Charlie was fortunate to remember that he was close to the old Victorian house at 812 Chestnut, where he knew a vet lived, when Ace ran out into the road and was clipped and tossed into some bushes. The car that hit him picked up speed and disappeared around the corner rather than stopping to help. The boy gathered the bleeding and whimpering border collie up in his arms and ran over to the house and up the walk, calling out to his friend, Tim, who lived there for help. Tim, fourteen, like Charlie, who Charlie messed around with, played pickup sports games with, and did some seasonal yard work with, lived there with two men—the forty-five-year-old veterinarian, Paul Wright, and his twenty-five-year-old boyfriend, Nick Dubois, an artist.

Tim heard his friend bellowing from down the street and was out on the front porch of the house, beckoning Charlie in, as Charlie ran up the walk carrying his precious load. Ace meant the world to Charlie—he didn’t have that much else in his world, certainly no one or nothing he valued more than his dog.

The house on Chestnut wasn’t where Paul Wright had his animal hospital, but Charlie was in luck that Wright did have an equipped surgery there and was at home when Charlie arrived, crying and trembling. Wright, tall, sturdy, handsome, and well-preserved for his age, gave Charlie a favorable appraising look, took the dog, and bundled Ace off to his surgery. Nick Dubois arrived at the door as the exchange of the dog was made and put an arm around Charlie’s shoulders to hold up the boy, in danger of collapsing, as Tim shut the door and led Nick, half French and half Jamaican and all muscular and foxy man, and his charge down the hall in Wright’s wake. Nick too gave Charlie the very favorable once over.

Tim stopped at the surgery door, turned, and spoke in a low voice to Nick, explaining quickly where he knew Charlie from and identifying the boy as someone he’d been telling the two men he lived with about. Nick smiled, and embraced Charlie closely to his side, supporting the boy through the door and into the surgery.

As they entered the room, they could see that the vet already had Ace on the table and was assessing the damage. The dog lay docile, whimpering, no doubt in shock from the surprise and pain of it all. Nick sat in a chair against a wall across from the table and drew Charlie into his chest, between his spread thighs. Charlie reposed there as docile and whimpering as his dog—his whole world—was, willing to take the canine’s pain onto himself, if that had been possible. Nick was embracing the boy and fondling him, taking advantage of Charlie’s concentration on the surgery table to enjoy the feel of the fourteen-year-old. Tim sat down, cross-legged, across the room from where Nick was embracing Charlie, his attention alternating between the drama on the surgery table and Charlie in Nick’s embrace.

“It isn’t life-threatening,” Wright reported from the table. “Scrapes and bruises mostly. I’ll have to shave him to fully assess and treat them. Some blood, of course. The worse seems to be a dislocated hip bone. That gets attention. Maybe you should leave the room while I reset the gone. I’ll give him what pain relief I can, but—”

“Please, sir. Do what you can. He’s all I got.”

“You did well, son, to bring him right in. We’ll make him right as rain. The blood looks worse than it suggests. And look at you. You have it all over you. Tim, take our young friend ... what’s his name?”

“Charlie. His name’s Charlie. He helped me rake the leaves in the yard this fall.”

“Charlie? Is he the one you told us—?”

“Yes, he’s the one.”

Wright took another look at Charlie. “He’s a beautiful young man. But he looks a fright now. Get him out of those clothes. Nick can throw them in the washer—and take him to the guestroom downstairs and put him in the shower. His dog here is going to have to recuperate here for a while before he can go anywhere. Charlie can stay with him, if he likes. Is there someone to let know you’re here, Charlie?”

“Nobody who cares or who would be sober enough to understand or remember,” Charlie answered, his voice tremulous and his full attention on the ball of fluff on the surgery table. “And, yes, please, let me stay with my dog. I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

Wright and Dubois exchanged smiles. Wright looked at Tim then and gave him a slight nod, accompanied by a smile. Tim looked away. He been told to arrange something but had been dragging his feet. This accident with the dog was rushing everything.

“No one at all?” Nick asked, taking a close interest, his hands still roaming over the young blond boy with the milky blue bedroom eyes. Charlie was sitting up with the man’s embrace, slowly becoming aware he was being fondled but still more concerned about the welfare of his dog than the hunky young man’s interest in him. Having men fondle him wasn’t alien to his life.

“Just an old man who doesn’t care whether I come and go,” he said. “I stay out for days sometime and he never says anything.”

Tim was nodding his head. “Told you so.”

“So, you did,” Wright said. “Show him downstairs and make him comfortable. You might have a little talk with him.” He turned back to work on a panting and whimpering Ace.

Tim led Charlie to a large bedroom, with a king-sized bed in a tucked-away corner of the basement of the house, both shedding clothes as they transited the bedroom toward the en suite bathroom. Nick came with them, picking up Charlie’s disheveled clothes that showed the inattention the boy was getting in life beyond the smearing of the dog’s blood on the material. Tim had said the boy was a wild child, roaming the neighborhood with his dog, unsupervised, at will, and that obviously was so. Even having been hit by a car, Ace came to the vet’s house better groomed than Charlie did. This illustrated how much Charlie loved that dog and put him first. It showed what Charlie would do for Ace’s well-being.

Tim, Mediterranean dark, stocky, and muscular, but with an achingly beautiful angelic face, pulled the slimmer, blond, younger-looking Charlie into the shower stall with him and the boys showered together, embracing and fondling each other and kissing, with Tim holding their cocks together and frotting them, as each helped soap the other up.

This wasn’t new and unusual behavior for the two. Although only fourteen, both already had men in their lives. The messing the two had done in the bushes around the neighborhood had been sexual in nature. It had had its limits, though, as both were submissives. They had discussed going all the way with men before, though, and Tim had no reason to believe that Charlie hadn’t done it or that he was to averse to doing it for advantage.

“I don’t know how I can pay for Ace’s care,” Charlie mused as they showered. “Ace has gotta be made better, but I know I can’t afford what Mr. Wright—”

Tim shushed him, saying, “I think you can cover the bill.” He put his lips to Charlie’s ear and told him how he could cover the expense.

“They do?” Charlie asked. “Each other?”

“No,” Tim laughed. “They’re both tops.”

“Then how?”

“Me, of course.”

“But you’re only fourteen,” Charlie said.

“You’re only fourteen, and the guy you’re living with does you, you told me—and some other men when you need cash. You asked how you can pay to get your dog fixed up, and I told you.”

In the basement laundry room, noticing that he’d gotten the dog’s blood on his clothes as well while he was groping the luscious boy, Charlie, in the surgery, Nick stripped his clothes off and threw them in the washer with Charlie’s clothes. Hearing the boys giggling in the guest room bathroom, he picked up a pencil and a sketch pad and made his way there.