Page 50 of The Barn: Frost and Q
“What I do here is kind of the same thing. I watch; I pay attention. I holler when things look like they’re fixing to go ass over tea kettle. There are fewer fires here, but way more bears. Way more weird human accidents at the club than there are outin the field.” He shrugged and chuckled at himself. “And I got to admit we got way better toys than I ever had on the fire line. Ever.”
His beer showed up along with a platter of fried pickles and ranch. Q groaned. “Oh my God, those smell good. You’re honestly not going to try one?”
Tug shook his head. “No. I’m just reminding myself.”
“Of what?”
He got one of those crooked weird grins. “What I’m working so hard for.”
Boone shook his head. “You are a crazy motherfucker.”
Q just sort of watched the two of them like it was a tennis game. It had to be fucked up, didn’t it? Two Doms couldn’t just get it on, could they? Was that a thing? Two Doms? Did they just take turns? Did they find somebody else to beat on when they needed to get their top on? How did that even work? Did they just get a dog and tell it what to do?
Okay, that was probably tacky. It was kind of funny though. Totally something he would tell Frost and not anybody else. Sometimes, he felt like he was a really bad man.
Other times, he just knew it.
“Hey, where’d you go, sweet pea?”
“I was thinking about Frost. I keep thinking I want to get a dog, but then I’d have to walk it. That means coming down four sets of stairs or, you know, elevator floors, whatever, every time that I need the dog walked. And that doesn’t seem very nice.”
Boone blinked at him, the look very owl. “You could hire somebody to walk it. You could keep it. You could have a dog handler.”
“Yeah, still… I don’t know. I just have to think.” He really didn’t need a dog, but it was a very nice way to distract them from what he had been thinking, which was completely, totallyinappropriate things about two of his best friends who he’d seen doing the nasty on the cameras one night.
“You should talk to Frost about it. He would get someone to come get it and walk it when you don’t want to. Or, you know, we can build a dog run staircase down from your tower and the dog can let itself in and out…”
He stared at Tug. Jesus, the man was a weirdo. He loved it.
“I can kinda see that,” he said, picking up his beer to take a sip. “A nice, covered, enclosed stairwell…”
That was what happened when people like him and Tug and even Frost had more money than sense, wasn’t it?
“Or,” Boone put in, “you could train it to use the elevator. Once it got to the ground floor, there would always be someone to let it out to go pee.”
“Oh, I can see that.” Tug sipped his own ultralight beer. “Boop that button, Bowser.”
“Ugh, I would never name a dog Bowser.” But now that the idea was in his head, he kind of couldn’t get rid of it. An assistance or balance dog might be pretty handy. He’d look into it. If nothing else, he could hire a trainer to help him brush a shelter dog.
He liked that idea. There were so many great animals in shelters. The crew he and Frost had worked with most in Oregon had always had at least one or two crew dogs who spent their time at the smoke jumper headquarters and training center. And they were inevitably shelter dogs who became loyal, happy pets.
“You’re warming to the idea,” Boone told him. “I can see it.”
“I know! That’s wild, huh? It feels like a lot of responsibility.”
“Would you have said that before?” Tug asked quietly.
He paused, giving that the thought it deserved. “No. I mean, I would have just taken him out. And taken him on the road to spend time with me at the jump center.”
“So, look for a dog.” Tug shrugged. “Now you can really give an animal a purpose. And trust a cowboy when he says that dogs, horses, mules, and donkeys love to have a job.”
“Okay. I’ll look into it. See what I need to do. If there’s a shelter that does any kind of training, or if I need to get the dog and then get the training.” He chuckled. Frost would be shocked at his easy decision.
“Good deal.” Tug winked. “Y’all ready to order actual food? I’m ready for my salmon and steamed broccolini.”
“Sure you don’t want one pickle chip with ranch?” Boone asked. He batted his eyelashes. “I can make sure you work it off.”
Tug tilted his head. “Deal.” He opened his mouth, and Boone dipped a pickle then popped it into Tug’s mouth.
