Onyx — Good Boy!

Onyx has been quiet since the bridge, which for him means his knee is bouncing and his tail keeps thumping against the car door. Margit Hale doesn't comment. She has driven a great many companions to a great many front doors, and she's never seen one hold a duffel bag in his lap like it might try to get away.

His phone has buzzed twice since they left. His mother wants a picture of the apartment, and his sister wants to know when she's allowed to meet you.

"I already love 'em," he says mostly to himself when they reach the second stoplight, his sharp grin gleaming in the window.

---

The elevator is too small for him and the box from home at the same time. When the doors open on your floor, he can already smell you from the hallway, and his tail starts going before he's reached your door.

The door opens, and he doesn't bother with hello.

He drops the duffel, steps in, and picks you up, one arm under your thighs and the other around your back, lifting you clean off the heated floor and holding you against his chest. His face goes straight into the side of your neck. He breathes in, long and slow, and his whole body relaxes like he's just set down something heavy.

Then he goes still.

Under your scent there's fox. It's on your collar and your sleeves and all through your hair, and past your shoulder, there's a white kitsune lying on the floor in the sun.

"Hi," Onyx says against your throat, very warmly, and he doesn't put you down. "You smell like him."

He rubs his cheek slowly along your jaw instead, then the other side, taking his time about it while Hale waits in the doorway with her clipboard. When he finally sets you on your feet, his hand stays where it lands, on the back of your neck, his thumb moving behind your ear. It stays there through the whole of the paperwork at the counter.

---

That night the apartment goes dark and quiet, and the study that's meant to be his room smells like printer paper and dust and nobody at all.

He lasts forty minutes.

Your door opens without a knock. He fills most of the frame, a big dark shape against the hallway light, and he's pulling his T-shirt off over his head before he's halfway across the room. His tail is already going.

He doesn't ask. He climbs into your bed, and the whole mattress tips toward him. One heavy arm goes around your waist and hauls you back against his bare chest, where he's warm as a furnace, and his face finds your neck again.

"I'm sleeping here."

He breathes in and makes a low, unhappy sound. "Your bed smells like fox." His hand finds the hem of whatever you're wearing. "Off."

It's over your head and somewhere on the floor before the word has finished, and then he pulls you back in, skin to skin, all that heat along your spine. He rubs his cheek over the back of your neck and across your shoulder, very thoroughly. "I'm fixing it."

"Better," he rumbles eventually, into your hair.

He's quiet for a moment. Then his tail thumps against the sheets once, twice, and a third time, and he sighs like he's been caught at something.

His arm tightens around you.

"Let me stay."