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Andrew, fully dressed - his new canid ears stuffed, thankfully easily, into that old USF cap, his furry legs and tail hidden by a pair of khakis, and the padded wolf-like feet luckily fitting neatly into an his other pair of shoes, some Adidas he had bought last year - made his way to the living room, calling Bligh's name...the open sliding glass door, the wafting, homey acridity of Marlboro Reds, told him Bligh was on the balcony, and Andrew stuck his head out to see the latter, cutting a devilish figure against the first dying of the Sun, a cigarette in his mouth.

Bligh's hair, still damp, remained lustrous, the color of jet...his flannel, borrowed from Andrew, was still unbuttoned, hanging limply on his slender body, so that his six nipples, and his inflexibly hard abs with their satiny black matting of hair - smelted West Virginia steel in a cloud of coal dust - could be seen in the open gap of the shirt, which swayed in the breeze of the approaching evening.

The image made Andrew's heart, his now fully-changed dog's heart, tighten - that strange feeling that he had last felt when he had taken that picture of Cody at Clearwater Beach...it was a knowing, a prideful knowing, that this beautiful creature before him was his, for all his flaws and faults, still in love with him, still his.

It dazzled him - Bligh dazzled him. That anyone at all could love him at all - even, and especially, Cody - dazzled him, but that anyone could love him all their lives, like Bligh, dazzled him the most.

"Bligh..."

With a puff of his cigarette, Bligh turned to greet him - a goofy smile. He took the cigarette out of his mouth, and the smile became toothy - showing off his fangs.

"Hey man. Jest enjoyin the view - yanno."

Andrew nodded at his open shirt. "Shouldn't you button that? Don't want people seeing--"

Bligh chuckled. "Drew, Drew--" He put out his cigarette on the balcony's railing, and then, flicking it away, moved toward him, throwing out his arms and slamming them on Andrew's shoulders, punctuating the whole display with a quick peck on Andrew's lips. "Why ya gotta worry, Drew?"

Andrew tried to frown, but his mouth made an awkward movement that ended up becoming a smile - he felt his tail stir into a lazy wag in his khakis. "That's what I'm good at." He sniffed. "Somebody in this family has to." His expression turned into one of self-surprise, and Bligh took advantage of it by kissing him again, more deeply this time.

"Family!" he exclaimed. "Now that what we is?"

Andrew chuckled, focusing on the patio beneath him for a moment before nodding - he took a step back out of Bligh's arms, but reached for his free hand, clasping it tightly."It just kinda came out, but - yeah. Makes sense, right?"

Bligh nodded - a quick, decisive nod of approval. "I like it." He smirked.

"Now - you have a family again."

Bligh nodded again, slower this time, his smirk twinging with the thought. "Y-yeah - that..." He stopped, the good humor draining from his face. "That makes sense. Ya heard what I said earlier bout my cousins..."

"Yeah - I only met the one--"

"Ricky Jay?"

"Uh, y-yeah, Ricky Jay--"

Bligh grimaced. "Doin life at Mount Olive fer shootin that guy at the c-store..." His disgust was palpable. "Not one of em worth a damn."

"Never really seemed like they were much of a family to you at all."

Bligh shook his head. "They ain't."

Andrew squeezed his hand, giving him the encouraging smile he often gave Cody. "Then we can be a family."

Bligh did not respond at first - he stared at Andrew, still in the revulsion that speaking about his family had left him in. At once, however, and without any prelude, he let out a cackle and, throwing out his arms and grabbing Andrew into another near-crushing bear hug...Andrew returned the hug, putting his face into Bligh's shoulder, passed his still-damp, drying hair, as the latter's cackle subsided down to his famous titter, before, for a full minute like this, it became nothing at all.

Bligh's grip softened, and he stepped back - Andrew was expecting him to cry, for tears to appear in the ice-crystals that passed for eyes yet again...but, perhaps strangely, there were none. Instead he was nodding, rhythmically and decisively, as though fully satisfied.

"Yeah - yeah, yeah," he said. He smirked. "Ya dun have a family, n'me neither, and Cody too - man--" He burst into another cackle, grinning. "Holy shit, it's perfect!"

Andrew smiled back at him. "You're right, it is. I like it, we - we're a family now."

Bligh embraced him again - less tight this time, before pulling away with a stolen kiss. Andrew giggled as Bligh seemed to study him with a bemused smirk. "But...if you n'me and Cody is a family - don't that leave Stephen in the lurch?"

Andrew shrugged. "Sometimes family is made, sometimes it's found - ain't you ever heard that?"

"Well yeah, but - that bother ya?"

Andrew paused, remembering his dream-hallucination when he had tried to kill himself. The memory - of both the event, and its motives, and the vision itself - brought a cold clamminess to him, a new shame, that made him shift uncomfortably and clear his throat. "You should know something - though. The last thing Stephen told me before I left, uh - was that I should say bye to you."

Bligh furrowed his eyebrows, dropping his arms to side for his hands to go inside his pockets. "That's news ta me..."

Andrew gave a nervous half-laugh - he turned his head to watch the sunset, unable to look Bligh in the face as he recounted the story.

"Well, uh - see he was drunk he, um - he'd bribe this older guy from the L-Burg Wally to buy him stuff--"

"I remember," Bligh murmured.

"Y-yeah - anyway - this guy would buy him Maker's Mark like every week--"

"Yeah, too good fer Jack--"

Andrew laughed, looking back up at Bligh. "Of course he was - anyway - yeah um, he was wasted and he came up to me and held me by the shoulders--" He gently took hold of Bligh's arms to put them on his own shoulders to demonstrate. "--like this. And he told me to say goodbye to you..."

"And...ya didn't." Bligh's expression had not changed - his eyebrows still furrowed deep.

Andrew shook his head. "I...couldn't."

Bligh frowned. "Why not?"

Andrew stared into Bligh's eyes - he hesitated, his mouth moving in a series of abortive attempts to form words, any words, words that would make sense to them both, some cosmic excuse that would redeem him for his actions and his behavior, even if it were only three years ago.

And he failed.

But he remembered what Stephen had said, remembered him still wobbling in place on the sidewalk, remembered his lilting voice in the mild sunlight of that West Virginia July...

"Because I - I didn't want to see..." He clenched his eyes as the enormity of what he was about to say struck him - stepping away so that Bligh's arms fell from him, slack, to his sides. "...see you cry..."

Bligh laughed - a soft, knowing, mirthless chortle. "I been doin a lotta cryin over the years, man. Not sure what one more day woulda done fer us."

Andrew opened his eyes - Bligh's face was kind, but there was a glint in his eyes that remained firm, as if he was holding back scolding Andrew more.

"Because I - because--" His emotions writhed raw in his own head. "Because this was stupid," he finally murmured. "This whole fucking thing was stupid..."

Bligh leaned closer. "What was...?"

"This--" He motioned to the entire state of Florida and everything it used to represent to him, as though he had created it, godlike, from his own head, in his own image, with a wave of his hand. "This whole thing--"

Bligh nuzzled his cheek - a small chill from his wet hair caught Andrew's face. "Naw, now--" he whispered. "Dun think like that--"

Andrew hugged him tightly, his regrets waxing unwieldy all around him in the long summer shadows of the palm trees.

"Cody is the only thing - he's the only thing that came good outta this." He stepped back some to look Bligh in the face, frowning. "I just convinced myself that moving - that this was the right decision. I wanted to go, yanno, I - I wanted a new start, a fresh start, I wanted to prove I was better than people who would just stay in Tempest forever like Little Bear and--"

He stopped, horrified at what he was about to say next - but Bligh was not fooled, and, sniffed to himself as he finished the sentence:

"Me?"

Andrew stared at Bligh for a second - he shook his head vigorously at first, but lost speed, stopping sadly. "I - I--"

"S'okay, Drew. I know I ain't done nuthin all this time..."

But his face, despite his words, had turned into a half-grimace - he reached into his shirt pocket to remove his last cigarette from the pack.

"Bligh, I--" Andrew felt his face go red, and his ears attempt to flatten inside his cap, as he struggled to explain himself. "I - I didn't mean--"

"Remember what ya said?" Out came Bligh's Zippo from his jeans pocket, the flame from it illuminating his face perfectly, like a picture in a frame. Andrew waited for him to elaborate - smoke poured from his nose as the half-grimace softened to something like disappointment. "How important it was ya did all this? Shit, man, I wanted ta do sumthin like that, yanno. I weren't smart, like y'always been--" He coughed, rolling his eyes. "Old bitch Forrest made that right clear..."

"Oh fuck her," Andrew dismissed. "She was a high school guidance counselor from Kentucky, she didn't know fucking shit, why would you ever take her seriously?"

Bligh took another drag, shutting his eyes for a moment as though to think - he breathed out smoke from his mouth this time, and his eyes reopened for his answer.

"Weren't jest that...yanno after ya left I didn't feel like doin nuthin - then Pappy got sick - so I cudn't do nuthin..."

Andrew sighed sadly - the truths that he had known for years given voice and reality before the judging glow of the eternal sunset."I know. I knew all that and I couldn't - what the fuck could I have done?"

"Move back," Bligh mused with a mirthless sniff before puffing on the cigarette.

A surge of outrage - useless, but by this point instinctual - shook Andrew, and his jaw clenched at the very notion.

"N-no--" he said defiantly. "No - no. Not even after this." He shut his eyes, his determination becoming so ironclad it was, self-consciously, verging on the delusional. "I'll be damned if I'm gonna look like an idiot - going back there with nothing to show for it."

A silence sprang up between them - Andrew moved off the railing to come back toward Bligh, his heart heavy with having knowingly upset him with his remark about being better than the townies in Tempest. It was probably nothing - Bligh inferring he agreed - but just as it was in high school, when Bligh's moods would frighten and upset him, so it was now, with the stakes, now, far higher.

"Drew," Bligh said with a grim expression. "I - I do gotta go back, yanno...ventually I gotta go back to Tempest."

Andrew was stricken with a stabbing, panicked anguish."Bligh - no, I - listen, I'm sorry I didn't mean--"

"Ain't got nuthin ta do with that."

"Well then don't - I mean, still, you can't - I just got you, I don't--"

He was silenced by the small trace of bemusement that curled in the corner of Bligh's mouth. "Ya don't what?"

Andrew took a heavy breath. "Don't - wanna - lose you..."

Bligh smiled - the same way Andrew smiled to Cody in encouragement, as perhaps he had picked up in the few instances Andrew had done it.

"Y'afeared yer gonna lose me?" He took a quick drag and exhaled, the smoke pouring from his mouth - he was a dragon, as Andrew fancied himself the day he had met Duke.

Andrew smiled, weakly. "Afeared," he repeated, nearly in wonder, "Hadn't heard that in awhile..."

Bligh smirked - he was being patient for Andrew's answer, but Andrew hesitated, then paused, trying to frame it properly. "Maybe," he said at last - the best he could do. "Maybe I was - and - am scared of...losing you."

Bligh shook his head. "Ya got me, man - ya got me now..." He slid his arms around Andrew, drawing their faces together. "And y'always will." He took another drag to punctuate his promise.

Andrew closed his eyes, shaking his head. "Bligh we need you here - can't you wait?"

Bligh withdrew somewhat, exhaling the smoke looking askance."We?"

Andrew nodded, half-smiling as though the question was obvious. "Don't you think me and Cody both--?"

Bligh tittered. "Cody needs me? Ya can't take care o'him like ya have been?"

"Didn't we just say we were family?"

"And we is! So why don't y'all come with me?"

"I can't just drop everything and go, I - haven't I been telling you all this time I gotta life here? It might suck but it's still a life..." Bligh looked away and Andrew shook his head - both, frustrated. "This ain't fair - this ain't fair of you to just leave--"

"Ya jest expect me ta wear yer clothes--" he opened his arms, cigarette still aglow between his fingers, to demonstrate his outfit. "--from now on? I gotta get _my_shit down here, Drew." His voice dipped, low and meaningful. "Because I wanna move here - dun that make ya feel better?" He lowered his arms, taking a long puff on the cigarette.

Andrew glanced away - quite in spite of how he wanted to feel, a lump formed in his throat, and he wrapped his arms around Bligh, his head to his chest, to make the distance between them nothing at all.

"That's - that's awesome, Bligh but you - don't you know - you have to know, I have to say this - how - how scared and alone I was today? When I woke up and - _nobody_was here? And I don't - I don't want to be away from you again - okay?" He rubbed his nose against Bligh's silky chest hair. "Even if for a few days - even if you're - gonna move in."

The thought - the very notion - of Bligh and he and Cody being permanent in such a way should have excited him, but the equal thought, simultaneous, of Bligh being away at all, made his new canine heart almost hurt with worry.

Bligh blew the smoke away from Andrew's face through his nose, again, like a dragon, a powerful and decisive imperial creature. His expression became serious and he looked to Andrew with a drawn-in frown.

"I fucked up," he said matter-of-factly, dropping the cigarette to the patio, grinding it with his shoe. "I didn't plan..." He directed his gaze into the distance. "I didn't plan any o'this--"

"I know," Andrew said, stepping back some. "I yelled at you for that - because you never do."

Bligh shook his head, the drawn-in frown becoming skeptical, as though of himself - he stepped back also, sighing with a slight cough. "I'm sorry, man. I - I really am, yanno hurtin ya wudn't the plan--"

"You just said there wasn't one."

Bligh chuckled, embarrassed. "Y-yeah, okay--"

"And why didn't you plan?" A thought, revelatory and illuminating, dawned on him - and as Bligh shrugged, about to answer, Andrew held up a hand to explain himself. "I know why. Because you - you've always been a dog."

"Beg pardon?" asked Bligh with a smirk.

"You always been a dog," Andrew repeated. "Before this--" He slid his hand into Bligh's open shirt to smooth over with his thumb one of his lower nipples, causing him to titter ticklishly. "--and this--" Now he reached around to feel for Bligh's tail, hidden down the pant leg of his jeans, and Bligh wagged it for him, his smirk turning prideful, so he could feel it. "--you've always - always been a dog. Guarding...me, protecting me - yanno, barking and biting at people who were mean to me--" He saw Bligh's face grow sad, but he raised his eyebrows, and persisted. "And a _dog_never plans. He just goes - he - he runs. So you came running after me..."

Bligh took a moment to answer. "So...ya - sayin it's a bad--?"

Andrew smiled. "Not at all." His voice dipped as he drew his face to Bligh's, so that they were nose to nose, their mouths mere breaths apart. "I'm just saying - I - I've been in love with a dog all my life." He swallowed hard. "What I saw last night scared me - but maybe - it was because I just had never seen your...your true form before." They kissed - brief and sweet. "I've always been in love with a beast."

Bligh studied Andrew - he looked puzzled, as though not being able to believe what Andrew had just said. "Where'd...that come from?"

"It's something I just realized - you kept saying how much you hated being human--"

"Well yer right," Bligh blurted. "Remember the werewolf mask?"

Andrew laughed, stepping back but taking Bligh's clasped hands with him. "Oh, no - no, no, - that was the first time we ever played together! You scared the shit outta me - oh geez..."

He expected Bligh to smile as well, but he did not - although no longer puzzled, his was an oddly neutral expression, trapped in the midst of one emotion to the next...his eyes glanced away, seeming to see somewhere else.

"That's it, though, I really did want ta be a wolf - after Pappy took me in, I wanted ta g'out in the woods n'live. I--" He coughed. "Never got ta be free - I jest wanted ta run, all day, all night..." He coughed again, harder this time. "I ain't ever told nobody that."

Andrew considered the thought. "I, um - I mean I never knew that. But then, you and Duke did something like that - at least that's what you said."

"Yeah, naw, we did do that--" Bligh chuckled to himself. "That was - ah, fuck, I'd give almost anythin to have those nights back, man." He shook his head sadly. "But way back then - I jest - afore I met ya, I was so lonely. Didn't have no friends..."

Andrew sighed, frowning sympathetically. "Bligh..."

"So I...kept dreamin and wishin I - I could be a werewolf - runnin around, bein free - then I wudn't need no humans around, jest the wolves, jest the woods, yanno? I kept that with me, even after we was friends - and - wait, ya never figured that out? Not never?"

Andrew shrugged. "I knew you liked werewolf movies, and you read a lot of books with them in it, but I figured - I mean I - I just thought you were outdoorsy! I never..." He thought a moment. "But I guess I should have. The guys on the team called you Wolfman--"

"Yew never did."

Andrew rolled his eyes. "I thought it was kinda dumb. Plus - you were my best friend." He smiled. "I didn't need a nickname for you." Bligh grinned back at him, squeezing his hand - Andrew thought a moment. "Um...there was that one time you wanted me to come out to the clearing down by the old mill - um, apparently you wanted to show me something, but I, uh, I had a stomach virus and never made it..." He raised an eyebrow. "Were you trying to do some, like, ritual or something?"

Bligh nodded. "Ya figured that out?"

Andrew dropped his hands from Bligh's to fold his arms across his chest. "Well why the Hell didn't you tell me?"

"This--" He shook his head. "This wudn't - like - me n'Duke, man. This was sumthin I never told nobody."

"But--" He leaned forward. "--why?"

Bligh smirked. "Cuz it was mine, man. It was my wish."

"Then why were you were gonna show me--"

"Figured by junior year that maybe - yeah, maybe then it was time."

"And then you stopped--"

"Cuz it didn't work."

"What...didn't?"

"The thang I was gonna show ya."

"Well what was - it wasn't bloody, was it?"

Bligh scoffed. "No, Drew, good Lord above."

Andrew rolled his eyes. "Well this is - this is werewolves we're talking about, so--"

"Naw, naw - I jest read in a book that if ya stuck a knife made outta copper into a treestump on the night of a full moon, ya get transformed into a werewolf."

Andrew raised an eyebrow "You mean to tell me you actually found a knife made out of copper?"

Bligh nodded, smirking again. "Yessir! Pappy had one from, shit, his grandpappy - I still got it, actually."

"And that book - what book was it from?"

"A, um - this ol book I found in Charleston when Ricky Jay n'me went up that one time, ya remember?"

"Yeah, sort of." Andrew sighed. "That book don't sound like something - um, Pappy would, ah - yanno, approve of. I mean he loved Halloween but - that was it."

A wistful look came to Bligh's icy blue eyes, and he sighed. "Why ya thank I quit goin ta church...?" He spat over the balcony. "Pappy told me, wolves are the devil's creatures, boy! When I heard that - I figured, well shit, I don't wanna be a part of no Jesus if'n he gonna hate my--" He stopped, raising his eyes to Andrew, an awkward frown drawn on his face. "--my kind."

"You wanted to be a werewolf that bad?" Bligh nodded slowly. "But you - I never saw you want to disappoint Pappy, Bligh. Not once."

Bligh shrugged, the spectre of Pappy's death, omnipresent since his arrival in Florida, hitting his emotions raw once again.

"Well ya - now ya did the same fer yer Pa afore--"

"Right," Andrew cut him off. "Right, I - I'm sorry. I knew you, um - lost your faith, I guess, but I never knew--"

"Well now ya do."

"And I don't blame you. And I don't blame you for - for not telling me - we...did share everything, but that woulda been hard for you, Pappy at the pulpit and all--"

"Well--" Bligh tittered. "S'why I couldn't tell nobody I was queer - not even my..." His eyes turned sad for a moment. "My best friend."

Andrew sniffed. "I hate to say it but - I get it. I mean after Pa reacted like he did--"

"Yeah - but..." Bligh smirked. "We're grown up, man - together, we're gonna live forever, we're past all that bullshit. We can talk about this shit and not get judged. We're alone - down here - don't nobody else but Cody need ta know what goes on between us."

Andrew nodded, smiling back. "I think you're right. Devil's creatures or not." He pointed to his ears, hidden under the cap.

Bligh sighed. "Funny we'd be talkin bout it like that - when it came to God n'stuff, I never seen ya think o'the Bible as anythin but bullshit...since we was little."

"Because it is?" Andrew turned to study the Sun, still spewing its swan-song of infinite fire into the clouds. He cleared his throat. "Ah, let's - not talk about religion..."

"Don't matter ta me," Bligh rejoined with a smirk. "I'd rather be a devil's creature than - well, ya get it."

"Yeah, I do. But - then, you..." Andrew paused, impressed, before looking back to Bligh. "You actually - you turned into - what you wanted..."

Bligh nodded, still smirking. "Man...when I found out I wudn't gonna be human n'more, I - well I told ya - what I wanted most - be careful whatcha wish fer n'all that...but yeah - yer right." His glance returned to meet Andrew's. "I woulda told ya later on, yanno, but - now was the best time. Everythin's settled, me and you - and whatcha said was right--" He nodded to himself. "Y-yeah - I always been a dawg - a wolf." He moved his mouth to deliberately reveal his fangs. "A beast ­- jest - like ya said..."

Andrew ran a hand through Bligh's still-damp hair, drawing him close once more, running a tongue along his own sharpened canines, feeling his tail wag, stifled, in his pants. "And who could love - a beast?"

Bligh exhaled from his nostrils - a warm jet of air that hit Andrew's face, wafting his conflicting aromas of musk and safety with the cigarettes, the shampoo, the shower...Andrew inhaled it back into his own body, and he felt his tail quiver with a stunted wag.

"Could yew?"

Andrew stared into Bligh's eyes - the portals of ice that he had know nearly all his life, and now would know forever. He nodded, leaning into the folds of the red flannel.

"My beast," he whispered.

"Yer dawg..." Bligh closed his arms around him, and, before he kissed him as deeply as he dared for the neighbors to see, as the Sun over Tampa at last gave way to its pressures of being eternally beautiful and smoldering violent-sanguine on the horizon, and set, he whispered, so softly that only Andrew's new canine ears could ever hear it, to affirm what had just transpired between them, what would transpire between them, in fact, for eternity. "My dawg, too - Drew."

The kiss - that kiss, that kiss into darkness that swallowed the day into their mouths, the day that had begun with Andrew awakening, anguished and in pain, and now would end in the arms of the man he had promised his life to long ago in a faraway land of mountains, and now reaffirmed that same promise here - went on for some minutes, punctuated in place by Bligh moving his strong hands to caress Andrew's new nipples, two more in number than his own, so the silent exchanging of tongues was interrupted only sporadically broken by a stifled moan as a new erogenous pleasure from Andrew's evolved body shot through him in an erotic shiver...

...until, from his pocket, he felt an angry, insistent vibrating - his phone, going off.

He parted from Bligh's embrace with extreme reluctance, letting the phone go off twice more before fishing it out of his pocket.

"The fuck?" Bligh said, glum with the moment ruined.

"813 - it's from Tampa, but I don't recognize the number...should I answer it?"

Bligh sighed. "Might as well."

Andrew swiped the screen, putting the phone to his ear: "Hello?"

A male voice on the other line, chirpy and jolly, spoke: "Ah hey, Andrew?"

"Yeah, speaking - wait, is this Tim?"

"Who zat?" Bligh mouthed - Andrew shook his head.

"Yeah, hey bro! Listen I just gotta new number - new phone, you know how it is - anyway um, you were Cody's emergency contact--"

A cold spear of panic ripped through Andrew's heart as he heard the words, and he turned away from Bligh, clutching the phone tight as he felt all color leave his face.

"Wha - what - what--"

"Yeah, um, he's been throwing up real bad. He's alright, if that's what you were wondering, but yeah, um, I thought it'd be a good idea to send him home, so if you could come get him--"

"We'll be right there, yeah."

"Alrighty! Just come on in, we'll be op--"

Andrew shoved the phone back in his pocket and nearly threw the sliding glass door open. "Get your shit and let's go," he said over his shoulder.

"What the - hey, hey man, the fuck's goin on?"

"It's Cody, he's really sick, we have to pick him up--"

"Whoa - Drew, Drew, slow the fuck down­--"

Andrew threw open the apartment door. "We don't have time - now get your shit and let's go." He turned back around to Bligh, who had emerged from the balcony, buttoning up the flannel - his face went from puzzled to worried.

"He's...he's sick real bad?"

"Yes," Andrew hissed insistently. "Now c'mon - are we a family or ain't we?"

Bligh nodded - at once, decisive and serious. "Yessir we are."

"Alright then," Andrew concluded, jingling the keys in his jacket pocket. "Let's go."