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Old Trick: Puppy dog eyes

Stella uses sad Puppy Dog Eyes against Milo the actual puppy.
Critical hit! It’s super effective!

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“—ne.” Stella stammered, at a loss for words when Javier pressed his lips against her cheek. The heat across her face couldn’t be anything other than a furious blush, and she tried to think about literally anything else to try to get her mind back on topic.

“Welcome home,” Javier said, wrapping his arms around her and putting his head on her shoulder.

“I can’t get to the fridge,” Milo said flatly, frowning down at the coydog.

“Hmm, nothing’s gonna melt.” It would’ve been more surprising if Javier had been even remotely repentant. “I got a job to, Stella!”

“What?”

“Wellllll,” he dragged out, one of his ears flicking against her face until she batted it away, “it’s not a job like Milo has, since I don’t have a fancy birth certificate like you two. But I’m a domestic engineer!”

“Pretty sure a good house husband wouldn’t leave the eggs out on the kitchen floor.” As Milo deftly disentangled Javier from around Stella, she noticed for the first time that the kitchen had actually been cleaned. There weren’t stray plates and none of the appliances were littered around from breakfast. It wasn’t perfect, but he’d actually done a bit of work.

“You’re taking this really seriously,” she said. Javier, who had been deposited in a chair in the connected dining room, beamed from what looked a bit like “time out”. At least he was wearing pants. They might’ve been her yoga pants, but they were pants. Pants that had been in the dirty clothes bin, meaning that he’d also done laundry.

“I guess I never really asked, but should I call you Curtis and...?” She looked at “Javier” who, if he had another name - one that his mother had given him - she didn’t know it. Even though she left the sentence hanging, he didn’t supply it.

“I like Milo,” came a muffled voice from the fridge. While Stella was having a crisis and Javier had been banned from the kitchen, he’d gone back to putting the groceries away. The pile at her feet slowly dwindled.

“But aren’t they... dog names?” she asked, crinkling the envelope in her hand.

“Tank.” Milo snorted and Javier made over-dramatized gagging sounds. “That was my name when I was on the force. That is a dog name.”

“You asked us what we thought at the time,” Javier said, thinking back to the days when she would visit them in the park bearing food and old blankets.

“And you gave them to us.” Closing the fridge for the last time, Milo rested a giant hand on the top of her head, ruffling her bangs. “They’re fine.”

Under his hand, Stella’s scalp tickled. It was warm, and the warmth that had started earlier when he’d given her a soft kiss started again.

Shit.