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The desert smelled so familiar.

He didn't remember much of El Salvador. A few images of the rooms of a house, but even those he couldn't be sure if they were memories of real things, or memories of imagining what memories of real things might have been. When Leo thought of childhood, when he cast his mind back as far as it would go, it landed here.

Here there was no motor oil. No lawn sprinklers. No stray whiff of taqueria or backyard barbecue or above-ground swimming pool. No smell of alcohol and cologne, of sweat and arousal, of leather and desire and maybe a surreptitious whiff of poppers mingling promiscuously in the air. Just sagebrush, sand, and the strange dry smell of unmaintained asphalt turning to dust under years of merciless sun.

If there had been anyone to ask, he wouldn't have been able to say why he'd come here. He'd just been driving by muscle memory, honestly, and by the time he had realized he was headed toward the old house he was most of the way there.

But that was fine.

Where else was there for him to go?

Not back to the cabin, certainly. Not after the way he'd panicked and fled. Will and all the rest must even now be breathing a sigh of relief that they had seen through to what he really was before he'd gotten too deeply interwoven into their lives. But it wasn't their fault, it was his. He should have known better than to try to wheedle someone into thinking they loved him, than to think it'd be possible for someone to love him.

And he couldn't go back to the apartment. That's where Mama or Dad would expect to find him. Also why he couldn't go home. If Dad or Mama were out of the question, puchica, how much worse was Ana?

Really he just shouldn't be around people.

It was nearly midnight by the time he pulled up in front of the old house. And of course he didn't dare go in. The place had been abandoned in the desert for years. At best it was full of spiders. At worst it was full of memories. He remained in the truck and stared out into the night until his heart stopped racing enough to notice he was exhausted. Might as well just recline the seat and sleep in the car. He should probably get used to doing that. It'd be the new normal once Dad fired and evicted him.

What must they think he was doing?

If they learned what he was actually doing, would that be any better? Probably for the best if he never found out.

Sleep, when it had finally come, had not been restful. He would drift off straight into a nightmare so smoothly that he didn't realize he'd fallen asleep, and the dreams were all of finding Dad or Mama knocking on his window demanding explanations for everything he'd done at the poker game, or with Sam and Will, or in the bathroom stall at the Stag, which they somehow knew about. Or of seeing Chase sitting in the passenger seat, not moving, not talking, just staring, holding out one of their old pair of matched bracelets for him to take, which suddenly became instead his own severed leg. Or of some tall, thin, fleshless thing with empty eyes crouched on the rooftop, watching his truck like a vulture.

Sunrise had been a relief, because at least he could stop pretending to try to sleep.

So now under early dawn he had wandered around behind the old house to the abandoned train tracks: abandoned long before he'd arrived here. They'd been 'the abandoned train tracks' behind his home for as long as it had been his home.

God. It was again now, wasn't it?

Well, that fit. He and this place were a perfect fit for one another. Abandoned by everyone who had finally seen there was nothing here worth having, nothing worth taking, nothing worth staying for. He should have known long ago that this was where he belonged: just another ghost in the ghost town.

Footsteps crunched on gravel behind him.

"How'd you find me?" Leo finally said.

"Well," answered Will, "I'm still a detective, you know." He decided not to explain about finding Alvarez Auto dark and empty, about splitting up: Cliff to Murdoch's place with Todd, in case Leo headed there and to make Todd get some sleep before the otter worried the webs off his paws out of self-blame, Nik back to the cabin in case Leo doubled back, Murdoch and Sam to the Stag and from there to the general downtown.

And Will to the Alvarez house.

Leo didn't need to know what conversations passed between his worried owner and his even more worried parents, when he'd found them sitting up and calling over and over. Not now. Maybe not ever.

"Why did you come after me?" Leo's voice sounded exactly as tired as he felt.

"Because you're mine, pup." Will's voice wasn't exactly fresh and energetic either, but he pressed on. "I found out what happened, at least. Somebody who knew you in high school took the picture--I guess you saw? Yeah--sent it to some other friends, one of them sent it on to your dad. Someone named Jenna tried to warn you, but I don't think you saw that message."

Jenna? "That's... the friend I mentioned. Who wouldn't've tolerated comments about frybread tacos, yeah?"

"I remember," Will nodded. "She says she tried to tell them not to, but it was already too late."

Leo made no move to take the phone Will held out to him.

"I tried, yeah?" Leo finally said. "I like... I tried to give them what they needed from me, what they wanted from me."

"Who, pup?"

"Everyone," Leo shrugged, "My friends. My parents. Chase, even when it turned out he was just something I was imagining, I still tried. Cause like... eventually I'd have to hit someone who'd accept me in return. That's how it's supposed to work, yeah? That's how they told me works, when I was a kid who didn't speak the language: offer people whatever you can give them and you'll be welcome eventually."

"I can't say, pup, that I think much of that advice." Will sighed through his nose, "Can't say I think much of your old gang, either. Doesn't seem like their goddamn business. Where were they all those years when hearing from them could have helped you? When you just needed someone, anyone, to give a shit about you? But now you don't need them anymore, suddenly here they come and you're supposed to care what they think?"

"But, if they reached out, then maybe I have something I can offer them again." Leo didn't sound hopeful. "Maybe it can still work after all, yeah?"

"And HAS it worked?" A trace of impatience slunk into Will's voice. "Did it work before? Did it work with Chase?"

Leo had no answer.

"You love like a puppy dog, Leo, always trying to give people things--your time, your attention, your service, your rubber chew bone--just in case they'll love you in return." Will took a few steps closer, into the space between Leo and the ghost of the trainyard. "But then they turn out not to need them, not to want them. They're trying to work right now, they have their hands full, they don't have time for a puppy. And the puppy doesn't understand that, he just tries harder to make them take the rubber chew bone. That's the only thing he knows how to do." The coyote advanced another half step, and his eyes made contact with Leo's when he turned unsuspectingly. "Maybe he starts getting angry at how they aren't reacting the way they should. Maybe if they don't want it, it means they don't want him. Maybe nobody ever taught him that just going to lie down and waiting was an option." The coyote didn't seem angry or aggressive, but also didn't stop slowly crowding forward along the obsolete tracks. "And then when people leave, the puppy doesn't understand why, he thinks it was his fault for not making them take the chew bone." Will was close enough that Leo could feel his words on his whiskers. "It doesn't occur to him they might come back, he just thinks he's alone forever."

"But... he was, or, I was right. They didn't come back."

"Didn't somebody else?"

Leo clenched his eyes shut.

"Even if I hadn't, even if nobody had," Will pressed the advantage, "somebody who abandons their dog doesn't years later get to claim him back from the house next door that took him in."

"Not sure this metaphor's gonna hold up much longer, yeah?"

"Then drop it. You're not a dog, you're a person, and a person deserves people who care about him."

"I don't feel like I do, though."

"Maybe I don't care what you feel like. Maybe what I say goes, cause you're the one wearing the collar, so if I say you deserve to be loved then you don't argue, you say Yes Sir." Will sounded pained. And it occurred to Leo that Will had also been trying to give him something in exchange for, well, arguably a kind of love. "Maybe it don't matter if you deserve love, you've got it, deserved or not, and you don't need to keep goddamn earning it over and over forever. Especially not from people who weren't interested in whatever you were trying to trade for it in the first place."

"I... don't know how to stop trying." Leo whispered.

"Don't stop trying. Try for me, not them. Cause I am interested when you try to give me your time and your attention. I like that you love like a puppy dog." At some point Will had taken something from his pocket. "You don't have to burn yourself out trying to be anybody's pup but mine." He held it out.

Leo looked at the slender but solid chain--alternating interwoven steel and rubber links--like a wounded wild animal looks at the veterinarian.

"I was gonna offer you this last night," Will stared out into the desert, not at Leo. "After the game."

"I can't be ready, yeah?" Leo whispered. "Doesn't... freaking out and running off prove that?"

"Are you saying no?" Will said carefully. "You can. You always can. If you choose to."

"I don't want to have to choose."

"I know, pup."

Ah, so he wasn't gonna let him take the easy way out.

For a moment, nothing moved. As if time and the world had to wait for some unthinkable power to will them forward again.

But there was nobody to make the choice for Leo but himself. Fine then.

He held out his hand to Will.

"I accept that this collar means I am a slave," the wolf said quietly, almost wistfully, like he was drowsily recounting a nostalgic memory, "and I accept that you are my master. I understand it stays around my neck until you remove it, possibly forever. Hopefully forever." This wasn't the future he'd imagined, when he was young, when he'd daydreamed about domestic bliss in this place with Chase, but, "I freely choose to hand over my freedom, my will, myself to you, and become your property. I accept your collar," The rubber links made it flexible, easy to pull over his ears and into place around his neck, "Master."

After a long moment, Will smiled. "You know you coulda just said yes."

"Well," Leo answered, "it was the last choice I was making for myself, yeah? Wanted it to be a little romantic."

"Yeah," Will's arms were around Leo now, not tight, just supporting him, "I get that pup."

They stayed there like that for a little while.

"Ok, how the fuck do you block messages on this stupid thing?" Will thrust Leo's phone at him, clearly disgusted with it.

"Like this," Leo took his beat-up phone back, "sir."