I welcome the velvet cloak of night as it envelopes me and I slink, cautiously at first, belly to the ground, ears back, nostrils quivering.
The scent of humans mingles with charcoal and charred meat as I cross the yard and make for the gap in the fence. I slip through the bushes, down to the stream and cross it by the fallen log, stepping carefully, relieved at last to enter the blessed sanctuary of the forest.
In the shelter of the rustling trees, I pause, muzzle raised to sniff the air. The reek of humans is faint now, but my quarry is near. With a powerful spring I am off and running free, the wind rippling through my fur, following the scent of roe deer. I am fierce and powerful, I am the hunter and I need to kill …….
“You look rough, Viggo. Bad night?”
Sean has let himself in with his key, because I was sluggish in responding to his ringing at the doorbell and I meet him in the hallway as I arrive at the foot of the stairs.
I haven’t showered yet, just pulled on an old pair of jeans, when the ringing finally penetrated my fuzzy brain and I follow him into my kitchen in a daze, trying to focus as he busies himself making tea and putting bacon under the grill and bread in the toaster.
“You need a bacon butty and HP sauce. I trust you have HP sauce?”
He knows I do, because I keep it for him, the same as I get the English Breakfast Tea for him. Sean is my best friend and spends nearly as much time around here as at his own place.
We met working on a movie in New Zealand a few years back and found we had a lot in common. We were more or less the same age, both divorced with kids, both liked beer and what he calls “proper football”.
We kept in touch after the filming wrapped and when I moved to London a year ago, we slipped back into the easy camaraderie we had shared on the other side of the world. I had moved on from acting to concentrate on my art and photography and as both of us were single and I didn’t know many people here, it was natural we would spend a lot of time together.
He’s only been back a couple of days from six weeks filming in the States and I could tell when I met him from the airport that he was worried by how I looked.
We know each other real well and have keys to each other’s cars and houses. I would trust Sean with my life, but can I tell him what is troubling me? He already thinks I am a crazy artist, but do I want him to think I’m really insane?
Sean has set two mugs of what he calls ‘builders’ tea’ on the table. He gives them a perfunctory stir and I am kind of surprised that the spoon emerges intact. It would certainly stand up alone in there if he let go.
He puts a plate in front of me with a hefty bacon sandwich on it, sits down and opens his own sandwich to anoint it liberally with the brown sauce.
“Now get that down you and tell me.”
I sit down opposite him,
“Tell you what, Sean?”
“Don’t give me that bollocks! You know. Tell me why you’re getting up every day looking like Hamlet’s father. You’re white as a sheet, your eyes are sunken, your cheeks are hollow and you’re losing weight. Them jeans are hanging off you.”
I tentatively take a sip of the scalding brew, which stops just short of dissolving my tongue and pick up my sandwich.
“I guess I’m just not sleeping too well right now.”
“Well, I can tell that, but why, mate?”
Sighing, I drink some more tea,
“You promise you won’t laugh, or even worse, try to get me sectioned under the Mental Health Act?”
“If I’d wanted to do that I’d have had grounds long ago. Come on, spill.”
“It’s the dreams. I keep having these dreams all night and when I wake up, I don’t feel rested. It’s like I’ve been running, doing the things I dream about.”
I look down at the table, afraid to meet his eyes in case he is laughing. Put like this, it sounds pathetic.
“What kind of dreams?”
He doesn’t sound like he’s laughing, so I force myself to meet his eyes. He is looking at me seriously, with nothing but warmth and concern. He reaches over and takes hold of my hand in both of his and it is comforting.
“Come on, tell me. Are they always the same? Is it a recurring dream?”
“Not exactly the same, well, the basic scenario is the same…..I’m always an animal. I’m a wolf, Sean.”
“A wolf?”
“That’s right. And it’s so real. All my senses are heightened. I leave this house and I can smell what’s been going on in the surrounding houses and gardens, hear a field mouse scampering in the grass. I can tell whose dog or cat has passed through and when. Once I clear the garden and cross the stream at the bottom, I go through the wood and sometimes hunt the deer in the park. Sometimes at dusk, I go out onto the heath and catch a rabbit. When I wake it’s as if I’ve been awake all night.”
“I take it you’ve not seen a doctor about this?”
“No. I don’t want sleeping tablets or tranquilizers and I certainly don’t want to see a shrink. But it’s affecting me in the daytime and it’s getting so as I can’t work.”
“How long, Viggo?”
He is gently massaging my hand and as well as being comforting, it is starting to be arousing. I’ve told him about my dreams, but I’m not brave enough to tell him I have a crush on him, so I pull my hand away, stand up and start to clear the table.
“Well, it started around the time you went away.”
“Six weeks? You’ve not slept properly in six weeks? No wonder you look like death. We’ve got to do something about this.”
“I’ve not told you the worst yet. Sometimes I wake up with the taste of blood in my mouth and I know I’ve killed in the night. I also find scratches and abrasions that weren’t there when I went to bed.”
I start to wash the crockery automatically, still talking to Sean, but keeping my back to him,
“Tell me the truth, Sean. Am I losing my mind?”
Strong arms wrap around me and I am drawn against his chest.
“I don’t believe that, Viggo. We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.”
I know he’s worried, because he’s not taking the piss and telling me I’ve always been unhinged. He hugs me, turns me around and shoves me towards the door,
“Now you go shower. I have to say that at the moment you do smell a bit feral, not that I’m complaining, mind. I’ll log onto your computer and do a bit of research.”
I have soaped myself all over, shampooed my hair and am rinsing off before it registers that he said he wasn’t complaining about my smell with a kind of innuendo and my cock twitches into life the way it always does, when I think of Sean in any sexual context.
Viggo really has me worried. When I left for the States he was fine. He’s really settled in here and it’s been grand having him around. I suppose I’ve been lonely since my last divorce. My older daughters are teenagers and doing their own thing and my access to my youngest has to fit into her mum’s schedule, not mine.
My parents and best mates from school are up in Sheffield and I’ve been working so hard over the past few years that I really don’t have a circle of friends down here. I’ve never been one for partying and clubbing with the showbiz crowd.
We picked up our friendship where it left off in New Zealand and we are very close. He’s a beautiful person inside and out and there are times, when I find myself thinking all kinds of impure thoughts about him. Most of all, though, he’s my friend and it hurts to see him like this.
I was alarmed, when he met me at the airport. It was clear that there was something wrong and when I came round today, determined to get him talking about it, I was half afraid he would tell me he was sick.
It’s a relief that he’s not been diagnosed with summat awful, but I need to find out more about his condition, so I start to google ‘wolves’ and it leads me to all sorts of different places. I am so absorbed, that I don’t hear him come back until he’s nudged my shoulder and put a mug of coffee by me.
“What have you found, Sean?”
“Well I’ve been looking at wolves, which led me on to lycanthropy.”
“You mean werewolves?”
I take a sip of my coffee,
“That’s right. You are a bit of a hairy bugger, now they don’t make you wax for roles!”
He thumps my shoulder this time and pulls up a chair beside me.
“Of course, werewolves are only legends, but they appear in a lot of cultures. One thing I have found, though, is called ‘clinical lycanthropy’.”
“Clinical sounds dangerously close to the nuthouse!”
“Well yes, it is a mental health thing, possibly stemming from depression, where people are convinced they are wolves and may adopt wolf–like behaviour growling, crouching…….”
“….savaging sheep. I don’t actually think I’m a wolf, Sean. Once I’m awake, I am me and I don’t have the urge to bite the postman, honest!”
“Howling at the moon, I was about to say. You can’t deny that the moon’s always affected you!”
“I don’t deny it. In fact I always used to find it inspiring. Being out in the back yard under the moon…”
“Naked!”
“Okay, naked …has always made me feel energised, as if the moonlight bathed me, seeped into my skin and rejuvenated me. I’ve always done great work afterward.”
“Lucky that your garden isn’t overlooked or the neighbours might have called the police. No, on second thoughts, scrap that. They’d probably have enjoyed the view too much. Ow!”
He’s punched my arm again. Sometimes he can be such a fucking schoolboy.
“Scroll down, Sean to what it’s saying about shamans and Native Americans.”
“Well I would, if some moron hadn’t giving me a dead arm,” I complain, rubbing it.
He snorts and shoves me over, practically sitting in my lap as he grabs the mouse. We read on together.
“Well that’s interesting,” I say after a while. “In modern, Western society, if you think you are a wolf, you’re insane, but in other cultures, you’re respected as a shaman. Kind of up your street, that sort of thing.”
“Yeah, except I don’t think I’m a wolf, Sean. I just dream about being one.”
“But you said you sometimes have scratches next day and taste blood.”
“Maybe I bite the inside of my mouth and scratch myself thrashing about.”
We both look at his hands, workman’s hands, calloused and stained with paint, turps and film developing chemicals, the nails cut short and a couple split from working in the garden.
“Look Viggo, how about me staying here for a couple of nights? Maybe it’ll stop you dreaming. Or if you start, maybe I can wake you.”
He is so clearly grateful and happy with my offer that it makes my stomach flutter,
“Would you do that? I’d really appreciate it. I’ve tried drinking myself to sleep, but that doesn’t work and staying awake for three days straight, but neither did that. This just might.”
“Okay. I have some stuff to do today and need to go into my agent’s office. I was just checking up on you, when I called this morning. I’ll be back tonight for dinner.”
“That’s great, Sean. Thank you. I’ll make something good.”
“No raw sheep, mind.”
We laugh and I hug him before I leave. He is still gazing at the screen and reading, when I let myself out.
I do have a few things to do, but I also call my doctor, who puts me in touch with a psychiatrist friend of his. I feel a little guilty, but tell myself that I’m not identifying Viggo, just getting some general advice. I want to help him and I know that he doesn’t want to go down the medical route, but I want to know what the options are, in case this continues.
Once we’ve got over the initial hurdle of “my friend” not being a euphemism for myself, the psychiatrist tells me a little about clinical lycanthropy, which is a rare condition. He tells me it is ‘largely considered to be an idiosyncratic expression of a psychotic episode’. It is thought to be ‘caused by an underlying condition, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or clinical depression’.
This we had already learned from the internet and I assure him that with my friend we are just talking about dreams, not delusions. He asks me about drug use and says that such strong and recurring dreams could well be chemically induced. If this could be the case, then he suggests rehab but if not, he still advocates therapy for dreams which are having such a profound effect on someone’s life. He warns me that there could still be some underlying psychosis.
I thank him and hang up. Viggo likes a drink and smokes a little weed now and then, but I’m sure he doesn’t indulge otherwise. I don’t want to think he has a real mental health problem, so I hope that it won’t come to him needing therapy.
I’ll stay with him tonight and we’ll try to get to the bottom of this together.
I feel relief at having had a good night’s sleep for the last few days. When I look in the bathroom mirror, my face is no longer haggard, my eyes no longer sunken.
Sean has stayed with me every night.
The first night, he started off in the guest room and I dreamed again. I must have made a noise, because suddenly he was there, cradling me, his voice soothing and calming.
I curled up and went back to sleep with him curled around me. I think I did dream, but in the dream, my wolf was in a cave with another wolf sleeping close and it felt safe and warm. This time I awoke feeling refreshed and happy.
It was a little strange to wake up with Sean, especially as I sleep naked. He was still spooned up against me, wearing a tee shirt and shorts, but his morning wood was creeping up my back and I quickly slipped out of his arms and into the bathroom, before things could get embarrassing.
I pee’d and got into the shower, dealing with my own little problem and watching the evidence swirl down the drain. Sure I pictured Sean, while I jerked off. I’ve been doing that ever since I first met him, which is why it was weird actually sleeping with him.
We’ve fallen asleep together on the couch after several beers too many, of course, but this is different. You would think that having him in my bed, feeling the way I do and not being able to let him know would be stressful and frustrating, but it’s not. It feels right and leaves me feeling relaxed and fulfilled, even though he just holds me.
After that first night, he never went back into the guest room. We didn’t need to discuss it; it was just right. We haven’t talked about it during the day, either. He has just asked me every morning how I slept, already knowing the answer in advance.
It’s my turn to make breakfast this morning and I am making pancakes, when he pads into the kitchen, shirtless, his hair still wet from the shower, looking just edible, with or without the maple syrup. While I’m checking him out, he’s clearly checking me out,
“You look about 100% better, mate. We seem to have broken the cycle. Maybe you’ll be okay now.”
I am torn. I hope he’s right, but if I am “cured”, that means he’ll go home to sleep and I want to keep him here.
I walk over and hug him,
“Thanks, Sean.” I swallow hard. “You are the best. You’re a truly good friend.”
I rest my forehead against his, rub noses and finally nuzzle and nip his neck.
He steps back and we look at each other in surprise. Neither of us expected that. *Shit, where did that come from?*
Who am I kidding? I know where it came from, but why couldn’t I control the urge?
Sean isn’t mad at me, but is still looking at me slightly bemused, when his cell phone rings.
I slide the pancakes onto two warmed plates and put them on the table with the pitcher of syrup, his mug of tea and my maté.
As soon as Sean answers, I can tell it is one of his exes from the way his expression kind of….tightens. The conversation seems harmonious, though and by the end he’s wearing the sweet and sappy expression he gets, when he’s thinking about his daughters. I probably get the same one when I talk to, or about, Henry.
“That was Abi. She’s got to go away overnight and she wants me to have Evie. Sorry, mate, but I’ll have to go home tonight.”
“Of course you must, Sean. Give Evie my love. I was just thinking that we need to test whether your cure has worked, so this is perfect timing.”
Sean smiles and brushes my cheek,
“So you’ll be okay tonight, mate?”
“Sure I will,” I say with more confidence than I feel.
I keep as busy as I can all day, as Sean leaves to do some food shopping for Evie’s stay and buy her a new game they can play together. I call my son and we have a long and happy talk. He notices that I sound more upbeat than I have in a while and I just tell him I wasn’t sleeping well and that I was tired.
“Well whatever you’re doing now, Dad, keep doing it. I worry about you, when you sound down.”
I have a couple of beers before I go to bed, leave it until late and take a soothing, warm bath first. The bed feels lonely without Sean and I lie over on his side, hugging the pillow that smells of him and willing myself to go to sleep.
That pillow is no substitute. It can’t hold me close, or snore gently into my ear, or stir, making little snuffling noises, when it’s waking up, or scratch its balls… or fuck me. I groan at the wishful thought and know that sleep will elude me unless I take myself in hand. I allow myself to indulge in my favourite fantasy and it doesn’t take long before I come, crying out his name into the empty darkness.
The empty darkness is my friend and calls to me again.
I follow my well-worn path, padding silently down to the stream. I am the lone wolf, who seeks its mate, but seeks in vain and will be left again howling at the cold moon, when it rises.
A field mouse has passed this way and my ears prick as I hear the muffled wing beat of her hunter, the ghost-like barn owl, which passes low over my head barely stirring the air. A brief cry and her journey is ended. Mine continues and I cross again into the woods.
A squirrel runs up into an oak tree ahead of me, but I have not feasted for days and I am seeking larger prey. I continue out onto the common and into the deer park…
*Fuck* I wake up, aware of a sharp pain in my left flank. Alarmed, I sit up and switch on the bedside lamp. I am a little disoriented and I blink in the light and turn my head to see what just happened. I am sweating and I know that I was dreaming again, something must have bitten me.
I am shocked to see blood trickling from a small wound. Limping to the bathroom, I get the magnifying shaving mirror and try to examine the wound. Whatever caused this, it is bleeding freely and hurts like a bitch! I reach into the bathroom cabinet for the first aid box.
Sean calls me, while I am in the kitchen making myself camomile tea to calm my frazzled nerves. Evie has got him up early and it seems his first thought has been to call me and see how my night went, which is good to know.
“Badly, Sean. It happened again.”
“I’m sorry, Vig. There’s more, though. Tell me.”
“I need to show you. Look, can you come round?”
“Abi is picking up Evie at midday and I’ll come then.”
As soon as I can, I get round to Viggo’s and find him sitting out on the decking at the back, smoking a roll-up, hugging his knees and staring into space.
He starts, when I put my hand on his shoulder, as if he was too far away in his thoughts to hear me approach.
“Sean, I need you to look at this,” he says without even a word of greeting.
He stands up and I see that his face is haunted and drawn again. We go into the kitchen and he starts to unzip his fly. My heart begins to thump in my chest and my cock sits up and shows interest.
“Before I show you, I need to tell you about last night’s dream. I was a wolf again and I went my usual route across the stream and through the wood, over the common and to the deer park. I was hungry and needed to hunt. I made a kill – a young deer.”
“You killed Bambi? Evie must never hear of this,” I say, in mock horror, trying to lighten things up a little, because the look in his eyes is scaring me. There is no answering smile.
“I made the kill, like I say,” he continues, ignoring my attempt at levity, “ate and was coming home, but in the woods, I caught the scent of a young, male human. Next thing, I felt pain and woke up.”
He strips off his jeans, showing that he hasn’t bothered with any underwear and turns his hip to me, so that I can see a dressing. He winces, as he pulls it off and I am astonished to see a small wound.
“There’s something in there, Sean. I couldn’t get it myself, but would you mind, please?”
He hands me a pair of tweezers and a bottle of antiseptic. I kneel down, swabbing the wound and then probing with the tweezers,
“Hold still. This will hurt.”
I grip the object and pull sharply, “Gotcha!” I take his hand and drop the airgun pellet into it.
“Little bastard!”
“Yes, some of the neighbours have lost cats recently and one came home missing an eye. Some mean kid is out there at night with an airgun and probably thought he was aiming at a dog. But Sean, I wasn’t out in the woods. I was in bed asleep, so how come I got this injury? It’s not possible.”
Seeing his stricken face, I want to hug him and I really need to get off my knees, as I am trying hard to avoid meeting the one eye of his half-hard dick. I have also started the wound bleeding again and we need a fresh dressing.
“Let’s get another band aid for this and I’ll make some tea, then we can talk.”
Standing up, I put my arms around him and hold him,
“We’ll figure it out together, Viggo, come on.”
I put the kettle on, make some tea and then take his hand. He has stayed in the same position, leaning against the counter, his jeans around his ankles and he looks so downright cute and somehow lost that I can’t resist kissing him. He stiffens for a moment, then puts his arms round me and kisses me back with a mixture of enthusiasm and desperation.
When we surface for air, I realize how odd it is for a bloke like me to be standing in a kitchen and kissing his best mate, who just happens to be naked from the waist down. It doesn’t feel odd, though. It feels as if a lot of disjointed thoughts and wishes have come together at once.
I am now so hard it’s not funny and there’s no hiding the fact that Viggo is equally aroused.
He won’t meet my eyes and tries to wriggle out of my grasp, but I grab his chin and lift it, so that I can look at him,
“It’s okay. I think maybe we’ve both been dancing around something that’s been poking us in the eye for a while now. Talking of which, let’s get you to the bathroom. Good job I’m standing up now. You could have someone’s eye out with that thing.”
Reassured, he smiles at me and goes to the stairs, stepping out of his jeans as he does so. I follow him, tantalized by his taut arse, teasingly revealed below the hem of his tee shirt with every step.
We reach the bathroom and he sits on the edge of the bath, while I kneel again and put a clean dressing on the wound.
“Thanks, Sean,” he says and strokes my head gently.
*Fuck it* This time I don’t resist the urge and I lean in and run my tongue around the head of his dick, causing him to tighten his fingers in my hair and make a strangled noise.
Feeling bolder, I take him fully into my mouth. It’s been a long while since I’ve done this, maybe twenty years or so, but it’s obviously like riding a bike, because I find it easy and natural.
I reach for his balls with my left hand and roll them gently, while I stroke his sensitive inner thigh with my right hand. I really want to stick my finger in his arse, but the edge of the bath is in my way and I don’t want to break the spell by getting him to move.
He looks beautiful from below, his head thrown back, his eyes closed and his sharp cheekbones thrown into relief. He tastes pretty good too and he just holds my head, not pushing me or pressuring me in any way.
He cries out a hoarse warning, which I ignore, as I grab his waist with both hands and swallow. He comes to a shuddering climax, his whole body tightening and then trembling uncontrollably. I hold him until his body stops shaking and he finally opens his eyes. His voice is still pretty shaky, though. I note with pride.
“Shit, Sean. That was amazing.”
“I know,” I say smugly, getting up again and pulling him to his feet. ”Good to know I haven’t lost the knack! Now where were we?”
I pull him into his bedroom and push him down on his unmade bed. I am touched to see that he has my pillow lengthways on his side of the bed and I don’t need to be a wolf to smell nocturnal goings on.
“What about you, Sean?”
“I’m okay,” I lie blatantly, resisting the urge to adjust my screaming cock, “that was just a bit of therapy to calm you down, like.”
“So you wouldn’t be interested if I offered to let you fuck me? Asked you to fuck me? Pleaded with you, in fact?”
“I never said that, “I whisper and miraculously, we are both totally naked and I am doing what I have fantasised about doing for the past year.
I am very confused, but very happy, lying with Sean in a tangle of damp sheets, having just had my mind blown as well as my dick and having been comprehensively fucked for an encore.
The pellet wound still smarts and now I have a sore ass to go with it, but I don’t care,
“Sean, how long have you wanted to do this?”
“Probably as long as you have. I just didn’t want to fuck up our friendship and I didn’t know you felt the same way. You covered up well.”
“You too. Well, you are a good actor and I’m a lapsed one, but I was pretty good too. I can’t tell you how often I’ve jerked off to fantasies of you.”
“Now we’ve taken our heads out of our arses and I’ve thoroughly investigated yours, we need to think about your other little problem.”
“Well I may be psychotic, but I didn’t hallucinate the hole in my hip. I was thinking out back before you arrived and distracted me. I knew that old Mr Jones down the road had died before anybody told me. The wolf had scented his death in my dream.”
“You told me about scratches and abrasions, which couldn’t have been self-inflicted by your short nails. You’re not nuts, Vig, just seriously weird.”
“I have a theory about this now. Will you stay here tonight?”
“Only if you agree to change these sheets. I may love a wolfman, but I draw the line at sleeping in a smelly den.”
“Did you just say that you loved me, Sean? Indirectly, of course.”
“I think I did.”
“So long as you know that it’s mutual.”
“I think I do.”
We strip the bed together and shower together, then he takes the dirty sheets to the washing machine and I put on the clean ones.
Later, he takes me out to dinner in a quiet restaurant and we toast our first date as a couple. We’ll need to figure out what will happen in the future and what we will tell the people we care for, but my first priority is to test my theory and tonight is a full moon.
We walk home with our arms around each other and slide into our nice fresh sheets. We kiss and fondle each other, then curl up and sleep deeply.
In the morning, I wake refreshed again. No dreaming and no howling at the moon. I can’t wait for Sean to wake, so I can tell him, so I use the bathroom, then get back into bed and kiss him awake.
He makes the snuffling noises I love, stretches, scratches and smiles at me,
“You slept well again. I can see you are rested. It takes ten years off you.”
“You know all that stuff we read about wolves, werewolves and shamans?”
“Mmm.”
“Well it said that in some places, shamans remain asleep in their human bodies, but send their wolf spirit out at night. If the animal is injured on one of the expeditions, the human has corresponding injuries. That must be what was happening. I know that in my dreams, the wolf was always alone and searching.”
“Okay. It’s hard to believe, but I’ve seen the evidence with my own eyes. Somehow it’s not hard to see you as a wolf spirit.” He runs his fingers through the fine pelt of fur on my chest as he speaks.
“But when you are with me, the spirit stays within. It doesn’t need to search. You see, Sean you’re my mate.”
“I’ll always be your mate, Viggo.”
“No, idiot, my mate. My soul mate. Wolves mate for life. I was always drawn to you, but I hid the true nature and depth of my feelings. We were almost inseparable for the past year, then you went a long way away and that must have severed our tie.”
“So your spirit went roaming, while you slept?”
“Yes and when you returned and slept with me, the unquiet spirit was calmed. Wolves are very tactile and use physical contact to communicate. Then you went away again.”
“But when I came back, we consummated our bond and I claimed you.”
“That’s right. And as long as we are together, my spirit will rest.”
“So no more nocturnal excursions as long as I’m with you. I’ll have to make sure that you stay claimed.”
“I don’t think that this should be all one sided, Sean. You may be an alpha, but I’m an alpha too. I think it’s my turn to do a little claiming.”
“If you think you’re alpha enough, mate!”
“An old Spanish proverb springs to mind, Sean.”
“Go on then.”
“*Quién guarda la compañía con los lobos aprenderá gritar.”
“So you think you can teach me to howl?”
“I’m sure of it. Come here.”
* He who keeps company with wolves learns to howl.
Summary: Viggo discovers he is a wolf
Rated: R
Categories: Actor RPS Pairing: Sean/Viggo
Warnings: NoneChallenges:
Series: NoneChapters: 1 Completed: Yes
Word count: 5749 Read: 896
Published: 08 Aug 2009 Updated: 08 Aug 2009