then worries came to perch on us

He huffed when he saw him stood, standing there. His white muzzle stained red, bitten and cut and chewed and grabbed.

His tail twitched.

Threatened to wag against his hocks.

He butted his head against him. His shoulder dragged against his.

Drew and swiped and dragged his tongue across the blood. The scabs that had formed.

“The fuck you do, old man.” He rumbled.

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 Madmortigan swayed, tired and sore after his ordeal. He beached himself on his own warm sandbar, savoring Daighre's contact and the way it quelled his nerves.

 The Harbinger laid down beside Daighre's legs, craning his head to snap lazily at his limbs. “Badger.” He answered at last. 

 Madmortigan licked a bit of blood from a weeping wound his companion's tongue had opened. “It paid.”

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He huffed.

“Dumbass.”

He pulled his leg away from him in favour of headbutting him. His head pressed against his. His ears pulled back, flat, against his head.

He rolled into him.

His cheek and neck dragged against the side of his head, the side of his neck, down and then under, beneath the underside of his muzzle. His shoulder and back pressed against him, against his shoulder. Blond and black and white, mixing together.

His back against his side before he rolled over again.

His paws and legs and stomach and chest facing his shoulder and hip. Blond-brown dirty paws and legs rested and leaned against his body, draped over his back.

He licked his lips.

Stretched and reached to nip at his chin and lick at his mouth.

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 He turned towards the warm sensation of his tongue, felt the weight of his foreleg over his shoulders. 

 “Have you been part of a pack before?” Madmortigan asked, his mind often more occupied with thoughts of his companion than deemed prudent or productive.

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He dragged and rasped his tongue lower and lower, from his chin to down along his neck to down along his chest. Black, and then grey. Silver and white intermixed. Salted and peppered. Different, to the stark, contrasting, unnatural white of his face, his shoulders, his back, his back legs.

‘Have you been part of a pack before?’

One last, long, lingering, final ministration. His tongue flat and damp and warm. His mouth and breath hot.

The side of his face rested on the ground.

The old man sideways, in this view, in this angle.

Before him, and above him.

He stared.

“Yes.”

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 Madmortigan submitted himself to Daighre's thorough attention, his body arching as the warm, velvet rasping lulled him into a half-lidded stupor. 

 When Daighre stopped, he felt cold. 

 “Tell me about them. What position did you hold?”

 To bribe him to speak, Madmortigan began to groom him with the same fixated care, running his tongue over the crest of Daighre's head before he worked at his neck and cheeks.

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His tongue against the top of his head, his face, his neck.

He huffed.

Shook.

Annoyed.

Space between them that he closed and control that he regained when he butted his head against the bottom of his chin. His ears pressed back. His voice against his shoulder, his chest, his neck.

“My parents were the leaders."

He dragged his tongue, once, over and against thick black and white fur.

"I was an only child.”

What else was there for him to fucking say?

He had been a shitty fucking kid, and a shitty fucking heir.

His teeth grazed his neck.

His tongue followed his teeth.

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 Madmortigan stopped, pausing to pull back so he could fit him in his field of vision. The Harbinger stared, seeing more than most. 

 After a beat, he bent forward, swiping his tongue along Daighre's muzzle, his lip, his gum.

 “I was the only one of my litter. I was groomed to take over the Order from the start.” Two heirs curled around each other, one following the path that had been set before him, the other choosing his own road to walk. 

 “I am happy you made your way here.”

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He huffed.

“My mom kicked me out when I was a yearling.”

Maybe he would have left, eventually.

Maybe he would have stayed, and stayed, and stayed.

Maybe the hag’s love and patience was always a finite resource and it was destined to run out from the very first day he was born, and his dad would always choose her side over his, over and over and over again.

Maybe he deserved every single bad thing that had happened to him.

Maybe he didn’t deserve any of it at all.

He would have been a shitty fucking leader.

---

He took the attention he was given and shut up. Him and the old man, tangled around each other and wrapped up. Their tongues against each other's fur. Their bodies pressed against one another.

A world of their own making.

A world of their own creation.

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 He rose suddenly, and felt cold without him.

 His tail flicked, the wound on his face throbbing, obstinate and loud. Madmortigan simmered, feeling the blood rush, a quiet roaring in his ears.

 The work wasn’t done, but he found that he did not want to do it alone. He bent, halving at the hips, lowering himself into an elegant and understated play bow. Daighre’s only invitation before he turned and set off at a run.

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The old man rose.

Sudden and abrupt movement away from his side, out from beneath his draped and perched paws and legs.

He grumbled and groaned.

Stretched and splayed out alongside his back. His head tilted back. His throat on open display. His stomach and his chest and his undersides open and bared.

He pawed and nipped at the air. Lazy, half-assed, noncommittal movement. He watched him as he bowed and then ran.

The movements of his hocks. The movement of the backs of his thighs. The movement of his tail. The black and white and pink of his paw pads flashing.

“Come back.” He called.

They could do whatever he wanted to do here.

Here, where the ground and grass and dirt was soft and warm, warmed by their combined body heat.

They could wrestle.

They could play.

They could fight.

Him beneath him.

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 He almost listened, the sway of his body leaning towards the call of his companion.

 Instead he kept them both wanting and furthered the distance between them, crashing quick through the undergrowth.

 “Daighre.” A call, disembodied and eager. A black and white piper, a serpent twisted on a reaching branch. “Come find me.”

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‘Come find me.’

He huffed.

Annoyed.

Drawn and quartered and splayed, out along his back. His legs in the air. His own hips his counterweight. He leaned to one side. Stretched and reached with his front legs. The vertebrae of his back popping and stretching.

He rose.

Slow, and languid, and unhurried.

Sand inside an hourglass.

The grains slipping, spilling, and falling. Building, and building.

He shook the dirt and the grass from out his shoulders.

And he stepped into the underbrush.

“You’re a fucking dumbass.” He huffed. Amused, or maybe just annoyed.

His eyes searched and looked and roved for black and white fur.

His senses strained.

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 He rushed from the undergrowth, a puckish, boyish gleam in his eye.

 The Harbinger reared, forelegs finding purchase on the top of Daighre’s back as he launched himself at the other male. Their bodies collided, a tangle of muscle and limbs.

 He pressed down against him, into him, black and white form over sand. His teeth were playful, nipping at the tips of his ears, the back of his scruff, teasing. “What makes me such a fool, hm?”

 Was it his need of him?

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He huffed.

Shifted, and shunted, the old man’s weight draped and pressed across his. His legs buckled and he stumbled, clumsy, as he stepped back, one of his back paws landing on his before he found his balance. His tail wagged. He curved—arched, reached—over his shoulder to nip at him.

His teeth already against his ears, the back of his neck.

“Everything.” He huffed.

Everything made him a fool.

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 He licked the back of his neck, long and broad, tasting him.

 “And what are you, Daighre?” To himself, to the Harbinger. If the world was a jester, a farce to be endured - what did that make the misanthrope who sat and shouted names, who bristled on contact?

 Madmortigan cradled a grenade, buff in color and exquisitely fragile. He licked him again, his body lowering, stiffening. Finger slipping around the bomb clip, ready to pull. “Tell me.”

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His tongue and his breath.

Hot and warm and wet and lingering, lapping, loitering, against the back of his neck. The fur there wet and warm and worn. Mused, beneath his touch, beneath his mouth, sculpted and ridged and formed.

His voice in his ear.

He wavered.

He stumbled.

He breathed.

A half step backwards.

He brushed and bumped against him. Clumsy, and fumbling. He felt him press against him. His back paws stepping on his. His elbows dug into his sides with his forelegs draped across. His stomach and chest and body warm against his.

He lowered his head.

His ears rolled back.

He swallowed.

He shuddered.

He breathed.

Open-mouthed, with his jaws parted. His tongue worked and moved in his mouth, between his teeth. He licked his lips.

Soft, quiet, wet, oral, breathy sounds.

“Whatever you want.” He said. His voice hoarse and his voice low.

His ears rolled back further.

He shifted his weight.

He stepped back.

He was whatever he wanted.

He was whatever that let him stay

He was whatever that made him not leave.

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 He didn’t move. Form on form, their bodies a single, molding slab. Daighre writhed beneath him, not unlike the creatures that came before, the animals he forced into the dirt and tore open beneath the silver moon.

 But he did not need to look at the inside of his companion to see who he was.

 Madmortigan shifted his weight, circling around him tight, a spiraling whirlpool of monochrome. “I want you to follow me.”

 He left more purposefully this time, not stopping until he came upon what he’d found earlier that afternoon: a fox den.

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He was cold, without the old man to cover him. He was cold, without the old man there to drape and blanket him, his body against his, the black and dark grey of his stomach and his chest pressed against the blond and black of his back, his weight rested against his haunches.

And he was was cold, with the back of his neck and the space between his shoulder blades still damp. The fur drying and curling in the air.

He huffed.

Shook the lack of his weight from his shoulders.

And followed him.

---

"What."

He scratched at his side, awkward, with one of his back legs.

He butted his head, forceful, against his shoulder and his side.

His teeth and his tongue followed the movement.

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 Again Daighre lured him with a touch that ached with yearning.

 He felt duty leave him, and in its absence desire coiled tight.

 But when he blinked the fox den was in view, waiting. Madmortigan stepped away from Daighre’s tongue.

 “To be Wolf is to be God.” He plunged into the gaping ground, emerging seconds later with a squalling kit. The little thing screamed, terrified.

 Madmortigan placed it between them. Then he closed his mouth around the crying head. Paw held the body in place as his muzzle jerked up, the head bursting free like pus from a boil. The spine came with it, and the slender white thing hung from his lips, oily in the moonlight.

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‘To be Wolf is to be God.’

Born and heaved from the earth itself, the fox kit squealed and screamed. Terrified, in its brief, final, fleeting, squalid moments. Its head rendered from its body. Its spine pulled from its flesh.

It dribbled and it leaked.

Decapitated.

The old man’s muzzle and lips stained and blotted red.

Its body limp and dead beneath his feet.

“Okay.”

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 “The Order cleanses those that are unworthy. It is our toil, so that the Wolf thrives.”

 The head dropped, rolling bumpily on the cold ground. Madmortigan gave no mind to the carnage, staring at his companion instead.

 He went to him, that stained muzzle rubbing against his shoulders, tongue snaking out to slide against his nape. “It is my duty, not my joy.”

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“Okay.” He repeated, again.

Listless, and dull.

He shifted his weight.

He watched the decapitated remains of the baby fox drop and bounce and hit the ground. Its spinal cord still attached, viscera and guts and gore and all. It rolled—briefly, and momentarily—against the ground. A gory rattle, made of flesh and blood and bone.

He could hear its siblings squeaking and squealing in their torn apart den.



He wondered if the mom would still come back.

He wondered what about the act made the old man believe he was a god.



His shoulders curved and curled beneath the old mans’ presumptuous touch. His ears pressed back against his head.

He shouldered him away.

“Let’s go back.” He said.

To wherever everyone else could see them. To wherever the rest of the pack was. To wherever there wasn’t a fucking torn apart, ripped open, fucking fox den.

The old man had already made his fucking point.

He understood, now, that he was nothing, to everyone and everything.

That he wasn't fucking worth anything, to anyone.

He didn't know why he thought the old man would be any fucking different. He just wished it didn't fucking hurt.

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 The job was not complete, but Daighre was finished.

 The walls Madmortigan had so carefully and lovingly placed around them cracked, a fissure found and fingered, like the hole on a worn pair of jeans.

 He let Daighre distance himself, but the Harbinger kept that proximity measured, swallowing the steps when they grew too great on their way back to the roots.

 Propelling himself forward, he stepped in front of his companion, barring his path. “Do you know how I arrived here?”

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The old man lingered.

An omen, hovering over his shoulders, pressed against his haunches, licking and mouthing at the back of his neck, his voice held close to his ear.

An omen, licking and nipping at his heels whenever he walked.

His shoulders curved and curled.

His ears pressed back against his head.



And he couldn’t meet his gaze, when he stepped out in front of him.



“I don’t give a shit, old man.”

He didn’t.

He really, really fucking didn’t.

He already got his fucking point across.

He understood now, just how fucking stupid and how fucking gross and fucking disgusting and fucking worthless he fucking was. That blind, deaf, and dumb, motherless, mutilated baby foxes took fucking precedence over him. That everyone and everything held more fucking value and fucking worth and fucking talent than he ever fucking had.

He just didn't know why he had to be fucking reminded.

He just didn’t know when he fucking forgot.

“Leave me the fuck alone.”

He was tired.

He was hurt.

He understood who he was, now.

He understood what he was always meant to be.

Nothing.

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