For innocentsmith
Number Sixteen - Whimsy/Reality
Fraser rubbed one hand through his hair and tried to convince himself to be calm. The very nice veterinarian had assured him that Diefenbaker, no matter how ill he was at the moment, would pull through.
But, still: Fraser was supposed to be the responsible one. He was, after all, the one with opposable thumbs and significantly more in the way of higher brain functions. He should have stopped Diefenbaker from licking out that pot in the warehouse. They had, after all, been there to arrest the makers of a particularly dangerous form of amphetamines. Dief couldn’t be counted on to know that something that smelled good was not necessarily good at all. That was Fraser’s job.
And he’d failed.
It felt very strange-and obscurely painful-to be in his apartment without the company of the half wolf. There was no click of claws; no roing-roing sounds of an empty food bowl being optimistically licked across the floor; no gentle in-out of someone breathing apart from Fraser himself.
He’d been to visit Dief at the clinic this afternoon. The half-wolf was lightly sedated and on intravenous fluids. The mingled smells of disinfectant and animal waste (not that the place was dirty: far from it. But there was an inevitable atmosphere that came from having sick animals of assorted species in an enclosed space), combined with the sight of Dief’s still form-shaved or bandaged in the places where catheters had been placed and blood samples had been taken-had conspired to make Fraser feel quite, quite ill.
Ray had taken one look at him and offered to let him stay the night at his house but the thought of the whole Vecchio family, as warm and well-meaning as they would be, had made Fraser feel dizzy.
So instead he was sitting, alone, on the dubious comfort of one of his rickety kitchen chairs looking alternately, at the ceramic water bowl on the floor and the distorted scribble of his own reflection in the cheap glass of his kitchen window.
Fraser rubbed one hand through his hair and tried to convince himself to be calm. The very nice veterinarian had assured him that Diefenbaker, no matter how ill he was at the moment, would pull through.
But, still: Fraser was supposed to be the responsible one. He was, after all, the one with opposable thumbs and significantly more in the way of higher brain functions. He should have stopped Diefenbaker from licking out that pot in the warehouse. They had, after all, been there to arrest the makers of a particularly dangerous form of amphetamines. Dief couldn’t be counted on to know that something that smelled good was not necessarily good at all. That was Fraser’s job.
And he’d failed.
It felt very strange-and obscurely painful-to be in his apartment without the company of the half wolf. There was no click of claws; no roing-roing sounds of an empty food bowl being optimistically licked across the floor; no gentle in-out of someone breathing apart from Fraser himself.
He’d been to visit Dief at the clinic this afternoon. The half-wolf was lightly sedated and on intravenous fluids. The mingled smells of disinfectant and animal waste (not that the place was dirty: far from it. But there was an inevitable atmosphere that came from having sick animals of assorted species in an enclosed space), combined with the sight of Dief’s still form-shaved or bandaged in the places where catheters had been placed and blood samples had been taken-had conspired to make Fraser feel quite, quite ill.
Ray had taken one look at him and offered to let him stay the night at his house but the thought of the whole Vecchio family, as warm and well-meaning as they would be, had made Fraser feel dizzy.
So instead he was sitting, alone, on the dubious comfort of one of his rickety kitchen chairs looking alternately, at the ceramic water bowl on the floor and the distorted scribble of his own reflection in the cheap glass of his kitchen window.