Four

by Tia Fielding

He’d gone with his hoodie for the visit to Mia’s but had a bubbling urge to pull on some patterned leggings and a knit tunic when they got home. It was that kind of day, and was glad that he could mostly trust Padraig to be okay with it.

  “Are we going to rename her?” Padraig asked as they turned to the road leading to the house.

  “Little Red is nice and apt, but I don’t think it’s a good forever name. So yeah, something else?” Kaos glanced at Padraig, who looked at the road in concentration. Whether it was the driving or the dog renaming he was concentrating on, Kaos had no clue.

  “Let’s make a list? Unless you have ideas already?”

  “No, nothing from the top of my head. I mean, I only met her two hours ago.” Kaos scratched the puppy behind the ears, and she licked his chin.

  Padraig chuckled and parked the car neatly next to Kaos’s Toyota. “That’s true. And I never thought I’d actually adopt one of them, so I didn’t have plans either.” They got out of the car, and the puppy looked around curiously from Kaos’s arms. “Why don’t you take her to the backyard to do her business. She’s small enough that she probably won’t want to run away and won’t get far if she does.”

  “Is it better if we don’t let her loose on the front yard?” Kaos asked, looking around at the road and the small yard there. None of it was fenced, even the backyard, but Kaos thought it might be better not to let her get to the road in the first place.

  “Probably, yeah. We should figure out some sort of fencing for the backyard so we can leave her there without having to worry, but we can do that later. The ground is getting hard, so putting in proper fenceposts will be tricky anyway.” Padraig opened the back door and rummaged around a bit. “Here, take these treats and give her some when you get to the backyard. Then call her back to you every now and then and give her a treat immediately. We should do that inside, too, occasionally. That’ll encourage her that we are worth returning to.”

  Kaos took the small bag of treats from indulgently smiling Padraig, and let him pet the puppy before turning to go. “You’ll get everything else inside?”

  “Yeah, I’ll take the tags off the outside toys and be with you shortly.”

  They’d gotten toys for the dog from Woodruff and agreed that outdoor and indoor toys should be separate for mess’s sake.

  Kaos carried the now-squirming puppy up the stairs to the front of the house, then walked around to the side, stepping over a low decorative pine-hedge thing, whatever it was called. There wasn’t an official way from the front to the back door, not with how the house was built on top of an incline, but he hoped the hedge would be enough to keep the puppy safely in the backyard for now.

  He rounded the corner and went to the back porch first. It was only slightly elevated, just a couple of steps, so he put the pup down on the porch and patted her gently. “There you go, girl. This is your new kingdom. Or princessdom, I suppose. Look what I have here,” he said, rustling the treat bag on purpose to catch her attention for a moment longer.

  She came to investigate, her black nose twitching comically when she got close, and then those piercing blue eyes gave him a distinctly get-on-with-it-human look.

  Laughing, he gave her a couple of the treats that felt a bit soft in his fingers, but luckily not icky. They didn’t smell too much either, which was also nice. “Okay, go on, then. Daddy will bring you toys in a bit,” Kaos said, then flushed red at the thought of the word “daddy” in context with Padraig.

  He didn’t have a daddy-kink thing at all, but somehow….

  The back door opened. “Here you two are. Come on, girl. Look at what I have here!”

  Luckily Padraig was completely concentrated on the puppy and not Kaos, who couldn’t have looked him in the eye if he’d wanted to right then.

  Instead, Kaos sat in one of the porch chairs and watched as Padraig and the puppy frolicked around the large backyard. The ground was frozen now, and there had been snow already. Luckily not much yet, but he expected to see more soon.

  It was almost Thanksgiving too.

  “Padraig? What are you doing for Thanksgiving next week?” Kaos asked loud enough for him to hear.

  “Stopping by at my sister’s. Otherwise I’m working as usual. Why?” Padraig glanced at him but went back to praising the puppy, who was bouncing toward him with a red bone-shaped toy in her mouth.

  “I was invited to the Newmans’. I just realized I hadn’t asked you yet.” Kaos noticed the treat bag where he’d put it on the table and grabbed it. “Heads up!” he called to Padraig, and tossed it to him.

  Without missing a beat, Padraig caught it and then proceeded to give some to the puppy.

  “Any names yet?”

  “Nope, but I was thinking something from Greek mythology maybe?” Padraig mused, as he tossed the bone for the puppy again.

  “I really liked Greek mythology as a kid.” Kaos had been obsessed at one point, around the age of ten. “Let’s see….” He pondered on it for a while, then burst out laughing. “I know what we should call her!”

  “What?” Padraig smiled slightly, looking oddly happy as he slowly walked toward the porch so the puppy would follow.

  “Hestia. The goddess of the hearth and home. She’s going to make the house feel like home, and she looks to be pretty fiery, if in nothing else than her fur.”

  “You laughed because she’s the virgin goddess, didn’t you?” Padraig asked drily, then grinned at him. “It’s fitting. Because let’s face it, that bloodline will need some permanent virginity.”

  They both cracked up, and the puppy climbed up the steps to Kaos as if to investigate what was wrong with him.

  “Come here, girl.” Kaos leaned down to pull her up to his lap. “What do you think? Is Hestia a good name for you? Hestia?” The puppy yipped, then struggled to get back down. “All right then, I think we can call that approval.”

  Large white flakes began to float down from the sky.

  “Uh-oh, snow,” Kaos said dumbly.

  “Uh-huh,” Padraig replied, looking at the white stuff falling. “Let’s get inside before anyone gets cold.”

  They caught Hestia, and Padraig stayed with her downstairs while Kaos went up to his room to get changed into something more suitable for how his skin felt that day.

  THEY’D GOTTEN Chinese from Woodruff and put it in the cooler Padraig kept in his car. When Kaos walked downstairs in his new attire, Padraig was talking to Hestia and the microwave hummed in the kitchen. There was already the scent of spices in the air, and his stomach seemed to like the idea of food.

  “Hestia!” Kaos called when he got to a spot where she could see him, and crouched. “Come here, girl!”

  She whirled around and raced to him on the hardwood floor, slid the last few feet, then collided with his knees. Laughing, he praised her and stroked her fur from head to toe, avoiding sharp little teeth as he went.

  The microwave pinged, and he got to his feet and went to check on the situation.

  Padraig was just taking something out of the cherry-red microwave, the only red thing in the kitchen. To have just one cherry-red thing in a house where most things were color-coordinated was a bit odd to him. Kaos didn’t have a chance to ask, because the puppy chose that moment to gnaw on his toes, and he shrieked.

  “Hestia, no!”

  “You should get some slippers or something. Makes it harder for her to get to your toes,” Padraig said as he divided the spring rolls onto two plates. “But in general, if she bites you too hard, yelp really loudly like a dog would. That way she instantly knows she was playing too rough.” Then he smirked at Kaos and added, “But I think you won’t have any problems with that.”

  Blushing, Kaos shoveled fried rice onto his plate. Being teased like that was… nice. It made him feel cared for, oddly, when it wasn’t done maliciously.

  Trev had been bad with that sort of thing. He would make disparaging comments on things, tried to hide them behind smiles or grins, but his eyes had been filled with ice.
Padraig’s steel gray eyes were oddly warm, and his teasing feeling like a caress, almost.

  “Oh, shut up,” Kaos murmured belatedly, and pointedly ignored the delighted low chuckle from Padraig.

  THEY SPENT the evening watching TV on the couch—Padraig with a book in his lap, and Kaos with a sketchpad—with Hestia studiously ignoring the dog bed nearby and whining until one of them gave in and helped her up onto the couch. Then she curled up between them and fell asleep for a moment, before popping back up like a jack-in-the-box.

  “Pop goes the weasel,” Padraig stated dryly when once again Hestia woke up. “Do you want to take her outside or should I? It’s getting late.”

  Right, Padraig had work the next morning. It had been an easy day off for him, with only two calls for advice and no emergencies that would’ve required him to leave the house.

  Because the show Kaos had sort of been watching just ended, he put his sketchpad and pencil case on the coffee table and stretched. “I’ll do it. We need to figure out where she’s going to sleep, too, so think about that while we’re outside.”

  He made sure Hestia got off the couch safely, then encouraged her to follow him to the utility room and back door. He pulled on his boots and let her outside. She slid to a stop on the porch, surprised at the amount of snow. There had to be two inches of it, if not more.

  “Oh wow. I guess you gotta go and pee in that, huh?” Kaos frowned. He picked her up again and carefully walked down the steps, then stomped the snow flat on a small area before putting her down. “Try now.”

  She sniffed at the edges of her little space, then promptly squatted to pee.

  “What a good girl,” Padraig said from the porch, looking incredibly fond.

  “Yes, you are the bestest of all girls, Hestia. Can you run to Daddy now? Come on, let’s go!” Kaos waved his hands and pretended to run toward Padraig to get her super excited.

  She yipped and started after him, pushing past him in the snow, then almost crash-landed on the first porch step but managed to correct herself. In a flurry of snow and flailing puppy limbs, she managed to get to Padraig, who praised her and picked her up. He let her give him a kiss on the chin before showing her a small towel held in one hand.

  “Here we go, girlie. Gotta learn early, huh?” he murmured just as Kaos got to them.

  Padraig dried her paws ever so gently. There was something so perfect about the moment, so he had no time to school his expression when Padraig let Hestia inside and turned to him.

  A full body throb of want rushed through Kaos then, something he couldn’t remember happening in a couple of years. He was still on the porch, and in his peripheral vision, Hestia turned back to the door, so he stepped inside on instinct, brushing against Padraig, who pulled the door closed.

  When Kaos looked at him, the conflicted emotions on Padraig’s face were somehow heartbreaking. So instead of taking a step farther away, he stood there, staring at Padraig, searching his eyes for something—anything at all.

  Kaos was a couple of inches shorter than Padraig, so when Padraig lowered his head ever so slowly, Kaos leaned up and met him halfway. The kiss started sweet, just a press of lips, but then Kaos overbalanced somehow and wobbled, so Padraig gently pushed him against the door as if to keep him standing upright.

  They spent a few seconds just looking at each other, the yearning in his bones intensifying until Kaos wasn’t sure if he’d live if they didn’t kiss again. He opened his mouth, even though he didn’t know the words to say. It turned out he didn’t have to, because Padraig dove in, sealing their mouths together.

  Kaos had never been kissed that way. Not once. Not like he was important and cherished and so utterly wanted. He whined into the kiss when the emotions overwhelmed him, and just as he felt like he needed to climb Padraig like a tree, Padraig’s emergency home phone rang loudly. The old telephone sound was shrill enough to scare Hestia into a barking fit.

  Padraig made a frustrated sound and all but tore himself away from Kaos. He stepped around the dog, just to march into the front of the house, where the emergency phone was kept on the hall table with the key bowl.

  “Dr. Donovan speaking.”

  Kaos stood there, listening to one side of what seemed like a panicked conversation. Padraig was remarkably calm, and his tone stayed kind and even throughout the call.

  “It’ll take me fifteen minutes to get to the clinic. I’ll meet you there. Drive carefully.”

  Kaos hadn’t moved when Padraig came back. “Go,” he said, gesturing weakly toward the front door. “They need you. This… this can wait.”

  Padraig looked torn, but it seemed like his inner battle didn’t take long, because he stepped back into Kaos’s space, kissed him hard, and then stepped away.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll take Hestia to my room.”

  Padraig nodded and left the house after grabbing his bag from by the front door where he always left it. The front door clicked shut, and the sound of Hestia’s claws on the hardwood signaled that they were alone.

  Sighing, Kaos took off his boots, wiped the wet floor with Hestia’s paw towel, and put it on the shoe rack with his boots. “Whoever figured a shoe rack at both front and back doors was a good idea was a genius,” he said to the dog when she came to check up on him. “Let’s go to bed, girl.”

  DURING THE night, Hestia was remarkably calm for a puppy. She only whined once, probably because Kaos had let her on the bed immediately instead of trying to make her sleep on the floor. She was a baby—she needed closeness. He did understand that it would just make her more likely to want to sleep on the bed even when she was full grown, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

  She cuddled next to him, pressed against his side, and slept through the night except for once when she whined and he had to calm her down with half-asleep gentle scratches. In the morning he figured she might’ve heard Padraig coming home, because she made the same sound when Kaos’s door opened quietly and Padraig called for her.

  Sleepily, Kaos grabbed the puppy and lowered her to the floor so she wouldn’t jump, then rolled over, falling asleep again. He woke up to a quiet knock this time.

  “Kaos, I’m on my way out. I’ve an early appointment. Should I leave Hestia to you or are you getting up?”

  “’M up,” he grumbled, starfishing on the bed.

  Padraig chuckled. “All right. Have a nice day, you two.”

  Kaos could just about hear the front door open and close, and then Hestia’s little barks as she tried to call her daddy back. He knew she had a bit of trouble with the stairs still, so he didn’t call for her. Instead, he got up as quickly as he could with being so freshly woken, and went to the bathroom.

  When he got to the landing, he was still dressed in his sleep gear, and Hestia was halfway up the stairs.

  “Oh no, you clever little girl,” he cooed at her. “You shouldn’t climb the stairs alone yet, though. Here, let me help you.” He picked her up and placed her down in the large open space that was most of the downstairs.

  He’d grown to love the house even more than he’d thought he would. It was so different from the house he had grown up in, with the open layout and the fancy stuff everywhere. Nothing in his grandma’s house had ever gone together in the effortless way it did here. Then again, they’d been poor to the point of Grandma skipping meals to feed him.

  Kaos went through the mechanical motions of making breakfast while being deep in his head, only to be shaken out of his morning stupor when a bright pink Post-it caught his eye on the fridge door.

  “The puppy has been fed.” He glanced at Hestia, who was playing with one of her stuffed toys on the floor nearby. “Good to know.”

  EVEN AFTER breakfast, he felt a bit off in a way he couldn’t quite identify. Things had been better after the talk they’d had, but now, in the morning light… Kaos felt discombobulated over the situation. He wanted more, of course, but at the same time, he was still wary and would be for a long time, he suspected.
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  “How about we have a girls’ day, Hestia?” he asked when he was finally putting away his dishes after eating and having coffee. “Huh? How does that sound? I feel like doing my makeup and maybe hair, and we could brush you, too, right?”

  The excitement his idea caused was surprisingly catching, despite the fact that Hestia had no idea what he’d just said. But first, he took her outside to play in the slush, just to get some of the morning energy out of her.

  She loved to explore the backyard, but she was smart enough to keep an eye on him. The only time she wandered a bit too far for his liking and didn’t react when he called her to get a treat, he pondered for a moment, then went to the porch. He crouched behind the chair with the best view of her and waited for her to realize he was gone.

  She turned her head and looked at where he’d just stood. It took her a couple of seconds to really realize he wasn’t there anymore. Worried, she started back toward the deck and looked around for him, but it wasn’t frantic yet, so he wasn’t concerned about freaking her out too much.

  When she didn’t come up the stairs, he whistled quietly, and her head tilted this way and that. She looked so adorable, he couldn’t help the burst of laughter coming out of him.

  Excited, she bounded up the few steps and came straight to him, wiggling with the joy of finding him.

  “There you are! Where did you go?” He ruffled her fur and gave her a treat, then decided it was time to go back inside.

  She wasn’t too bothered about the toweling, letting him do it without much squirming. He left her with a bone to gnaw on and went upstairs to dress and to grab his makeup kit. It had been pretty small, but in the last few days, he’d received the makeup he’d ordered online, and he was quite interested in trying to recreate a YouTube tutorial. Which one, he wasn’t sure yet, but he could certainly find one to try.

  It took him almost an hour to figure out which tutorial to follow, and by then Hestia was asleep next to him on the couch. It wasn’t the best spot to do his makeup, but he could deal, because moving to the kitchen would mean waking up the puppy, and she was just too cute to move.