by Tia Fielding
“Yeah, he’s learned from the best. My pit bull, Grace, she’s a multitool of a dog.”
“She getting old?”
“Yeah, but she needed to stay home for another reason this time,” Leaf said, smiling wistfully.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, one of my partners found a kitten a while back. She’s been mommying the cat, and now he’s old enough to be castrated and I didn’t want to leave him without his momma for that, you know?” Leaf scratched the back of his neck, knowing how ridiculous his statement might sound to most people.
Chay was quiet for a while. Then she said, “First of all, one of your partners? You’re poly? And secondly, you’re a good guy, Leaf DeWitt.”
Leaf ducked his head and grinned a bit. “Thanks. And yeah, we have a poly relationship going on. We found a third some months back, quite by chance, really. We’re pretty damn happy.” He couldn’t help but grin as he lifted his right hand to show her the ring with the three puzzle pieces on it.
“Congrats, man. My last girlfriend walked when I told her I was going to expand the kennels next year,” she said and grinned, but he could see she was still hurting.
“Not everyone gets the lifestyle.”
“From what I hear, you’ve been home a lot lately. Not taking jobs?” She pointed at some benches, and they went to sit down.
“Yeah. Lately it just doesn’t feel right to be away. I’ve been thinking about something like this, actually.” He gestured behind himself at the kennels. “A training center of sorts.”
“You have the space?”
“Not at the current house, no. That’s the problem, really.”
“Talk to your partners? See if they’d be willing to move. Unless it’s a commute thing, you know?”
“Dev works at home. Seth’s taking a sabbatical, so he’s at home right now too.”
Chay hummed, then leaned down to scratch one of the pit bulls behind a floppy, blessedly uncropped ear.
“Talk to them? That’s all the relationship advice I have when it comes to this job and mixing it with family. I mean, I could’ve probably not sprung the expansion on Mira like I did, you know.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that when I get home, I think.”
He looked at the time and realized it was around when the guys would be getting home from Weasley’s operation. Alex rarely kept cats or dogs at the clinic if their owners knew what to do with them and lived close, so he expected them to get to take the cat home afterward.
As if on cue, his cell rang in his hand.
“Hey, Seth.” He smiled into the phone, but immediately sensed something was wrong.
“Hey, honey. Uh… we have a bit of a situation here.”
“What’s wrong?” Leaf got to his feet and paced across the fenced area, already forming horror scenarios in his head.
“Weasley had a reaction to the anesthesia. He almost didn’t make it, Leaf.” The way Seth sobbed at the end made Leaf squeeze the phone hard enough for the battered case to creak.
“How’s Dev?”
“Not good. I had to take him home almost by force, and he’s wrapped in a blanket in our bed with Grace halfway on top of him and Missy behind him.”
Leaf could hear from Seth’s tone that it was more than “not good,” but he chose not to call Seth out on it. “How’s Weasley?” he asked instead.
“He’ll be okay. He… he died on the table and they had to bring him back. Dev was there in the room, Leaf.” Seth’s voice wobbled so badly, Leaf could feel a bubble of grief rise in his own chest.
“Jesus,” he managed to say. He rubbed his hand over his face and tried to stay composed. “I’m fucking never leaving you two again. Never again. I’ll be home as soon as I can, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” Seth said, sounding carefully hopeful.
“I love you. Go cuddle up with Dev, okay. Tell him I’m thinking of you all.”
“Yeah. I love you, bye.”
Leaf felt like throwing the phone across the fucking yard, but he put it in his pocket and made fists, holding in the emotions that were trying to bubble over.
Suddenly there was a warmth against his left calf, and he looked down to see Husky there, sitting against his leg.
“I’m okay, boy. Go play.”
Husky looked at him with his too-smart blue eyes and seemed to be giving his instruction some serious consideration.
“Go,” Leaf said in a firmer tone, and the dog left to go play with the young ones. Leaf walked back to the bench and sat down heavily.
“Something wrong?”
“Yeah. The cat died on the table. Our vet was able to bring him back, but apparently Dev was in the room when it happened and….”
“And you’re the backbone of the family when it comes to animals and their issues?” Chay guessed.
Leaf snorted softly. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“How about you give me tomorrow and then drive home?”
“I don’t think—”
“Listen, I can call other people if I need help. I got the easiest dogs on purpose, because then I could take more of them. If I’d taken the tricky ones, I’d need you more even if there were fewer of them. You’re needed at home, Leaf. This isn’t your gig anymore.” She placed her small, callused hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Your guys need you at home.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
SETH SENT him messages the next day, saying they had Weasley home and that Dev was doing much better now.
Dev’s one message seemed to be somehow restrained, like he was holding himself back even in text.
Leaf couldn’t call him. Instead, he worked all day with the dogs and Chay, then had dinner, took a nap, and started the drive back to Colorado Springs.
He’d felt off ever since Seth’s call, uneasy within his skin, and he hated it. He knew it was the guilt of not being there when Dev and Seth had needed him to be their rock, but he couldn’t predict what would happen any given day. Routine operations could go wrong sometimes. Hell, people died during routine operations every day. One just never thought it would be yours, human or animal.
He supposed it wasn’t even that, really. Even the good days were something he should be there for. The regular, normal days when nothing good or bad happened too. He knew his place now, and he hadn’t always known that.
But driving toward home made him able to breathe again. Like the ease he’d felt in himself lately was gradually returning to him. Being with Seth and Dev every day, even when they fought—and they did; they weren’t perfect by any means, they were just right together—was easy and natural to him, like breathing.
Leaf was dead tired when he drove the RV into the driveway. He’d been listening to music he didn’t like for the last two hours just make it home safely and before the morning rush hour.
It was early enough for Seth and Dev to be asleep still, so he let Husky out for his business, then went inside and let the other dogs out too.
Weasley walked in while he was fixing the dogs’ breakfasts as quietly as he could. He walked around Leaf’s feet, rubbed himself all over his jeans, and purred loudly.
Leaf picked him up gently and held him to his chest. “You seem to be doing okay, kiddo.”
Weasley brushed cheeks with him, then sniffed at his face for a while, before head-butting his nose hard enough for it to hurt. “Yeah, yeah, Daddy’s home now, okay. I’ll go feed the other beasties now. I don’t know if you’re on meds, so I can’t give you any food yet. That’s Daddy Dev’s job, right?” He scratched the rangy, adolescent cat around the ears and then placed him in his bowl, where he still liked to hang out sometimes. Like Dev said, they didn’t have a fruit bowl, they had a cat bowl.
Leaf took the dog bowls and went outside to line them up on the porch. It was getting cold, so they would have to start feeding them inside soon, but for that day, outside it was. He went back in and snacked on some leftover pizza from the fridge, then let the dogs back in when they were done.
“Okay, you kids stay downstairs, I’ll go see your daddies.”
He went upstairs quietly, marveling at the fact that neither of his lovers had woken up to the sounds he must’ve made. Then again, maybe it was a testament of the familiarity of those sounds. Even if out of place, since they didn’t know he was coming home yet, they were positive sounds and let them sleep.
Leaf snuck into the bedroom and two heads of hair peeked from under the covers. They were sleeping so close, they must’ve been entangled under the blanket. Smiling, Leaf undressed, hoping he was clean enough even after the drive, and climbed into bed behind Dev.
Dev made a snuffling sound in his sleep, then turned around and attached himself to Leaf. After a moment, he seemed to wake up a bit to the body-temperature difference—it was like a furnace under the comforter—and opened his eyes.
“Wh—how are you here?” Dev asked, confused and adorable in his sleepy state.
“I got done early,” Leaf answered simply.
Seth stirred and rubbed his eyes before opening them fully. “You’re home,” he said, beaming Leaf a smile.
“Yeah, I am.”
“More sleep?” Dev murmured, burrowing closer than he normally would have.
“Sounds good.” Leaf reached to take Seth’s hand over Dev and kissed his fingers.
They fell asleep like that, with Dev as close to Leaf as humanly possible, and Seth and Leaf holding hands over him.
Epilogue
DEV WENT to make some more coffee in the break room at DeWitt Dogs. He smiled as he looked at the huge whiteboard on the wall, where some of the children from a local elementary school had scribbled things for them the day before.
The training center was an old ranch by the mountains. It wasn’t far from Leaf’s friends’ farm where they’d gone on their first date, almost two years ago. In fact, part of their properties lined up somewhere far from the house Dev, Seth, and Leaf now called home.
The house was much more manageable in size than the pink one had been. It was more compact, and the gaming room doubled as Dev’s office.
Seth hadn’t gone back to teaching, not after his sudden success as a novelist. His gay romance novels revolving around the art world with a hint of mystery had brought him income—and more importantly, a feeling of happiness—none of them had expected.
Leaf worked at the training center, and Dev still did his thing for Nemo Gaming.
The doggie door made a telltale squeak by the mudroom, and soon Grace wobbled in. She was so very gray now, and the cat following her never left her side for long.
“Hey, kiddos. Want some snacks?” Dev asked and dug his pockets for a dog cookie and a cat treat.
Once they’d eaten those, Grace went to her bed by the radiator, and Weasley curled up right next to her head.
Dev left the coffee to percolate and the kids to sleep, and walked out to greet the late-spring afternoon. He glanced up the hill where Seth was cleaning the windows of their house. He’d been talking about doing so for the last few days, and it seemed like he’d hit a snag in the novel he was writing and was avoiding working on it by cleaning.
Chuckling, Dev went to the kennels, where he knew Leaf would be. As expected, he found Leaf in the puppy room, where they had the occasional litter of puppies whose mom needed rehabilitation. A lot of shelters would just put the whole litter down, but Leaf had decided to take on those cases. He was playing with the six-week-old mixed-breed puppies while their mother, an Old English sheepdog coming from a severe neglect situation, sat in the corner inside their pen and tried not to tremble.
Dev went to sit on the floor, and three of the seven puppies toddled over to him immediately.
“We’re not keeping one,” Leaf told him, when he instantly cooed at them.
“I know. But look at their little faces!” Dev grinned, lifting one of the little ones to his face and inhaling the sweet new-puppy scent that still clung to them.
“How’s finding homes for them coming along?”
“Five down, two to go,” Dev said proudly. He’d become somewhat of the social media face for DeWitt Dogs, and he worked on the rehoming side.
“That’s awesome, sweetheart,” Leaf said, and leaned over the puppies to give him a kiss.
“Since I’ve been such a good boy, do you think Daddy might have a reward for me later?” Dev asked casually, right after the kiss. From the close distance, he could see how Leaf’s pupils expanded as he moaned.
“Yes, definitely,” he promised, and Dev grinned mischievously. They’d gotten further in their explorations of their shared kink, just like Seth and Dev had in theirs.
Leaf liked to tease them about having an office where blowjobs were not only safe but encouraged, now. He’d even said that to Angel who had come over with his new fiancée, Rachel, and Dev had never before seen his brother move quite so fast as he did out of that office.
Angel and Rachel still lived in the old house, and while they weren’t planning on getting married anytime soon, Dev had a feeling his parents would give them the house for a wedding present whenever the day came.
There were no hard feelings between Dev and Angel, or anyone, really, anymore. Enough time had passed, and they were all happy. Even Rain, who had found herself dating a much-younger woman seemed to be in a good place with her life.
Life was awesome, but they’d hit a few rough spots right after Leaf had come home from his last work trip.
They’d all been excited about Leaf starting his own training facility. The problems had started when Leaf had done some math and realized he’d need a huge loan to afford a place somewhere even remotely close to Colorado Springs.
When Seth and Dev had suggested they’d become partners, Leaf hadn’t been very receptive. Then, eventually, after days of being at an impasse, Dev had suggested they just buy something bigger with that money. He’d done his research during that time and knew there were reasonably priced old ranches for sale around Colorado.
Seth had liked the idea, and so Leaf had confessed he’d talked about that with his friend Chay. Once they got that sorted, Seth and Leaf put the house on the market and looked for a place to buy together.
The last curveball was one Dev totally didn’t see coming, maybe stupidly.
When it became obvious that they had found their dream location but that some more money would be needed to put into the pot, Seth and Leaf had become almost despondent. Until Dev had told them he had that money, even on top of his third of their agreed sum, and then some. He’d been investing money with the help of his parents’ financial advisor ever since he earned some at sixteen. By now, with and without the trust fund his parents had set up for him and Angel, he could’ve afforded the whole property by himself.
His lovers… didn’t take it very well.
It had been rough on them. For a day or so, Dev had thought this might be what would crush them and drive them apart.
In the end he’d justified it by saying this was him investing on their future. That if Leaf and Seth could sell the house they’d owned together and put that money and their savings into buying the ranch, then he could put in as much money as they did, and since he had the extra, why not use it?
Leaf had made him promise to take a salary out of the job he did for the center, just because of his investment in the property. So he had two salaries coming in now, and life was… good.
“What did you think just now?” Leaf asked, gazing at him from under the puppies that had chosen to use him as a climbing exercise.
“How we got here,” Dev said, smiling.
“Oh….”
“Yeah. But hey, we’re here.”
“That we are.”
“There’s going to be coffee soon. I’ll go make a mug and take it to Seth. He’s cleaning the windows.”
Leaf chuckled. “Oh man…. Well, I hope he gets over his writer’s block soon, because the house is going to sparkle, and if he starts here next, the dogs will freak out.”
“I’ll be
sure to tell him that.” Dev grinned as he got up carefully and made his way back to the old barn they’d converted into an office, small room for some classes Leaf taught occasionally, and a break room for them and all their volunteers.
They weren’t officially open that day, so it was just the three of them on the property.
Alex, their vet, had taken on the job of their part-time veterinarian and would probably come check on some of the dogs they had right now later that day.
Dev poured some coffee into a travel mug, doctored it for Seth, and petted Weasley and Grace on his way out again. He got halfway up the hill before Missy bounced to him, excited as ever to see him.
“Hey there, Missy lady,” he cooed, and grinned when Husky marched to the edge of the fenced-in yard around their house. They didn’t close the gate on days when it was the three of them, yet Husky still chose to stay right between the gateposts, watching Dev and Missy’s approach. “What a good boy you are, Husky, my man,” Dev told him, scratching him by the ears in passing.
Seth had taken off his long-sleeved shirt and was washing the windows in a sleeveless tank.
“Could you be any hotter?” Dev groaned as he got close enough to see the sweat rolling down the back of Seth’s neck.
“I literally don’t think so,” Seth snarked, then perked right up at the travel mug. “You brought me caffeine?”
“Uh-huh,” Dev said, but held the mug away. “Kiss first.”
He got his kiss and then some, and Seth almost forgot about the coffee. Almost.
“Thank you!” Seth snatched the mug from Dev and grinned cheekily.
“It’s good I love you, you know,” Dev murmured, mock-frowning.
“Yes, it’s very, very good,” Seth agreed, nodding vigorously in jest, and they both laughed.
Dev turned to look down the hill. The buildings and the different fenced areas looked either lovingly restored or brand-new. There were dogs in the runs beside the kennel building, and Leaf emerged with a big silvery-blue pit bull on a leash. He started toward one of their walking paths in the forest and waved at Dev and Seth when he saw them looking.