The Dogs: Litany - Episode VI
The Sun was glorious above them, Sol Invictus, the rays of the Solstice fresh and gorgeous down from the Virginia sky - the air was alive with the smells of the summer, the damp earth from a passing shower, and the effervescence of a campfire, somewhere nearby. Around him he could hear the faint of buzz of bees, and the alighting birdsong of the chickadees and the cardinal. But what caught his sight first, were the mountains, nigh-blinding in perfect verdance, a green so resplendently rich and deep that they possessed a sinister kind of beauty, as though they did not belong on this Earth. The trees seemed altogether too thick from how Andrew remembered - he knew where he was, he was near home, just outside of it, although he could not see the road and the sign, but he was close, he felt, even if the forest was too wild and wicked, as though not a day had passed from the first utterance of the name, in the tongue of the Spaniards who had claimed it first: Apalachen. He glanced down - and gasped. Before him were no more than fifty men, on their hands and knees, prostrating themselves in a deep bow of grateful reverence - they were dressed in the finery of the Powhatan native he had seen in textbooks, beaded and breechclothed, painted fantastic stripes of brilliant red. They did not speak, but one amongst them, in front, differentiated from his fellows by a magnificent cloak of turkey feathers, came forward, standing, a box woven from what looked like willow branches in his hands. And he spoke. What came out of the man's mouth was beautiful, mysterious, and hushed - a language that Andrew did not recognize - and as he finished Andrew's eyebrows furrowed in, his mind struggling to make sense of this strangeness so close to him. He looked to his right, and there stood a great Black man, broad-shouldered and powerful, with a handsome face, dressed in plain cotton clothes which Andrew, with a new clenching dread, recognized as the costume of the Colonial slave. Next to him, dressed equally humbly, hair tied back, was a Black woman, observing the scene serenely - from her proximity to the man she must have been his wife, and at her breast, a baby, their child, was nursing. He had never seen this man, or this woman, in his life, but - but he knew their names, and he spoke to the Black man as though he had known him for years, and inquired of him in a nervous whisper: "Turner Jack, what be this manner of strangeness?" He lifted his hands to the native in his feathered finery, deeply puzzled. "These Indians come to us as one who would do obeisance, yet - do we not--?" His voice was not his own - it was his, yes, but the accent was very different, it seemed tempered and forged by an anvil that was not American...or perhaps not yet American. "Massa Nicky - don't ya know?" The man's words were rich with the timbre of the Sénégal - it was English, but an English dipped in the mermaid-waters of West Africa. "Dese man a'fom da tribe down by da watah - da creek dat run by ya farmland, Massa Nicky." There was a tinge of confusion in his voice, as though it should have been utterly obvious. "Dey here ta tank ya, riddin dem of da scourge upon de land - Massa Nicky."
He smiled - it was a kind smile, patient and wise, and he stretched his arm up, and over, the gathered Indians. Andrew's gaze trailed back to them, this mass of men whom had not moved from their reverence to him, the white man who had encroached on their territory, but somehow held in esteem, still, for some errand he did not remember doing. The one who seemed to be their chief, and who had uttered the peculiar supplications of thanksgiving in a language which Andrew now suspected he should have understood, dressed in that cloak of turkey feathers, now fell to his knees, the woven box held up for Andrew to see. He uttered a single word, choked with emotion: "Tenagh." A moment, awkward and stilted, passed before Andrew heard Turner Jack's voice, still gentle, still patient, in his ear: "Dey mean ta offa dat as a gift - a trophy, wat ya helped dem git in da battle, dis night now just passed." "Trophy...?" Andrew repeated, as he felt swimming in his heart a nameless fear, a revulsion he could not place - but he answered the chief, with a respectful nod, from an instinct he struggled to understand even as it came naturally to him: "Netah..." He took the box from the Indian chief's hands, and as the latter went down to kowtow in imitation of his tribesmen, he nodded, again - and removed the lid. Inside was the tip of a tail - it looked like a wolf's tail, or perhaps a dog's, a large dog's...it was black, as black as night, and it shimmered like jet in the summer Sun, beautifully tied at one end with wampum and a scarlet thread. At once, he could not sense Turner Jack, or his wife, or the Indians, or their chief, around him, any longer - he felt alone, hideously alone, alone with this box, and its contents, the eldritch evidence some great crime had taken place which he, evidently, had masterminded, committed, in cold colonist blood. Andrew recognized it immediately - this was the tip of Bligh's tail, the same color, the same shape - it had to be, yes, there was no mistaking it. He cried out, bitten into by stark, morbid horror - he dropped the box to the ground, and the little furry trinket began to twitch like a panicked worm, sprawling upon the grass and moving about, wildly, serpentine, blindly searching, Andrew realized, for the body it was cut from. He screamed - he screamed aloud - and sat bolt upright in bed. Andrew was in his bedroom - Cody was snoozing, facing the wall, beside him, the boy's tail making the furtive motions of deep sleep against his leg. He took several breaths - long, ragged, shuddering breaths, before he clapped his hands to his face - a dream, that's all it was, just a dream, a horribly fucked up dream... Cody stirred beside him, rolling over to face Andrew. "An...dy?" he asked drowsily. "Go back to sleep, Cody," Andrew said letting his hands come down to stroke his boyfriend's hair, trying to regain his composure and expel the awful final image of the dream from his mind's eye. "It's okay--" "Are you okay?"
"Yes Baby, I'm fine." He was lying, but he would rather lie, in the moment, than have Cody worry about him. "Just a - just a weird dream, that's all." Back to the wall rolled Cody. "Mmm...love you..." "Love you too, Baby - go get some sleep." He patted Cody's ear - the furry dog's ear that twitched and swiveled and fluttered, so sweet and so bashful, when Andrew and Bligh would dote on him. Cody made a little sleepy moan of acknowledgement, and Andrew tried to chuckle at the cute sight - but the macabre image, the feeling of dread and the thick, saturated guilt, down through the ages... ...what an odd thought. What ages? Who was he, in that dream? The man had called him Nicky - was not the first ancestor that came to Dog's Creek Nicholas Lightfoot, for whom he was given that middle name? Was he dreaming things that had happened to his ancestor, the man who, Stephen said, slaughtered the tribe that was there before the Indians ever came...? He tried to make sense of the fragmentary details - he tried to make sense of feeling so sick from a dream, a dream about Bligh...but was Bligh really in it? His tail was - was it symbolic? Was something his ancestor did speaking to him about he had treated Bligh the day before, the residual regret from questioning the three of them's relationship, the vulnerability opened up by letting Stephen in? And then he realized: "Stephen..." he whispered to himself. "Stephen'd know..." Gingerly sliding out of bed as to not wake Cody again, he found some jeans that had been tossed to the floor earlier that week - putting them on, stuffing his tail down the right pant leg as part of a now-ingrained subroutine, he made his way out of the bedroom, to the living room, to see if Stephen was still awake. Opening the door, he was greeted with something he half-expected but still surprised him: Stephen, slumped back on the couch, breathing heavy in the throes of sleep. Bligh was next to him, taking up the other two-thirds of the cushions - his hat was still on, even in the slumber which the wheezing rise-and-fall of his chest made apparent. Andrew stood there, in the open doorway, observing them, unawares in their dreams - he sighed, being able, for the first time since Stephen had cannonballed into his life after a three year estrangement, to reflect...and to breathe. His thoughts came to Bligh and Stephen's relationship, hidden from everyone, the seven months Bligh had latched on to the one person he could turn to and count on with Andrew gone, probably for good. How stupid he had been - how fragile he had been. One small upset and the whole thing was in chaos - was that he, Andrew, had always been? The answer was an obvious no, because this was a perfectly reasonable neuroses to have acquired, being forced into this, by Bligh, with Cody's encouragement... His eyes drifted to Bligh, asleep. Here he looked helpless - here he looked so vulnerable, as though, unlike the Bligh that moved about in the waking world, he could be wounded, he could be defeated. But he could actually - only when it came to Cody, sometimes, but all the time, when it came to Andrew... ...had Andrew really been forced into this, after all? No. The terror was no longer fresh and therefore no longer exquisite, the novelty of the separation from the world no longer a curse - because it was never a curse. Bligh - twisted up into his own neural pathways, his echoing shadow from Tempest, his legacy of West Virginia skin, this obstinate, stubborn, forceful, patriarchal hayseed with the thick accent and the wolfish smile and irritating laugh, this stupid dog - he would follow Bligh into the Hell that Pappy had preached about it, and dwell with him in damnation and torment for eternity, and all he had to do was ask. Simply because...he was Andrew, and Bligh was Bligh, and that's how, in the reductionist way that he taught himself in things scientific - for was he not, even now, a scientist? - that things in this universe were. And then Cody - Cody would follow him, because wherever Andrew went, Cody went too...this too, was a irrefutable facet of the universe. For the three of them could not be separated, as hard as the world seemed to scheme and pressure. He leaned in the doorframe to look upon his brother - mouth agape, a hilarious image, for someone who spent his existence trying to play the role of the trickster. He had forgiven Stephen for what he and Bligh and done, and the memory of his outburst played out embarrassingly, a bit of melodrama he hoped that all three of them, Cody too, would forget soon enough. He had forgiven him because - there was nothing to forgive. Bligh had every right to fall in love for someone as close to what, he, Andrew, was and represented...he had every right, with Andrew gone, to have someone who loved and respected him. And Stephen did - Stephen probably did still, Andrew guessed. He had made the right decision, the uncharacteristically conscionable decision, to let Bligh go... ...and when he did, Bligh, on a winding path, set off to find Andrew and Cody... Andrew had told him that night, no terms uncertain, that Stephen was to stay the night, and Bligh was to look after him. It was the first time he had maybe ever insisted on something that major over Bligh's objections - but what else could he do? Stephen was Andrew's own flesh, his family, whom he shared DNA and, now, a destiny with. And Cody had spoken up too - he, forever believing the best in people, making sure Stephen, though a year younger than he was host to an utterly different life, was comfortable and secure on the couch to sleep off the copious liquor and beer and marijuana... He knew what level of drunk his brother was - the spins, that awful period of inebriation when the level of fun of getting has evaporated into a slow panic, a danger, a danger that he knew well in his own life and needed to protect his brother from. Cody sensed that - he must have - but Andrew guessed it was from his own volition that he wanted to care for Stephen...Andrew's brother, but his brother-in-law. In Cody's belly, growing, were puppies - so Cody said, so Cody felt, and with that conviction Andrew could choose only to believe it also. They would be his flesh and family too - and therefore Stephen's also. Why couldn't Andrew do as Stephen did, and meet the phantasmal terror of the half-dog species with cosmic wonder? If they were his, and Cody said they were with a passion that made Andrew secretly proud that they were - they were not holotypes or case studies...they were his. Now, though it felt as though some key component of his existence would be absent, Andrew knew - now was not the time to be a scientist. At least Stephen, for one, would doubtless see the gravity of having nephews - even if those nephews walked on four legs, covered with fur, speaking an esoteric language of growls and howls and barks. It made Andrew smile, warmed by the thought, the cosmic certainty that stood in direct juxtaposition to how he felt - was it only a few hours ago? Earlier that day - by the sink, cutting chicken...it was still in the fridge, he would fix it tomorrow for Bligh and Cody, and invite Stephen, uncle to his puppies to at least eat with them...as a family. Another sigh - a sigh of relief, the feeling of something old ending and something new beginning, even in this ineffable abstract. He pushed himself out of the doorway, and crept back into the bedroom - he gently closed the door behind him, leaving it open at the customary crack, and as he was disrobing the spare pair of pants he heard Cody's drowsy voice from the bed: "Andy...?" Andrew looked up at the faint figure nesting in the covers. "Hey Baby - you can go back to sleep, yanno." "Mmm..." A clump of shaggy hair move in a headshake. "I don't think I can...I have uh--" He coughed. "It kinda hurts, like, right over my heart--" Andrew paced quickly, the pants tossed off by the closet door, embracing Cody tightly at the edge of the bed. "Holy shit, Baby what's--" But then he withdrew, his abrupt panic melting, back into his usual ordered scientific thinking. "...oh. I bet I know what's wrong" "What?" "I bet you got heartburn." "Is that--" Cody rubbed the patch of skin just under his neck. "Is that what that is? It's like a--" He looked as though he was gathering his words, trying to express a queer quale he had never felt before. "Like someone's pressing on it - and it's burning, but like, a wet burning--" Andrew smiled, nodding. "Yeah - that's heartburn. I've heard pregnant women get it, and - because you're pregnant..." He watched Cody's eyes, very faintly vitreous, light up. "I - I'm getting it too..." Andrew nodded. "Yep." Cody giggled. "That's - that's great, right? Even, um - though it hurts." "Yeah, I was about to say, that's--" Andrew chuckled, leaving the sentence unfinished in the midst of feeling unsure to share in Cody's triumph, or still be worried about his pain. He tilted his head some: "But you've - never had heartburn?" Cody shook his head again. "No, not - well maybe I have, I just, not like this and - not like how other people get it, after eating spicy stuff." He smiled, and Andrew could make out the outline of his sharpened fangs. "You know I love spicy stuff!" Andrew kissed him with a small chuckle, his tail wagging amidst the covers. "Yeah - yeah I do..." he whispered gamely - he leaned back just slightly, the smile morphing into a frown. "I guess - it's possible not to have felt it before. I really dunno." He saw Cody's ears lower slightly. "Yeah - I am kinda weird." "Stop that..." Andrew said gently, nuzzling Cody's cheek with his mouth. "Sorry..." "It's okay," Andrew answered. "But, uh - yeah, we don't have anything for heartburn in the house..." Cody shrugged. "It's okay - I'll live." "Yeah I know that, but--" Andrew took fingers to massage where Cody had indicated he was ailing. "I don't want you to feel bad..." Cody gently pushed Andrew's hand away, coming close to plant a deep kiss on his cheek. "Andy - I'm fine." "Alright..." Andrew kissed him on the forehead. "Alright." "But why - I'm kinda worried about you too. Did you have another - weird dream?" The memory of the waking vision - the Indians, the centuries-old summertime, the horror in the woven box - played back out in his memory, and the rising flood of terror filled his skin once more. "Ah--" he intoned, his ear twitching slightly. "Y-yeah - yeah I did." Cody's tail, which had been wagging lazily in a pleasant cadence because Andrew was nearby, stilled to a stop. "Oh no - again?" Andrew nodded, his ears drooping. "Yeah - it--" He struggled with the words, unsure even himself what he had seen, what he had experienced. "It's kinda hard to, like...describe." Cody thrust his arms in the space between one of Andrew's, and held him, putting his head up to rest on Andrew's shoulder. "Wanna talk about it?" Andrew hesitated. "Y-yes - yeah I think I - I think I should." "Well I'm here," Cody said with a small smile. "I can listen." Andrew glanced to the boy and caught his smile - up came his free arm to ruffle his hair, to which he responded with a giggle, and a wag of his tail. "Okay - okay." He took a deep breath, shutting his eyes, the images reappearing, fragmentary, but then coalescing, until he could near-see them again in his mind's eye. "I'm - okay, maybe not I, that's the thing, I don't think it was me being me, but - one of - one of my ancestors from way back in the day--" "Mmm," Cody said back. "Which one?" It was an almost sarcastic answer - Andrew knew Cody well enough to know that it wasn't, that he was, out of a deep love, concerned with Andrew's mental health...but talking about his ancestors, his birth-status, the aristocracy of the Lightfoot name and the ferocious way it made Andrew (not to say Stephen too) neurotic and maladaptive, was something of a tired subject, something Cody could never think to relate to. Still, Andrew stifled a frown, and continued: "Nicholas - Nicholas Lightfoot, the first one that made our na--the name Lightfoot all famous." "So like...way back when?" "Y-yeah - Seventeenth Century." Cody nodded. "Yeah, so way back when." "Right." "And you, like - you - saw what he was--" "I was him." Cody lifted his chin, tilting his head, one of his ears falling just slightly. "You...were your - ancestor?" "I--" Andrew's ears fell, and he hung his head, the weight of some imagined crime that his far-off family from centuries before near-literally pushing down on him. "My - people - back then, remember what I said my brother told me?" "Yeah, um - there was a tribe of Indians only they weren't Indians--?" "The Moon-Eyed People," Andrew affirmed. "It's a - that name and that tradition shows up in other places in the Appalachians - uh, where I'm from - down in, or I guess up in, whatever, uh, Tennessee, Georgia--" "South Carolina?" Cody guessed with a hopeful wag of his tail. Andrew smiled. "Maybe, I'd have to research it--" "Neat!" Cody exclaimed. "Yeah, yeah - um, but there in that part of West Virginia, see, Stephen said they were this--" "They were like us," Cody finished. Andrew sighed. "Right." Cody fidgeted. "He told you that when he was really drunk..." "But I believe him..." He lifted his head up to seek Cody out, and with a compassion that came from nowhere and vanished into the same, grabbed his wrist, pulling it tightly to him. "Cody--" he said, an insistence. "Cody my - my family killed all those people - all those people who were like us." Cody stared at him for a few passing seconds, his eyes drifting down to the wrist that Andrew was still gripping - he nodded, very slowly, understanding at once how grave the notion truly was. "So you - you're upset - because that memory - was passed to you..." "Yes - yes." "And that dream you had - was him - telling you - that you were him, that your family...killed--" His ears drooped, together with his voice, as he spoke the last word: "--us." "I don't know," Andrew interjected. "I don't--" He shook his head. "That's really not how - how memory works, I mean, barring the existence of a soul which science is - I've told you, pretty clear on, there's theories out there about cellular memory, but--" "Andy," Cody said softly, gently pushing away the grip that Andrew had on his wrist. "Andy what - what do you feel?" "I - I--" It was a strange question, a complicated question, a disarming question - Cody was good at these: a good mass of their relationship was Cody being able to shoot through the armor of science - a scientist - and reason and logic that Andrew draped himself in. "I...feel..." Andrew spoke slowly, his voice ravaged by an ambient sadness he tried, and failed, to understand. "I feel - guilty." "But - why?" "Because I - we - we're what they hunted - they - they must have done it as a favor to the Indians who hated us too - my...family..." He stopped. "Us - we - I can't believe--" Back went Cody's chin to his shoulder. "That's right, though. We're different." "I..." Andrew sighed again, longer this time. "I guess - no, no, you're right--" "And so you're really upset your family did all those terrible things to - us--" He tilted his head to accent the word before withdrawing from Andrew's shoulder. "All the way back then? And maybe the dream was a message?" Andrew frowned. "I still don't think--" "But maybe," Cody pressed, "it was." Now Andrew studied him, Cody, his boyfriend, his husband, his mate - studied him in the darkness, trying to fathom the wisdom this nineteen-year old could have acquired that, in so many ways, eclipsed his own. "Fine..." he muttered. "Maybe it was. Maybe they were trying to tell me - make me remember what had happened." Cody thought a moment. "But - Andy, what difference would it make if they did do bad things to us though?" Andrew raised an eyebrow. "What - do you mean?" Cody leaned forward. "I mean..." He smiled, a puckish knowingness that dovetailed a little too fitting his young face. "It wasn't you, right? It was - like, people who you were - um, your ancestors, not you." "Yeah, but--" "We've talked about this before, haven't we?" Andrew frowned - he glanced away to the slitted light coming from the blinds. "We - y-yeah, we have--" "And I tell you the same thing." His arms came around Andrew's shoulders from behind - a tight hug. "That it doesn't matter. Because you--" He kissed his ear, gently, it twitched back in response, eliciting a skittish chuckle. "You're your own person. Just like--" He sighed. "Just like with me, living - where I was, and stuff, before we met - that's who I was." He gave Andrew an encouraging squeeze. "Not me now..." Andrew smiled - a little sadly - as he looked over his shoulder at Cody's shadow. "Am I, though? My - my own person?" He felt Cody nod. "Yeah! Of course you are! And - and - maybe that ancestor - Nicholas, was that his name?" "Nicholas - um, yeah, Nicholas Lightfoot." "Well maybe Nicholas was telling you that he made a mistake - but you can correct it." Cody smiled. "You - me - Bligh and Stephen, we can - rebuild who we were, someplace safe..." Andrew smiled back at him, and chuckled, very softly, and very well in spite of himself. "The - thought - is nice..." He paused, cringing. "But - w-well - I - sometimes--" He hesitated - he blushed in the dark and he was glad that Cody could not see it, though he could probably tell how he felt with how flat his ears had become. But even so, he felt that the weight he had carried since the first day - the very first, in fact - that Bligh had made him the half-dog he would be forever, the weight of being's Bligh's bitch, his property, creep on him, heavy, too heavy, any longer, to hide from Cody, who, now especially, needed to know: "Sometimes I'm - actually all the time I'm not - my own person..." He winced as he felt Cody pull away just slightly. "Well...whattya mean?" "I'm..." For a passing second the words were heavy in his mouth before he could actually say them: "I'm - Bligh's bitch." He let out a rush of air. "I - he owns me, like really owns me--" Cody parted from him and Andrew winced, harder. "I...could tell," came Cody's answer as he shifted from behind Andrew to scoot next to him, now both sitting on the bed together. Andrew jerked his head to Cody in frank surprise. "You - really?!" "It's not hard," said Cody, almost like he was teasing. "You uh - well, should I really - spell it out?" Andrew stared at him blankly - he felt his tail thump, up and down, on the bed. "Tell me," he murmured. "I wanna hear, uh - what you think." Cody moved his head in a coy, shrewd way, and even in his nightvision Andrew could see he was trying to be clever. "Just - the way you act around each other, it's kinda different from how you and me are--" He paused. "Well - it's a lot different. Bligh likes to tell you to do stuff and you--" "I know," Andrew cut him off, feeling his penis start to inexplicably harden. "I know, I - it's weird for me, but..." Andrew looked away, his breathing starting to quicken. "I dunno, I shouldn't - I shouldn't like it, should I?" "Well why not?" "Because I love you too!" Andrew blurted, near the same way as he done before. "And that's not - fair, for one thing - if one guy owns me, then..." He saw one of Cody's ears twitch, as though in thought, and he answered slowly: "I...have never really seen it that way, though?" Andrew raised an eyebrow. "You haven't?" "No, not at all, actually." He gave Cody an askance look. "How...?" "See--" Cody grazed Andrew's bare shoulder with his fingertips - Andrew's tail went up and resuming its wagging at the touch. "I always knew you two had a thing going on, something, um...something I couldn't really understand." His hand dropped into his lap. "Remember you...told me that? When--" His voice dipped at the imperfect, painful memory. "When - we started--" "Yeah," Andrew cut him off, sensing the discomfort. "Yeah, I - did, didn't I..." "So yeah." Cody shrugged. "I mean, Bligh loves me right?" "Baby, yes, of course, why would you--" He stopped. The waves of guilt and doubt from earlier, made an unwelcome reappearance, flying up through Andrew's body - his face turned a bright red, and for the second time he was glad Cody could not see it. "Is this...about the work thing, and the fact that--" He was silenced by Cody's headshake. "I told you I'm fine with it." "You're sure?" "Yes I am." He rubbed his belly, and the bedsheets quivered with his happy tail-wag. "I wanna make sure these guys are healthy and safe like you guys do, too..." His hand came away and grasped Andrew's. "Plus - Bligh did, um, have, a point...maybe it would be dangerous. And you two can get the money we need...I don't really need to help..." Andrew nodded quickly, his guilt again assuaged but not yet gone, and he suspected that it may never leave - a twitch of his ear gave it away. "Okay - okay, if you say so." "Because - Andy I mean I know he loves me - I'm his husband and your husband too - and I--" He giggled again, softly. "I love that - all of that - I love you guys. But..." He slowed. "I just asked you that to ask you back, uh...basically..." Cody's fangs appeared, almost glinting in the light from the blinds, in a mischievous smile. "Do you - like being his bitch?" Andrew nodded, slowly at first, then picking up speed. "I...I do. I really do." He sighed, feeling the weight of the truth at last slide off of him. "It feels - right for me to - be his, like that." "And do you like what we have?" "Well - that's the thing, what do we have?" It was Cody's turn for his ears to droop. "What do you mean?" "What..." Andrew's ear twitched again, and he grabbed it irritably. "I'm trying to say if - if I'm his bitch, his - property, then - what does that make us?" He saw, faint, but unmistakable, Cody's ears return to where they were - and his warm smile with them. "It makes us - us." "That doesn't--" Cody silenced him with a gentle kiss on the lips. "We're just us, Andy - you're my husband and you're gonna be a dad to my puppies..." The smile grew. "We don't need a label." Andrew glanced away - his tail thumped in the bed, his heart full and happy. He turned back to Cody and nodded at him. "Right - right. We'll always - always be together." "That's right!" Cody affirmed, throwing his arms around him to give him a tight squeeze. Before Andrew could reciprocate - Cody retreated, with a giggle that had a strange tone behind it, something Andrew could not readily place. "What...what are you--?" "Oh, uh - it's..." Andrew chuckled. "C'mon Baby, tell me." "O-okay. Like, um - well since you're - he owns you, like you said does that mean - does that--" His face broke into embarrassment. "Oh - geez - but, um, do you wanna get pregnant too?" Andrew opened his mouth to answer him, but closed it, his ears fluttering until they settled, firmly flat, his embarrassed tail-wag stopping still. He remembered earlier that that day - he and Bligh in the kitchen, the heat and the pressure, the ecstatic release of precum because Bligh had put his palm over his belly...something that had been lost in the explosive chaos of the day. Instinctively - in an instinct he did not understand, that surprised him as it happened, he placed his own palm, as Bligh had, right over his stomach... "Yes," he blurted. "Yes, I - yes I do." Cody laughed, a peal of delight. "Oh wow that's - that's great!" "It...is?" Andrew chuckled back nervously. Cody nodded vigorously - he pulled himself into Andrew's lap and kissed him. "I would love to be pregnant together..." The remark took Andrew offguard. "Are you serious about that?" Cody nuzzled their mouths together. "Yes, Andy...whether with your puppies or his - me and you..." Andrew found himself lost in a sudden, acute void - of gratitude, of intangible feelings of love for this boy so intense that mere language failed him as descriptors. He pulled Cody to him, into him, he felt the skin of the boy's face against the skin of his own face, devoid of fur, devoid of the things that made them different, and for that instant they were as they had been before - Cody was his alone to protect and preserve against a world that had tried to kill him. "I love you..." Cody murmured, kissing his lips - first, then moving, deeper, deeper into Andrew's ready mouth. "I - I love you s-so much--" And again came his passionate kiss. "I...love you too..." Andrew was not prepared for it either time - it was such a sudden thing, out of almost nowhere, from a fine talk in bed, assuaging his fears about a nightmare he could only barely make sense of... ...but he knew, he knew from an instinct that had to have been primal and that he relished must have been primal and base, he knew precisely what this was. He could sense what was happening - their mouths parted, a very small trail of saliva drawn between them. Against his better judgment - a judgment being voraciously swallowed by sexual desire he vocalized it: "You - pregnant - now - it's heightening your sexdrive..." Cody nodded, quickly - even in the dark Andrew could tell it was bashfully, as though even he did not want to admit it. "I - I need you--" For a moment, a fleeting and fatal moment, he felt what Bligh must have felt, the urge, irresistible, to orgasmically release, to mate with Cody, to be inside Cody, to join with him as a single creature, gorgeous and new. Cody's body was precious, it was perfect - and Andrew craved it. "I need you too - more than anything right now..." His hand continued the slide down Cody's toned, flat stomach to the awaiting cock - erect, wet, it twitched at Andrew's fingers, ready for him. He would touch him, he would caress this beautiful Florida creature whose hair was once crowned with a wreath of strawberry leaves by his adoring mother, he would impregnate him again, and in the abyssal twilight of their lives he would bring forth in the Tampa sunshine the perfected canine shape that arose in an antediluvian age from the Appalachian valleys - foreign, foreign utterly, to the gemtones of Florida, the pearl of beaches and the emerald canopy of the jungles and the peridot of the waters and the diamond of the sunshine. But he would replace these colors, this rainbow, with the coastal pelican emblazoned upon it like flag of Saint Petersburg - he would make Cody something new, as Bligh made them both new before. Andrew felt his sheath stir, insistent, even angry, and his shaft met the air as it extended fully. His mouth came to his first nipple, just a faint hint of being swollen, so delicately enlarged and waiting for its purpose that one would never know unless, as Andrew did, as father to the mouths it would suckle, one knew just where to look. It would not grow very much but would be a small symmetrical pillow, a low raised mound, easily hidden...but no, never, he would crave to see it every day, the synthesis of the two human genders in the stark perfection of man-and-dogkind. He pressed his mouth to it and suckled - Cody moaned, his tail twitched violently, out came Andrew's name from his youthful, perfect lips. Andrew was overcome: his hand shot to Cody's penis, turgid, moist, where his touch was met with a sudden swell - a spurt of precum. Up came his mouth from the needy nipple - with his other hand he pressed against the nape of Cody's neck, bringing them close, achingly close, a breath apart, lips to lips. "Say it again," Andrew commanded, coldly - the game they used to play, though to both their minds it had ceased long ago to be a game at all, but instead a sacred ritual. "Andy - An - drew--" "Who loves you?" Andrew demanded. "You - you do - Andy does--" "And who do you love?" "You - too - I love you, Andy - Andrew--" "Yes you do," Andrew affirmed in a satisfied hiss, his hand moving up and down Cody's shaft, longer and more ample than it had been as a human. "Yes - you do--" "Oh - oh gosh, Andy--" Andrew's hand dropped from Cody's neck, down to the center of his chest, pushing him, guiding him, down to the bedsheets, feeling his own penis become hotly stiff as he felt Cody's legs instinctively rise...it made his whole being burn to see that Cody was still an animal, a submissive animal that craved him as Andrew him also in turn. The movement of his hand on Cody's shaft slowed - slowed as he took his free hand, with a ready middle finger, to tease around in the blind dark in the region of the cleft of his beloved's furry ass, knocking against his tail that had moved back to better let Andrew finish his task. The room was silent, tensely silent, except for the drone of the fan that seemed drowned in the collective sound of Andrew and Cody's passion. He heard Cody moan, plaintively - another anticipatory spurt of precum. "You want this?" Andrew whispered. Cody leaned up some, trying to find his protector's eyes, trying to show him how he felt - his tail wagged, just slightly. "Y-yes - yes, Andy, gosh y-yes--" Without another word, Andrew's middle finger found its target - Cody's anus, unusually stretchy, unusually receptive, more than a human's...the thought made Andrew grit his teeth, the fangs poking his lip, it was too beautiful and too crystallized a notion, that Cody had transcended the mortal flesh he was born as and become what he had always wanted... The finger slid in and he heard Cody squirm ecstatically, the pleasure receptors he had developed there, what Andrew had also, and Bligh too, the few times he had let Andrew finger him this way - the invitation of enflamed nerve endings that made anal sex, in all its forms, so thrilling a sexual experience. His finger slid out almost to the tip, but back it went in, harder, once, twice, thrice, like it was a dick, the dick Andrew had that was hard for Cody, only Cody, the moment so pure in the shared darkness it belonged, in the universe, to them alone. Cody moaned - then cried out, his penis, smaller than Andrew's and dwarfed by Bligh's, blindly spraying precum all over his body, the small swell, the mound in his belly that, at a stroke, rent the curtain of scientific proof, the universe he had built simply because he had dwelt in it, in tatters. Andrew longed to do more - he longed, his whole body a skin-ridden flame, to take his inhuman penis and, with a skill he had only just learned to master, knot him, tie to them together and hear his pitiful noises of love, mind-rending devotion, hear them echo in his ears, smell the arousal, the milky-sweet musky of an animal in heat... ...but he could not. Even - even as he knelt down and licked Cody's lips, then his cheek, then his face, in an abominably atavistic ritual he choose not to understand, even as his finger thrust, in and out, in and out, Cody clamping his mouth shut to block out the immodesty of his pleasure that made him want to scream with sexual abandon - even, even, after all that, Andrew still remembered not to use his penis, enlarged from its human shape, to penetrate too deeply, not to endanger his children, something previously nebulous that, each lick, each thrust of his finger, each demand to be told he was loved and each answer that was a near-shout of affirmative, was becoming something new...something real. He wanted to be father - no matter his children looked like, whether a human, a naked little ape, or a puppy, furry and blind...no matter what they were, how they were shaped, what would they end up as, he wanted to be a father - and he wanted Cody to be the mother. Faster and faster his finger plunged, back and forth, forth and back, into Cody's ass the warm, slick, moist flesh of the boy's insides unchanged from the transition to half-canid - Cody moaned, cried, whimpered, his ears never moving from a prone position of submission, his tail still, too still, with arousal. He did not last long - Andrew knew he wouldn't, he knew how Cody's body was engineered, with or without the beautiful fur and the superior caninity, he knew, still, what do...how to use a simple digit on his hand to make Cody overload with pleasure, and all the rest incidental, but vital: the newfound nerve endings inside his rectum, the psychological security of the man, the dog, who rescued him, defended him, protected him, so near to him, so enraptured in the waves of their mutual scents, milky-fertile, sweaty-sweet. His thrusts were futile, they were always futile, because there was no ass, no vagina, for him to put it in, he was always the receiver, the vessel for someone else, for Bligh, for Andrew - but still Cody thrusted as his humanoid evolution demanded and commanded, his lithe body taut, the spray substantial, the musky-smelling near-luminescent grey fluid that geysered all over him, on his chest, on his cheek, on the pillow... The sight of him - prone, whispering the name, Andy, over and over - overrode any last sane thoughts Andrew himself may have had: he took his cock into hand, rigid with the baculum, deliciously slick, and thrust into it, over Cody, over him and dominating him, looking into his face in his grainy nightvision to watch him as his own thrusts continued apace...and then in a euphoric paroxysm, he released. The ropes of semen - grey, musk-ridden, the same as Cody's if, perhaps, a little thinner - let loose from his pointed cockhead, painting Cody's chest, up to his chin, for several seconds of erasing bliss. At last the orgasm ebbed from him - his eyes, which had watched Cody supplicate him silently for the semen, for the sloppy mess, refocused out of the primal urges of lust and reproduction...he could see movements below, arms and mouth, and tell that Cody was feasting on the cum that Andrew had given him. But the exertion was too much - much too much, and he was gripped with the lassitude of having awoken so suddenly with no respite since...and stumbled, near-fell, onto Cody, into the cesspool of their intermingled slime. Cody near-caught him - they were soon wrapped in each other's arms, Andrew nuzzling the boy's cheek, chuckling breathlessly. "You like that?" he murmured. He felt Cody nod. "Y-yeah - I love when you do that..." "Good..." Andrew kissed his nose. "I'm glad." "Andy?" "Yeah Baby?" "What--" Andrew felt Cody's breath on his face, hesitant, concerned, as if the words could not come correctly at first thought. "What - what's gonna happen now? You - me - Steve - Bligh? Our - our family?" The question faded into Andrew's psyche, where transmuted into a line of disjointed thought: The moment that was so pure before - he and Cody alone - tunneled back into the real world, it opened, in Andrew's mind, he could see it, he could see the world receiving him again...he heard Cody's question and he comprehended it, the chemicals firing in his brain that he was, day by day, less sure about it, the divine supernatural glow he had long flouted that, now, flesh, fur, grew in him every day. He felt it - he felt it and he knew what Cody felt, the certainty not falsifiable by any science anywhere. He felt - he knew. He knew Stephen was safe - and still loved him. Loved him enough to recklessly and with a disquieting abandon change his life, his location, to be with him...him, and Bligh, whom he imitated in many ways but, in that elegant throwaway of his old life, clearly taught him something more. Bligh loved him - that deranged, damaged love that never made sense, could never make sense...should never make sense. Cody loved him...the gratitude that rendered words useless, the safety that could be expressed only with arms wrapped around ...he stroked Cody's face, gently, so gently, as if the slightest misstep from his fingers would shatter this, this moment, this perfection that slowed down time itself. "You didn't answer me..." Cody whispered, his face curving into a smile. Andrew stopped the movements of his hand on his beloved's face. "Which - which part?" "About...what's gonna happen next." "Oh..." Andrew hesitated - within the silence he felt it, he felt the line, drawn, down from West Virginia, he and Bligh and Stephen, wrapped around them all, wrapped around Cody like Andrew's own arms were. And then he knew: he was always apart from the world, different from it, walled off. First he and Stephen's status and birth, then he and Bligh's inscrutable relationship, then Florida and its wilderness, and then Cody...he was always an outsider. But not with them. Not ever. "It doesn't matter what happens next..." Andrew whispered, coming down to kiss Cody on his smiling mouth. "As long as we - the four of us - as long we're together."