Tony was in his room enjoying a squeaky toy that David had given him as a present and really hoping that Lucky next door wouldn't complain about the noise while he did. It still felt weird to have huge pointed ears on his head moving around, but he was starting to get used to it. He felt a little bit like a kid again, having just spent a day full of fun activities and now playing with a new toy during his free time. Maybe he really was cut out more for this kind of lifestyle than having to go out and work for a living as an adult.
Suddenly, his large ears focused themselves directly on the wall as a horrifying scream sounded out from next door. The scream stopped, and Tony was unnerved by the silence, but fortunately he started hearing movement. Unfortunately, whoever had screamed still didn't sound happy. He heard a panicky voice muttering to itself before he heard some shouting: "Tony! Tony! Tony! I know you're over there. Tony! You gotta help me!"
Tony responded to his name and hurried over to the room next door. He knocked softly, and the voice inside told him, "Just open it. It'll be easier for you than for me at this point." Tony did as he was told, and standing there on all fours in the middle of the room was Lucky, his legs (or rather his hind legs) having completed shifted to canine limbs. His tail was dangling between them, and though his arms were not dramatically changed, his thumbs had shrunk to almost nothing, and his fingers were at least a little shorter with dark swollen patches noticeable on the undersides.
"Oh, Lucky, are you okay? It sounded like you were being attacked in here almost!"
"I might as well have been, Tony. I don't know why it had to happen the way it did! My hands were already like this since earlier, and I was in here still trying to manage as best I could without thumbs, and then this happened. My legs. All at once they just completed transformed before I knew what was happening. And it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch when they did, too! It's like the bones in my feet just got yanked out while my legs got cramped up against me. I'm on tip-toes back there, Tony! I can't stand up like this, not for more than a few seconds, anyway. What am I gonna do now, Tony?"
"Walk on all fours, I guess? Don't worry. I stay here for a little while, Lucky. Besides, it's not like you really have anything you have to do for the rest of the day except sleep when you're ready. You're not in pain now, are you?"
"No, no, it's fine, but ... would you mind bringing you're radio over if you're gonna visit me here? It might be nice to, um ..."
"Say no more, bro. Be back before ya know it."
Tony brought over the radio and plugged it in, and soon they were bobbing with the beat like they had the day before. During the commercials on the rap station, Lucky recommended a hard rock station he used to listen to, and Tony was surprised that he kind of liked what they were playing as well. After a few lame jokes about one of the lawyer commercials, Tony heard Lucky say something seriously to him.
"Tony, I, I want you to know that realize this is probably going to be my last night here, since I can barely stand up and can barely hold things any more. I'll probably be going home with my trainer and only coming back during the day, when we're all training in different places based on our schedule. I might not see you any more, and ... well, I wanna thank you, for actually making friends with me before it was over."
"Hey, buddy, you don't have to say that. I know I'm gonna have to leave here, too, and I don't know when it'll happen, but ... it was nice to have you as my homie, too."
Lucky's barely human face smiled at Tony, and his tail wagged behind him, and they both listened to the music for a little while longer, and they talked a little about things they had done as humans. Not big things, just small talk about daily life things. Songs they had listened too, trips they had taken, favorite beers they had drunk, women they had banged, lame restaurants they had down voted online, and even the occasional drugs they had experimented with. At some point the conversation turned to self-pleasure and the best methods they had discovered human hands were good for. At last, Lucky became quiet, and timidly began to ask about something that was obviously very difficult for him to request openly.
"Enjoy those hands of your while you've got 'em, Tony, even with those claws you have on 'em. I, I always told myself there was gonna be one more day at least, and well, I never got to do that, you know, one last time, before ..... Surely, as a fellow male, you understand. I'm not gay or anything, but since we've already seen each other's everything, you don't think, one last time, you could ..."
"Lucky, I don't know if you've discovered this, but I think you can probably still do that for yourself, in case you're worried you can't. I'm not nearly changed as much as you are, and even I'm already a lot more flexible than I used to be. Check this out." Tony scratched the back of his head with his foot again, and then curled around and nibbled his own back just above where his stub of a tail was. "You can probably do this even better than I can," Tony said.
"Wait, so we can do that?" Lucky watched in amazement before testing out his own range of flexibility. He sat, lifted a leg out to one to side, and brought his head around until he was up close and personal with his own balls. He dragged his tongue experimentally against his own manhood and then backed off a bit, seemingly in awe of what he had just done. Curling himself down even farther between his legs, he finally gave himself his first decent whiff of his own asshole, and even managed to lick that part of himself, too. For the first time in his life, the part of his body where food would go into his digestive tract was lapping away at the part where it would come out.
"So that's what I smell like back there," Lucky said when he was finally able to pull himself away and lick his nose a few more times. "That's what other dogs will get to know me as? I think I can live with that, weirdly enough. By the way, thanks for the lasagna last night, Tony. It came out of me hours ago, but I can still smell it back there. I can't believe I get to taste my meals at both ends from now on!"
Tony chuckled, "It's kinda gross when you put it that way, but hey, this is what we are now, right? Might as well enjoy the upsides where we can."
"Speaking of," said Lucky, "I think I'm going to keep on exploring down there, if you know what I mean. I'm not ashamed for you to stay here, but I also won't mind it if you want to leave. It would be my last bit of privacy ever, so I won't complain. Just crack the door so I can get out later if you do."
"No problem, boy," said Tony, "have at it. And if I don't see you again after tonight, I'll still be looking for your scent in the training yard." Tony got up, gently closed the door incompletely, and took one final glimpse of the mostly changed labrador as he left. Lucky was curled around licking his crotch, his mushroom dick pounding erect, the precum indistinguishable from the saliva he was soaking it in. Maybe, just maybe, Lucky would enjoy tonight enough to let go of some of his fears and regrets from yesterday. And maybe, just maybe, Tony could learn to do the same.