#theon the fictional therapy dog

[ashintheairlikesnow]

When Kell comes back from the store with beer, Theon is out on his cushion in the living room next to the sofa, settled down with his favorite purple monster stuffie, chewing on it idly and watching Kell with his slightly narrowed brown eyes as he opens the door, ears straight up, giving Kell his total focus and attention.

“Hey, buddy,” Kell says out loud, in the same tone Holland uses, but Theon isn’t fooled and doesn’t so much as twitch a muscle. “Where is he?”

Theon glances back over one shoulder, then looks right back at him. Kell blinks and follows his gaze. The bathroom door is closed and he can hear the shower running.

Kell tenses up and waits, but all he hears is the water itself; no sound of Holland talking to them the way he sometimes does, no sound of things being knocked around, no sound of loud breathing... nothing.  Just water. When he looks back at Theon, the dog is about as relaxed as he ever gets when Kell is in the room. “Is he okay in there, Theon? Did he at least remember to wrap the plastic over his bandages?" 

Theon ‘woofs’ gently, and goes back to chewing on his stuffie, his eyes still focused on Kell. There’s another long moment where man and dog simply stare at each other, the two steadfast guardians of a damaged man.

They might understand each other well enough, at this point, but Theon never lets his guard down when Kell is in the room unless Holland says it’s okay.

Except… there’s a thing about Theon that has been bugging Kell lately, too. He’d taken him down to the beach to walk a few weeks ago, before Holland's surgery, and something… weird had happened. It’s happened a couple more times since.

The walk had started out normal enough. Holland was having one of his harder days, so Kell had volunteered to take Theon out himself to give him some space. They’d gone down the streets, walked a few blocks, crossed the highway, and ended up at Theon’s favorite part of the beach, a rocky area where almost no one else really spent much time. 

Kell had been watching Theon scratch at something in the sand. He’d been thinking about it all over again, the way he sometimes went in circles thinking about the ghosts that haunted them both. He’d never say a word about it to anyone else, not even Rhy, but he thought about the redwoods all the time. 

They told him, in the hospital, that the ketamine Astrid had spiked his drink with would probably wipe out his short-term memory of the night, but it never did. 

He lost some stuff at the beginning; he remembers Astrid sitting down with him, being startled by how pretty she was and that she seemed so interested in him. Holland had called it hunting, when they talked about it - that Astrid always knew what man in the room had no one waiting for him at home, singled them out, knew how to get them to look at her.

Athos did it, too, Holland had said, as though the words were forced out. Athos mostly hunted women, Astrid mostly men.

Except for you, Kell had said without thinking. Athos wanted you, right?

Holland had paused, looking with a blank face over at the silly magnets Kell bought him to put all over his fridge. They both wanted me, or that’s what they said. From the second they saw me.

(Click to read the rest)

[ashintheairlikesnow]

I need to tag "Original Dog Character" because fuck yes

[Image Description: Tag reading “original dog characters sdlfkjsldkfj”]

The AO3 Tag of the Day is: I already love them

[ashintheairlikesnow]

(I did it! 31 prompts in 31 days! I made it to the end! Wooo! This is the final chapter for the Serial Killer Gap Year storyline - so just expect darkness)

Holland came out of the bathroom with Athos just ahead, the two men wrapped in towels, Holland drying off his hair one-handed while Athos pretty much just let the water drip onto the floor. 

 He felt a little better and a whole lot worse, all at once. 

 “There, that’s better,” Athos said, stretching his arms above his head. “Don’t you always feel better after a shower? At least, the way I take showers makes me feel better. You might limp for a while.”

 “I limp anyway,” Holland said quietly, rubbing at a new bruise on the side of his neck. He put his clothes back on mechanically, body moving without brain, and watched Athos pull on a pair of Holland's PJ pants that were folded in the clean laundry pile next to his couch and nothing more.

 There were new scars on Athos that hadn’t been there eight months ago, healing cuts, some bruises. He really had been living in the wilderness until he’d decided to hunt Holland down. Without thinking, he reached out with his left hand and traced a long new scar, still red, down Athos’s arm. “How did this happen?”

 When he wasn’t remembering what his situation was, he stopped stammering with them. He hadn’t stammered with Athos and Astrid, except when he was scared, before. But he’d been scared all the time with everyone else.

 Athos grinned at him, clearly pleased that he’d reached out of his own volition.

(Click here to read the rest of the chapter) 

[ashintheairlikesnow]

“I don’t understand why we’re here,” Kell’s brother says, sitting next to him in the hospital waiting room. No one would ever name them brothers on sight, of course; Rhy is dark-skinned and dark-haired and smiles all the time (even now, in a room full of worried people, he smiles), while Kell’s pale, redheaded, and never not fighting the urge to frown. But they met at five and three, respectively, and they’ve been brothers ever since. “You’ve been here all damn day, Kell. You’ve been here since he was still doing the prep stuff. You came here with him at six a.m.”

“Well, someone had to. I’m his medical emergency person, they need me to be close by in case something happens.” What if something happens? Kell has worried over it all day.

Holland only agreed to this surgery because Kell insisted on it, that he shouldn’t have to carry around the wounds they gave him for the rest of his life when Maresh Logging Company money could buy him a better knee, a half-metal hand, and a way to take back control of his own body.

If something goes wrong, he’ll never forgive himself for pushing Holland to do this, but without making these decisions, Holland’s always going to be wrapped up in what they did to him, limited by it, limping every time he uses the stairs or runs with Theon, asking Kell to help him with things that take two hands.

He needs to do this, Kell tells himself, but still… he worries.

“That brings up whole new questions,” Rhy says insistently, leaning down to scratch Theon behind the ears. The service dog flicks on ear back towards Rhy, but he doesn’t relax. Theon hasn’t relaxed for a second all day. He doesn’t have his vest on, not right now, and officially he's not working - but he seems to sense Kell’s worry and reflects it right back. “Why are you his medical anything?”

“He doesn’t have anyone else. Someone has to help him get home. It seemed like common sense to give me the, the uh, the thing where if something happens I get to make decisions when he can’t. I don’t remember what it’s called.”

“Power of attorney?”

“That doesn’t sound right. But yeah, it made sense for me to be the one to help, didn’t it? I’m right here all the time, anyway.”

“Sure, but you could run errands, or head back home, or… you don’t have to stay here all day, sitting around with his dog.”

“Theon and I should be here when he’s done. They said surgery could take eight to ten hours,” Kell says restlessly, left foot tapping rhythmically on the tile floor, one hand idly scratching at a bit of loose skin on his thumb while the other holds on to Theon’s leash.

Theon lays his head down on his paws, staring at the door, and sighs forlornly.

I feel you, buddy, Kell thinks. He and Theon understand each other, these days. The dog’s let his guard down, spends less time carefully watching every move Kell makes in Holland’s direction. But then, that really just means that Holland is less nervous than he used to be.

“I know they said that, but… Look, I get that you stay with him a bunch. I do. But you’re just friends, right?”

Kell doesn't say anything, mostly because he has no idea what the answer is - he’s not even sure you could call it friendship, not exactly, not by anyone else’s definition.

Rhy’s eyebrows nearly meet his hairline. “... are you dating him?” (click to read the rest)

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Theon the Fictional Therapy Dog and True Hero of Serial Killer Gap Year can never die

Which OC is immortal?