Mandatory after-shooting-suspect appointment with the department sanctioned shrink, normally Tim would be dragging his feet and trying to think of a way out of it. This time he had a question. Well, more a series of questions, and not all of them were human.

Raylan was back with Tim again. Tim was playing it very carefully, if Raylan made a move, Tim reciprocated and that was working just fine. He had mastered the art of not-smothering. Raylan wasn't banging into things, he was cheerfully testing the boundaries of his sense-deprived situation, and all was sort of alright with the world again.

Kinda.

Raylan would come to bed every night, find Tim's wrist with his hand, exactly like they had been sleeping for the almost three years since Tim first took Raylan home with him. Everything normal. Yeah right. That did not explain Tim waking with Raylan wrapped around him like an octopus. Arms tight around Tim's body, face buried in Tim's neck, the legs seemed optional, but more often than not Tim would find his legs pinned to the mattress by a lean, muscular thigh.

And Otis wouldn't turn left.

So Tim had questions. The domestic questions concerned him, the shooting thing, not so much. It was his job, he didn't need to rationalize it, he just needed to do it. The far more important situation was his partner and his partner's guide dog.

She was nice enough, Dr Sanders. In her fifties, with a settled, calm but not overly condescending manner which Tim appreciated. Not that he was going to unload any of his own dark secrets, but he still felt a tiny twinge of guilt at off-loading Raylan's.

They were clearly going to begin in the same place that they always did, but Tim came up with a pre-emptive strike. "Doc," he said, "We always do this, and you know what I am going to say, and I promise you that this is absolutely no different from every other time I've been here. So can we talk about something else?"

Marilyn Sanders laid down her pen, and fixed him with that look which made people believe her whole attention was on them. Tim secretly wondered if she sang songs in her head while listening to the boring stuff, but this time he actually wanted her to listen.

"You know I have a partner?"

Dr Sanders glanced down at the file in front of her, there was some sort of note to that effect, but the notation was vague on detail. "Yes. Is there some sort of difficulty at home, Tim?"

"Not so much, we're talking, more than we used to, we're sharing the bed again… it's just…" Tim came to a halt, as he tried to find the right words to describe the problem without sounding like an idiot.

Marilyn smiled, nervous and tongue tied she could deal with. "What's your partner's name?"

"Raylan Givens."

The name didn't register, and Tim remembered that Dr Sanders was a new hire after Raylan lost his sight.

"Long story short, Doc. We've been living together for nearly three years…" Tim shifted uncomfortably as he related the circumstances of their fight, the break up, the make up "and suddenly Raylan, who has a PhD in emotional unavailability," Tim's voice almost cracked on the irony, "suddenly every night he's clinging to me like a vine. It's not Raylan, not his thing." Tim's jaw ached and what felt like the beginnings of a tension headache was knotting itself somewhere behind his eyes. Stress, he supposed. He couldn't remember the last time he had talked this much about anything this personal. "And Otis won't turn left." He tacked on as an after-thought.

She looked startled at that. "Who is Otis?"

"Otis is Raylan's guide dog." Tim frowned a little, "Raylan's blind."

"Go on."

Tim shifted in his seat, this part was not really his story to tell, but the doctor had this look in her eyes…

So he told.

[][][][][][][][]

Hypnosis. That was what Tim was going to put it down to.

After spilling his guts to the psychiatrist in a completely uncharacteristic manner, he'd made a second appointment, a promise to bring Raylan… and Raylan's dog… with him next time.

Once outside in the car, Tim had a moment's panic, the kind of panic that sent two fingers reaching for the pulse point in his neck as he tried to calm himself and just breathe.

Taking a shot. No problem. Talking about feelings… worse still getting Raylan to talk about feelings… and Otis' inability/unwillingness to even contemplate turning left. Tim checked in the driver's mirror, okay the scream was coming from his brain and not his lips.

At least Otis' bizarre problem was something that he and Raylan could talk about. Tim had suggested that they contact the guide dog school. Raylan panicked and begged Tim not to.

In as far as Raylan Givens was capable of panicking over anything.

Given how fiercely attached Raylan was to his dog, that wasn't a shock. Raylan and Otis' trainer, Cally, had wanted to scrub Otis out of the programme, and that had upset Raylan a lot. Now he had been living with Otis for nearly a full year, Tim knew that separating Otis from Raylan would break the cowboy's heart.

So, no pressure then.

Tim just needed to figure out how he was going to get Raylan to agree to come along.