“He’ll be okay. He… he died on the table and they had to bring him back. Dev was there in the room, Leaf.” Seth’s voice wobbled so badly, Leaf could feel a bubble of grief rise in his own chest.
“Jesus,” he managed to say. He rubbed his hand over his face and tried to stay composed. “I’m fucking never leaving you two again. Never again. I’ll be home as soon as I can, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” Seth said, sounding carefully hopeful.
“I love you. Go cuddle up with Dev, okay. Tell him I’m thinking of you all.”
“Yeah. I love you, bye.”
Leaf felt like throwing the phone across the fucking yard, but he put it in his pocket and made fists, holding in the emotions that were trying to bubble over.
Suddenly there was a warmth against his left calf, and he looked down to see Husky there, sitting against his leg.
“I’m okay, boy. Go play.”
Husky looked at him with his too-smart blue eyes and seemed to be giving his instruction some serious consideration.
“Go,” Leaf said in a firmer tone, and the dog left to go play with the young ones. Leaf walked back to the bench and sat down heavily.
“Something wrong?”
“Yeah. The cat died on the table. Our vet was able to bring him back, but apparently Dev was in the room when it happened and….”
“And you’re the backbone of the family when it comes to animals and their issues?” Chay guessed.
Leaf snorted softly. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“How about you give me tomorrow and then drive home?”
“I don’t think—”
“Listen, I can call other people if I need help. I got the easiest dogs on purpose, because then I could take more of them. If I’d taken the tricky ones, I’d need you more even if there were fewer of them. You’re needed at home, Leaf. This isn’t your gig anymore.” She placed her small, callused hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Your guys need you at home.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
SETH SENThim messages the next day, saying they had Weasley home and that Dev was doing much better now.
Dev’s one message seemed to be somehow restrained, like he was holding himself back even in text.
Leaf couldn’t call him. Instead, he worked all day with the dogs and Chay, then had dinner, took a nap, and started the drive back to Colorado Springs.
He’d felt off ever since Seth’s call, uneasy within his skin, and he hated it. He knew it was the guilt of not being there when Dev and Seth had needed him to be their rock, but he couldn’t predict what would happen any given day. Routine operations could go wrong sometimes. Hell, people died during routine operations every day. One just never thought it would be yours, human or animal.
He supposed it wasn’t even that, really. Even the good days were something he should be there for. The regular, normal days when nothing good or bad happened too. He knew his place now, and he hadn’t always known that.
But driving toward home made him able to breathe again. Like the ease he’d felt in himself lately was gradually returning to him. Being with Seth and Dev every day, even when they fought—and they did; they weren’t perfect by any means, they were just right together—was easy and natural to him, like breathing.
Leaf was dead tired when he drove the RV into the driveway. He’d been listening to music he didn’t like for the last two hours just make it home safely and before the morning rush hour.
It was early enough for Seth and Dev to be asleep still, so he let Husky out for his business, then went inside and let the other dogs out too.
Weasley walked in while he was fixing the dogs’ breakfasts as quietly as he could. He walked around Leaf’s feet, rubbed himself all over his jeans, and purred loudly.
Leaf picked him up gently and held him to his chest. “You seem to be doing okay, kiddo.”
Weasley brushed cheeks with him, then sniffed at his face for a while, before head-butting his nose hard enough for it to hurt. “Yeah, yeah, Daddy’s home now, okay. I’ll go feed the other beasties now. I don’t know if you’re on meds, so I can’t give you any food yet. That’s Daddy Dev’s job, right?” He scratched the rangy, adolescent cat around the ears and then placed him in his bowl, where he still liked to hang out sometimes. Like Dev said, they didn’t have a fruit bowl, they had a cat bowl.
Leaf took the dog bowls and went outside to line them up on the porch. It was getting cold, so they would have to start feeding them inside soon, but for that day, outside it was. He went back in and snacked on some leftover pizza from the fridge, then let the dogs back in when they were done.
