This story contains some very mild descriptions of animals being hurt or neglected. Don't worry, they're all fine. Also, Will is still a homicide detective, so there's some violent imagery. I had a lot of fun writing this. (PS - I'm looking for a beta, if anyone's interested.)
Will Graham was tired.
He thought he'd understood what that word meant, but he knew now that he'd had no idea what he was talking about. What he'd thought was tired was a pale imitation of the exhaustion that flooded him. His eyelids seemed to weigh ten pounds apiece, and it was all he could do to keep them open, putting one heavy foot in front of another as he walked home. Everything seemed muffled, like he was seeing and hearing the world through a thin veil of cotton.
Visions of his bed swam in front of his eyes as he walked. He could feel the cotton sheets on his skin and smell his girlfriend's shampoo on the pillow. Something with coconuts. Jessica smelled like the beach, like piña coladas, which seemed out of place when it was thirteen degrees outside and snow blanketed the ground. It was one of the things he liked about her. She would be warm right now, curled up under their electric blanket. He pictured himself burying his face in the crook of her shoulder.
Then she grew cold in his arms, her skin wet and tacky under his chin. Lacerations covered her skin in parallel lines, evenly spaced in a trail from her collar bones to her naked pelvis. The edges of the wounds were ragged under his mouth.
He clenched his fist and forced the image away.
There was no reason to think about it, he told himself. They had caught the killer. There was no reason to remember what it felt like inside his head.
Unless you like it, he thought.
I don't like it.
The Jessica in his head opened her eyes and smiled. Her corneas were the filmy blue of a corpse, and her teeth were sharp, sharp, sharp -
Gritting his teeth, he drove his fist into the nearest wall. When that wasn't enough, he did it again, then a third time. The skin split across his knuckles. He could feel his hand beginning to swell.
A sound broke into his awareness as he pulled his fist back a fourth time. Something whimpering. For a second, he thought it was his imagination, but he heard it again, coming from a cardboard box in the alley. His hand throbbed as he knelt down to look.
The puppy's fur was a filthy, matted gray that might once have been white. Ribs showed through his thin fur, but his belly was round and swollen – probably worms, he thought. His ears were too large for his head and stood pricked as the puppy watched him. One of them was brown. He looked to be about twelve weeks, far too young to be out in the snow alone.
His dad had never let him have a dog growing up. They moved too much, kept too long hours, and as his dad liked to remind him, Will was a fuckup who shouldn't be trusted with a goldfish. He'd tanned Will's hide the time he tried to smuggle an abandoned terrier into their apartment. After that, he'd made due with feeding strays while his dad was working, which was most of the time..
When he reached his uninjured hand into the box, the puppy lapped his fingertips and stared at him like he was the most amazing thing in the world. Like he wasn't a fuckup, or the kind of person who fantasized about his girlfriend's shredded skin. Will stroked the top of the puppy's head, and his tail wagged and thudded against the cardboard.
Puppies needed things, he thought. Food. Vet visits. Other things he was too tired to remember but were probably complicated and beyond his abilities. Will Graham should never be trusted with a living thing. That was a solid and universal fact.
His fingers stilled, and the puppy whined and butted his face against his hand. Something warm melted in his chest.
Unzipping his jacket with one hand, he scooped the puppy up into the warm space against his chest before zipping it up just below his chin. His ears twitched and rotated like satellite dishes.
He walked more quickly now. Time to get the little guy out of the cold.
Jessica had a lot to say to him when he got home.
What were they going to do with a dog?
Did it have fleas?
What about worms? Were they going to get worms?
Look at his hand – didn't he take any care of himself?
(Will tried and failed not to see red gashes in her skin.)
Didn't he stop to consider if she even wanted a dog in the house? Did he know how much work that was going to be?
It was all fair, he decided as she frowned and washed his knuckles with cold water. His knuckles stung as she carefully washed the grit from his wounds and cradled his head against her chest. He hadn't thought about her at all as he scooped the puppy from the box. He hadn't thought about anything.
"I'll find him a home as soon as I can." he promised.
She pulled back to give him a deeply skeptical look.
First Gus needed a clean bill of health, which entailed a forty-five minute vet visit. He tried not to preen when a technician in tie-dyed scrubs hugged the puppy against her chest and asked if she could take a selfie with him. The photo wound up on the clinic website.
The vet, a dark-haired woman with a faint Korean accent, fielded his first five questions gracefully. By the seventh, her face took on a hunted expression.
"How can I aid his social development?" he asked as she squirted a yellow paste into Gus's mouth. "He doesn't have any parents..."
Dr. Park gave him a stack of pamphlets, a reading list, and a referral for puppy socialization classes. Was that like kindergarten, he wondered? He could have used a class like that himself. Maybe he wouldn't have wound up spending half his time in the heads of murderers.
"Don't you think you're going overboard?" Jessica asked him over dinner.
He looked up from where he was feeding Gus chunks of baked chicken.
"I just want to make sure he gets a good home. More people will want him if he's got all his shots and training."
"Right," she said.
After dinner, he ordered a copy of Animals in Translation online and browsed for dog toys.
To find Gus a family, he needed photos. Cute ones.
It only made sense to do a photoshoot.
He took Gus to the park and posed him next to trees and flowers. The jaunty blue bandanna around his neck was to appeal to adopters. He smiled as Gus obeyed sit, stay, and beg while he snapped photos.
"Which do you think is cuter?" he asked Jessica later. "I think it's this one. His eyes look... soulful." He'd accomplished that shot by holding a chicken biscuit over the camera.
"Will, just pick one." she snapped.
"Actually, I think this one's better," he said absently, looking at a photo of Gus rolling in the grass. His head was cocked to the side as he grinned at the camera and showed his furry belly.
Jessica sighed.
The first family failed a background check – the boyfriend had been charged with battery three years ago. The second had a twelve-year-old son whose smile didn't quite reach his eyes. From the nervous looks his little sister was giving him, Will suspected the last thing they needed was a pet. He discreetly slipped the mother the number for a child psychiatrist. Therapy had failed him, but as his coworkers often told him, he was a weird son of a bitch. It seemed to work for other people.
The third person to contact him asked about cropping Gus's ears. He looked down at where the puppy was curled at his feet sleeping. His ears twitched, and his little legs jerked as if he were chasing rabbits.
Gus got his first booster shots, then his second. The puppy seemed to have doubled in size. His coat gleamed from the special conditioner Will used.
When Jessica moved out, Gus laid in the corner as she carried box after box out of the apartment. She refused to let Will help.
He didn't protest when Gus hopped into bed with him that night.
After that, he stopped looking for homes.
One day Will came home to find the trash had been ransacked and Gus had vomited at least six times. When Will touched him, he yelped and tucked his tail between his legs. He scooped Gus up and drove straight to the vet's office, breaking every speed limit and zooming through yellow lights. Gus threw up twice in the car.
After a whirlwind of tests and x-rays, Dr. Park diagnosed pancreatitis. He would be fine, she promised, but he would have to stay overnight for IV fluids and medicine.
"Can I at least say goodbye to him?" he asked. The doctor's face softened as she led him into the hospital ward.
Gus looked pitiful, but at least he wasn't vomiting anymore.
The dog in the next cage was in much worse shape. He had a gorgeous thick black and brown coat, but half of it was shaved or missing. Both his rear legs had been broken and had metal pins sticking out every few inches. External fixators, the technician told him. Most of his left side was covered scrapes and cuts.
"So sad," the technician said– Sally, according to her name tag. "Some jerk hit him with his car, approved the surgery, and dumped him here."
The dog whined. "It's okay, Whiskey." she murmured, bending to stroke his head. He couldn't rise, but his tail wagged so hard it clanged against the metal cage. "Someone will take you home."
Will scratched behind Gus's ears before he left.
On the way home, he thought about the mangled dog, alone in the hospital with no one to go home to. He looked like the kind of dog that lived to play fetch for hours and then bring you your slippers. Smart. Friendly. Loyal.
Someone would definitely take the dog home.
He didn't sleep that night. The apartment was too quiet, too empty.
Gus woofed at the other dog on their way out the clinic. Will shushed him as they went to pay the bill.
Whiskey wagged his tail quietly as he watched them leave.
"Someone will take you home," Will promised the dog. Sally the technician shot him a long, knowing look.
Later that night, Gus stared up at him as he flipped through TV channels.
"We don't need another dog," he told him. Gus yawned and curled against his feet without breaking eye contact.
Will bent reflexively to pet him.
"The landlady freaked out enough about you. And you're getting bigger every day." he said. "Besides, I'm sure someone will want him. He's a good dog."
Whiskey was still there when Gus went for his recheck. His hair seemed to be coming back in, and Dr. Park said he was making great progress.
"I think he's lonely," Sally said as she slid an IV into a cat's back leg. "I wish I could take him, but my girlfriend's allergic. He just looks so sad when everyone goes home."
Will knew at least five reasons this was a bad idea.
He ignored them as Sally helped him lift Whiskey into the backseat of his car.