Page 71 of Love Unlimited

He took out three berries and hid the rest behind him. When he had Ash’s attention, he let them lick the blueberries out of his palm while he buried his other hand in Ash’s curls to scratch their scalp.

They loved it, pressing up into his fingers.

Good puppy. He kept up the scritches while he snagged the mask. He slipped it on with only the slightest interruption, then raised his hand to slide the clips into place.

There. Perfect puppy.

Ash pawed up his shirt to lick his neck, their wet tongue poking out from under their snout. It was slobbery and wet and kind of amazing.

Zhong pushed them gently aside, focusing on neck scritches instead. It was powerful to see Ash go from excited to relaxed with a few strokes of his fingers.

Zhong considered the leash and collar that remained in the bag. On one hand, he knew they meant a lot to Ash, that the symbolism was even higher than most of the things they shared. The leash was also the only part of the ensemble that he’d bought for Ash.

On the other hand, he didn’t feel like training them to walk to heal was what either of them needed right now. He’d rather see Ash tumbling around freely.

Offleash, so to speak.

He could, of course, put the collar on by itself. But it wasn’t the collar he’d bought for them. He didn’t know where that was. That decided him. Ash could barely stay focused long enough to put on the puppy mask. They clearly didn’t need another signifier of being a puppy unless it also meant that they were Zhong’s puppy. Which they already were.

His puppy.

He picked up the ball. Ready?

Ash’s eyes followed the ball rather than his signing hand. Alright, then.

Zhong crossed the porch and opened the door. Outside were three wide wooden steps. Would Ash be able to make it down?

Ash put out a hesitant paw, withdrew it, and then tested it again. It wouldn’t be any trouble for Zhong to carry them down, but he let them experiment, confident that they would let him know if they needed help.

They moved both paws down one step. Then a second one. Now their body was stretched out with their knees still on the porch.

Gingerly, they brought one knee down a level. It looked awkward, but not unstable. Their hands went down another step, which was when they finally looked up at him to question the situation.

Zhong propped the door open and skirted around them to kneel at the bottom of the steps. Now if they tumbled, he could catch them.

Knee, knee. Paw, paw. They were doing it, and he felt almost like cheering.

With an unexpected burst, they leapt the rest of the way down and then raced right past him into the open lawn.

Zhong watched indulgently as they explored their new play space. Every few minutes they would discover something new and exciting—a rock, a tree, the mulch in the garden—and look up at him to make sure he shared the thrill. Sometimes they even started back toward him, only to discover something else to explore before they ever quite made it.

Zhong drifted closer to explore the world through puppy Ash’s eyes.

How could he have ever doubted this feeling?

Objectively, it was probably silly, this outpouring of love that he felt when another adult crawled around in the grass with a puppy mask on.

But internally, it just clicked. There was a rightness to it.

Ash was his puppy, and he was their Handler.

At some unknowable signal, Ash suddenly decided that they’d had enough exploring and wanted to play. They crowded around Zhong’s knees, butting into him and then springing up with their paws to his chest in excitement.

Wait, he signed. He’d forgotten the blueberries, which meant that if he threw something, Ash would never return it. I’ll be right back.

Apparently puppy Ash didn’t know those words because they raced alongside him back to the porch, only stopping when he started going up the stairs.

If a puppy could pout with their whole body, Ash was doing it. Puppy Ash was sad and abandoned and alone.