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The thing about profound, transformative experiences--an evening spent on your knees in the upper bathroom of the Stag, for example--is they transform only you. The rest of the world, and your daily life in it, cares very little. It carries on much the same as before.

***

"You able to make this a regular thing, pup?"

"Yeah, I can save Monday and Friday evenings no problem, Master."

"Good boy. Let's get you out of those clothes."

Will led him down into the basement, turned down the hall and flicked on the lights in a bare room full of equipment.

"Let's see how your bench press looks first," Will began his stretches.

"Yes sir." Leo folded his clothes in the corner, pulled on the jockstrap that Will had presented as his 'workout uniform.' "Thank you for letting me use the equipment, sir."

"Well, that's what it's there for! Sam and Nik and Todd use it all the time." Will inhaled as he bent fully into the stretch, held it, then exhaled. "That workout game you got might work well enough to start with but I bet with your build you could use a more substantial workout on top."

"Whatever you say, Master."

"Well, right now I say do your warm up first!"

Will proved a very effective workout partner, which in hindsight Leo should absolutely have known just from looking at the man.

Of course afterward, in the shower stall, on his knees, Leo had other duties.

***

> Gonna be away for a couple weeks on work.

> You're gonna use this time to get close to the rest of the family.

> Find time to spend with each of them.

> yessir

> by spend time you mean sex sir?

> If that's what they want, sure. Or just spend time regular, you know?

> yes master

***

"I realized," Nik sat his back against a cottonwood trunk, "where it is I had seen you before."

Leo leaned the shovel he'd carried up here against a convenient tree. "I, uh, didn't know you had, sir!"

"Hrm." Pursing his lips made the badger's beard shift. "I have not yet decided how I feel about you calling me this."

Nik had said, as Will was packing, he wanted 'a second pair of hands' this weekend in the woods behind the cabin. Leo had been quietly pleased with himself, with the progress of his training he supposed, that his instinct had been to glance across the room at Will, return the tiny nod, so that Will didn't have to say anything but, to Nik, "Leo'll do it."

He'd been handed a shovel and a curved saw on a telescoping pole. Nik had hefted a canvas bag with considerably more tools, and then led him behind the rows of pines down a rocky slope. Apparently nobody lived further up this way than Will did.

A narrow rocky stream ran down a gentle slope, stands of massive cottonwoods staggered drunkenly along it. There was almost nothing in it now: snowmelt was over, the rainy season wasn't due for a half a month at least. They were here to do something called Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration, Nik had said, but apparently first they were going to relax.

"You were at the talks about a strike on the concrete recycler, last autumn."

"Oh, yeah sir!" Leo said, "I, uh, don't really remember much, I wasn't paying a lot of attention."

"William has mentioned," Nik allowed, "that you had been living unhappily for some time. Who were you with?"

"I.A.M., that's-"

"Auto mechanics, ah good." Nik smiled, "I was worried, from what William described, that perhaps your work was exploitative."

"I work for my family, yeah?"

"That is no protection I'm afraid." The badger sighed. "But the union is a good sign at least."

Leo shifted his weight, unsure what he was supposed to do.

"You are not sure what to make of me." Nik said. It wasn't a question.

"I..." no point in denying it, was there? "no sir. You don't seem to... want me, the way the others do."

"I am not complicated." Nik gazed down the slopes. It wasn't so very high, really, from Payton proper to Will's cabin, but still the view was impressive. From here you could see the town, the interstate leading to Pueblo the one way, to the coast the other, the desert beyond it, the other, higher crowd of mountains across the valley. The sun had only just cleared the mountains behind them, and the badger's shadow reached the edge of the meadow and toward the valley floor. For all Leo could tell it reached the town. "You are young, still. At least, from my age you seem young. But I remember what it was like, when I was your age, to feel I had been working all my life to set down roots somewhere, anywhere, and to be uprooted again and again. I was afraid I was already too old to try again, that it was already too late. You, also, you were not born in this country, correct?"

"I... no sir."

Nik nodded, but said no more about that. "I did not fear death, I feared that when I died no one would notice. No one would care. But coming to love Sam, this has brought me into the lives of all the other men he loves. And the men that they love. And as if by magic, there are suddenly more men than I could name in a single breath who, when I die, will notice and will care. So," Nik laid his hand atop Leo's, in the dust and gravel, "it may not seem to you that I want you, but I do. Perhaps not in the way you expected. But more than want you, I think I understand you, Leonardo Alvarez. I think you too know what it is to fear that nobody will mourn you. And I think you are just now discovering that loving a man has brought you into the lives of the men he loves, and the men they love."

A cool wind stirred, as the sunlight began to bear down on the valley floor, and the rustling of it through the cottonwoods formed a single sound, like an orchestra tuning but soft and remote.

"This really is a beautiful place. And I am more fortunate than I know how to account for that I get to live in it." Nik pushed himself to his feet. "But! You and I have work to do! Now, streams like this one can erode and wash out, which means floods downstream and drought up here, so what we must do is take natural materials from the environment, branches and stone and the like, and pile these into little dams, so it drains more slowly-"

***

Dutifully taking and sending today's pic--naked, on his knees, make sure to get both his dick and collar in frame--finally produced enough frustration to make Leo do something. It was always so much trouble to find an angle where the sad, shitty piles of auto shop supplies and detritus weren't visible.

He pulled on his jeans and started moving boxes. Stacked by the door, they all took up surprisingly little room.

He borrowed a shop vac from downstairs, gave both rooms a once-over on the low setting. It was frankly astonishing how much difference it made. Suddenly this place almost felt like he lived here.

***

"Long day at work, huh?" The fox asked when Leo climbed into the passenger seat of his little hybrid. "I know how that feels."

Murdoch had assured him that this would only take an evening, he'd be home and in bed well before midnight, and there'd be no need to wait for the weekend. He hadn't said what 'this' was, because that would "spoil the surprise."

"Cliff is out with Sam," the front room of the brick house initially felt like a museum, rather than a living room. The floor was light, highly polished wood. The lights were on rails, individually aimed. The walls were carefully covered with precisely arranged photographs, paintings, and small shelves each with a single object displayed there. "So we've got all evening to amuse ourselves."

The only furniture was clustered at the far end: two lighting tripods topped with umbrella-like structures, a sheet hung from a bar on the ceiling to block the front window, a handful of unrelated furniture--a kitchen chair, a piano bench, what looked like some kind of weightlifting rack with no weights--and several piles of deeply and vividly colored ropes.

"You have a quick shower, while I set up," Murdoch directed him toward the bathroom. "Don't bother getting dressed again."

Which was more or less what Leo had expected from Murdoch.

The camera was set up, when the wolf emerged damp, clean, and naked. "You're shooting porn of me, sir?" Leo blushed.

"Please," Murdoch deployed his most mischievous smirk, "they're 'erotic nudes.' And they're gonna take a bit of setup, get over here..."

The setup was mostly wrapping the colorful silk rope around and around him into some kind of netlike bondage harness, customized to hold him in whatever pose Murdoch had devised. It was intimate in a strange way: the fox's soft hands were running over and around his naked body--thighs, shoulders, wrists, chest, even sometimes under and behind his balls--but every layer of rope made him feel more like just an object, just one of the things Murdoch was setting up for the picture. Posed the way he wanted, held there, trapped by-

"You can talk, you know," Murdoch grinned as he got Leo into the first planned pose: on his knees, thighs lashed to his calves, arms behind his back, ropes under his pecs and over his shoulders. "Or if you can't," he gave Leo's erection a brief squeeze on his way to the camera, "you can moan."

"Would you like me to moan, sir?"

"I'm certainly not gonna turn down a moan or two," Murdoch ducked behind the camera, adjusted the angle, "turn your head a little more towards the wall, no no, other way, a little more, now tilt your head back a little. Without moving your head, look into the camera. Now imagine, you're captured, you're helpless, you're completely powerless to resist whatever the viewer is planning to do to you... excellent."

Getting the whole arrangement undone gave Leo time to collect himself.

He'd liked that more than he expected.

Murdoch changed the color of the lights to match the next hue of rope. The next pose involved tying from his bound wrists, to wrapped around his muzzle, from there down the back of his neck, under his armpits, to his chest. It was loose enough that he could talk, and there was plenty of slack between face and wrists, "which we'll need to use for the pose" explained the photographer.

So he asked, "I don't get why this feels good, sir."

"You," Murdoch hooked the rope around itself over his belly, "got raised Catholic. I know what that's like."

"...what does that have to do with rope, sir?"

"Well, just that if you got told often enough that what you want is obscene and evil," Murdoch took the loose end of the rope, tied it lightly around one side of the weight rack, "then maybe it'd be good to find yourself in a situation where what you want isn't your fault, it's something that got done to you, and you had no power to resist? Ok, bend your back knee a bit, lean backward till the rope goes taut. Like you're being dragged somewhere by someone holding it. That's good. Move the hands down a little, and then I want you to snarl, bare those teeth, really strain against the gag. Turn your waist toward the camera a little more... perfect, hold that!"

"Or maybe," he changed the lights and rope again, "it's about something that you need but never actually do for yourself. I know what it's like, too," Murdoch needed zero encouragement to explain himself, clearly, "to be so busy with whatever everyone else needs from you that you suddenly look up and realize it's been years since you paid attention to anything you need. Feels good, maybe, to be in someone else's control, and have no choice but to think about how you feel?"

"I, uh," the way he'd been tied to the kitchen chair made Leo hold his arms over his head, armpits toward the camera, thighs spread and erection straining, "I sure am noticing some feelings, sir."

"I noticed them too..." Murdoch teased Leo's cock with two fingertips, tapped the wolf on the nose to leave a drop of pre there, and licked clean the rest himself. "Ok, nose back a little more, show me more throat, got it."

The final pose had his wrists bound, raised above his head to the bar above. "Of course, it could just be knowing what anybody tying you up naked is planning to do to you. Ok, down on one knee, no, the other one, we want you dick toward camera. Good, now raise your tail"

Well, alright, but why-

Murdoch lashed his tail around the middle, looped the ends over his wrists to keep it. "Hm... starting to flag a little down there, huh?"

"What do you mean si- ahh!" Leo yelped when Murdoch squatted in front of him and started stroking his erection back. He couldn't move, not with his arms and tail trapped like this, he could barely even press his hips into the paw around his shaft.

"Oh, you're blushing," he felt, more than heard Murdoch say, there must have been less than an inch between his lips and Leo's.

And then there was none at all.

Realistically there were plenty of ways he could have resisted the tongue pressing into his muzzle, and the hand around his rod. But Murdoch wasn't wrong, it was amazing to feel like he was powerless.

Murdoch pulled away, very suddenly, and Leo reflexively bowed his head, panting for breath.

"Oh oh, perfect, leave your head down, nose a little lower... arch your lower back a little. Oh, Leo, you're gorgeous, this is perfect. I got you both blushing and leaking!"

The wolf lifted his head, blinking, "Does that mean we're done, sir?"

"Well," Murdoch was busy undressing, "We're done with the pictures. How long has it been since you topped?"

It had been a while.

But Murdoch had nothing but praise for his performance.

***

> Been practicing with your toy, pup?

> yes master

> Let's see.

The windowsill, he'd discovered, made a good place to set the phone while it sent video: high up, near the bed, not slippery, and it meant the light was always coming the right way.

The dildo had initially been intimidating. But length meant ability to reach behind him, once it was lubed up and presenting to the phone camera, and slide it smoothly into himself.

Less than a month ago, he'd have been sure he'd never even consider doing this.

When he turned around it was to a litany of approving messages from Will.

> That's very good, pup. Good boy.

> You're gonna be so open for your Master. When he gets back.

> Maybe I should keep you naked for a whole day to fuck any time I liked.

> No notice, I just say "Bend over" and slide right in.

> That what you want, pup?

He had to wipe excess lube from his paws on the towel he was kneeling on to respond, but Will had plenty of time to see how hard he was as he did.

> so much sir

> Good boy.

***

"You don't pick what chances you get," Sam explained, though what he was explaining wasn't immediately clear.

Sunrise came up behind the mountains, up at the cabin--Leo had apparently outgrown thinking of it as 'Will's Cabin,' the closest his mind would go without conscious effort was 'Master's Cabin'--it was behind as you looked into the valley.

Sunset, when it descended, claimed the entire visible sky.

"Some people, the world gives em chance after chance after chance, and they don't take any of em because they weren't the one they wanted." The sunset had turned Sam's white pelt an almost luminous golden orange, the way an old fashioned lightbulb turns the white lampshade around it yellow. "Some people only get one chance their entire lives, and if they don't take a shot at it, or if they miss, then that's it. All you get."

There was nobody but Sam and himself, this afternoon, for the mile or so of forest too thick, or slope too steep, around the cabin. Leo had finished his basement workout, had a shower, and come up to the kitchen for some juice or something and found the puma at the open fridge door with a bag of pre-shredded mozzarella in one hand, a fistful of cheese in the other, and wearing nothing but running shorts and a guilty expression.

"Uh, hand me a bowl," he had said, as if he hadn't obviously been planning to cram it directly into his mouth.

Leo obeyed.

"I had a nip edible," he'd preemptively justified.

"Oh, I get it sir." Leo poured himself a glass of something red from the fridge, which turned out to be blackberry iced tea.

"Just makes you hungry is all."

"Yessir."

There had been a moment of nothing but the silence of the house.

"Do you want some crackers, sir, or...?"

"It's fine!"

Leo had finished his drink.

"You going around in just a jock now?" Sam put the empty bowl in the sink.

"It's... what master told me to wear when I workout, sir."

"And I can just," the puma had waved a hand in the air, "order you to lie back on the couch and spread your legs? And you do it?"

Leo had stood up a little straighter. "Yessir."

"You know what, do that."

Nothing paved over an awkward moment, Sam had said, like a good deep plowing. On his back, Sam buried in his gut and busily pawing him between them--can't get into it, he'd said, unless the guy's getting off too--legs up till his toes cramped, Leo hadn't been in any position to disagree.

"There's no way to tell," Sam still seemed a little uncharacteristically pensive, after putting a load of himself in Leo's ass, so maybe there had been more than catnip in that edible, "whether you're getting another chance after this one. A shot at happiness shows up, you take it."

"Are you alright, sir?" Leo stopped just short of leaning on the railing beside Sam. He was still naked, after all, and this was exactly where someone, if anyone, who came up the gravel road would first look at the house.

"A... client got personal." Sam admitted. "Said he couldn't understand why 'a guy like me' wasn't on a beach in Baja 'where I belonged.' Said I must be so tired of living in 'a shithole' like this." He waved a paw at the valley, turning from orange to crimson as the sun sunk into the purple clouds. "I told him I don't do unpaid overtime," Sam snorted, "if he wants to pour out his tormented heart he can get a therapist."

"Hm, I used to hear that one too, sir."

"Hear what one?"

"That I should get a therapist, sir."

"Did you?"

Leo had to shake his head. Sam laughed bitterly.

"I mean, maybe I coulda been happy if I hadn't stuck with Will, if I'd hooked up with some fancy asshole who'd sweep me off my feet to some hipster village up the coast. But some fancy assholes wasn't there. Will was there. Maybe I didn't need to bring in every other man who decided to go and fall in love with me. But they were there. Maybe Will coulda found someone else to set his heart on than the professional slut who's a bit of an asshole himself, but I was there. Maybe you and whatever-his-name was woulda been better off never being more'n friends. But he was there, and you were there, and don't you let anybody blame you for taking the shot. Cause maybe you woulda never gotten another one."

They watched at the railing until the sun was down.

"If it helps, sir," Leo might as well try, "I'm glad I got whatever chance put me here now."

"Thanks, pup. It doesn't hurt."

***

> On lunch, Pup?

> yessir should i meet you?

> are you back?

> Not yet, still busy with work. You're gonna have to be patient.

> But you still get to obey:

Leo felt one eyebrow rise. But, master's orders stood.

"Entonces, además de pupusas," he stared at the sun-faded menu on the side of the food truck, "¿qué es lo más saludable que tienes?" (So, instead of pupusas, what's the healthiest thing you have?)

He wondered if the taco truck guy noticed his collar. If he had the slightest idea it was more than a necklace.

> What did you get?

> chicken soft tacos sir

> black beans salsa and guacamole its not bad

> honestly i was kinda sick of having the same thing every day sir

***

"I mean, I don't wanna pry or nothing."

"It's fine," Leo wiped his face and draped the cloth over the back of his shoulders.

"It's just unusual, you know!"

"Yeah, I get it." He braced himself for his next set of curls.

"It's just a guy is curious sometimes is all," Todd had apparently completely forgotten about the squats he'd been doing.

"I mean, it's not complicated," which was good because Leo wasn't really great at explaining complicated things, at the best of times, let alone while he was doing reps in nothing but a jockstrap, "it's pretty much exactly what it sounds like, yeah? He owns me."

Todd nodded and bit his lower lip.

"If you don't feel like that's hot I dunno what to tell you." Leo finished the set and flopped back on the bench. He was supposed to do one more, but it could wait a minute.

"But like... aint you supposed to care about like freedom and liberty and such?" Todd had carefully, and not at all casually enough, turned so that Leo couldn't see the front of his singlet, which accomplished nothing. Leo knew damn well what turned-on otter smelled like.

"I mean, he doesn't chain me up or anything," not that it wouldn't be hot if he did, "it's like. Ok. I don't do great with like... not knowing where I stand, yeah?"

Todd understood that.

"And like, it's stressful having to like, try to work out what people want from you, when you aren't sure if you're supposed to ask?"

Todd admitted this was an experience he'd had.

"And there's always the fear you're gonna say the wrong thing, or make a mistake, and that'll just be the last straw, it'll be all over before you even knew there was a problem."

"Yeah, I... wait, what?" Todd stopped him short. "I dunno if I can exactly relate to that one."

"Well, point is," Leo stretched his shoulders, "this way I don't ever have to guess, yeah? I know where I stand, if I'm a slave. He owns me. It's simple."

"Gosh," Todd sighed, "I guess I got a lot to think about."

Leo would've let it go with that... but what would Will want him to do?

"If you want some help thinking about it," he lowered the weights carefully, "I'm about ready to shower off."

Todd gulped.

"I guess what really got me," Leo said, when they were both naked under the hot water, "was the smell."

"What do you mean," Todd looked deeply concerned, "the smell?"

"Like this," Leo sank to his knees, pressed his nose to the otter's balls, and demonstrated.

"Oh... golly, that's..."

"Now imagine," he moved to the other side, inhaled there as well, "Will ordering you to do that."

Todd's cock stiffened.

"See," Leo said, "you get it."

***

"I obey by listening," Leo panted.

"I obey by repeating," he arched his back against his bed.

"Everything I say becomes true," nothing on his body but his collar, his headphones, and his paw.

"Everything I repeat is true," he wouldn't have believed a month ago, he'd ever masturbate to something like this.

"I am a slave," but here he was.

"My purpose is to serve," usually when you loved someone they could only touch you when they were with you.

"I serve my owner," but he could feel Will anywhere, any time.

"I obey my owner," when he obeyed, when he noticed his collar, when he remembered that-

"I am a slave," he moaned and stroked himself faster.

"I want to be a slave," he'd always been, well, very passionate. Very amorous.

"I need to be a slave," so maybe Will had just found a new route for that.

"I want to obey," like a river in the desert it was wearing itself deeper every second.

"I need to obey," or maybe this had always been in him.

"I obey completely," maybe Will had just been the first to find his hidden switches.

which was lucky, what if someone less trustworthy had found him first?

"My body submits to my owner," what evil influences could have controlled him?

"My will submits to my owner," what could they have made him do?

"I submit to my owner," because it wasn't just that Will ordered him to suck his cock, that turned him on.

"Those who submit are slaves," It was that Will ordered him. Period.

"Therefore I am a slave," And he was.

"I am a slave." He was coming.

"I am a slave," he repeated, blissfully, even though the track had ended, "I'm a slave."

***

"I'd like to experiment with some ideas like," Cliff explained excitedly, "Byzantine hagiographic iconography but filtered through the kind of surrealism that gave us progressive rock album covers and vintage speculative fiction paperbacks!"

Leo was pretty lost by this point in the explanation, but Cliff seemed content to carry on regardless.

"I've already made some sketches for Murdoch's portrait," they ushered Leo into the shared room down the hall from Sam and Will, "oh, please have a seat, but I don't have anything set in stone yet. The temptation to avoid of course is the literal obvious symbols, instead to find things that are still true without feeling like charades clues!" They flipped through a notebook, held it up, "you see the problem, of course."

To be honest, Leo did not. He saw a bunch of sketches of Murdoch, some clothed, some nude, some just his face, but all with halos made of swords or with wheat growing from his hands or a burning orb for a heart.

"So... am I going to pose, sir?" Leo ventured. Basically the same sort of thing he'd done with Murdoch, right?

"Hm?" Cliff's ear twitched, "oh! No no, we're not doing art tonight! We're going to have sex!"

That turned out to be an understatement.

Kissing, with Cliff, was like wrestling: Leo found himself pressed back into the bed, the passionate stoat astride his chest. Groping was like fencing: Cliff's paws darted to places they shouldn't have been able to reach faster than Leo could keep track. Undressing was like being mugged by fanatically proselytizing nudists.

"Mr. Adler is very strict about your cleanliness, I understand?"

"I... took a shower, if that's what you mean?" Leo stammered.

"Superb!"

Cliff darted around to the base of the bed and before Leo could sit up enough to see what they were doing down there his knees were hauled into the air.

"You don't have to let me get away with everything so easily as that, you know!" Cliff looked smug between Leo's thighs.

"...what are you... aah!"

Leo had been concerned, if he was honest, about his time with Cliff. They were the only one who was anything like, well, the same 'type' as Chase had been. But the actual experience, in the same room when Cliff was fully unleashed, couldn't be more unlike Chase.

And Chase had absolutely never done THAT.

"You can't have been this thoroughly subdued already, surely!" Cliff, apparently satisfied with how slick how Leo was, popped up with their elbows propped on Leo's knees.

"I'm gonna be honest, sir," Leo panted, "I'd be completely knocked on my ass even if I hadn't walked in here meaning to do whatever you told me."

"Well by that logic," Cliff's smile grew aggressive, "I ought to claim my prize."

They absolutely did.

It wasn't just that Cliff was fast, deep, and apparently tireless. They were simultaneously tender: the entire time their cock was buried inside Leo's ass, their paws were groping his belly, stroking his cheeks. Their mouth nipped his chest. Their tail lashed at the bed until it entwined with his.

Leo heard moaning and it turned out to be him.

"You like being mounted." Cliff huffed.

It hadn't been a question but Leo still gasped "yes!"

"You love being fucked?"

"Fuck yes!"

"I suspected you'd be a randy dog," Stoat paws gripped both of Leo's cheeks, shook him puppyishly, "you must be desperate with lust to be so eager to lift your tail and hand over your whole life to Adler. You could have just knocked on our door, if you wanted sex, you know!"

Leo couldn't find any words to reply. That was fine. Cliff didn't have much more to say. Their hips sped up till they buried deep inside Leo and erupted.

"If I'm being honest," Cliff lay with their chin on Leo's belly, ran a single finger up and down his side, "I can see the appeal." The wolf had collapsed and gone limp on his back, the stoat relaxed on him like a body pillow. "I might have to try spending an evening or two as Murdoch's slave? Or Sam's, maybe. Just as an experiment. But some other time, tonight you and I have more work to do!" The stoat grinned, "Just as soon as you're rested."

***

"It's not really... possible, right sir? It's like the videos where a guy's somehow so good at fucking that he... gets other guys pregnant in the butt, yeah? It's a fantasy that you jerk off to, sir, not something you can really do?"

"Uh, no, fisting is," Sam didn't know a way to say this delicately, "is real."

Leo was baffled. "Wha... how?!"

This wasn't the conversation Sam had expected to have tonight, especially not at the mall food court outside the smoothie place. "It's not complicated, man. Things are stretchier than you think, is all."

Leo looked like he had a lot of thinking to do.

"Look," Sam glanced behind him. The mall was never crowded, but if there was ever a time that a whole crowd of schoolkids or a bunch of nuns would have walked by, it WOULD be now, "not going into the details here. If that's something you wanna try... you're probably gonna need to talk to Cliff? Maybe Murdoch. Me'n Will are not gonna be able to help you there."

"Why not, sir?"

Sam silently held up his paw, easily large enough to palm a watermelon. "Will's're even bigger."

"Oh."

They found something else to talk about until Sam had to leave for his appointment.

Leo decided not to bring this one up to Will.

You didn't have to explore down every road you discovered.

***

"Nobody has claimed your night yet?"

Leo looked up, ready to deny that was how it worked, but really it did, didn't it? "No sir," he answered. "Sam, Cliff, and Murdoch went somewhere-"

"Oh yes, he mentioned some kind of party."

"Todd is at the park," Leo waved a paw.

"And Will is still out of town working... I see," Nik said gravely. "Well, sometimes I have a great deal of difficulty in falling asleep if I do not have someone to hold. Come."

"Yes sir."

Leo hadn't seen Nik's room yet. It was in the forward peak of the A-frame roof, shaped inside like a tent. The walls were covered with shelves--sturdy and metal, the same kind they had at the garage--and wherever they crossed the windows they were lined with potted plants. The bedframe itself was built into the network of shelves.

"Did you build this yourself, sir?" Was the first thing it occurred to Leo to say.

From the way Nik beamed that must have been a good instinct. "When you have spent as long as I have in places you are not allowed to make your own," he sat on the edge of the bed, pulled off his clothes and hung each garment on a convenient bar that folded down from the shelves, "you save up a great many plans for the day when you finally have the chance to use them."

The plans had been comprehensive, apparently. There was a second bar for Leo's clothes.

But when the wolf went to his knees beside the bed, Nik held up a paw. "Oh, I don't need, uh, that, from you." He glanced away and blushed. "I really do only wish to hold you while I sleep. I hope this is not a disappointment-"

"It's ok, sir," Climbing into the oversize bed was the same thing as climbing into Nik's arms.

"There are nights," Nik's voice was soft but too deep to be a whisper, "even now, when the loneliness is more than I can bear." The only light was the distant diffuse glow of Payton in the valley though the shelves and curtainless window. The badger's tundra of a chest, the stripes of his face, were faintly visible, the rest of him was indistinguishable from the darkness.

"How do you get through it?" Leo did whisper. He huddled close against Nik's body. Initially he'd tried to angle himself away, hadn't wanted to trouble the badger with his erection, but Nik had merely chuckled sleepily, wrapped his arms around the wolf, and pulled him closer. When Leo pressed his face into his chest he could have convinced himself that Nik's arms, legs, and body were a firm oversized sleeping bag.

"I don't," Nik's chin rested between Leo's ears. "I have plenty of men who wish me to hold them while we sleep. When the loneliness comes looking for me, I do not bother fighting with it. There is no need. It is not permitted in this house."

Nik's sigh was large enough that Leo's weight shifted.

He was convinced the huge badger was asleep when he rumbled sleepily, "do not think I don't intend to have my way with you. The time will come!"

Well that was alarming. "Sir, what do you-"

"Sh, sleep now, little puppy." Nik stroked Leo's ears and pressed his head back down into the embrace with the same paw. "Sleep."

Leo surrendered, and obeyed.

***

Leo was out of the shower with a cup of bad coffee when his phone buzzed.

> Morning slave.

> morning sir

> ...

> Well, I was gonna tell you to get your ass out of bed, but it sounds like you were already up.

> i suppose so sir?

> Just interesting that you're getting up as early as I do.

> Anyway, let's get a dick pic.

> Yes sir!

***

"You did it captain!" the game announced, apparently in case it wasn't obvious from the fact that the spade dragon in the leg warmers lying flat on his back was too ambiguous. "You out-exercised the Fitness Monitor! The planet is saved!"

Leo was honestly impressed with himself. The final boss fight had been six consecutive rounds, but he was less than half as wiped out than he'd been by the first level.

He made sure that the picture he took for Will included the victory screen, right next to his naked ass.

***

> Gonna be back tomorrow, Pup.

Leo's heart jumped.

> You have the evening free?

> yes sir!

> I've missed your ass around my cock real bad.

> i miss your cock sir

> need to taste it sir

> That's a good slave.

> Make some room in your schedule, boy. We'll have to throw a little party.

And then a lady rolled in with a early 2000s Honda, and Leo had to go back to work.

He didn't even notice his father, looking bemused from the office, and wondering what his son had been texting about: whatever it had been, Leo's tail hadn't wagged like that since he'd been in high school.