He's breathing too hard, rattling off his list of hybrid words, right up til the moment her hand rests on his arm. His eyes close, and he inhales hard and slow, his frantic gestures stilled.

--

"It's gonna bite you."

"It ain't gonna bite me."

"Why's it barin' its teeth then?"

"It's scared."

He leaves a paper plate of dollar-store kibble outside. A week later the dog lets him stroke her ears while she eats, cringing all the while.

It'd be nice to let it end there, but it never does.

--

He's trying to be diligent. It's important work so it's easier to be diligent than he expects even if he tempers his obedience with sarcasm, stretched thin over his constant nerves.

He doesn't realize until after he narrowly averts a blow-up that the long, snapped, angry insults Sunny'd leveled out had been the heavy insulation around what was suspiciously like a compliment.

Better than a compliment. Praise.

He's ashamed of how much he wants to go crawling to her, wagging his imaginary tail. He just closes his eyes, exhales.

--

His hands are shaking so Alex does it for him, and when he pushes the plunger down it's all Taym can do not to yank back, sucking a hard breath in through his teeth. He spits a <********' hell as the needle slips free.

"Did I miss?" He's all wide eyes behind those stupid affected glasses. Taym can't get mad at him, not like that.

"I don't think so. Bad cut? ********' hell," he repeats, a hand clamped hard over his elbow, eyes filming with tears.

"Maybe I missed," he says, but then Taym is swaying, buckling, pain forgotten.

"Bad cut," he says again, loosening, slack. "Don't, out of this one."

"Well what the hell am I supposed to do?" Alex demands, with rising panic.

What indeed is he supposed to do? By the time he's hissing through his teeth Taym is too far gone to care, too far gone to hope that whatever's in there isn't going to kill him. Both of them will scar from it, from the itching craterous infections that abscess their elbows. He's still got that scar years later, her sleepy fingers passing thoughtlessly back and forth over the colorless divot in the crook of his arm. It's still hard not to beg her to stop.

They've forgotten the patterns of normality. Alex, he thinks, might never remember. On the good days Taym thinks he might. On his worst days he knows he will.

--

On the days that he wakes up and she isn't there he comforts himself first by remembering that she's waking up alone too, and then by reminding himself in slow and painful detail that even if he's paralyzed when it comes to helping Tuesday she is not the only person who needs his help. He folds his coat by the bed so that he can run his fingers over the embroidered shoulder patch, a totem defense against the ever-present sense that he does not deserve what good things he has, and against the guilt of wanting them anyway. He wants good days as much as he wants to martyr himself to the cause that is his daughter.

He wants to be happy. He wants it handed to him. He wants to earn it. It's his right. It's his reward.

Please, please, let today be a good day, he thinks, and even now he's surprised and exhausted when it is. There are so many good days, and even the ones that end in an empty bed are so, so good.

--

The ones that were sweet, that leaned into his hands, he took down to the no-kill shelter, begging the people there for help, please. The staff of fat middle-aged women with glasses and curly blonde hair were indistinguishable save for their reaction to him. Lisa was discomfort, going to fetch someone else. Lori was sympathy, all kind hands on fleabitten backs and reassurances that they'd do what they could. But the rest of them were tired disgust, thin smiles, hints that he ought to leave when he broke down.

They thought he cried to leave a mother dog and her litter of puppies with them instead of curling up with them in whatever hovel he was currently sleeping in. They thought he cried to say goodbye to a scarred-up tomcat with a ruined lop ear. He's ruined these animals. They knew nothing better than a short hard life in storage lots and restaurant dumpsters and he'd turned up and shown them something better and there was nothing for it, now, but to find it for them. The dogs don't snap. The cats don't run.

He cried for the women's faces, cried for the desire to lean into their hands if only they'd let him, too detached from being real and from pride to care that he did so in front of them.

When Bird finds him she feeds him, she turns him over her shower and gives him her roommate's clothes which are too big for him. She's got an apartment overrun with strays and what's one more, after all? She turns him out but he shows back up because she doesn't lock her door.

--

Bix grins at him in a hallway. Someone says "long time no see," like they remember the last time and recognize the absence. Peyton is all hugs that make him cringe terrified that she might change her mind.

And he comes home to a clean room full of smoke and noise and a smile that makes his knees buckle.

She's been too kind to him. She's given him too much mercy. She's ruined him, and he'll never stop crawling back to howl desperately at her door, begging her for just one kindness more, just one more. Let me lean into your hands. Please.

--

He'd been recruited and he thinks probably it was because of his files. The files said that he experienced vivid hallucinations, but they also said that he was intelligent, lucid, and had four months of clean drug tests despite the pressure of living in the street.

The worst part of it is not, as he'd told her, sleeping alone. The worst part is the boredom. He rocks back and forth, he whispers; he knows that people think he's insane, but if he is it is because there is no longer anywhere else for his head to go.

He just needs one kind hand. One kind hand to guide him to the cage. He'd taken the dogs and the cats to a no-kill shelter, his heart too tender to do otherwise. He won't get the same kindness. He's bound for a crowded kennel full of claws and howling and he goes in certain that he wants nothing more than the peace of a long, long sleep.

He'd expected cruelty. It is, after all, most of what he knows, now. But there are too many people on the other side whose hands he can lean into. A dog's instinct is to love and to please. By the time he realizes that anyone might want him he's already in the cage.

Maybe if he wags his tail hard enough. Maybe if remembers not to bare his teeth. Maybe if he tries. Look how good I can be. Please.

--

The only thing wrong with the dog on the patch is that it doesn't have a collar.

Please, please, let today be a good day. Another good day.

And it is.