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Three clinks on the small, round table in the indented alcove next to the kitchen that was meant to be the apartment's dining room announced that Andrew's dinner for the three of them - a plate of pancakes with pads of butter melting in the midst of the stack, garnished with toast and peanut butter, glasses of milk for drink - was finished.

Andrew had gone pantless for convenience, the shame and weirdness of his new body - his furry sheath, fatter than Bligh's or Cody's, and his balls, and his tail - having been erased with the togetherness of the other males, just like him.

The trauma, the agony, the rejection from earlier that day had not been yet healed totally but had it eased - Andrew was willing to accept everything as it happened because he could forgive Bligh anything, even if, with his own doubting self, he wondered this time it was fully possible.

But at that moment he looked to Bligh, who had gone shirtless, an ear twitching in tandem with his delighted grin, hat doffed and beside the plate as an ingrained Appalachian cultural courtesy - and then to Cody, who had changed into one of Andrew's plain white t-shirts to freshen up from how the Volcom shirt had grown overly damp from lactating, but still managed a sunny smile.

He smiled at them both - the cognitive dissonance faded, the love in his heart grew, again, for both of these strange and beautiful creatures - he nodded at them, and grinned.

"Alright - let's eat," he pronounced.

With a shudder that betrayed an embarrassingly ravenous hunger from a full day of not eating, a totally empty stomach from the traumatic episodes of vomiting - his fork shook slightly in his fingers from the excitement of the food he had prepared - he set to his task.

The three of them ate for the next few minutes in relative silence - even Cody, who had reassured Andrew several times, several ways, that he was alright, that he was fit to eat, that in fact he wanted to eat, that he was hungry again.

It was, given everything that had taken place that day, and indeed had taken place in that very house, a surreal scene - this homey tableau of an improvised family, three males, eating breakfast-for-dinner, around a table, together...none of which faintly hinted at the insanity that had taken place earlier that day, and the night before.

The pile of papers - the pamphlets and packets and forms and applications that had been a bane of Andrew's world for weeks now, that had sat, inanimate and yet still by their very existence leering and threatening, had been banished to a corner on the floor - and now, Bligh sat at the place where they had been.

It was Bligh who first broke the silence - a happy titter, through a mouthful of pancake.

"Dang Drew, this is good," he said.

"Thanks," Andrew replied after swallowing - he gulped down some of his milk and took a breath, realizing he was eating too fast. He paused with his hand to his mouth as the feeling passed of his throat being too full. "Uh - yeah thanks, I guess I just got better at it making it all these years."

Bligh tittered, with a nod. "Guess so."

"Thank you Andy," Cody added with a smile.

Andrew laughed in the depths of his glass of milk. "Y'all welcome."

"Who taught yew this, anyhow?" Bligh asked, holding up a piece of pancake stabbed on his fork.

Andrew grinned. "Granddad."

"Yeah?" Bligh answered as he chewed.

Andrew nodded. "Yeah, he, um - we used to have servants way back in the day, and--"

Cody's eyes widened. "You guys had servants? You never told me that!"

Bligh tittered. "He didn't have em Pup - last of em were gone by the time Pappy was around, he told me."

"And he was right," Andrew said. "My house had rooms that hadn't been opened in ages because - I mean shit, ain't nobody around to clean it." He sniffed. "I used to think ghosts lived in them..."

"Kids at school told me y'all's house was haunted n'shit, yeah," Bligh said after a drink of milk from his glass - his ears flattened with a small sigh. "They uh - used ta piss me off callin yew Dracula cuz yew--"

"Lived in a haunted house, yeah, just--" Andrew chuckled bitterly. "Fuck each and every one of those assholes."

"That was a long time ago," Bligh said in a low voice.

"Don't care," Andrew replied with a shake of his head. "I'll forgive - one day, probably - but I ain't ever gonna forget. Why should I?"

Bligh shrugged. "If that's how ya feel."

"That's how it started, dude - Dracula. And then..." He shook his head, trying as he did so to literally shake away the bad memories.

"Is that why you hate vampire stuff?" Cody asked as he, too, partook of the pancake before him. "I always wondered but - people hate things for weird reasons--"

"Yeah." Andrew took another bite of his toast. "Yeah," he repeated through a mouthful. "That's actually exactly why." He sniffed. "Plus Twilight don't exactly help."

Cody laughed. "Ew, yeah."

"Well fuck vampires," Bligh declared as he cut off another piece of pancake. "Werewolves forever, man."

Andrew laughed - it was so like Bligh to say something outrageous to cheer him. "Uh - damn, what were we talking about?"

"I think werewolves are cool too," Cody said to Bligh with a smile - Bligh gave his one of his quick, approving nods.

"Damn right, Pup." He glanced to Andrew. "And uh - yeah yew were talkin bout Granddad Lightfoot and how he--"

"Right - okay, well anyway they had a, uh - a black housemaid, and she knew how to cook all these dishes from when West Virginia was part of Virginia, I guess her family passed it down to her, and - she really liked Granddad...and passed it down to him."

Cody beamed. "That's so awesome."

Andrew raised an eyebrow as he took a too-large bite from his toast. "Think so?" he said as he struggled to keep it all in his mouth.

"Yeah!" Cody nodded enthusiastically. "It's cool that your family is so old..." His smile faded some as a thought seemed to occur to him. "My family was old too, I think. I remember my dad um - before he went crazy - I remember him saying how we'd been in Florida since it was a territory..." He shrugged. "Not sure what he meant by that."

Bligh furrowed his eyebrows. "Did Florida used ta be a territory afore it was a state? Like one of them ones out west, yanno?"

Andrew thought a moment. "I think so - that's more Stevie's area, the whole history thing. I never took any Florida history classes, but - so - wow, all our families are old, then."

Cody glanced at Bligh. "Yours too?"

Bligh nodded with a grin. "Yup! I had a relative way back who went to the uh - dang, whatcha call it - the convention, yeah, the one that said West Virginia was gonna be its own state."

"The Wheeling Convention," Andrew said as he took another dive into his own stack of pancakes. "I had an ancestor there too, I think." He chuckled ruefully. "If I didn't, I'd be really surprised..."

"There ya go - remember in school it was...1863."

"Wow..." Cody said, his mouth agape. "That's old."

Andrew opened his arms, fork still in hand, as though to put two centuries between them. "And now - we're here."

"Weird, huh?" Bligh said with a titter.

"Not if you think we were supposed to be here," Cody observed.

Bligh looked to Andrew. "I suppose - we are," he murmured with a grin.

"You know," Andrew said, putting his fork down for effect as he leaned over to kiss Cody on the cheek, "I think I do too."

Cody laughed. "I'm glad, because that's what I think." He reached for his glass of milk, and, seeing it was running low, Andrew rose from the table to retrieve the jug.

"You want more?" he asked even as he had already gotten up.

"Y-yeah but Andy it's okay I got--"

"No no, allow me."

As he returned to the table to top off Andrew's glass of milk, a strange look came across Cody's face - he frowned, at first, but then smiled, as though puzzled as to what he was feeling.

"You - you know, um--"

"What is it, Baby?"

"Well uh--" Cody gave a small laugh, perhaps at himself. "It's um, it's just that - I'm - I'm drinking milk here, but I'm...giving it too."

As Andrew replaced the milk jug back in the refrigerator he threw an appalled look to Cody, who giggled softly.

"This cow and me," the boy explained, "did the same thing."

Bligh's eyes widened. "Uh - Pup yanno it ain't _really_the same thang--"

"No, I know," said Cody with a satisfied smile as Andrew came back to his chair, standing before it. "It's just weird - funny, I guess."

"Baby..." Andrew began gravely as he sat back down. "Listen, if it makes you uncomfortable--"

"No, no, Andy, c'mon!" Cody giggled again. "Why would it? It's just - it's a little weird, but it's kinda cool, too."

"Cool?" Bligh repeated dubiously.

"Yeah," Cody said. "At least I think so."

"But Baby you seem--" Andrew chose his words carefully. "You seem um - not really all that worried that you're - yanno--"

"Giving milk?" Cody guessed - he giggled. "It's okay...it's part of being pregnant, right? I mean I--" He blushed some. "I - did kinda think about that...about...nursing and stuff."

Bligh furrowed his eyebrows. "Ya did?"

Cody shrugged. "Well yeah. It's part of being pregnant and caring for - for the babies. Err..." He scratched his ear, which twitched with his hand. "Puppies I guess."

"Makes sense," Bligh murmured with a smirk as he took another forkful of pancake. "Still weird y'all were into that."

"You had sex with a dog," Andrew said flatly.

Bligh swallowed his pancake - he tilted his head at Andrew with a coy grin. "Technically, boy, so did yew."

A second elapsed before Cody, getting the joke, erupted into a happy laugh as Andrew found himself gobsmacked, a tongue in his cheek as he held a glass of milk before him - he lowered it back to the table with a defeated smile.

"Alright, alright--"

"Aight?!" Bligh said, leaning to scritch the back of his neck.

"Yes," Andrew answered with an embarrassed chuckle. "Alright." He sighed - as Cody let out one last giggle before partaking of a piece of toast, he shook his head, looking back to the boy with a slight frown. "But...I mean think about it, this - all of this ain't anywhere close to normal, to--"

"So?" Cody smiled as he munched. "Weird things happen. I'm living proof of that..." He stopped to swallow the bite of toast, his mouth twinging. "Least I always felt like that..." Bligh reached to rub the boy's back - Cody smiled at him.

"He, uh--" Bligh looked to Andrew, his voice low. "He told me today all bout the - the, uh--"

"I told him I was homeless, Andy, before you took me in."

Andrew absorbed the comment before nodding back slowly. "Yeah. You - um, yeah, y'all said you got close today."

Bligh took his turn at the toast - after biting off a piece, he answered: "We did, yeah."

"I still think that's good," Andrew said with an affirming smile. "But uh - as long as us drinking uh--" Andrew tapped the edge of his glass with his finger. "Milk - as long as it don't bother you."

"No, Andy - it's - it's fine." Cody's blush returned, and his ear twitched with a sheepish smile that he tried to hide with the back of his hand. "Honestly it's really cool. I never imagined I - I could do this, that this would actually happen..."

The sight was so endearing Andrew could not help but chuckle - Bligh took his free hand to run his fingers through the boy's hair with a grin.

"Well - neither could I," Andrew said.

"Me neither," Bligh added with a small titter. "I, uh - yanno I..." He put his fork down. "I always wanted ta be - kinda like this. Jest not alone, like I was..."

"A werewolf," Cody said with a look of wonder. "That's so cool."

"Yeah," Bligh snickered. "Yeah - that's me. Wolfman."

Andrew raised his eyebrows. "But now - you ain't alone."

"You're with us," Cody added.

"I know," Bligh said with smirk. "Best feelin - best feelin in the fuckin world, man."

Cody giggled quietly at Bligh's triumph, and a warm feeling swept over Andrew as he saw how happy his best friend was - he felt his tail wag happily out from the back of the chair.

"I love you," he blurted - he looked to Bligh, then Cody, letting them understand it was to them both that he said it.

"We love you too, Drew," Cody answered - he giggled to Bligh. "Right?"

Bligh grinned. "Always, Drew. We've always loved yew."

Andrew felt himself go red - his tail wagged, but then stopped, as he felt himself overwhelmed. As the others smiled at him, he breathed out a weak grin. "Th-thank you. Thank y'all - s-so much."

The rest of the meal proceeded in near-silence, interrupted in requests for milk and, in Bligh's case, one for extra syrup - the three were hungry, each for different reasons, and the food before them was amply filling. It was not the only meal Andrew knew how to prepare, but it was favorite, and his favorite because he knew how comforting it could be, how homey and simple it would be, and was. After the insanity and world-shattering bombastics of the day behind them, this was the least he could - a taste of the familiar, prepared from his own hands.

At last they all finished - the pancakes, the toast, and the milk all gone, eaten heartily by the three of them.

"Y'all like it?"

Bligh cackled, pointing down to this empty plate. "Shit I _reckon_so!"

Cody nodded enthusiastically. "It was great, Andy. The best you've done in a long while."

Andrew raised an eyebrow at the boy. "Really?"

Again Cody nodded. "Yeah!" He smiled. "It really was delicious."

He opened his mouth to say something else, and hesitated, before stopping, shaking his head with his eyes closed, as though trying to shake away a bug that had landed on his face.

Andrew bent forward to put a hand on his shoulder. "Baby? Baby are you okay?"

Cody opened his eyes and flashed a small smile. "Y-yeah - sorry, just got a little headache."

"Musta ate too fast, Pup," Bligh gently admonished.

Andrew nodded. "Yeah, you were hungry, weren't you?"

Cody giggled shyly, embarrassed at being point on the spot. "I guess so..."

Andrew smiled at the boy. "You wanna go rest a minute while me and Bligh clean up?"

"No it's okay, I can--"

"Go rest, Pup," Bligh said. "Drew n'me can handle this."

Cody seemed put off by the idea of not helping. "Guys it's okay you don't have to treat me any different--"

"Baby, it's okay." Andrew leaned in for effect, giving Cody a quick peck on the cheek. "Go."

"Well..." Cody still seemed reluctant. "I do gotta go to the bathroom..."

Bligh rose, dishes already in hand, with one of his quick, decisive nods. "Aight then! G'on now - leave the cleanin ta us."

Cody slid out of his chair with a slight frown, clearly disappointed at being directed not to help, and as he passed around the kitchen table he paused to give Andrew a hug - the latter answered by nuzzling the boy's hair with his face as Bligh, who had rounded the table already to the kitchen to turn on the sink, looked on with a smirk.

"I love you," Andrew murmured. "You're sure you're okay?"

"Yes, Andy - I'm fine."

"Okay..."

Andrew released him, and the two regarded each other for a spare second before Cody, a mischievous smile overtaking his face, poked Andrew's chubby sheath - Andrew let out a startled cry that ended in a laugh.

"Okay - okay, get outta here."

"Aww, you're no fun, Cody called out as he made his way to the bedroom.

Andrew chuckled to himself. "Love you," he said as the disappeared from view.

"Love you too!" came the answer from near the bathroom.

With a contented sigh, Andrew turned back to the table to retrieve more dishes.

"Hey, Drew--"

"Yeah? Oh, and hey--" Andrew stopped where he was, glasses in hand, to regard Bligh. "You liked the food, right?"

"I said I did, man! I loved it." Bligh tittered, taking the glasses from him. "And uh - I was jest gonna ask ya - remember that time we were on dishes duty fer--"

"Oh my god." Andrew let out a long, rueful laugh. "Yeah, we did to do dishes for the football banquet - us three, Richie Rich_and _Wolfman and - Little Bear--"

"Dan, yeah - Dan. Since we signed up last..."

Andrew's smiled slipped into a frown at the mention of Dan Dorsey's name. "Poor guy...I hope his family's been alright."

"Yeah," Bligh said with a respectful nod, his ears flattening in tandem. "After he - changed, yanno, he, uh - he didn't talk to me. I tried callin and textin em but he answered - even went ta his house, yanno, the one he got from his daddy after he passed..." He shook his head, just slightly. "Nuthin."

"Was he mad at you?" Andrew said with a raised eyebrow.

Bligh shrugged. "May o'been. It uh - it happened that same night, yanno, like it did with yew, n'he got real scared and ran off after it was all over..." Andrew watched Bligh's face became stony at the memories. "He was freakin out hard bout it..." He shook his head, the icy eyes distant and sad. "I'll never know, man. I'll jest never know - I's so afeared he'd tell somebody and they'd find us out but - he didn't, thank the Lord but - not like that, man, not...like that..."

As he laid the dishes in the sink, Andrew approached him with a tight hug from behind - Bligh turned to him, still in his arms, and hugged him back.

"Not your fault," Andrew murmured. "Back then you didn't know what the effects of your - of your cum were. And you even said you tried to reach out to him."

Bligh nodded slowly. "Yeah...and really, man he - yanno he had problems before. His daddy was a real snake."

Andrew grabbed him tighter, the thought of his best friend in distress bringing him distress in turn. "Bligh please don't blame yourself - you're a good person, and it wasn't your fault."

Bligh nudged him back some so that they could see into each others' eyes - his ears were righting themselves and a smirk was growing on his face.

"Ya really think so - that - that I'm a good person?"

Andrew smiled. "Yes, Bligh - yes. I love you, you know that."

The two separated - Bligh tittered under his breath, an almost imperceptible laugh that grew into a happy cackle. "Drew - boy, I love yew too."

The two kissed, their tails wagging together, before separating again.

"What'd ya do with the shirt, yanno, the one with--" His frown finished the sentence.

"I threw it out--" Andrew motioned with his head to the pantry. "It's in there - the garbage. Knife's in there too..." At once he was crestfallen, the memory of his attempted suicide playing out in his head. "I'm sorry," he blurted, seeking Bligh's eyes with his own. "I'm so sorry..."

Bligh shook his head. "Dun be, man - yer aight, we aight...jest dun think about."

"W-well it - I don't even know why I - why I did it like that--"

"Drew..."

"Anybody - anybody with some medical knowledge would tell you that - the stomach definitely ain't where stab yourself if you wanna kill--"

"Drew please don't..."

The two searched each other for a fractional length before Andrew, swallowing hard, managed: "I - I didn't mean, I guess, to really h-hurt myself - I was just sc-scared, okay? I -- I love you. I've always loved you."

Bligh nodded with a smirk that was strained, but seemed to trying to reassure him. "I know - I love yew too."

The silence after this, so sudden, was unbearably awkward as soon as it came - the running water was suddenly deafening.

"Uh - looked like a nice shirt," Bligh offered, clearing his throat as he handed Andrew the final plate.

Andrew laughed with the breaking awkwardness as he put the plate in the sink - he put a hand to his forehead, which ran up through his hair. "It was a v-neck from Neiman Marcus, Bligh - it was - yeah it was a nice shirt, it was fifty bucks nice--"

Bligh balked. "The fuck yew payin fifty dollars fer a damn shirt?!"

Andrew laughed again - Bligh's reaction was precisely as he expected. "Dude c'mon--"

"God_dam_, Drew!" Bligh cackled. "They really do gotcha comin and goin down here!"

"Oh who the fuck cares," Andrew said, shrugging. "If you have the money, shit, spend it!"

Bligh looked at him askance, approaching a frown. "That sounds like yer daddy talkin--"

"Does it?"

"Kinda, yeah."

"I don't care - it's how I feel - and I might be his son but I am_definitely_ not him."

With a smug smile of finality, he went back to putting the plates under the faucet - perhaps offput by the remark, Bligh drew nearer to him.

"Hey--" He caught him by the shoulder to address him directly. "Hey, y'okay?"

"Why do you keep asking me that?" Andrew answered with a small laugh.

Bligh smirked - a little bashful, his ears twitching slightly. "I always asked you that - cuz - I always wanted ta be sure..." The smirk faded. "I still do."

Andrew reached behind him to turn off the water. "Yeah you - you always did, didn't you?"

"Ya never figured it out?"

"Figured what out?"

Bligh kissed him. "That I loved you?"

A long pause seemed to pass before Andrew started to nod slowly. "I wanted to believe--" He caught himself as a surge of emotion threatened to derail him, and he coughed suddenly, his tail starting to wag. "But I - I never could act on it even if - it was true."

"Well--" He kissed him again, deeper this time, and Andrew, leaning back some, put the dish he was holding in the sink as he suddenly feared dropping it. "It was. And it is."

Their eyes locked again, and Andrew, suddenly unguarded, gave a quick, breathy laugh - he leaned sideways to see if the table had been cleared.

"Uh - yanno, um - I can just...put these dishes in the dishwasher later..." He smiled. "Table's clean, after all..."

"What, yew done?"

Andrew nodded slightly. "I - uh, yeah. I wanna spend some time with you, so..."

Bligh smirked. "We've spent--" He tittered, rolling his eyes. "A lot of time together already, man. What about Cody?"

"You want him out here too?"

"Well, yeah! I love the little Pup. He's part o'this too."

Andrew chuckled. "Pup..." he repeated. He cleared his throat, and called out: "Yo, Baby!"

"Yeah?" came the response from the bathroom.

"You coming back out?"

"Uh - uh y-yeah, just a - in a minute."

"Okay Baby. I love you."

"Love you too..."

Andrew smiled coyly at Bligh. "See? He'll be out here, then we can all spend time together."

Bligh cackled, his tail starting to wag. "Aight - fine. Whattya wanna do, watch TV?"

Andrew's smile turned warm - an enveloping feeling of coziness, a kind of latent thrill of togetherness, made his heart, the new heart that Bligh had given him, swell in his chest. His tail, which gave away everything, wagged enthusiastically behind him.

"Yeah - yeah we can do that," he answered.

The two of them, at Andrew's direction with a casual swerve of his arm, exited the kitchen, pausing in front of the table where they had eaten at to, and again at Andrew's wordless insistence, a hug - it was brief, too brief, but it brought a warmth to Andrew's body and that gave his heart immense delight. As he stood before the chair he was sitting at before, he ran through Bligh's hair - his tanned hand from the Florida Sun and sand through the sable feathers of nighted Kanawha.

"I love you," he breathed, hot on Bligh's neck.

He was met with a deep, wet, passionate kiss. "I know - I've always loved yew, Drew."

"Deep - down, I--" Andrew swallowed hard. "P-probably always knew..."

Bligh sighed through his nose - his eyes looked away, and he seemed to grow sad. "Drew, I - I don't wanna ruin nuthin but I - yanno I do gotta go back, like I told ya - gotta get my stuff, n'all that..."

Andrew's tail come to a dead halt, and he pulled away, stricken. He stroked Bligh's beard, his fingers losing themselves in the dense jet-black hair - it was his turn to sigh.

"Think - think about it first, okay?"

A fractional length passed before Bligh nodded back, just slightly, and the two of them continued their sojourn to the couch, Andrew approaching near the coffee table to pick up the remote where it fallen haphazard to the floor earlier when the coffee table had been overturned - he used it to motion to the television.

"So yeah, you wanna watch TV?"

"Um..." Bligh shrugged, taking up a spot at the end of the couch. "Sure. Whatcha got?"

"Uh, well--" Andrew sat down next to Bligh, scooting close, taking advantage of being able to intimate with him. "We gotta DVR, so..."

"Wazzat?"

"It's a thing that records TV shows as they're being broadcast and stores them as data - uh, I think that's right - anyway they're shown during the day and you can watch them later."

Bligh seemed impressed. "That's legit."

"Yeah, it's nice to have..."

His voice trailed off, and he held the remote in his hand, his index finger on the power button, at the ready, but at once his mind was overcome with a possessing thought - that this coziness was but a vacation, that this was not as permanent as it could be, as it should be. What Bligh said on the balcony came back to him, and it struck him so that he remained in a stiffened, awkward silence - a living freezeframe, like on a recorded television show...

"I don't want you to leave..." he murmured. He set the remote down on the coffee table without looking at him, staring ahead at the television, before slowly turning his head to Bligh to gauge his reaction - Bligh was stoic, not quite frowning, even as he shook his head.

"Fine--" He sighed hard, before nodding. "I guess yer right, I should - I got nuthin'ere anyhow...I can jest buy more clothes if I need em."

"What? The fuck you mean, don't you--" He stopped, at once, as a thought occurred to him, and he lowered his head as the pieces came together. "Wait...wait, the whole idea - you said had time off--"

"Well I--" Bligh snickered. "Kinda had ta lie to em, man - I mean c'mon, weren't this more important?"

Barely had Bligh finished when Andrew sighed, harsh and bitter - the thought, for whatever reason, deeply irritated him...some small, reddened, agitated mass had freed itself from Andrew's mind.

And it was mad.

"You fucking idiot," he spat at Bligh.

Bligh blinked, taken aback by Andrew's unexpected reaction. "Wha - Drew, what's--?"

"So you'll just get fired? Or did they fire you already--?"

"I...I dunno? I mean what good is me havin a job if yew want me ta stay here?"

"Fuck." Again he shook his head, stronger, shutting his eyes. "Fuck Bligh - just when I think you're smart--"

He heard Bligh shift uncomfortably on the couch, leaning back...he was first to aid, first to heal, when Andrew was upset, but utterly helpless when Andrew was upset at him.

"Well what - what was I s'posed ta--?"

"I don't know," Andrew interrupted. "I don't--" He shook his head once more, his ears going flat, impotent to the circumstances before him. "Guess I'll just buy you new clothes - since you don't have a job anymore--"

"Dude, no, I just said--"

Andrew gritted his teeth in frustration. "--because you never plan anything."

Bligh seemed stricken. "Drew, dude, no, I'm movin down here anyways, c'mon man it really ain't no thang--"

"Yes, Bligh, it is indeed a thing." Andrew flung Bligh's words away with wave of his hand. "How much money do you even have, anyhow? Enough to come here, I'm guessing? And then what?"

Bligh did not answer - for several seconds, the hurt in his eyes, immobile, remained...before he shut them, hanging his head. Andrew sensed that he had won, at a terrible cost - even though he was in the right, Bligh would admit failure, for civility's sake.

"I reckon - I - y-yer right - I - I shoulda saved up more. Guess I weren't really ready--"

"I figured," Andrew snapped back. "But then again I_wasn't ready to be a _dog." He knew it was merciless, and, a new malice and resentment growing inside him, he did not care.

Bligh's head shot back up, mouth agape - an aborted response - but he closed it in utter rout.

Andrew's anger flared again - something about Bligh's face, something about his tone, something was making him angrier by the second...a mild pain started to grow in his right temple, an eruptive cluster headache from nowhere, and it built upon his irritation. He blinked - focusing again on Bligh's face. A few hours ago Bligh had been, rightfully so it seemed, the love of his life - now he was a total nuisance taking up space on his couch.

"The fuck is your problem," he muttered.

At this piece of situational absurdity, Bligh had enough - he rolled his eyes and glared back at Andrew, on a new offensive. "The fuck is yer problem, dude? How the fuck yew gonna be mad when we was supposed ta be happy?"

"Shut up," Andrew muttered again, wincing some as the pain in his head suddenly spiked.

"Why the fuck yew mad?" Bligh repeated, leaning forward. "Y'ain't never jest - _turned_on me like that. The fuck, dude?"

Andrew's jaw clenched, the pain in his temple pulsing apace, and he drew in a breath as he felt some part of his pride become wounded at Bligh's words - somewhere so deeply rooted it was almost as though it should not have existed...

"I told you to shut up - what are you, deaf? Goddam redneck."

Bligh did not yield - his voice dropped to a deadly monotone. "The fuck yew just call me, Lightfoot?"

"I said," Andrew persisted with jeering slowness. "Yew - are - a redneck. A fuckin hayseed from nowhere,_and I ain't about ta be spoken ta like that--" He leaned forward very slightly, a silent threat. "_Understand?"

Bligh blinked, starting to recoil some at the way Andrew's voice was changing - warping, morphing, into the way he used to sound...

"Drew - the fuck gotten inta yew man--?"

Andrew felt his teeth grind against each other. He cringed hard as the headache needled his temple one last time with a surge of pain, before his eyes snapped open and, seeing Bligh eye him with confusion and fear, could bear it no longer - something, something insidious which he could not understand, some shadow that draped itself across his brain in a complete eclipse, had made the very sight of Bligh indescribably infuriating.

With a loud, animal growl, he leapt at him, arms up, to strangle him.

Bligh was taken off guard at first, but swiftly recovered, wrestling Andrew's hands off of him - Bligh clearly the stronger of the two - clumsily but firmly, bringing his wrists down to where they could not threaten him.

"The - fuck - has gotten inta yew, Drew?!" Bligh demanded.

The two of them shared a deadly gaze - panting, wild-eyed, Andrew's reason had left him utterly, so that his thoughts were little more than a massed jumbled of half-formed sentences.

Bligh shook him, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice. "Drew, talk ta me, man, what the fuck is goin on with yew?"

It was then that Cody returned.

"Hey, um, hey guys."

Bligh and Andrew looked up in near-unison to see the boy emerge from the bedroom doorway, the shirt he had been wearing now more noticeably stained than when he went in.

Andrew leaned back off of Bligh - the pain in his temple dissipated at once, and it was though a curtain had been lifted, so that he could once again see and feel things as they actually were...his head snapped to Bligh, ears flat and occasionally twitching, eyes wild with bewildered confusion.

"What..." He could not finish the sentence - he cocked his head at Bligh as if he, of all people, would know the answer...but the latter merely shook his head, the look of bewilderment never leaving.

Andrew swallowed hard and turned back to Cody, forcing a friendly smile.

"Um...h-hey there, Baby." he said haltingly. "How - um - is everythin aight?"

Cody did not respond as he neared the two of them on the couch - he stopped before them, in front of the television, the glass-topped coffee table, with an oddly blank expression...Andrew's eyes trailed down to the nylon Adidas pants, where he noticed a bulge coming from the front.

Cody's expression melded into a kind of sideway frown - a supremely odd look for the boy. "I'm - I'm okay. I, um...I had to um - to jack off."

Andrew felt himself becoming increasingly focused on the obtrusive bulge in Cody's pants as he slid off Bligh to return, seated, beside him. Some strange feeling had struck him just then, an ephemeral thought, or perhaps an instant cluster of thoughts, which he could not readily identify - from the corner of his eye he saw Bligh shake his head, as though trying to stay awake.

"Zat, uh - zat so?" Bligh said distractedly. "Yew, uh - y'okay?"

"I might be, I can't really be sure," Cody answered - it sounded to Andrew's ear like something a robot would say, trying to self-diagnose some bug in its own programming.

It was at this point that Andrew recoiled - there was something terribly, even horrifyingly off about Cody's eyes. They were the same eyes Andrew knew...but there was nothing behind them. Absolutely - nothing. It was like looking at a shark, devoid of every impulse except eating and fucking.

"Baby are yew--" And again the intrusive cloud of disjointed thoughts overtook him, stopping the sentence before it even started. "Uh - uh..."

"Sumthin - the matter, Pup?" Bligh said with an odd slowness, as though trying to carefully enunciate every word.

"Andy - you - you know you h-haven't--"

"Haven't - what?" Andrew managed.

"You haven't fucked me." His voice was still the same glibly mechanical tone as before.

The two of them stared at Cody, equally dumbfounded by the out-of-character remark.

"What?" It was all Andrew could manage.

Without another word, Cody peeled off his shirt, discarding it beside him - where two of his nipples had been giving milk, now the two below them were lactating as well, creating four small rivulets of creamy fluid that dribbled messily down his lithe, slender body, falling into the shallow crevices of his toned stomach.

His eyes, which had been repellently lifeless before, now sprung back to a kind of overly nervous awareness - for a second he was terrified, and now in despair, but then he settled on something else...the drugged, lotus-eater look from last night when he was with Bligh.

"Fucked me," Cody repeated.

As Bligh and Andrew watched in their new strange, respective stupors, Cody brought a hand, seductively, up to his torso, rubbing himself - each nipple in turn, a full-body quiver for each - until he came to the ones producing milk. Here, he stopped - with the back of his hand he rubbed some of the milk onto it, smearing it across his lips and cleaning it away with his tongue.

"Andy you - you still think I'm sexy, don't you?"

At the sound of his name, jarred out of Cody's tantalizing display, Andrew sucked in a startled breath.

"Wha - B-Baby--?"

"Pup - yew - y'aight - there?" Bligh's words seemed painfully strained, as though each one required careful thought.

Cody's breathing picked up speed as he removed his pants - Andrew felt his eyes fixate on Cody's penis, which sprung out of the black nylon that had been holding it back. It seemed like it was the first chance he had gotten to finally study it - it was indeed, as he said at Checkers, bigger than his human penis, now standing somewhere at seven inches, tapered, pointed, glistening scarlet... his knot was not as bulky as Andrew's own, nor as imposing as Bligh's, but it was still out, still ready, still needy.

"Like - like this - even though I look like this--"

He came forward before Andrew could answer, his tail making large sweeping wags behind him - not watching what was in front of him, his eyes fixed on Andrew, he knocked himself into the coffee table, wincing hard as he crawled over it to reach the couch, sliding himself into Andrew's lap.

"You - do - do you still find me sexy, Andy?"

"B-Baby, y-yeah--"

Cody's tongue came out, and in a single motion scraped the peachfuzz on Andrew's chin to slurp into his mouth - Andrew recovered quickly as Cody pushed his face into his, and for an instant, he remembered the first time they had ever done this, a year ago, when Cody, no virgin, was still pure, to him...there was a newness to this. They had not kissed this deeply since either of them had become half-dog, and in that moment - Andrew's tongue poked by Cody's fangs - it was as though they were inexperienced lovers once again, in a blanketing, noiseless sea of sweetness and elation. Even the latent dampness from Cody's nipples, which trickled onto Andrew in a sporadic drip, he could ignore in the bliss of this connection between them in their new bodies.

It did not last - as Andrew took his hand to put on the back of Cody's head, running his fingers through the boy's hair, he was suddenly shoved back into the couch as Cody pulled them apart in abrupt desperation.

"Knot me, Andy," he whined, his eyes pathetic and plaintive. "Please - please, I need your dick s-so bad right now - knot me like a bitch. I - I know what I am what - what Bligh - m-made me--" His voice dipped into a deadly whisper. "Make me your bitch, Andy--"

His hands dug into Andrew's sides - they seemed, in their desperation, to try to pierce his lungs, which shuddered, like broken steam engines, as the surge of arousal took hold...Cody's demand, so vulgar, so grotesque and so complete, rang echoingly in Andrew's head.

"C-Cody!"

His mind had become absolutely blank - his vision, his brain, was filled with Cody's face, the hazel eyes that now threw out a fire that could have engulfed the entire apartment with their passion, the furry ears that had flattened like a scolded puppy's - all he could do, in the drenching putrescence of his own amazement and arousal, was repeat the boy's name:

"Cody - Cody--"

"Fuck me," Cody growled back, in a voice that was only barely his own. "Pl-please, Andy, fuck me, fuck me until it stops, until it s-stops--"

"Cody..." Andrew breathed. "What - what--"

Their faces became pressed together once more, and Bligh, recoiling, could only look on, utterly bewildered.

"Pup - I don't think yer feelin--"

"Shut up, Bligh," Cody said, his lip twitching about his fang like a dog threatening to bite - but his eyes, and his ears, seemed to droop in sudden anguish. "Andy - Andy c'mon - I want you why - why can't you understand that, Andy? Why - why won't you fuck me - why won't you knot me--"

"That's enough, Pup--" Bligh said, rising, evidently coming out of the catatonia that had gripped him before. "Get way from em, y'ain't feelin right--"

One of Cody's hands released its grip from Andrew's ribcage to shoot down to his penis - erect, very well in spite of himself, it was easy for Cody to grip it, and Andrew threw his head back as the brusque touch on his sensitive cock-flesh caused the involuntary release of precum that jetted forth messily in the space between them.

Like a starving prisoner released into a banquet hall, Cody tore himself away to ravenously, greedily, lick up the remnants of the precum that had splattered on both himself and Andrew - the sensations of Cody's tongue on his skin ripped him from the stupor that had encased him, and suddenly Andrew was conscious, alert - and horrified.

"Cody - Cody stop--"

Coming from behind the coffee table on the opposite end for stealth, Bligh grabbed the boy from behind, peeling him off of Andrew amidst panicked whines that sounded, hideously, like a dog in distress.

"C'mon Pup - that's enough--"

"No--" Cody whined pathetically. "N-no - no - please Andy, don't leave me l-like this--"

Andrew was silent - his mouth agape in horror at Cody's strange behavior.

"I said that's enough!"

Grappling fruitlessly against Bligh's iron grip, Andrew could see the boy's eyes, the precious hazel gems that he had beseeched him that day at the gas station, were now filling with desperate, animal tears.

"Andy - please--"

"What the fuck's wrong with em?" Andrew said to Bligh.

Bligh shook his head rapidly. "Yer askin me?"

"There's nothing wrong with me!" Cody shrieked, his voice now completely unrecognizable. "I only need--" Still he continued his vain struggle in Bligh's arms. "I need - you - Andy - p-please I need you so - bad--"

"Whattya want me ta do?" Bligh called over Cody's shouts.

Andrew had spare seconds to think. "Bathroom," he said. "Put em - put em in the bathroom we - we'll figure sumthin out."

"No!" Cody moaned as Bligh took him away, still fighting against him. "N-no please--"

A moment passed as Andrew watched Bligh, with mounting force, shove the boy with nearly each step into their shared bedroom - he watched, helpless, as Cody continued to cry out his name, begging him to come for him, to be with him, to rescue him...the noises stabbed him to his very heart.

He swallowed back a forming lump in his throat as he rose to follow after the two of them, all the while feel gnaw a cold, clammy confusion, mingled in with a monstrous despair.

His natural state was to know - to know, to understand - and what had just happened defied both. Nothing - not all of the events of today, even, could have prepared him for this, not more than ten minutes of nightmarish, disjointed Hell. He felt his ear twitch, and he grabbed hold of it hatefully - how dare his new body betray him even further than it already had.

He came to the bedroom just in time to see Bligh, with one final effortful push, trap Cody in their bathroom - he said nothing, but bid Bligh to move aside with a wave of his arm, gripping the door handle tightly so that it could not be turned.

"Bligh - Andy - wh-why - Andy - Andy why won't this door open? Hey - hey let me out! What - let me out!"

Several more shakes of the door, rising in desperation, until they abruptly stopped with a loud thump to the bathroom floor - Andrew struck his head against the bathroom door, leaving it there to rue in bitter silence.

"Andy where are you? Somebody? Let - let me out, I can't - Andy? Andy?! Where - wh-where are...you..." An intermittent judder started against the door, intertwined with the rising sound of Cody's defeated sobs.

Andrew held back his own tears as, his hands gripping the knob, he jerked his head to Bligh, a feeling of entrapment and encroachment saturating him in a sticky film of paranoia.

"Shoulda let me die," he whispered bitterly. "Shoulda let that mountain lion eat my fuckin head - none o'this would ever--"

Bligh was visibly horrified - Andrew could actually see his heart breaking. "Drew - no, no don't ever say--"

"Well then I want yew ta leave," Andrew interrupted coldly. "I - I want ya ta leave. Go - jest fuckin go, n'leave us the fuck alone--"

"No--" Bligh's voice had risen into a clarion of panic. "No, no, no, no, no--" He gripped Andrew's shoulders, forcing him into a pulled hug. "Drew, no, no--"

"Fuck yew, Bligh. Yew listen ta me. Ya made us all sick! Yew did this!" He shoved Bligh backward. "With yer stupidass stalker-psycho - bullshit! Yew did sumthin ta him - look at em! Now he - he--" A feeling of helplessness shook him, as he motioned with his head to the bathroom behind him.

Bligh was struggling frantically with his words: "That - weren't - I didn't--"

"Shut up, Bligh, just shut up--"

"No - no, dammit ta Hell, no!' Bligh shouted back. "Dammit Drew please hear me--"

"I heard enough." Andrew narrowed his eyes, feeling tears at least come to them - his voice had become a low, lethal hiss. "I heard enough of yer fuckin excuses and yer lies and yer bullshit, and I've fuckin had it with yew - now git the fuck outta my house!"

Bligh's face collapsed in anguish. "I didn't know, man, I didn't know - I swear--"

"Shut the fuck up!" Andrew screamed. "Shut - the - fuck - up!"

Bligh's voice quavered, and then broke, as he seemed to realize the pure apocalypse exploding between the three of them. "How was I s'posed ta know?!"

"Ya couldn't!" Andrew shouted. "Yer an inbred hick who don't - plan -nuthin!"

Bligh's eyes glimmered with sudden outrage. "What the fuck - Drew don't yew--"

"Hick!" Andrew clamored, knowing full well what the epithet would do to Bligh. "A fuckin hayseed probably born in a goddam barn, don't plan nuthin, don't know nuthin, jest gonna drive a goddam truck for the rest o'his life I fuckin guess cuz he don't know no better than ta keep his lips off a fuckin dawg's dick!"

Bligh stood to stare over him - his glare was deadly, the stuff of pride being torn asunder, the kind of look their ancestors would have adopted before challenging one another to a duel.

"I swear on my Pappy - were yew any other boy, Drew, I would bash yer _fuckin_head in--"

"But I ain't!" Andrew's face became a shock of gleeful mockery - he raised both his hands, pointing to himself. "I ain't any other boy! I'm yer best friend, remember?" His smile died where it was on his face, the scowl returning. "The one yew love so fuckin much."

Bligh was unmoved. "Yeah. I do love yew, and I _will_beat yer ass."

Andrew wanted to respond - make some hateful remark about how he'd like to see him try - but he found himself speechless, unable to form words in an enveloping fog that made even the basic act of thinking impossible.

He kept staring at Bligh, stared at him and through him, the scowl and the glower that besmirched his face never leaving - at last he let out a broken sigh, a hot exhalation of aggressive air, as into his ears floated Cody's sporadic, yet quiet, muffled cries from behind the bathroom door.

"Now please," Bligh's voice came as a cold command. "Drew - calm the fuck down."

He heard Bligh say it - the fogginess in his head, the voiceless rage, the rank slime of perverse arousal that seemed to have sprung, fully formed, out of his subconscious, only let him barely comprehend it.

Andrew glanced down at Bligh's crotch - his penis, canid, alien, gorgeous, stood in fully glory, glistening and ready - and he glanced back to Bligh's face, the scowl giving way to narrowed eyes in strange suspicion.

"Me? Calm down?" He reached down to grasp Bligh's erect penis in an iron grip that made Bligh, unprepared, cry out in shock - a powerful spurt of precum sprayed onto Andrew's chest. "How bout yew calm down, Lynch."

Bligh's breathing had picked up pace, and, with his eyes still locked to Andrew, his mouth drew up in a stoic frown, quivering every other second with deeply suppressed emotion.

Andrew's eyes widened as he struggled, valiantly but vainly, to keep lucid and stable, and he felt them grow glassy...if he had beheld himself in a mirror, he guessed he would have resembled a junkie in need of a fix. He let go of Bligh's penis, bringing his hand up to his nose to inhale the smell - Bligh's smell.

Bligh's hands gripped Andrew's shoulders. "Stop - dammit ta Hell, stop. We have ta fight this, Drew, c'mon this ain't--"

"Fight what," his hand coming down to his nipples, which he brushed over in brief erogenous titillation.

"This - ya - know, this_--_"

"Nah, I don't know," Andrew murmured flatly. "Tell me."

A pause, a long, dreadful pause, elapsed before Andrew saw it - Bligh had lost the battle, his battle against whatever madness was probably going to kill them. His ears went flat, and his expression exploded into one of nigh-feral ferocity - fangs out, his face dove into Andrew's, voice dropping to a bare, guttural half-whisper.

"I wanna fuck em til he can't breathe."

Andrew swallowed, his mouth a desiccated mess from the cesspool in his head of nervousness, arousal, and confusion - he whimpered, an impotent, weak noise in the thick of his throat.

"I wanna be a father," Bligh growled, pulling Andrew's face to his even further so that they were less than an inch apart - his scent, grotesque and addictive, closed around Andrew like a wrapping shroud. "I wanna be the father he ain't - ever - fuckin- had."

"He's in heat," Andrew half-shrieked, the words parting his mouth as though they had been ripped out of his throat. "He's a bitch now - yew heard em, he's a - a bitch - like a d-dawg--"

Bligh plunged his tongue into Andrew's mouth - he withdrew, growling again. "I'm a dawg. Yer a fuckin dawg." He shook him. "We gonna act like dawgs in a minute--"

"Ya s-said f-fight it."

Bligh's breath was hot on Andrew's face. "I lied." His eyes had become icy whirlwinds - there was precious little behind them, like Cody's had been, nothing human, nothing rational. "I wanna be a father."

Andrew moaned as he felt another spurt coming on at the very thought, going all over Bligh's lower abdomen - he backed away, hitting the bathroom door behind him, his tail involuntarily thumping against it in steady cadence.

"Me - me too - he--" He blinked, hard, the rage surging through him again. "He fuckin_owes_ me. I saved his fuckin life and he fuckin owes me--"

Bligh stepped forward, pinning against Andrew's the bathroom door - a kiss, needful and wet, attacked his submitting mouth. "I'm a dawg," he repeated. "I gotta big fuckin dick." Bligh stepped away - he grabbed hold of Andrew's face, turning it down to force him to behold his glorious canid tumescence. "It's so fuckin big I can git em pregnant first try, and I'm gonna knot em like Duke used ta knot me."

Andrew coughed, suddenly feeling as though he could no longer breathe properly...he stepped forward but immediately almost fell, and he clutched Bligh as hard as he could, fingernails digging into bare arms as he shut his eyes, becoming hopelessly lost in the wafting fog of hormones and what he now suspected - his thoughts barely lucid enough to make the connection - were the same pheromones Cody was emitting.

"I wanna pass on my name," Andrew half-slurred. "Because it belongs ta me - my ancestors--"

He felt tears well up - angry, resentful at something he could not cogently put together, some vague outrage about being born different, and now having to breed different.

"What'd he taste like?" he heard Bligh say - suddenly he was against the door again, as Bligh had slammed him there again...there was no room, no space between them, their arms wrapped together in clawing grips, as Andrew cowered before him.

"Wha - ah wha, wha?"

Bligh's lips were mere millimeters from Andrew's own, but his fangs were bared and fierce - they were close enough to kiss, but the passion was entirely wrapped up in violence and need.

"Ya tasted em - ya tasted his milk, Drew - what the fuck did it taste like?" Again Andrew was slammed against the door as the tone in Bligh's voice reach a nigh-hysterical peak. "Fuckin tell me, dammit, I wanna know, what the fuck does he taste like?"Once more Andrew felt his back meeting the wood of the bathroom door in an aggressive shove. "Fuckin tell me, dammit--!"

"It was so good!" Andrew screamed - the hot tears oozed out from under his eyelids as he wrenched an arm free to reach for his own penis, masturbating furiously. "He tasted - so - sweet - I c-can't take it, I can't d-do this - I jest -wanna taste em again I jest wanna--"

"We can taste it all the time if we knock em up."

Andrew's eyes flew open. The stupefying ecstasy of this orgasmic cloud that he dwelt in had finally overridden what could have passed for sanity, and like vinegar into water, his desire to mate with Cody - not fuck, mate, reproduce - spread over the mantle of every thought in his brain.

"We'll take turns," Andrew agreed with the same emotionally empty flatness as before. "He'll have a litter - half yers - half mine--"

"I'll be a dad." Bligh's face exploded with grotesque glee. "I'll be a fuckin dad--"

"Oh f-fuck - m-me t-too--"

Andrew, in a swift motion Bligh had not expected, gripped the latter's penis so that he would - as expected - produce a volley of precum, and just in time, Andrew gaped his mouth to catch it. It splashed inside it, rough drops hitting his lower lips, which he probed to retrieve with a lolling tongue. Bligh's tail had picked up its wagging speed so that it beat with the speed of a motor, and Andrew looked up at him with a smile that betrayed the basest, most primal depravity.

"Yew taste so fertile," he breathed out dreamily - a comment that would never make sense, and the he never would have said, anywhere else.

"I know I fuckin am," Bligh murmured back - he felt along his own penis with a perverse pride. "First fuckin time - he's pregnant." He grinned - a wild, savage grin, his fangs made him wolfish, Faust's Devil in sex-drenched flesh. "Lemme at em, Drew. Do as I say--" His hand returned, from his penis, to Drew's neck, overpowering him, dominating him. "Cuz yew - yer my bitch."

"I'm yers," whispered Andrew with a low, malicious laugh, and as Bligh's hand fell away from his throat, he leaned to kiss him - the tongue, still with the savory taste of precum evaporating slowly from it, deep past the teeth. "I'll do - whatever yew want..."

Catching him offguard, Bligh almost did not hear the sound of the door opening, as Andrew used a free hand to turn the knob - he saw Bligh's eyes fly open, and a bestial gleam overtake the lustrous jewel-like orbs, as he realized what had happened...they separated, and Bligh burst into the bathroom without another word.

Cody did not a have a chance - perhaps he heard what they were talking about, perhaps he only figured they were fighting in the cloister of the bathroom with the fan on, only hearing the slamming and the hateful-sounding words...in either case he did not seem to think that coming from the other side of the door was Bligh, his magnificent doghood at the ready, pouncing on him, and without warning, without the decency of a kiss or foreplay, barely moving the boy's tail out of the way, and slammed his knot, no regard to safety or comfort, directly into his ass.

From this angle - Bligh mounting Cody, the boy on all fours, his confused and pained cries turning into plaintive moans - Andrew knew what he had to do. He dropped to the floor, and as Bligh was jackknifing the boy's ass, he slithered uncomfortably to position himself in the space between Cody's torso and the tile, to suckle on his leaky nipples.

It had gone from four nipples lactating a few minutes ago, to all ten at once producing a generous flow of white-yellowish fluid, so that the tile directly underneath him, no longer protected by the rug that was bunched up by the commode as Bligh had kicked it out of the way, was slick and slightly sticky with the liquid - but Andrew was far past caring, and probed them, all of them, with his tongue, greedily and hungrily sucking and lapping what he could, from the seemingly limitless milk-flood, his head darting back and forth.

It did not take Bligh long to cum - doing his biological duty, as dictated to him by the pheromones in the air and the hormones in his body, and horrendously overstimulated from his conversation with Andrew, perhaps a minute passed at most before his seminal flood was let loose, and from what Andrew could hear it may have been the most powerful paroxysm he had ever experienced...certainly the longest, and as Andrew slid back to watch the final seconds of the orgasm occur, his still unshaven peachfuzz-beard, even his hair, dabbled with milk-drippings from Cody's nipples, it seemed to take some time before he saw Bligh's thrusts slow and then stop, and his eyes open at last.

They were exhausted, and lucid, and weary - as if a spell had broken, as though he were under some kind of eldritch hypnosis and, with a fingersnap, he was himself again...he turned to Andrew with a sickened look of confusion.

Cody, his head down into the tile, still had not cum yet, his scarlet penis still strong and erect, his moans, which had softened some, still echoing hollow in the small space of the bathroom that all three had found themselves in.

Andrew crawled towards him, leering at him almost threateningly - a kind of territoriality, similar to what he had felt before towards Cody but now stronger, and deeper, welling up in his chest.

"Get off," Andrew ordered coldly. "My turn."

"Drew..." Bligh muttered, forlorn. "Ya need ta - don't--"

"I said--" He reared up, gripping Bligh's shoulders as Bligh had done to him, shoving him as hard as he could with a dashing body-blow, backed by a terrible upsurge of adrenaline. "--my turn!"

Andrew's half-tackle, remembered dimly from his football days, threw Bligh off balance, and he tottered onto his side, tangling himself in the shower curtain - unable to hold his penis in Cody any longer, it came out with a sudden wet pop, the same noise Andrew had heard when he and Bligh were in the shower together earlier.

Andrew grabbed Cody roughly, pulling him, sliding him, anus still agape with a small trickle of Bligh's semen, still panting and moaning, in the mess of milk on the tile, to his awaiting cock. He mounted him immediately - roughly, with no regard for Cody's comfort or his own, batting away his tail like an errant fly, shoving in his engorged canid equipment into Cody as soon as he was able...the sensation was near-crippling in how good it felt, how intense and complete it was, the feeling of Cody's anus against his penis, infinitely more sensitive than it was when were they both human.

He lasted mere seconds - he was too worked up, his body and mind too beaten-down with the demands of biology to put up any further resistance, and like Bligh, he gave way to orgasm, a white-blinding avalanche of pleasure that seemed to actually kill him, to cease his existence as a person and remove him from reality...

...his thrusts slowed, and his eyes opened.

He was puzzled at first by what he saw: Bligh, against the bathtub, staring at him in wordless anguish, Cody beneath him, with his whole penis full-hilt inside the boy, a foul puddle of his freshly spent semen and lactated milk underneath him...

The memories came to him, experienced as one does when the vivid dream is forgotten in the moments after awakening and then reappearing, reborn, as one sits up in bed or bathes - they punched him, savagely, mercilessly, as the full horror, the gripping, visceral terror of what he had done, crashed around him.

"N-no--" He wanted to pull out of Cody, but there was a latent concern of hurting him further, and at the memory that he had hurt him at all, his stomach cramped, and he choked back a dry heave.

After several seconds of excruciating silence - Cody giving off soft moans of pain and afterglow from his too-intense orgasm and having Bligh's knot ripped out of him, Bligh panting and staring, shell-shocked, a hand covering his mouth - Andrew let out a soft groan, shutting his eyes in choking despair.

"Why..." Andrew he managed to croak in a kind of death-rattle. "Why...w-why is this happening...?"

The hand came off Bligh's mouth, and his ear twitched, but he offered no response, only shaking his head, slowly and sadly - it gained in rapidity until he stopped, looking down, in shame. "F-fuck, man - if I - I'd known--"

Andrew knew what he was going to say - that something like this would happen, that the true horror of their new bodies, of their own species, was something even remotely akin to this, than he would have never been so proud of it, so desirous of making the love of his life the same as he, so determined to spread it to not merely Andrew but Cody also.

"Andy..." he heard Cody whimper. "It - it hurts--"

"I know, Baby."

Andrew stifled a sob - he could say nothing else, nothing else meaningful, for the abominable sexual Hell that had just exploded, and then collapsed back in on itself, in the span of mere minutes. He wanted to say he was sorry - he wanted to take it all back, every word, every action, he wanted to tell Cody and Bligh how much they meant to him, how it hadn't been him that had, essentially, just raped the one person he promised to care for, no matter the cost...something, anything, to make this right.

But words failed him - as the sob he suppressed came back and detonated in a cry of abyssal misery, he could only repeat it - the only thing that was true.

"I - I know..."