, he needed to meet them.