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David had been standing in the entrance for almost a full minute before Michael looked up, which gave him time to reconsider several decisions he had made that evening.
The first was the puppy. The second was putting the puppy inside his coat.
He had been quiet on the ride back, tucked against David’s chest with his nose beneath the lapel, apparently content to sleep through the engine and the wind. Now that they were home, however, he had discovered the zipper. David could feel him worrying at it with small, determined teeth.
Michael was stretched out on the couch with one knee bent and a book resting open against his stomach. His dark curls were flattened on one side where he had fallen asleep against the armrest, and the smile he gave David still had something drowsy in it. He held out a hand without bothering to sit up.
“Hey. Thought you were going to be out longer.”
David crossed the room and caught the offered hand before Michael could pull him down. “Had to pick something up.”
Michael was opening his mouth to answer when something moved beneath David’s coat.
His eyes dropped. David felt the puppy brace an enormous paw against his stomach, then a small white head pushed through the opening beneath his lapel. Apparently dissatisfied with the air outside, the puppy sneezed directly against his shirt.
A thin curl of smoke rose between them.
“David,” Michael said, sitting up so quickly that his book slid to the floor. “Please tell me that’s what I think it is.”
“He’s yours, if you want him. Although you might want to let me get him out before he eats through the lining.”
Michael was already reaching, both hands coming up beneath the little white body as David opened his coat. The puppy emerged in a scramble of oversized paws and soft fur, hind legs briefly catching before David freed them. Once Michael had him securely against his chest, he went very still.
“Oh,” he said softly. “Hi, sweetheart.”
David had spent most of the journey being regarded with considerable suspicion. He had been bitten twice while getting the puppy into his coat, once while adjusting him, and again for what appeared to be the pleasure of it. Michael received perhaps three seconds of solemn inspection before the puppy planted both front paws against his chest and began licking his chin.
Michael laughed and tipped his head back, which only encouraged him. “Okay, hi. Hang on, let me sit down with you before you hurt yourself.”
He settled against the couch with the puppy gathered into his lap. One enormous paw caught in the neckline of his shirt, Michael carefully unhooked it, kissed the little white head, and received another enthusiastic lick for his trouble.
David remained standing.
He had expected Michael to like him. That had never really been in question. Michael stopped to talk to dogs on the boardwalk with the same seriousness he brought to conversations with people, sometimes more. He remembered their names. He had once spent twenty minutes sitting on the pavement because an elderly retriever had leaned against his leg and he hadn’t wanted to make her get up.
Still, David had prepared an explanation. Several explanations, in fact, depending on how badly Michael took certain parts.
Michael glanced up at him, smiling so broadly that David lost the beginning of every one.
“You actually got me a dog. You went out tonight and bought me a puppy.”
“Something like that,” David said, catching his wrist as he offered the puppy a finger to chew. “Just don’t let him do that. He’s got more teeth than you’re expecting.”
Michael looked down at the open mouth waiting hopefully beneath his hand. His eyebrows rose, but he didn’t pull away, he simply turned his hand and rubbed a knuckle gently beneath the puppy’s chin instead.
“Okay. That explains why you’re being weird about calling him a dog.” He glanced at David’s shirt, where the smoke had long since disappeared. “And the smoking thing, I’m guessing.”
“He’s a hellhound. He’ll get bigger.”
“How much bigger are we talking? Because these are ridiculous.” Michael lifted one of the front paws and spread it across his palm, delight creeping back into his voice. “David, you told me we couldn’t get a dog because there wasn’t enough room.”
“I said there wasn’t enough room on the bike. You were trying to take home somebody’s Pomeranian.”
“I was petting him. He liked me.”
“You asked the woman what she’d take for him.”
“I was joking,” Michael said, although the grin he gave David suggested that had depended entirely on her answer. He gathered the puppy closer as it began nosing beneath his arm. “This is a hell of an upgrade, though. No offense to the Pomeranian.”
David finally sat beside him before the little idiot could climb directly off the couch.
For a few minutes, Michael seemed content to discover everything there was to discover about him, the soft fur behind his ears, the pink beneath the white coat at his belly, the way his paws spread when Michael pressed a fingertip gently between the pads. David watched him support the puppy’s head as he shifted, watched the care in hands that could be careless with almost everything Michael owned.
Eventually Michael caught him looking.
“You can pet him, you know. I’m pretty sure you buying him gets you visitation rights.”
“I’ve met him. He tried to take my thumb off.”
“Did you?” Michael asked the puppy, rubbing his chest. The tail thumped against his thigh. “That’s terrible. David needs that.”
The tail thumped again, and Michael’s attempt at a serious expression collapsed. David shook his head, but Michael caught the corner of his mouth moving and leaned over to kiss it.
The puppy rolled immediately, offended at being left out, and pushed his nose between their chins.
Michael broke the kiss laughing. “Sorry, sweetheart. Didn’t realize you were being neglected.”
David caught him beneath the chest before his feet slipped off Michael’s lap. For something intended to keep Michael alive, he had very little regard for his own survival.
As David settled him back into place, Michael’s smile softened. He watched David’s hand remain against the little white back, then reached over to touch the marks in his glove.
“Come on. Tell me about him. You didn’t just happen to walk past somebody selling hellhounds, and you’ve been looking at me like you’re waiting for me to ask the right question.”
David ran his thumb between the puppy’s shoulder blades. The fur was finer there, still soft enough that he could see Michael getting emotional about it if he pointed it out.
“He can go out in the sun.”
Michael’s fingers stopped against his glove.
Outside, water broke against the rocks below the cave. David could hear it through the silence, along with the steady beat of Michael’s heart.
“You spend half your time here,” David continued. “Then morning comes and you go wherever you want. Home, the boardwalk, down to the beach. Doesn’t matter where. I don’t like being dead to the world while you’re out there.”
Michael looked down at the puppy, who had begun attempting to fit the side of his own paw into his mouth.
“I usually go home and sleep, David. Sometimes I get breakfast. You make it sound like I’m spending my mornings looking for trouble.”
“Trouble doesn’t need you looking for it.”
David had tried to explain before, in pieces, and Michael always heard more criticism than fear. Be careful where you go. Don’t walk down there alone. Tell somebody when you leave. David could hear himself doing it and still couldn’t stop, especially when Michael came home late with no idea how long he had been expected.
He scratched beneath the puppy’s chin, earning a brief stretch of the neck before the paw became more interesting again.
“He’ll hear things before you do. Smell them, too. Once he’s grown, there won’t be much that’ll want to get close enough to find out what he is.”
Michael stroked one floppy ear, his expression changing as he listened.
“So you got me a bodyguard.” His eyes moved over the puppy curled across his thighs. “A bodyguard who’s currently losing a fight with his own foot.”
“He’ll grow out of it. Hopefully before he eats anything important.”
Michael smiled, but it faded a little as he looked back at David. “You know I’m not going to stop going outside. Or doing things on my own. I love being here with you, but I can’t spend all day waiting for you to wake up.”
“I know that, Michael. That’s why I went looking.”
He had listened to three separate people tell him what a poor idea it was to give a human something with that much strength, that kind of appetite, that degree of attachment. He hadn’t needed another person telling him to keep Michael indoors. He needed Michael to be able to leave and come back.
Beside him, Michael lowered his eyes. His hand settled over the puppy’s back, moving slowly with each breath.
After a while, he asked, “How does it work? Do you tell him to look after me, or is there something I’m supposed to do?”
“Mostly this.” David nodded toward Michael’s lap. “He needs to know you. Live with you, learn what belongs here and what doesn’t. You feed him, take him with you, let him get attached. He’ll figure out the rest.”
Michael rubbed a fingertip along the little wrinkle forming above the puppy’s nose. “I think I can manage that. Although you should probably tell me what he eats before I start giving him things.”
“I’ll show you what I brought. Enough to keep him happy for a while.”
The puppy yawned, displaying his teeth again. Michael watched the tiny jaws close, then glanced toward David with a question he seemed to be considering how to ask.
Michael rubbed a fingertip along the little wrinkle forming above the puppy’s nose. Thorn leaned into the touch, his eyes slipping shut, and for a while Michael just watched him.
“What about vampires?” he asked eventually. “If one came after me, would he still be able to do something?”
“He will when he’s grown. There’s not much that’ll get past him once he knows what he’s protecting.”
Michael glanced toward David, then back down at the puppy. His fingers had stopped moving, although Thorn continued pressing his head against them, patiently waiting for him to start again.
“Even you?”
David had settled that in the man’s cramped back room, before the money had changed hands. The man had offered assurances that the animal could be made to obey him, that there were precautions against it turning on its purchaser. David had made him start over and explain exactly how to avoid those.
He looked at Michael now, at the pulse moving beneath his skin and the hand resting so trustingly beside his own.
“Especially me, if he needs to.”
Michael’s eyes lifted to his face. David held his gaze for a moment before looking down to scratch behind Thorn’s ear.
“Wouldn’t be much use if he had to stand there and watch because it was me.”
For a while, Michael didn’t answer. Then his free hand slipped beneath David’s, warm fingers curling between his own.
“Come here,” he murmured, drawing him closer. “You can let me kiss you without looking like I’m about to argue.”
David let himself be pulled in. Michael kissed him with the puppy squashed comfortably between their stomachs, his hand coming up to rest along David’s jaw. When he drew back, he stayed close enough that their foreheads touched.
“Thank you.”
David squeezed his hand, uncertain what he could say that wouldn’t make Michael look at him even more softly.
The puppy spared him the trouble by sneezing.
Michael jerked back as a tiny puff of smoke escaped between them, then looked down in startled delight.
“Oh, you are so fucking cool. Did you see that? He barely even woke himself up.”
“Try not to encourage it until we know whether he can set the couch on fire.”
Michael glanced at the cushions, considering this with rather less concern than David would have preferred. “We could put a blanket down.”
“Great. Something else that burns.”
That earned him a laugh, warm and unrestrained, and Michael leaned against his shoulder while he rubbed the puppy’s belly. David felt some of the tension leave his own back. He hadn’t realized how much of it he had brought home until he could sit there and listen to Michael deciding aloud which blanket would be the puppy’s, whether they had a bowl somewhere, whether Lucy was going to believe him when he explained what kind of dog David had bought.
He suspected Lucy would have several things to say about it. Most of them would be directed at him.
“He needs a name,” Michael said eventually. He lifted the puppy a little, studying his face while the little white paws rested against his chest. One ear had turned inside out. Michael fixed it with a gentle fingertip. “What do you think about Thorn?”
David glanced at the fresh marks in his glove, and Michael laughed before he could answer.
“Yeah, okay. Maybe he’s earned it already. But look at him.” He held the puppy close enough to kiss the top of his head. “I think it suits him.”
The name would probably suit him better when he had grown into his teeth, but David found he didn’t particularly care. Michael was already trying it out, murmuring it against the soft white fur, smiling when one small ear moved at the sound.
“Your dog,” David said, and Michael looked over at him with an expression that made him wish, briefly, that he had thought to do this sooner.
“My dog,” Michael agreed.
By the time David had retrieved the book from the floor and placed it on the table, Thorn had tucked his nose into the hollow beneath Michael’s jaw. Michael held him with one hand spread over his back and the other supporting his hindquarters, swaying faintly where he sat.
David settled against the cushions and drew Michael close enough to lean into his side.
Thorn opened one eye as David’s arm went around them.
“Relax,” David told him, brushing a finger over the small white head. “You can have the night off.”
Michael’s shoulders shook beneath his hand. “Leave him alone. He takes his job seriously.”
A few minutes later, Michael’s breathing began to settle. His hand slowed against Thorn’s back, stopped, then started again whenever the puppy shifted. David drew his coat over Michael’s legs and tucked it around his bare ankle.
Thorn woke just enough to watch him do it. When David left his hand resting against Michael’s knee, the puppy stretched forward, sniffed his fingers, and set his chin on top of them.
David stayed where he was.