The unfolding of the year
and now our season is here
All the balances are clear
now that our time is here
In our perfect present tense
through our wide rose tinted lens
When the words have all been spent
will we still have learned it?
-Season Song, by Blue States

Renfield woke up a virgin wrapped around his lover.

There had been a time when he asked himself whether it was possible to have double vision of the mind's eye, but he hadn't lived that yet.

He didn't know what had woken him, only that it had, and he held his breath tightly. Listening. Eyes open and wide.

Ray breathed beside of him.

Their room. Their bed. Their smell. His Ray, bigger now; grown into that nose that Ray didn't want, the hair that would fall out, but his Ray, just the same, just as beautiful and his. No one else.

Ray was right, the night before. It was quiet here. Scotty was right, too. There were monsters out there.

He held his breath until his chest ached. Growing up, it felt, in a matter of seconds, the first time he'd really felt the change in any meaningful way. Terror came, followed by grim pride and then tentative hope that he didn't dare give too much of a look in.

When he released that breath, he did so slowly. Silently.

Constable Renfield Turnbull, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, didn't close his eyes again.

He pressed Ray gently over onto his back, moving to cover Ray's body with his own.