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Someone witnessing events, invisible but ever present, from the outside, might have been forgiven for thinking that being fully and officially Will's hadn't changed Leo's life all that much. Like a newlywed after the honeymoon, the return to ordinary life proved how ordinary it was.

Will's first order had been for him to call his parents, tell them he was alright. No, he wasn't being kidnapped or anything, he'd just been seeing a guy and had wanted to try something a little spicy so- What? Yes, Mamá, he was dating a man again. Uh yeah, he'd say it was pretty serious. What, no it wasn't a rebound and he wasn't rushing into anything, hace diez años que no tengo novio, ¿cómo puede ser precipitado, si-? (I haven't had a boyfriend in ten years, how could that be rushing, if-?)

Will had given him a look and a gesture across his throat.

"Look, Mamá, we can talk it out later," Leo had sighed, "right now I need to get some sleep. Can you tell Dad to give me the day off? Gracias. Te amo también Mamá."

The talk had been at a pancake house an afternoon later. No, of course they weren't angry, but how could Leo do this, thinking he couldn't come to them, thinking he had to keep secrets, thinking they would cut him off?

Before he would have cringed, looked away, mumbled something conciliatory, but Leo found himself saying "Maybe ask my sister why I didn't trust my family, yeah?"

He watched his parent's eyes go to the next booth over, to the muscular coyote nursing a coffee and apparently ignoring them. He hadn't expected them to put it together WHO Will was.

"Leo, ¿qué creías que iba a hacer?" Dad had very deliberately switched to Spanish, "¿De qué tenías miedo?" (Leo, what did you think I was going to do? What were you afraid of?)

"Fire me?" Leo stayed with English.

"¡Aunque quisiera, el sindicato me mataría!" (Even if I wanted to, the union would kill me!)

"¡Habrían necesitado," Mamá said, "matarte antes que yo!" (They would have to do it before I did!)

So nothing about his job ended up changing.

Leo avoided the subject of where Ana was, why his sister hadn't come along to the 'make-sure-Leo-is-alright' meeting.

In return, they very carefully avoided asking about the chain he wore.

He had offered to move out of the apartment, but they wouldn't hear of it. So nothing about his living situation changed either.

Nonetheless, Leo had spent every night at the cabin for a week. The early morning drive into work was more than worth it for the affection that all of them seemed to have an unspoken agreement to smother him in. Waking up every morning had been a surprise: he might find himself between Sam and Will, Sam and Nik, Cliff and Murdoch, Will and Murdoch, Nik and Todd... any combination might be possible.

Which wasn't to say Will was going easy on him. Leo spent most of the time at the cabin in nothing but his collar. And at any moment, Will or Sam, Murdoch or Cliff, even possibly Nik or Todd (though in the otter's case Leo suspected him of imagining himself at Leo's end of the leash rather than Will's) might send him upstairs, order him to his knees, and knowing that they could, knowing they knew they could, knowing they knew he knew they could, that kept the tingle of giddy anti-shame burning behind Leo's mind and under his groin every moment he was awake.

Will would send him to fetch tiny, trivial things, from the other end of the house--get my nail clippers from the kitchen counter, or bring the TV remote up out of the basement pantry--things that would've had no reason to be where they were and every reason to be where Will already was. No matter how clear it was that Will was just looking for an excuse to call him a good boy, it kept working.

But even this felt, very soon, strangely normal: it was all of it nothing that he hadn't already done under the training collar. It took an effort, one night, to make the oddness of it hit his mind. He was sitting on the floor, his head on Will's knee. Nik was stroking his ears sleepily. The only light in the living room was the old, weird, bad movie Mudoch had put on, with the shadow puppets making fun, that nobody but Cliff was paying more than half-attention too. It all felt so normal that it was easy to forget he was naked, collared, and leashed. He felt the same as ever.

But the one thing that mattered couldn't be any more different: he belonged to Will, he belonged to all these men, and that meant he belonged. He always would.

This was the rest of his life.

As far as Leo knew, at least.

"If you're here to tell me to break things off with him," Leo started off before he even reached the park bench, "then you're just gonna be wasting your time."

"I can see that." Jenna raised an eyebrow.

He hadn't been surprised to get the message. It was why she was the only one whose profile he'd left unblocked.

> I have to be back in the area next week. It would make me feel better if I could check on you while I'm there.

No point putting it off. He'd said she should tell him where and when, and went back to work.

"I don't think you can blame me," Jenna looked different than he remembered, "if I thought I needed to make sure you weren't being abused." She wasn't softer, or less vigilant, or less intense, but there was a different quality to everything she was. She was less on-guard, maybe, less escalated. But then, he'd last seen her how long ago? And in what state of mind? Maybe this is how she always really was. "But that's not what I'm here for."

"Then what are you here to talk about?" Leo tilted his head.

"Well," she gave him the kind of look you would give someone who angrily demanded the small children in costumes explain what the hell they thought they were doing knocking on doors in october, "I'm here to find out what happened to my childhood friend."

"Fine," Leo sighed, "I guess I got some questions too."

"Ok, start with what you thought happened when you Chase broke up."

"I didn't know we were broken up." He answered, a lot quicker than he expected. "The first I heard of it was when you chewed me out for ruining the spring break meeting."

From her expression she'd been expecting him to say that.

"Look," he said, "I dunno when I started... seeing things that weren't there, about it, and I dunno if that can make you not see things that are there, but I never once got told we were split, yeah? So why would I question what I thought was happening?" He could feel a little pilot-light of the old frightened, desperate anger, but it felt small, and distant, and pointless. "I guess it doesn't matter now whether you believe me," Leo shrugged.

"That's not true," Jenna said, "I know how much it hurts to not be believed even when you're telling the truth. But," her voice got a bit more confident, "as it happens I do believe you. I talked to Chase not that long ago. He admits he never told you it was over."

Leo leaned forward, elbows on his knees, turning the idea around in his mind. She'd talked to Chase not that long ago. How did he actually feel about that?

"How is he?"

"Alright," Jenna shrugged. "He went into cinematography after college, turns out. Works with some youtube studios."

"That sounds alright." He... didn't seem to be sad about it.

"I can ask where you could look up his work if-"

"Nah," Leo shook his head. He wasn't excited about it, either. Whatever he was feeling was like phantom pain in a missing limb. It was like passing by the school you used to go to. It was like hearing that a cartoon from early childhood was getting a reboot. Not uninteresting, but ultimately unimportant. "What's everyone else been up to?"

"Shouldn't we talk about-?"

"We'll get to it, yeah?"

"Well," she looked away for a moment as if mentally reordering her notecards. "Well, Flynn and Carl moved to Batavia not long after the wedding-"

"Wedding?"

"Yeah, they're married, as of... 2018. I guess I assumed you turned the invitation down, but apparently they never sent it." She sounded like this had just put some long-abandoned puzzle pieces into place.

"I mean," Leo rubbed the back of his neck, "it mighta gotten thrown away unopened, I guess. I wasn't doing great, those years."

"But you are now?"

"...and TJ?" Leo didn't care how obvious it was he had dodged the question.

"Moved back to Canada. I think he's a physical therapist." She sighed. "Fine: Sydney I haven't heard from in a couple of years now, last I heard he was in rehab. Steroids and painkillers. I haven't heard from Heather or Clint in years, and I don't particularly miss it. I don't think you knew anyone else in the group." She frowned, tight, chin down, and for a moment looked exactly like the Jenna Leo remembered. "And I'm Doctor Begay now, actually, on a research fellowship with a psychological institute in Sotamacochee."

"Congrats."

"Thank you, though I've been that for a while."

"So what are you doing here, then?"

"Jeremy's parole hearing." She shrugged. "He got lucky, I guess, that he wasn't charged with any felonies or he wouldn't be eligible. Has an apprenticeship lined up with M.D.N. power and light, over in the Meseta Nation, which will hopefully keep him a little further from the reach of the U.S. 'Justice' system."

"I guess having 'Dr.' Begay arguing for him helped?"

"It shouldn't have to," she sighed, "but I guess it didn't hurt."

"Are the two of you talking again, then?"

"I don't intend to keep in touch with him, if that's what you mean." She gave him a sharp look. "But that's all the stalling I'll put up with from you."

Here it came.

"Leo, what happened?"

So he told her. It was easier than he'd feared, perhaps having already told someone helped. When he mentioned Chase 'visiting' her eyes widened, but she stayed carefully silent and stone-faced until he finished. "And then you left, and that was the last I saw it. Is it bad that I missed it?"

"It?"

"The hallucination or whatever. There were times, in the years in between, where I kinda wished you'd never made me realize it wasn't real. When I would've rather kept being fooled by a fake relationship that didn't exist than realize I was alone."

"That makes sense," she said, as if it didn't, "persistent delusions are often designed to satisfy some unmet emotional need. If it weren't wildly unethical to do a study on a personal friend..."

"Anyway," Leo was entirely ready to be done with this subject, thank you, "I'm free of it now, that's what matters."

"Are you, though?"

"What?"

"Are you free?" She pointed at the chain around his neck. "We covered paraphilia in basic coursework, Leo. I know what a collar is."

No wait, this subject was worse. "I'm fine, Jenna. He doesn't lock me up or beat me or anything. It's just... this is how I work now. I couldn't make myself try for a relationship the normal way, with like dates and romance, after Chase. But I could do this. And this worked, and that's all there is to it, yeah?"

And somewhere in her eyes he saw the spark he'd been afraid of, that wasn't about to let him get away with excuses, that wasn't going to walk away from an argument or indeed anything that she knew she could win...

...but it too sputtered, drifted away, and vanished, just like his jealousy on hearing about Chase. "I guess there's another reason I'm here, then. I owe you an apology. I shouldn't have berated you for someone else violating your privacy, and I should've paid more attention to the chat where they shared the photo. If I had I could have said something before they sent it to your parents, maybe have stopped them. I'm not going to apologize for things other people did, but they also shouldn't have done, well, any of the things in the messages I forwarded you."

Leo had been about to say that he hadn't seen them, that Will had deleted them and said he was better off not knowing, but that'd just open the can of worms wider. And Will was, above and beyond being his owner, right: Leo didn't actually want to know.

"I can invite you in the channel? Where the picture got shared?" She pulled out her phone, "I mean, it makes more sense to have you in there than SOME of the people that are..."

"No thanks," Leo shook his head, "S'like you and Jeremy, yeah? And I don't really think Flynn'd have much of an apology to give."

"Probably not, no." She finally smiled.

So she talked about her work, instead, and Leo understood none of it, and that was ok. Until it was time for her to catch her flight back north, and for him to head up to the cabin, where he belonged, for the weekend.

It was nice enough to reminisce, Leo supposed, and maybe an answer or two about what went down back in the day was a little satisfying. But he'd had more than he wanted of nostalgia, and anyway what was any of this to do with his life now?

And this ought to be where someone witnessing events, invisible but ever present, from the outside would say: Ah, and this is the difference. This is what has changed in him, this is the lesson learned, this is the moral of the story.

But of course, things don't always die just because they're dead.