The Dogs: Litany - Episode III
In the small space of time that it took for them to leave the gas station and come to the front door of the Green Room, Andrew fucked up really badly by being honest. As he was about to try and open the door to see if it was locked - it was well after closing, he knew- he said, a mounting pressure in his chest that exited his throat like a toxic vapor: "Yanno, it's uh - it's kinda funny." "What is?" "Well, growing up, me and you I - I never thought I'd hafta raise your kids. That's - kinda funny, right?" An insensitive joke at the expense of the situation - it was the culmination of everything he had put himself through while waiting for Bligh to get gas, where his logic had led him...where his life, so changed and so altered, had led him, until now. Bligh stopped where he was, not five feet away behind him - those eyes of his looked especially beautiful, especially ethereal, when he was sad, when he was wounded...the last time they saw each other before Andrew moved they were flawless, and it hurt Andrew's very heart to see them. And now they looked - not quite as flawless, but close, very close, because Andrew had delivered a savage blow to a spot that was soft and unguarded. "What the - so yew - yew dun wanna raise em?" Andrew tried to backpedal: "Wait - dude, dude no, I didn't--" "What the fuck, Drew?" It was a leap of logic based on one small joke that wasn't even a proper joke, but Andrew could not hide how he really felt. He cringed as his hand grasped the door to the Green Room. "I - I dunno, I just--" The whirling trill of the crickets, still symphonic for the next month but doomed to be silenced by the cool of the October rains - the ambient roar of the cars on the street - it all seemed too loud to him, ringing in his ears as the regret panged in his chest. "I...I didn't mean--" "That's exactly what yew meant, man. Yew been actin funny since we left the house - ya wanna tell me what's goin on?" His hand still on the door handle and his eyes down into the sidewalk, Andrew gave an impassive little shrug, a deflating headshake. "N-no--" "Well why the Hell not?" He should have felt ashamed, the lingering submissiveness that came from knowing that, after all, he was gladly owned as a person by Bligh, but he straightened his jaw and shook his head. He made a futile pull to the glass door, papered over with scores of skating company logos and band insignia and faded fliers for decades-old shows and the obnoxious Kalashnikov silhouette with DEFEND POP PUNK beneath it - it gave off an uncomfortable jamming noise. "He was my boyfriend, Bligh then - you come down and knock him up and I - I gotta take care of kids that ain't even mine? That're yours?" "They're yers too!" "No." Andrew sighed harshly. "No - no they ain't. Just think, okay? Who's got the bigger dick and who's in better shape and who cums more?" Bligh's face turned pink - he shut his eyes, shaking his head sadly. "Man - don't--" "It's - stupid of me to think, maybe, after all higher volume of semen does not indicate higher fertility..." His voice, so full of scientific certitude trailed off into a half-hearted headshake. "But me and Stephen are inbred all to fuck, and - I - I know my limits." Bligh let out a long sigh from his nose. "Drew dun - dun be like that, yer - still in good shape, man, and yanno--" He stopped himself, growling in agitation. "Man - not ten minutes ago yew--" "I know what I said, Bligh. But - but maybe I was just saying that - to - to convince myself." For a few seconds Bligh seemed mystified - his eyes, no longer sorrowful, narrowed in annoyance. "So ya lied." "No, I didn't--" "Yeah ya did." "F-fuck - consider my position, Bligh, okay?" He hesitated, still fearful to stand up to him, fearful enough that this would ruin his relationship, his marriage, but unable to suppress it any longer. "Those puppies are gonna come outta someone who -who--" He staved off an unwelcome surge of emotion, his ears straining hard inside his hat. "S-someone who said he - he loved me first, and the daddy ain't me it's - you." Bligh did not offer a response, at first - his lips pressed together in a different kind of frown, something defiant, something demanding, and Andrew's eyebrows flicked together over his nose as he half-expected Bligh to reprimand him for questioning how he wanted things done. For a lapsing second the true horror of Andrew's bitchdom crashed into him, as what he had willfully ignored was revealed to him, how deeply patriarchal Bligh was - how he, Andrew, had allowed their entire lives to slip into a paternal autocracy with Bligh as its head. But instead, Bligh did something Andrew had not expected - he apologized: "Well then I'm sorry, man." "I am too," Andrew said, near-automatically. Another brief, uncomfortable pause as Bligh smooshed an imaginary bug on the asphalt with the toe of his boot. "But - Drew, man, yew definitely said--" "I say a lotta things!" Andrew retorted dismissively, calling on long-forgotten reserves of courage. He tried to tug the door open again - he knew it was locked but the kinetic burst helped him, somehow, in this battle of wills he had accidentally started. Bligh remained unyielding - he folded his arms, tilting his head back some, his mouth becoming a firm line. "Then what yew gonna do?" Andrew knew the answer - this had all been an exercise in futility, Bligh needed to hear what was going on inside his head and heart even if it could not change the circumstance of Andrew cuckolded, Cody pregnant. "I'm gonna raise your damn kids, Bligh," he said, in a low voice of dying anger. This whole time his tail had been perfectly still with dread anxiety, but it betrayed him, the thought of a family, however distant, however monstrous, made it wag - a slight vibration in his khakis. Bligh fiddled with the cigarette pack in his shirt pocket, an abortive, nervous gesture. "I kinda dun like the way that sounds..." "I ain't - gotta choice," Andrew answered, the same low tone. He looked past Bligh - to the emptying asphalt-wasteland parking lot splotched with the leprous lights of the streetlamps that were starting to come on, the road with its anonymous bleary-lighted cars and the ritzy beach condos that rose sinisterly behind choking palms and oaks on the other side of it. He looked past Bligh to memories he now wasn't even sure were real. "Even if it weren't for Cody - making sure he's okay, which - I'd die for him, we both know that--" "Dun say that," Bligh murmured. "Even if weren't - for - him..." Andrew pressed - he paused, trying to choose his words carefully. "It's...still you." Bligh folded his arms again. "Wazzat s'posed ta mean." "It means - ever since you shot that mountain lion in the head, this - something like this - was gonna - was gonna happen." He swallowed hard. "Understand? I never really had a damn choice." Bligh shook his head slow - Andrew rolled his eyes. "We - this is just a hunch now, but it means - we were always meant to do - something like this." He sighed. "Maybe a little less fucked up, but--" "What, like fate? S'fucked up way o'tellin me yew love me, Drew." Andrew shrugged. "I mean if it weren't for you, I'd be dead. So I - not to be cliché - fuck I even hate saying this, but - I can't quit you." He jerked the door handle again. "Ever. Even if it means - raising young'uns that ain't my own, fathered by my best friend and mothered by - someone who started out being just mine. I mean - I mean shit, you were better at everything back home anyway, except grades, so - so no wonder you could do in one try what I..." He realized the absurdity, situational and historical, of what he was about to say, but he went on, smiling to himself. "...what I tried to do too many times to fucking count." Bligh absorbed what Andrew said, but he seemed unimpressed. "A hunch, huh?" "Yeah - y-yeah. A hunch." Taking a few steps forward, his hands thrust to his pockets, Bligh still seemed skeptical - or tried to seem that way, to guard being hurt. "Thought yew hated hunches - all about ya some scientific ev-uh-dense." Andrew turned back to the door - there was the sound of a key entering a lock. "I have said that in the past, haven't I?" He wasn't sure if Bligh wanted to answer him or not, and in either case he was cut off by the door swinging open - standing on the other side was a woman, slightly shorter than Andrew, with glossy bobbed black hair that came straight down to her shoulders, a pretty oval face framed by a pair of thick black glasses that accented eyes that near-glowed with a luminous brown, rose-petal red lipstick and flawless olivine skin. She wore a purple shirt - John Varvatos, Andrew noted, rather expensive - with jeggings that terminated in a pair of near-matching purple Tom's. She smiled in that delightful, joyous way so rare amongst women, indeed amongst people - in an instant you could feel the joie de vivre, the ecstasy of merely being alive, from that one, single smile. "Hey you!" she said in a raucous Nuyorican accent, throwing her arms around Andrew in a hug. "How you doin!" "Hey Gabby," Andrew said, forcing a friendly smile. "How's it been?" "Good, good, good! I hadn't--" She cut herself off as she noticed Bligh, and the red lips curved into a bemused expression."Who's this, who's ya friend?" Bligh stepped forward, cleared his throat and smiled without showing his teeth. He thrust out his hand, and gave a half-nod of acknowledgment as he introduced himself - "Bligh, Bligh Lynch" - all, the action of a humble good ol mountain boy that a month in Florida could do nothing to erase. "Oh so you're Bligh!" Gabby said with another delightful laugh as she took Bligh's hand. "Cody's talked about you, ya know, what, so--" Her hand returned to her, she used it to point at Bligh. "He's roomin with you guys? Amirite?" "Yes ma'am," Bligh affirmed. "Moved down ere last month." The laugh returned, less delightful, more amused: "Ohmigawd, that accent! That's so cute! I've never heard anyone talk like that in real life!" A touch of pink came back to Bligh's face as she went on: "And - oh, oh, oh! Oh honey please don't call me ma'am, ya make me feel old!" A perplexed look crossed Bligh's face - Andrew sensed at once that he had never in his life heard someone utter such an absurdity, which he himself was so used to hearing in the egalitarian anarchy of the New South. "Yeah - yeah, that's right," he answered for Bligh. "I'm sure Cody told you, he's my best friend, from back home--" "In West V.A., ya, ya I know." She smiled at Bligh - the same smile of infinite joy, who answered with a polite smirk. "We known Andy for ages!" She struck to Andrew to strike him lightly on the shoulder with the back of her hand. "How long, how long Andy?" Andrew chuckled. "Since, um - since I moved to Tampa..." "Ohmigawd that feels like foreva ago, don't it?" She patted him on the arm. "Don't it? And now little Davey, he's growin up too quick, he'll be in junior high!" "Yeah, yeah he will," Andrew replied with another chuckle. "You still want him tutored, right? Last we - we spoke you said you wanted to wait some--" Gabby laughed, a kind of high-pitched chortle that brought the back of her hand to her mouth in something like embarrassment. "Oh yes - oh honey, yes--" She laid her hand on Andrew's shoulder. "He's doin okay so far, so far, but yanno it's Earth science this year--" "That can be tough," Andrew concurred with a small smile. "I'll definitely be here for that if y'all need me." He wondered if, behind him, Bligh could catch it, the way he was speaking, the way he was acting, the effortless, empty, charm of his father, how meaningless his words were, how this conversation did not matter and only Andrew knew it...he knew how distasteful he found it, anytime Archie Lightfoot's corrupted, inbred DNA found its way to blossom into Andrew's voice, Andrew's heart... Gabby shifted where she stood. "So whatchu doin here honey, you come ta see Cody?" "Well, it's..." He shot a glance that nearly betrayed a transparent worry to Bligh who, detecting he was needed, cleared his throat and spoke up: "It's, uh - it's a lil hard fer em ta talk bout but his - his mama fell down the steps and, we gotta go up north n'see her, n'we think Cody needs ta come up with - uh - with us, n'we - dunno how long that'll be." Would this be happening to someone else it would have been an element of light comedy - but it was happening to him, to Andrew, and his whole body froze in mortification, in barely suppressed rage. They had not, it was true, agreed upon a plan, on what to say, not even as they got there - there was vague mention of a family emergency but never exactly what the emergency was. It was a poor choice - improvable, yes, it was in bad taste, appallingly bad taste. As Gabby gasped and put her hands to her face in abject horror, Andrew's eyes slowly turned to Bligh in a glance that could have murdered him, had it the power to. But Gabby thrust out her arms and pulled him into a hug that only mother could make, complete warmth, complete comfort, utterly undeserved, it made Andrew's whole body shriek with an embarrassment he did not think capable of feeling. "Oh Andy honey," she whispered, a practiced, polished maternity in the words. "I am so - so sorry." Her hug did not relent as much as Andrew wanted it to - needed it to - and he swallowed, hard, his discomfort and his humiliation falling back into his throat in the same action. "It's - it's okay," he managed, pulling out of her hug with a humility that was partially forced, partially genuine. "It's okay. We - just need him up there with us, and--" He tried not to grit his teeth as he echoed Bligh's words. "We really don't know how long that'll be." Gabby flipped her hair, face still full of concern. "So - you takin Cody with?" Andrew hesitated - he did not mean to, one slip-up and even she, who trusted him enough to be alone with her own child for hours on end while tutoring him, would know that he was lying. But he hesitated, gravely, crucially, before answered with a succession of nods - Gabby, he saw, reading her, did not notice. "Yeah, he does. I'd like the whole family there - and he's--" He smiled to himself, knowing the truth behind it. "He's family too." Gabby waved a hand. "Ohmigawd you guys are so cute, it's disgustin--" She looked to Bligh to support her. "Isn't it disgustin? How cute they are?" Bligh tittered, his mouth closed, hiding his teeth - Andrew could only guess how hilarious he truly must have found this. "Sure are - cute as can be." Gabby laughed at the remark. "And that accent!" she exclaimed again. "Okay Andy honey come on in, we're doin inventory so watch ya step, it's a little messy." They entered to find the Green Room was the same as it usually was: the sensory overload of skating paraphernalia, the endless papered chaos of old band logos and flyers from long-ago punk shows, the saluting rows of skateboards lined up smartly against the wall above the black vinyl couches like the muskets at the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg - it crossed Andrew's mind every time - but Gabby was right when she said messy. There were piles of shoeboxes, many of them half-open - shirts in chaotic puddles of differing colors and sizes - boards in what looked like an aborted attempt of organization from off the wall behind the cash register. But the thing Andrew noticed immediately was how quiet it was - the Green Room was usually loud, really loud, pumping through the speakers with something, The Killers, Unknown Hinson, Social Distortion, Black Flag...but now the store had closed, the music was off. The only sound was, faintly, a high-pitched electronic beep in an irregular pattern - three sets of them, it sounded like - and one of them, Andrew knew, by smell, with just a quick inhale, was Cody. Of the many things he went back and forth on about his new body even a month on, being able to know his two mates by smell was something he had learned to unquestionably love - every time one of them came home from work, or when he met them somewhere and hadn't seen them in some hours, that rush of scent, that feeling of being close to them in a way no one else in the entire world could fathom, made him, as few things did, happy. "Cody..." he said - to himself, but Gabby, in front of them, leading the way, heard him, and turned around with one of her charming little laughs. "Yeah, yeah, lemme go get him, he's in the back with Tim and Davey--" "Davey's here?" asked Andrew. "Oh yuh, he's helping me and Tim and Cody do inventory - we gotta get everything counted cuz, yanno, Christmas." She threw mockery on the last word - Andrew smiled politely at the joke. "But yeah Cody, uh - Cody volunteered to stay, cuz yanno, he's Cody, so we let em." "He volunteered," Bligh murmured back. Gabby nodded. "Yuh huh! He's always doin that - right, Andy?" "Yeah," Andrew said with a chuckle that he hoped did not sound as mirthless as it was. "Yeah, yeah he is." "So we got these guns, right? And they're supposed to scan the barcode and then it tells our computer how much of what we have, right?" "Right," Andrew answered. "Yeah! It makes everything so much easier, yanno back in the day--" Whatever story she was about to tell - turning around, accenting every word as she always did with a wave of her hands, was interrupted by the stockroom door, which sat behind the glass display case and the cash register underneath the formidably enormous black-and-white picture oh Alan Gelfand doing an ollie, swinging open. Out stepped Cody, first - in his Vans hoodie he had bought himself a few weeks ago and jeans, with a grey plastic scanning gun in hand, he was sniffing the air with a deeply puzzled look on his cute, boyish face, and Andrew realized, a warm feeling building in his chest, he had smelled he and Bligh before he had seen them. Cody stopped behind the display case, setting down his scanning gun, his head tilted in further bepuzzlement as he saw Bligh and Andrew with Gabby. "Hey Baby," Andrew greeted. "Hey - hey guys," Cody answered. From behind him emerge two males, each of them wielding scanning guns of their own: The first - Tim, smiling and waving at Andrew as they neared each other - was a corpulent but jolly-looking man with shaved head and gauged ears, one arm covered in an intricate style of a well-known New York tattooist, wearing a plain black shirt with an embossed picture of Morrissey. The second, Davey, who, taking a cue from his father and also waving was a boy, no more than eleven, short, rather chubby, with freshly-trimmed dark brown hair - he was dressed similar to Cody, his jeans tight in the latest style. Tim spoke first: "Well hey, fellas! Fancy seeing you here." "Hey Tim and - Davey, how're y'all?" Davey shrugged. "Mami and Dad are making me help with inventory - so - yeah." Andrew chuckled. "Sorry to hear that." "Yeah," Davey huffed. Gabby interrupted the smalltalk: "Cody honey, they're uh - they're for ya, actually." "Well what's up, you guys never visit me at work unless--" Andrew cleared his throat to start. "Baby it's - it's my mom--" He swallowed, the will to lie dangerously fading with every vowel. "My mom fell down the stairs, and uh - she's really bad, Baby. We have to go - we have to go visit her, I - didn't call you because I - wanted to tell you in person." "That's awful!" Tim exclaimed. "Did it happen today?" "Yeah - yeah, happened this afternoon." Tim frowned with a slow headshake. "Oh, man." Cody's reaction would have been, at any other time, in any other situation, priceless: his face did not change, nor did his tone, all that he was able to say was: "Really." "Y-yeah," Andrew went on. "We - we gotta take you home and get packed up--" Cody's eyes narrowed for a split-second - Andrew could tell he was no fool, particularly to this, he had suspected a ruse and had smelt one as surely as he had smelt the two of them coming in the store. His ears wanted to flatten as his boyfriend stared him down. Davey set his scanning gun down on the glass display case. "You have to go, huh?" Gabby shook her head, still concerned with how Andrew must be feeling. "Yeah - yeah, but you're mom said you're doing okay this school year, right?" Davey shrugged. "Yeah, it's pretty okay so far." "Is she okay?" Cody asked in a lifeless tone. "We - we dunno--" "I had an uncle fall down the stairs once," Tim said to Gabby. "It was bad, real bad." Davey was becoming restless with all the adults talking. "What's so bad about falling down the stairs?" "Well you can break a lot of bones," Tim answered matter-of-factly. "Sometimes people even die when they're old and they slip and fall like that." Davey's eyes widened. "Whoa." "Yes whoa," Tim said with a nod. "Wait, which uncle?" asked Gabby, distracted. "You don't remember Uncle Ora, came to the wedding?" Gabby gasped. "Ohmigawd, yes! And he was still on crutches, oh--" She turned to Cody to grab his shoulder. "Cody honey this is serious, you really should go with." Cody's hazel eyes drilled into Andrew's. "I guess we're leaving soon?" he asked, still lifeless. "Tomorrow," Bligh answered with a confidence that Andrew now longed to have. A small silence wedged between them as it became apparent they were waiting on Cody to decide - he sighed, quick, acquiescing, probably knowing that, somehow, and sooner or later, he would have to submit to whatever plan was being hatched. "Is that okay with you, Gabby?" "Yes, honey, yes! Go be with your family, we can manage." "How long you think ya gonna be?" Tim asked. "Bout two months, I reckon, right Drew?" "Hey, you might be longer than that," Tim opined. "For that long..." Gabby thought to herself - and then, an epiphany: "Oh, wait, no, that's perfect! Lemme go get, um--" She tapped her husband on the arm. "The thing, that thing we're doing. Yes, awesome, okay--" "You sure it's alright?" Cody could no longer hide his listlessness. She laid a hand on his shoulder, another little laugh. "Cody honey it's perfect, just lemme go get something in the office, okay? Be just a sec - Tim honey take Davey and keep scanning those Oasis, I wanna get outta here on time, okay?" "But Mami--" "No Mami!" Gabby shot back, pointing to the stockroom. "Go with ya daddy, I ain't playin." "C'mon Davey," Tim beckoned, clicking the trigger on the scanning gun. "Sooner we get this done, sooner we can get Little Caesar's." "Fine," Davey groaned, and into the stockroom he, and his parents, vanished. No sooner were they out of sight when Bligh tittered, softly: "Ya think we're gonna be like that when we're older?" Andrew snorted, livid, not even able to look at Bligh in the face. Waiting until they seemed to be out of earshot and the cheerful beep of the scanning gun, Cody spun on his feet to glare at his two mates. "Your mom isn't dead," Cody said flatly, clearly nonplussed. "S-sick," Bligh corrected - the hesitancy gave it away, the sigil of the jig being up. Andrew's face went hot - the guilt, the brokenness of what he was doing, hit him, once again. "Fell down the stairs, Jesus, Bligh, least get your own lies straight--" "Y'ain't makin this any easier, Drew--" "Don't start with me," Andrew answered with a hostile mumble. Cody remained nonplussed. "Making what easier, guys? I mean - I know for a fact you wouldn't pull me outta work - because your mom is sick or--" He rolled his eyes irritably. "Fell down the stairs." He shook his head, as though in disappointment. "You hate your mom." Bligh turned to Andrew, who half-nodded, still ashamed. "Yew mean yew still hate yer mama?" "You've heard me talk about it..." Andrew murmured. "Yeah, man - like today, but shit--" Bligh seemed aghast. "Not enough ta even--?" Cody thrust his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, looking first to Andrew, then Bligh. "Seriously. What's this really about, guys?" Andrew swallowed hard. "Baby - Baby, we--" Unable to finish his sentence for the second time that evening, Bligh once again picked up where he had left off: "Pup - Pup, listen - yer - yer pregnant, aight?" At the word pregnant his voice dove into a whisper. "And we can't be havin yew--" "Having me what?" Cody demanded. "Having me go out and help get money for my own puppies? We have to get so much stuff--" Andrew persisted: "Baby, listen, I can pay--" Cody shook his head furiously. "No! No - no. I have to help." "Pup no--" Bligh tried to say. "You don't have to, is what I'm saying--" "Andy." Andrew shut his mouth at the sound of his name - Cody moved closer until their eyes were locked, the latter shorter than Andrew by a several inches so that he was looking up at him, but with a tangible emotional power, the unshakable certitude that Cody had developed about the world many darker years before. "You can't just - decide this without - without asking me," the boy said quietly. "Yeah we can," Bligh rejoined, his voice absolutely serious, devoid of the slightest irony. "Yer carryin my - our kids--" "And?" Cody answered at once. "Bligh I can still work, I can still--" A moment of epiphany, immense and shaking, took hold over Cody's face, and his mouth, in mid-reply, slowly closed. "Oh," he said simply. Andrew watched him - his boyfriend, his beloved, so beautiful and so precious, his lips parted in thought so that his fangs drooped just slightly past his lips - realize, and realize deeply. "Oh..." he said again, quieter this time, more defeated this time. Bligh grabbed him into a hug about his shoulders, kissing him on the forehead, searching his eyes with his own in a deep earnestness that surprised even Andrew. "Pup, do ya - do y'understand?" He took a hand to stroke the boy's face. "Me and Drew's puppies they - they growin inside ya. We love ya but - it ain't bout yew anymore." He glanced to Andrew, who nodded in reluctant agreement. "It's bout all o'us - as a family, aight?" "Yeah, I--" Cody sighed, closing his eyes. "I get it, I get it, I just--" His eyes opened and he fidgeted uncomfortably. "I wanna help! I wanna help pay bills and--" "Drew n'me can do that - he gotta little money, and I'm workin full time..." Cody looked to Andrew, who tried to disagree - not just with Bligh, not just against Bligh's word, but with the idea that he could, after all, simply let the person he vowed to protect, who meant so much to him, just do as he pleased...as distasteful as it was, maybe Bligh was right, maybe this was for his own good. "Consider - Baby, consider if you got hurt or something. It wouldn't just be - you getting hurt - it'd be the puppies too." Bligh relaxed his hug, the hand on Cody's face retreating to his shirt pocket where he fumbled for his pack of cigarettes - a nervous subroutine, Andrew knew. "Pup - listen, I dun - I dunno what I'd do if something ever--" "But when I'm gonna get hurt, though?" Cody said, the helplessness in his voice becoming palpable. "Well for one thing, I've been letting you to skate to work when it's cool out," Andrew answered. "I've skated to work for like a year, Andy--" "And you ate shit back in June because you didn't see that they had busted up the sidewalk putting in new pipes." Cody winced at the memory, Andrew almost doing the same - it was mere months ago, and he had recovered from it so quickly, that he had almost forgotten it. Andrew looked to Bligh, whose face had turned to stone, the nervous motion of his cigarettes in his hand frozen in mid-gesture, all at the very thought. Cody was in utter rout: "But you - usually drive me--" He stopped, and there was a very faint motion in his toboggan that Andrew had not noticed before - his ears, trying to flatten in their hiding place, a motion that, upon seeing it, he now shared. "Shit," Bligh murmured, the cigarette pack going back in his shirt. "I ain't - I ain't bout that." His gaze was suddenly stern, and Cody withered within it. "Pup, we gotta git yew home - me n'Drew'll take care o'ya and--" The hand that had been in his shirt pocket came to Cody's belly, in the pouch where he had kept his arms all this time, and they parted, falling to his side, so that Bligh could gently press. And he stifled back a burst of emotion, an instant of - it was similar to how he acted when he would talk about Pappy, but deeper, somehow, rawer, and Andrew felt it, he felt it as Bligh felt it then, a wrist coming to his mouth to hide it, the stone cold terror-euphoria of being an expectant father. Cody looked away - a of Skullcandies he would probably need to scan later- grabbing Bligh's hand, stoic, at first, but then hanging his head, to submit. He was overcome - the pressure, the immense pressure of being himself, Andrew could see, was becoming too much. Cody had the fantasy of getting pregnant as a human, but now that he was as half of one, the consequences, the impossible and unthinkable determinations of being fertile, carrying offspring, crashed into him, leveled him, such that, written into his face that Andrew and surely Bligh could see too, in that moment, he became a mother. But just as soon as it all happened, it all evaporated into the unobvious hidden symbols of their present reality - Cody, his hand still tight in Bligh's, looked back, and into his eyes, nodded, slowly, wordlessly, the affirmation and the surrender. It was done. Andrew made an emotionally exhausted noise of completion that came on the wind of a sigh, and none too soon, the door to the stockroom swung open, and Tim reappeared, scanning gun still in hand - Cody and Bligh separated, but Tim did not seem to notice. "Hey fellas, Gabby'll be out in a minute." "Where is she?" Cody asked. "She's in the back still, she's getting a form for you to fill out. You said two months, right?" Cody tilted his head. "Y-yeah, maybe - longer - wait, a what to fill out?" "It's a form - a rehire form, and when you fill it out we can just put it in your file and then when you come back and work for us - boom, we can start you right away again. Two months, right?" "Well that's good," said Andrew, only slightly cheered by the notion that this was, perhaps, not altogether permanent. "In my file..." Cody repeated. "So you're starting that up for real, like a real - like a real business--" "Yeah, what we're gonna do is - it's a new thing we're doing just in case we expand--" "You're expanding?" Andrew asked with a raised eyebrow. Tim chuckled. "Well, we might, you never know. Business in this neighborhood's been pretty good - Cody's really knowledgeable and gets people skating who normally never would've." Andrew stifled a cringe, but Cody rolled his eyes bashfully. "Tim, cut it out--" "Seriously! So that's what Gabby's looking for right now, and that way when you're ready to come back, we have your form on file, and you can start again no problem." Cody nodded. "Yeah, but - you know me already, right?" Tim conceded the point in a shrug. "Well of course, but, we want to start being more official--" "So you really are looking to expand..." Andrew said. "Eh, you know, we'll see. Like I said, we do really well in this neighborhood but other places in Tampa...might be a little tough." "Orlando?" Andrew suggested, trying to make conversation and put off the inevitable of being alone again with Cody. "Yeaaah, that's what we were thinking, but it's a little uh - what's the word - saturated up there, they got malls and malls and malls and every one of them has a Zumiez in it." A thoughtful look came to his chubby face, with a small, wistful smile. "Plus it'd be a little hard without my best guy up there with me." "Without me?" Cody clarified - a fleeting side-glance to Andrew that made the latter's ears try to flatten in his cap. "Yep!" Tim answered with another chuckle. "Nah, it'll be alright." Perhaps sensing that there was a mounting, if invisible, awkwardness, Bligh, who had listened to the three of them had not said anything - Andrew noticed a strange, faraway look in his gelid eyes. He shifted where he stood to get Tim's attention: "Y'all gotta bathroom?" "Ah yeah--" Tim curved his arm to point around an unseen corner. "That way, s'on your right if you keep goin that way." "Thank ya," he said, nodding at the rotund man as he passed him by - he turned around and walked a few paces backwards as he smiled at Cody and Andrew. "Be back in a sec--" "Take your time," Andrew murmured, trying to tease him. Barely had Bligh left when Gabby's voice floated in from the back: "Tim honey? I need you! C'mere I can't find the Halloween stuff cuz we gotta put that out next, and I need that new rehire thing, where they all at?" "They're in the--" Tim sighed, chuckling. "Hold on, I'm coming." He nodded at Cody and Andrew with another chuckle. "Hey guys I'm gonna go help her for a second." "Is she really doing this again?" Cody asked with a giggle. "They're two different things, they're probably not even close--" "I know," said Tim with a half-chuckle, shaking his head as he opened the door to the stockroom. "You know how she is!" The door remained half-open - Cody giggled at the muffled sounds of Tim directing Gabby. "I always though they're - they were great to work for, because they're - because they're married, they make a good business team, I think..." "Yeah," Andrew agreed impassively. "Always thought they did a good job parenting, too - Davey's a good kid." "Mmmhmm," Cody intoned. They both could sense the awkwardness that befallen them now that they were alone - a painful quasi-tension that made Andrew nervous, and he took a deep breath, trying to will away the pit in his stomach that was coagulating from the mounting anxiety. As his ears strained in his cap, he put his arm around Cody's waist and pulled him into a kiss - trying, failing, not to be as sad and as guilty as he felt, to greet Cody's smile, lukewarm and hesitant. Cody leaned to return the kiss - he looked down at Andrew's shirt and smoothed a stray wrinkle with a furtive smile that went away as soon as it came. "That's - your favorite shirt." Andrew glanced down - it was indeed his favorite, a powder blue Banana Republic v-neck with the cute little elephant logo on his left breast. "Y-yeah it is." Cody's finger came to the stitched off-grey elephant, and Andrew sniffed as he watched him linger there, petting the trunk with his fingernail. "We haven't seen them in awhile..." "What, the elephants?" Cody nodded. "Kinda miss going to Busch Gardens." "Well then we should - uh, we should take Bligh." Again Cody nodded. "Yeah...yeah." His face was becoming fraught with a new, poignant sadness. "Baby..." Andrew kissed his boyfriend's cheek, whispering in his ear: "What's wrong?" "Um - w-well they didn't say this, because uh - they dunno I know, but I overheard them - they were gonna make me a keyholder next month - I - just needed to be trained, first..." Andrew cringed, barely stifling a groan - he could stand it no longer, the guilt burst inside him like an overfilled balloon, and he knew then, he knew that Cody deserved to know the truth. "Baby - Baby listen, this--" Andrew moistened his lips, his nervousness betraying him. "This was - this was Bligh's idea." Cody cocked his head. "Bligh's idea?" he repeated. "But you both said--" "No," Andrew said quietly, shaking his head. "No, I - I was gonna wait til you got home tonight, and - and we could kinda talk about it as a family, like, us three." His frown deepened. "N-not - not just showing the fuck up and taking you like - like this. I just - I just really don't like this." Cody shrugged - trying to shrug it off, as he probably had seen Bligh do before. "I - it's alright." "Are you sure?" Cody tried - failed - to smile. "Not really. But maybe...he's right, you two are right, it's the best thing for now. I know - how worried he is - now - I get it, now..." He paused, letting out a small sigh. "But then - aren't - aren't you worried too? They're yours too--" "No," Andrew cut him off. "I mean yes I'm - I'm worried about you, but - no, I'm - I'm pretty sure they're not." "Wait what? How can you - how can say that!? What about--" Cody seemed to struggle to remember the word. "What about - super - super--" "Superfecundation." "Y-yeah! What about--" "Cody..." Andrew's face lost all expression - it should have been liberating to be this honest, to let loose the weight he had been carrying these weeks, but he felt no joy in it, he felt nothing at all. "What...?" Andrew swallowed hard. "He had you first - and you - you've seen him, he's bigger, he--" He winced. "He produces more - plus I'm - we kinda talked about this once, randomly, but my genetics aren't really all that great--" "So?!" Cody protested, taking a step back. "Andy, come on, I'm the one who's--" He stopped, lowering his voice. "Has - them - inside me, and I know, I just--" Andrew silenced him with a shake of his head, allowing himself to think outloud. "Baby - listen. That's your - your intuition. Not scientific fact - and it's hard to argue that - the more fertile, the more - fit organism...gets to pass on their genes." He paused for effect as Cody studied him, his hazel eyes becoming sadder and sadder with each word. "You keep - you like being half-dog, don't you?" Cody nodded, somewhat ashamedly. "Well what's the other half? Human." He paused, searching for the best way to continue. "Not everything is going to mirror canine physiology, canine - reproduction. And I - I think I was wrong about - some things, but - superfecundation, especially..." "But - Andy, why?" "Because I think, I truly think, based on logic, and reasoning - Bligh won the - the evolutionary game." He let out a small sigh. "If we're - I don't think it was deliberate but if we're really setting out to - to carry on the species, then--" He cleared his throat, trying to relieve some of the emotional pressure that had been clogging it. "He succeeded." Cody shook his head, mouth agape as though in horror. "Andy, that--" "So it's left up to me to - I - I provide for the - the pack." He forced a smile. "That's what we are, right?" "Wait a second--" Andrew ignored him - he meant to air his anguish so that Cody could hear, just as Cody had to listen to his anxiety about graduate school and college and how his parents never loved him, now too, he would have to hear this. "That's what I had to be for Stephen, I had to - to um, support him, I'm used to it, really, people depending on me - and I said, I told Bligh this, I wanted to help people, like my Granddad did - and this way I can help y'all, I'll support y'all, as like - an uncle." "No." "Really, though, it makes sense, see, there's a theory, actually, called the Gay Uncle Theory, where--" "Andy, stop." Andrew did as he was told - he could see in Cody's face there was an irritation, small for now but in high danger of growing. It was rare, extremely rare, but Andrew knew when he had crossed the line. "Stop talking down to me." Andrew raised an eyebrow, trying to guard being hurt by the remark. "But I'm not--" "Yeah, you are." Cody hung his head, scowling. "I know - I get it - I know you're all - all s-smarter than me--" "I'm not, really--" "Yeah you are, stop saying you aren't!" Cody's raised his head, narrowing his eyes defiantly. Andrew wanted to press his case, the ancient tradition, or so it felt like, that Andrew was not more intelligent than Cody - but he could not. Cody, so it turned out, had a point to make: "Just - I know you - you said you didn't have evidence for me - for me knowing that what's inside me is - puppies, like - like actual dogs, and I guess that's really - um, um, convenient, but--" He shook his head, a rapid motion of trying, Andrew thought, of clearing his own thoughts. "You should listen to me! Why aren't you listening to me? I'm the one--" And again his voice dipped. "I'm the one who's pregnant!" "And that we can prove," Andrew said, clinical, retreating. "We can prove--" Cody took his hands to grip Andrew's sides, shaking him - Andrew sucked in a shocked breath as Cody's eyes bore into him. "Why?" Cody whispered. "Why can't you ever trust your - feelings?" Andrew remained impassive - lack of emotion still his best defense. "Because," he answered, letting a coldness creep into his words, his tail deathly still in his pants. "Feelings aren't facts." "But what about - when - when - when you found me and--?" "It was a fact that I felt - feel - fell--" Andrew paused, trying to stop stumbling over his words, his tongue feeling along the back of his front teeth, rounding gingerly over his fangs. "That I loved you, love you, that's a - that's a fact--" "Well this is a fact too!" Cody hissed, as near a threat as he had ever spoken to Andrew before. "I felt you fuck me in the bathroom, I felt you knot me and I felt you make me pregnant, Andy - something - something I've always, always wanted." He pushed Andrew back so he could see there were tears forming in his eyes, the hazel becoming gemlike, always perfect, and Andrew felt his chest tighten at the sight - instinctively he raised his hand to catch Cody's face, but he was stopped, a hand on his wrist, in a display of emotional strength Andrew always knew Cody was capable of, but had never actually seen. "They're Bligh's," he said, through gritted teeth, the fangs appearing. "And yours." He shut his eyes tight - against bursting into tears, against being weak, summoning, Andrew could palpably feel, the courage from his former life, orphaned and alone, without Andrew to save him...his eyes flew open, and two crystalline tears streamed down either cheek: "That - that is a fact, Andy." A silence draped the two of them once again, Cody's hand still on Andrew's wrist, a physical expression of power he could never before articulate with words - Andrew's eyes wide with a mixture of emotions that leered at him, a phosphorescence in the midst of twilit gloom. He was sorry, desperately sorry, abashed, mortified, guilt-ridden, gobsmacked - he was all these things, because he had forgotten, and he was ashamed he had forgotten, that in the violent immolation that Bligh had performed to their old life, that Cody held power over him also, still, he was still what had stood between him and being a ghost, an unperson, dazed and alone in the poisonous Florida sunshine. In one single action, Cody took Andrew's wrist and forced his hand to come up under the hoodie that hid what Andrew could now feel...Cody's pregnant belly. The bulge, a modest pouch that distended outward only a few inches, was the proof, positive and infinite, that he was of a different species, that he possessed a body that could fulfill the dark magic of biological reproduction He had felt it before, he done this before, but now, now it was different - Andrew's hand felt electric against Cody's skin, warmed preternaturally with his new physiology and two final lower nipples he was not born with. Some microscosmic distance against his palm, into Cody's newly-formed uterus, attached to his colon, an awkward but practical setup given that he was still male, were puppies, amniotic, embryonic...puppies that would be, whatever gods that plucked these new strings of fate willing, healthy, beautiful, with the same strong genes as their fathers... ...fathers. Andrew felt his eyebrows furrow as he tried to understand, tried to make sense, why he knew all this, why he understood all this, why this seemed so empirical, not theoretical, not a guess - but he was stopped, and his mind made utterly blank, as Cody's relinquished his grasp, and pulled him into a tight hug, so that Andrew's mouth was pressed against the Bucs toboggan, where he felt the boy's ears twitch, very subtly, against the cloth, against Andrew's face. He inhaled Cody's milky-sweet scent, growing stronger every day, the smell of fertility and beauty and, he thought, of hope. "I'm sorry," was all Andrew could manage - stunned, but oddly, very oddly, grateful. "I'm - I'm so, so sorry, Cody..." Cody relinquished his hug and took a step back, covering his face with the sleeves of his hoodie to wipe away the tears and loose snot. "Don't, um - don't be, okay? It - it's okay--" "It's not," Andrew muttered, facing away from him, pinching the bridge of his nose as a lump starting to swell in his throat, feeling his ears angrily strain in his cap. "You're - you're right, I just really should have--" Back Cody came to hug him tightly again. "Andy - stop. Stop beating yourself up - hey, hey look at me." His sleeved hand, moist from his mopped tears, pushed against Andrew's cheek - Andrew relented, his arm dropped to his side, looking Cody in the eyes. Cody smiled - it was warm, warmer than it had been. "I - I got mad at you - I'm, I'm sorry for that, is your hand okay?" "Yeah," Andrew answered, rubbing his wrist. "It's fine, Baby, you didn't hurt me or anything." Cody nodded. "Okay - okay. But - I got angry with you, like I said, but that's - that's who you are. That's just how you think..." The smile faded some. "I just wish you'd - put that aside, though, and believe me." "I do," Andrew said, having to clear his throat from the sudden rush of emotion the mere particles of words had summoned. "I - I do." "You do? You really do?" Andrew nodded. "Yes--" He nodded again, trying to show Cody how sincere he was. "Yes, Baby...yes." "Okay - well, like I said, I know - I can see where you're coming from with the science-stuff - remember? The first day we even met, you said you wanted to be--" "--a scientist." The word - that old dream of greatness echoing from the invincibility of his teenage years - came out reverent and lofty, like it was the name of a forgotten god in a despoiled temple whose name, in hieroglyphics, was being read aloud for the first time in millennia. This was what was forgotten, this was what was left behind - his new life, his new identity, his new species, no, for once, and only once, that his entire existence had been predicated on the notion of transcendent success, even fame, as...a scientist. Andrew found himself running his tongue over his upper teeth, pausing on his fang, letting it poke the flesh of his tongue...Cody giggled, very softly, imitating Andrew by doing the same - Andrew sniffed at him. "What're you doing...?" he said playfully, trying not to feel as upset as he still was. "You do that a lot." "What?" Cody waggled his tongue along his teeth in the space between his own fangs. "That! Only slower - you always do that when you're thinking hard on something." Andrew cleared his throat, trying to chuckle. "Yeah, yeah - yeah I do." "You were thinking about something just now," Cody guessed. "You can tell?" "I think at this point - yeah." Cody giggled again. "You gonna tell me? Seems like - tonight's a night for talking about stuff." Andrew forced a chuckle. "It's just - it's just, well yanno - I - I'm--" He froze - he looked away from Cody, to the cash register, messily plastered with band logos, he had said it before, some variation of it before, some shade of it before that had latched into his subconscious, but now it was beautifully, horrifyingly real. "I'm gonna be a dad." "Yeah - y'are." Andrew jerked in surprise - Cody's head coming from behind his shoulder at the same time - to see Bligh behind him, arms folded, an unsmoked cigarette in a mouth marred by a deep frown. "H-hey Bligh," Cody said with a meek smile. "How do you keep doing that?" "Dun stomp round when I walk, I s'pose," Bligh said, taking a few steps forward, dashing the cigarette out of his mouth to twiddle it in his fingers. "I dun mean ta sneak like that--" Andrew chuckled nervously. "Well you--" Bligh neared him, his frown unyielding, joined with his gelid eyes that dragged disappointment across all they saw. "You k-kinda do..." Andrew sensed that Bligh wanted to see Cody, the way he was moving felt like a wedge and he gave way to it, so that Bligh and Cody were face to face - his frown faded, and a smirk arose from where it was. "Are you okay?" Cody asked - it was apparent he was unsure what else to say. Bligh nodded - and took his hand to where Andrew's had been, Cody's lower belly, feeling the bare skin beneath his hoodie. He shot a glance, which Andrew could see was tinged with a kind of triumph, and the smirk grew larger. And then, his hand retreating from under Cody's hoodie, he turned, thrusting it to Andrew's own, gripping it tightly. "Y'understand now?" "I told him..." Cody muttered. "I told him I knew - and he should trust me." "That's what he said..." Andrew affirmed, trying in vain to swallow back the boiling-over embarrassment that was making his face turn pink. "Do ya believe em?" "I--" It was an almost involuntary gesture, how Andrew's eyes in that moment moved to lock with Cody's - to see Cody's eyebrows raise, slowly, waiting for an answer. Andrew remembered the feeling - the epiphany devoid of materialistic backing, the sensation of certitude that had no root whatsoever - and this time, did not fight it, did not try to probe or prove it. He grinned - shut his eyes, shook his head, but still grinned. "Y-yeah - it's - I - yes, yes I - I do believe him. I, uh - I guess I was wrong, really...really wrong..." Cody smiled - Florida sunlight made flesh and fang - and Bligh cackled, restrained, trying not to be so loud so suddenly. He nuzzled Andrew's cheek and, lightly, in his ear: "Fer a smart boy, Lightfoot - yew can be dumber'n owl shit sumtimes..." Andrew stiffened. "I ain't dumb, Lynch. Don't call me that." Bligh sniffed, a little unkindly, folding his arms. "What the fuck yew wanna call how ya been actin, then?" Andrew looked to Cody, who shrugged, reaching for his hand - Andrew took it and gave it a quick squeeze. "Don't - blame him, he's - that's just how he is, I even told him that." He squeezed Andrew's hand back in turn. "He just..." His voice trailed off, and a twinge of fresh pain clenched around Andrew's heart - here was Cody trying to apologize for him, for his cloak of alienation and paranoia that had brought them such needless strife tonight. After a handful of unbearable silent seconds Cody finished his thought: "He just wants to know." He glanced to Andrew. "Right, Andy?" "Shit," Bligh answered for him, taking a step forward to wrap Andrew in a strong one-armed hug. "I know it, this man's gonna be a big ol scientist one day, ain't he?" An unwelcome flush came to Andrew's face - a flood of relief and gratitude so heavy it almost made him panic deluged him. "N-no dude, hey--" "Nuh uh, c'mere," Bligh murmured, and pulled Andrew into his chest - Cody soon followed, hugging them both. Andrew let himself be a part of the moment - another group hug - for several moments, breathing in Bligh's smell of earthiness, musk, masculinity, and Cody's of the same ambrosial milky sweetness. Just as the three came apart from their group hug, Gabby's head appeared in the crack of the stockroom door. "Hey Cody honey!" she chirped. "Hey Gabby - did you get the, uh - the thing?" "Yeah, the rehire form, can ya come back here and fill it out?" Cody nodded. "Yeah, sure." "Thank ya honey it'll take a second - Davey you stay out here we gotta do business, but you be nice to Bligh, he's Andy's friend, kay?" "Kay," Davey answered from somewhere behind her. Tim opened the door to the stockroom, and Gabby entered, Cody following - Davey, in turn, emerged to stand in front of Bligh, who looked down at him with a quick nod, seemingly expecting him to leave now that he had been greeted...but he did not. Andrew was highly amused at the sight: Bligh, naturally aloof already to newcomers, was still usually wonderful with small children, but it was when those same children aged and obtained the warped sentience of adolescence that he became disinterested and uncomfortable. And who could blame him? Sullen, hormonal, contrary - they had probably been the same at their own age but Bligh would deny it, he could have never have been that awkward and that stupid. "Hi," Bligh said, friendly enough, with another nod. "Sup," Davey said, holding up a hand in greeting. "Hi," Bligh said back, again, now looking uncomfortable. "Where are you from?" "West Virginia," Bligh muttered, looking to Andrew, who raised his eyebrows, his smile becoming more and more bemused. Ricky beamed. "Oh, neat! So is that where you know Andy?" "Uh, yeah, we grew up together--" "My dad's from Ohio, you ever go to Ohio?" "Can't say as I--" "It's neat, have you ever been to Cincinnati?" There was a slowing down of the way the syllables were spoken as if it were a whispered myth of utopia from a Bronze Age text. Davey was a good kid, Andrew had told Cody, and it was true - like his peer group he was rough-and-tumble but still thought himself impeccable in taste and style, yet he was, considering the area and considering the culture, on the right path. Of course - and again, like his peer group - he was still saturated in the culture of hashtags and swag and plastic, characteristic of South Florida youth. It wasn't his fault, Andrew knew, but it was still repellent to someone like Bligh, who used to regularly shoot his own food. Andrew saw Bligh's jaw stiffen as he tried to hide his irritation at the young boy. "Nah...nah I ain't--" "Aw, dude!" Ricky burst out, waving his arms to accentuate his point. "Why not, oh man, they have this awesome place where there's this huge fountain and it's so - so cool - hey - hey you like the Bengals?" "No," Bligh said through near-gritted teeth - he put a thumb and finger on the bill of his cap. "D'ye not see this, boy? I like--" "Oh why do you like the Ravens?!" Ricky's nose curled up with ribald disgust. "The Ravens suck!" Andrew stifled a cry of laughter as Bligh's eye twitched in suppressed rage. "I dun...think..." "Dude okay so we went to a Bengals game cuz my granddad owns a dealership and he has lots of money? And it was so much fun! Um, I don't remember if the Bengals won but uh - oh dude you know I got beer spilled on me?!" Andrew was nearly beside himself with choked-back laughter as Bligh's face turned bright pink with agitation. "Zat so, now..." "Yeah dude! And then--" He hoisted his hands on either side to announce his final triumph - Bligh recoiled somewhat. "Zac flipping Robinson signed my autograph! See my granddad owns this dealership--" By a miracle that could scarcely be expressed, at that very moment, the door to the stockroom swung open, and out came Gabby, Tim and Cody: "Davey don't be yammerin like that," Tim scolded. "Andy's friend don't wanna hear about Grandpa up in Cinci!" "No, no!" Andrew burst in with a grin that exploded the dam of laughter he was holding back. "He's - he's fine, yanno I'm - I'm used to it--" Bligh shot Andrew a glance of daggers that only made it funnier for him - as Cody came from behind the display case, cocking his head and looking at him askance as though he knew there was a secret being kept, Andrew could help it no longer, he pulled Cody into a happy squeeze, burying his face in the folds of his hoodie and letting out a hearty, muffled guffaw. "Drewhoney, whassa matta wit you?" Without missing a beat, Cody, having resigned himself to what has happening, answered for him: "He's just really nervous about seeing his relatives again." Andrew could hear the smile in Cody's voice: "You know, visiting his mom and everything." "Now Andy honey - look-a-me. Look-a-me!" Andrew emerged from being pressed against Cody to do as he was told - Gabby held him by his cheeks, her hands immaculately smooth, and her eyes, the near-glowing brown, going through him. "You need anything, you don't hesitate, kay?" Andrew nodded - he was indeed grateful, but could not tell her, for the option of Cody to come back to work, for understanding and for trusting him that he needed Cody to come with him. "Yes ma'am," he said with a smile. "Don't call me that!" she admonished teasingly. She relinquished him to do the same to Cody. "You too, Cody honey. Okay? Now ya gotta good man, ya gotta take care of him right now, got it?" Andrew heard Bligh made a strange noise in his throat - unable, it seemed, to contain the irony. "Okay Gabby - I'll be back."
"I know ya will honey, but right now you need to go and that's okay. Okay?" "Speakin of--" Bligh said, with his smirk. "We really oughta be gettin--" "Alright - well, sorry to see you go, Cody." "Yeah," Cody said with a glum frown. "But you guys made it so that I can come back, so - it's okay." He smiled - the usual sunnyness was absent. "Yep, we'll be waiting for you," Tim added with a little chuckle. "Well - that said--" Gabby sighed, surveying the disheveled store before her. "We better get back to work! Lemme walk y'all out--" Tim and Davey said their goodbyes - near in unison, how very much alike they were, father and son - and Gabby led them back to the front door. She gave Cody a final hug, and they departed. She shut the door behind them - there was a clink and a scrape, as it locked back. The evening was settling into dusk - the crickets louder, the cars on the street lazier and fewer, the temperature fine and refreshing. The three of them set off for the truck in silence, one to the other probably loathe to break it, the tension, the new, the enormous change. As they neared the car, however, Cody stopped - he had been in front of them, and he turned, slowly, to both of them, and he said, in a low murmur, to neither of them in particular: "I just quit my job." Unable to take seeing him this way, Andrew pulled him into a hug. "Hey - hey Baby - Baby I'm sorry." "It'll be aight, Pup," Bligh said. "I mean they made a big deal outta ya comin back." "I - I know, it's just--" Cody nuzzled Andrew's chest. "It's my first job ever, and I was really, really good at it..." "But you'll come back," Andrew objected quietly, kissing him on his forehead. "You said so - and I want you to." "I know..." A thought seemed to occur to him. "But - what if they see us? Or me?" "What, like, out and about?" Andrew asked. "Baby I've never seen them anywhere but the store. If it bothers you - if it bothers you we'll just go to a different Publix or something." "Alright, alright..." "Pup--" Bligh stepped forward, jingling his keys from his pocket. "Ya still understand, dontcha? We ain't bein mean, we ain't - tryin ta run yer life--" Cody shrugged. "It kinda feels that way, but - yeah, I can't - I have to think about..." He nudged Andrew out of the way so that he could rub his belly through his hoodie. "These - these guys." Andrew felt his heart warm as he watched - he felt his ears Bligh neared him and nuzzled his cheek. "Bligh - you - wanna tell him what you told me today?" Bligh tittered - he and Cody shared a kiss. "I, uh - I told Drew here I wanted him ta be my husband - wanted us all ta be husbands." "Husbands?" Cody repeated. "But - aren't - aren't we already?" "He just wanted to make it official I - I think, right?" "Yeah," Bligh said with another titter, his eyes still on Cody. "Yeah I - told em it was high time--" Cody kissed him back to interrupt. "I love it." He giggled. "I'm married - and I, uh--" Andrew chuckled, his tail stirring in his khakis, as Cody giggled again, louder, more embarrassed. "I have husbands." Bligh closed him in a bear hug. "Yeah ya do Pup - bet yer ass, ya do." From in Bligh's arms, Cody, smiling his immaculate smile, moved his head, slightly, telling Andrew to come closer, and he did was he was told - Bligh, sensing he was close, pulled him into the second group hug that evening. They remained this way for only a few passing seconds before Andrew backed away from them both - reaching into his hat to scratch his ear, which had developed a sudden itch, he sighed, feeling the weight of the day pass off of him at last. "Let's go home, y'all." Bligh and Cody separated. "Aight," said the former, jangling his keys again so that they folded up in his palm. "Pup gonna ride up front with me." "Okay," Cody agreed. "Cool then - let's go." Bligh's door closed - then Cody's. Andrew leapt over the tailgate, into the bed, and sat down with his back against the cab with his head up, searching the darkening sky that had turned a smoldering burnt orange with the blue of the Tampa Indian summer. He heard the engine start, the lurch of going in reverse, and he shut his eyes - the feel of the cooling evening upon his face, mixed with the relief that something dreadful but necessary had been accomplished, eased him, gently, and he sighed out a breath of immense, wordless relief. The ride back home was quick, but pleasurable - the lights were all green, it was one long breeze on him, on his hat which held down by the bill, smiling to himself, feeling once again, as he did earlier that day, content with his life, with Bligh, with Cody. They pulled into their apartment complex, and the truck parked - the rattle and hum ceased. Andrew sat up so that he could see the two passengers up front... ...but he saw not two heads in the cab, but only one - and Bligh, looking down at a shape that undulated in shadow with a pleased smirk, a fang over his lip. Andrew rolled his eyes in immediate annoyance, a hot wave of arousal making his face look and feel ruddy-hot. He knocked on the window: "Hey - hey what the fuck, y'all?!" He saw Bligh's arm move subtly, as though holding something down - no, that was precisely what he was doing, and he flashed a devilish grin at him, cunning, toothy, the Big Bad Wolf incarnate yet again, before that same smiled melted into gritted teeth, and tightly shut eyes. Andrew felt a stirring in his loins as the inevitable happened - Bligh's lips moved in what he knew to be a grunt, prefacing terminal thrusts into Cody's mouth, rapid, quick, animalistic, a cadence that Andrew had never seen a human perform, but he wasn't human, he was a dog, as much as he looked like a man he was still a dog, a dog he was married to, a dog he was in love with. He heard soft coughing noises coming from the inside of the cab, and Bligh's thrusts slowed to nothing, his eyes opened, his whole face bespeaking a euphoric afterglow - Cody's head rose with his wrist to his mouth, gulping back the last massive dose of what must have been Bligh's cum. For several seconds there was absolute quiet in Andrew's head - no thoughts, no inner voice - his mind had become blank with the pressurized heat of sex yet again. He shifted uncomfortably where had been sitting, trying to will away the anticipatory stir of his tail, the paralyzed fluttering of his ears in his hat, and the fat erection that had sprouted of his sheath, waxing longer with each consecutive heartbeat, hidden in the crotch of his khakis. His breathing had begun to pick up as Bligh threw open the sliding glass of the cab window - he cackled from within, reaching into his shirt-pocket for a cigarette...so like him, Andrew thought, to smoke after sex. "Hey, uh - s-sorry, man had ta - take care o'sumthin." Cody, meanwhile, looked back at Andrew with a deeply sheepish smile. "Hey, Andy." "Uh," Andrew chuckled awkwardly, "hey." Cody did not answer - he put his fist to his mouth and cleared his throat, twice. At first he wondered what could have been wrong, but then he realized -- Bligh had been pent-up and his cum, surely, had become rich and thick, some of it maybe still stuck in the boy's throat... Andrew should have been jealous, but their triad was firm, even with the uncertainty of that evening he felt a sick sort of pride in knowing that Cody had done well to please Bligh, that Bligh had stepped up over Andrew's own objections to, in turn, protect Cody and their pups. The storm and the challenge had passed. Bligh had left the truck and shut the door behind him - another, final sharp throat-clearing from Cody, and he exited the truck as well, and they both came to opposite sides of the bed, flanking Andrew who still sat in its center. "Um - you're not mad - or anything, are you?" Cody's voice was hesitant, apologetic even in the gathering darkness of their apartment parking lot, the streetlights with their slumberous orange-white beams turning on to pour down onto the asphalt. Andrew could see that his beloved, fumbling in his pants to hide must have been an angrily insistent erection of his own, had a face that burned with embarrassment and passion. He shook his head, a slight gesture, his own arousal was abating by an abrupt wind of the fear he had felt at the Circle K - the fear of discovery. "Y'all - c'mon y'all, couldn't we waited a little?" he asked, his voice growing low, throwing an incredulous chuckle on the question. He rose, very carefully, his hand diving into his pants, as Cody's had, to right his penis so that it would not bulge through. Bligh lit his cigarette, the Zippo framing, as it always did, his face against the approaching darkness, the Sun dying in the sky. Back went the Zippo into his jeans pocket - he took his first puff. "Drew, man--" came his answer in a cloud of smoke. "Dun git mad, aight?" Andrew steadied himself, cautiously mounting the edge of the tailgate before leaping to the ground - landing on his feet in front nearer to Bligh with a triumphant "Oomph!" Brushing off his back side, his mouth had become set into a disapproving frown, and he looked to Bligh with it. "I'm not - mad, y'all, I'm just - what if someone saw?" Cody approached him from behind to give him a quick hug. "But - there's nobody around, Bligh checked." Andrew raised an eyebrow - it was a strange detail. "Wait...what? You checked--?" "S'why I told ya not ta git mad, man," Bligh said in a reluctant murmur. "I - I needed it real bad n'I - looked round real quick, made sure weren't nobody watchin..." "You needed your dick sucked that bad?" Andrew repeated dubiously - Cody came around to hug him on his side, and he stole a kiss on the boy's cheek. Bligh inhaled another drag on the cigarette, putting his hands in his pockets - a look of humility. The cigarette stayed in his mouth, squirming in the corner as he spoke, and the smoke flew in a plumed cloud with his answer: "I kinda - I kinda weren't playin with ya today when yew was fixin dinner. I needed some--" His mouth closed around the cig as his gelid eyes, for just a moment, grew pensive. "--whatcha call it - release." "It happened really fast..." Cody murmured. Andrew's moved out of Cody's hug to stand before Bligh - a sick feeling clenching his heart. "Bligh..." Andrew began. "What - what are you saying--?" Bligh shrugged. "I'm sayin I git all wound up n'shit real bad, lately man - ya said so yerself I's horny all the time." "Y-yeah, but--" Andrew was horrified into near-speechlessness - what Bligh was describing something insidious, something that Andrew's naturally analytical brain seized upon as being directly related to their new species. He took a breath, trying to quiet, in his own head, the uncomfortable flight of ideas and theories. "Is this - is this a new thing or--?" Bligh shook his head. "Nah man." More smoke came from his mouth, and he appeared as he sometimes did as he smoked, as a dragon, something mythical, something limitlessly powerful even he was wounded. "Nah. This is like - last week, two weeks." "I - holy shit, Bligh I didn't--" Andrew stopped. "Why didn't you--?" "Weren't getting all that bad til - last - two days, maybe?" Another drag, another nervous puff of smoke. "Whattya think I's doin in the bathroom, man?" Andrew was still aghast. "Taking a shit, for one thing!" Bligh shook his head, the cherry on his cigarette illuming with his breath. "N-nah - nah." "Jesus Christ," Andrew hissed. "Dude, I just - I just figured you were pent up from - f-from the week, but if it was that - important - I coulda stopped what I was doing in the kitchen, we--" "Cuz I liked what we was doin, Drew," Bligh said quietly. "Cookin together that--" He tittered, sad, regretful. "That was special, man. I's jest teasin ya but - maybe I shoulda, I dunno, but I didn't wanna ruin the moment when ya said we had ta cook..." "You guys cooked together?" Cody asked. Andrew nodded, as did Bligh. "Yeah Pup. We havin fried chicken tonight." Cody made a noise like he was about to laugh excitedly, but suppressed it, and instead nodded enthusiastically with one of his warm smiles. Andrew's eyes were fixed on Bligh, who, after several moments of awkward silence that began abrupt and by the second grew hideously uncomfortable, shook his head, slowly, very slowly - his hands still firmly in his pockets, he had smoked the cigarette unusually fast, and he let it fall out of his mouth and hit the pavement, where it flamed out and turned to blackness underneath the stamp of his boot. "S'jest, I mean, I--" He glanced to Cody, smirking weakly. "I guess I should say sorry, Pup." Cody shook his head vigorously. "No - no, Bligh - I mean hey, I liked doing it!" "It just - happened?" Andrew pressed. "Suddenly, like real suddenly--?" "Yeah," Cody answered for him. "He - uh, yeah. Like I said, it was really fast--" Bligh opened his mouth, perhaps to add something, but Andrew interjected before he could: "Bligh..." He rolled his eyes, Bligh had told him not to get mad and he wasn't, but he couldn't help but be agitated at this abrupt change of news. "You should've told me. I could've put chicken off if you needed to--" He stopped, again. "I just thought you were stressed out and you - and - and me and--" He glanced to Cody. "--and him - when we would--" He left the final idea unrealized. "It would help, it would make you feel better." "I mean yeah, kinda - kinda." "Only kinda?" Andrew said, leaning forward, trying to draw Bligh's eyes to his. "Bligh - hey, so - please, lemme get this right, you - you have these, like, irresistible urges, now, to - to fuck?" Bligh's head still down, he gave no verbal response, only a slight nod. Andrew sighed. "And you - you of all people are - are upset by this?" He sniffed. "You were even smiling when--" "Cuz it felt good," Bligh muttered, glancing away, but still to the pavement. "But I dun like feelin like my dick's gonna explode, man. Like I'd be fine and then suddenly I'm--" He held up his hands, as though to contain the idea of being poisoned by his own testosterone within them. Andrew and Cody shared a look - Andrew frowned, so taken offguard with this new information, so much so soon.
Cody, in turn, seemed to think a moment. "Bligh it's - maybe you're just having a reaction to me. Because I'm pregnant now. And all those - hormones, right, Andy?" Cody's eyebrows went up - he was giving Andrew a cue. "Y-yeah - actually, yanno I dunno why I didn't think of that myself uh - it might be because--" He had spare nanoseconds to bullshit a hypothesis, and his tone become the calm explanatory drone of his speciality. "The - well we don't know what kinda hormones that Cody's giving off because - we're not - not human and all, so there might be some - unknown quantity that's causing your testosterone production to escalate, and with that sexdrive - perhaps even in violent bursts." Bligh at last looked up from the pavement into Andrew's eyes - they still sparkled, even in the darkness that was now becoming supreme with the sun finally setting amongst the splatter of orange and pink on the horizon, like glaciers in a vast ice sea, that perfect picture they would create when something awful had befallen him. "That ain't no scientific evidence, Drew," he said softly. "Right," Andrew rejoined his heart pained to see Bligh so worried even if, as it probably was, it was over nothing. "But sometimes - you have to guess." He smiled with a confidence he wished he had, came forward and grasped Bligh by the chin, and kissed him, putting as much love and understanding as he could in the movement of his tongue in his husband's mouth. Cody closed in on the two of them - Andrew broke the kiss and relinquished the hold on Bligh's chin, to flash the boy a grateful smile, which faded almost at once into a new frown. "But..." he added, starting to believe his own hype. "But if that's the case - it might start affecting me, too." Bligh's eyebrows furrowed. "Ya think so?" Andrew shrugged, and with an unintentional burst of honesty, answered: "Maybe." Bligh pulled him into a bear hug, nuzzling the side of his face - Andrew could smell the fresh nicotine, the warmth of his earthy scent that others, other humans, could not detect, and it filled him, as it always did, with that ineffable safety, that brain-quieting certitude of love. "It'll be alright, Bligh - I'm here for--" A dread feeling overtook him that oozed into a dark, sexual place in his brain. "I'll always be here when you need me..." He heard Cody giggle, and he nudged Bligh out of the hug, looking to Cody first, then back to Bligh - he motioned to their awaiting apartment some yards away up the stairs with his head: "C'mon y'all, lemme fix some dinner." Bligh sniffed, smirking - for the first time since they had left the Green Room it seemed genuine. "Aight," he answered softly. "Yeah let's go," Cody said with another giggle. "I'm really hungry." "Zat right, now?" Bligh said, reaching to scritch the back of the boy's neck as the three began to make their away to their apartment. "Yew gonna be cravin some weird stuff now that yer all knocked up." "It's normal," Andrew said. "Every mammal goes through it - eating weird stuff for extra nutrients - now if it gets too weird, it's called pica, but you'll--" He chuckled. "You'll be fine." "Yeah I heard that too - um, heard of that, too..." said Cody. "I just - I guess it would never actually happen to me one day." Bligh cackled - something about the remark had broken his tension. "Believe it, Pup - believe it, it's happenin." "We're gonna be dads, Bligh," Andrew admonished teasingly as they came up the stairs. "Are you ready?" "Shit," Bligh replied. "Ready as I'll ever be I reckon." "That's the spirit," Andrew replied with a knowing laugh. Cody was a cloud of giggles at their banter, in between the two of them as they walked together. Andrew's hand was on the doorknob as he turned back to see Bligh and Cody - the first smirking, the second smiling, a family, his family, there with him. "Alright y'all - let's get in here and--" He made the motion, so routine, so quotidian, to open the door - but the doorknob, to his instant confusion, to his immediate horror, jammed in his hand... ...as though someone else was trying to open it from the inside at the same time. He recoiled: "The Hell--?" "Sumthin wrong, Drew?" "What is it?" Cody asked. "It's - it's the--" But before Andrew had time to explain, all three of them saw the knob move and turn on its own. The door opened with the welcoming creak it always did, from the inside, as though nothing at all was strange or wrong. But someone else stood in the doorway. It was a boy - short, scrawny, and shirtless, barefoot, his only clothing a pair of preppy khaki shorts cut just above the knee and a silver pendant about his neck terminating in a sharp dog's tooth that guarded his heart. He looked like a miniature version of Andrew, but more polished, and perhaps - if one had known them both - more handsome. He had all of Andrew's facial features, but they were warped, oddly curved, by an innate slyness that bespoke of someone who, just from his sinister smile, which curled in the corner of his mouth, would declare it better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven...the overall impression was of Andrew himself, an imperfect clone, a smaller and daintier Andrew Lightfoot, had he been forever possessed by an impish, vulpine spirit. The boy's evil smile somehow grew even more evil: "Hey, Drewseph - sup, Bligh." Andrew was struck dumb - all he could manage was a strained, shocked noise that roughly coalesced around a word: "St-Ste - Stephen!"