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Chapter Text

Chapter 1: The Stillness After the Storm 

The first thing I’m aware of is the warmth.

It’s a deep, primal thing, a stark contrast to the bone-deep chill that has been my constant companion for… well, for longer than just the past few days. This warmth isn’t just the absence of cold; it’s an active presence. It’s a weighted blanket. It’s the low, steady hum of a furnace that isn’t just heating the air but seems to be radiating directly into my bones.

My eyes are still closed. I’m afraid to open them. In the fuzzy, liminal space between sleep and waking, I can pretend this is just a dream. A particularly vivid, comforting dream, but a dream nonetheless. Because if I open my eyes, it becomes real. And I don’t know if I can handle that.

There’s a weight across my chest. An arm. Heavy, solid, and radiating that impossible heat. One of my own paws is tucked beneath it, and I can feel the coarse, friendly texture of fur against my pads. My other arm is pinned beneath my own body, and my legs are tangled with another pair. My tail, usually a restless, anxious thing, is curled tightly against my stomach, as if seeking refuge.

And there’s a smell.

It’s… Rofi. It’s the scent of clean dog, a hint of the cinnamon-laced junk food he was devouring last night, and something else. Something uniquely, achingly familiar, a scent that my brain has apparently kept locked away in a vault for the last ten years. It’s the smell of safety. The smell of home, or what used to be home.

*Oh, god.*

My eyes snap open.

The reality is exactly as I feared, and yet, somehow, infinitely more terrifying. I’m on the air mattress in Theo’s den. The morning light is muted, filtering softly through the boarded-up window where the tree branch crashed through yesterday. It paints the room in gentle stripes of grey and white. And curled around me, breathing in a slow, deep rhythm that I can feel vibrating through my entire torso, is Rofi.

He’s fast asleep. His face is turned towards me, muzzle relaxed, lips parted slightly. One of his long, floppy ears is draped across his cheek, the other is splayed out on the pillow we’re apparently sharing. The arm across my chest belongs to him. His legs are indeed tangled with mine. We’re… cuddling. Spooning. Whatever you want to call it. It’s an embrace so complete, so unconsciously intimate, that a hot spike of panic shoots through my chest, so sharp and sudden it almost makes me gasp.

*Don’t move. Don’t you dare move.*

My heart is hammering against my ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. *Thump-thump-thump-thump.* It’s too loud. Surely, it’s loud enough to wake him. I squeeze my eyes shut again, as if that will somehow make me invisible.

*What did I do? What did I let happen?*

The memories of last night are a fragmented, hazy collage. The chaos after the window shattered. The searing pain in my footpaw. Rofi’s sudden, shocking transformation from goofy, energetic friend to a focused, competent PA, his voice calm and steady as he pulled shards of glass from my skin. The way he held me after I broke down, after I confessed the stupid, impossible dream. The way he offered his room, his bed. The way he…

The way he held me, just like this, as I cried myself to sleep.

It wasn’t a dream. It was real. All of it.

And now it’s morning. The crisis is over. The adrenaline has faded. And I’m left with the consequences. I’m left with this. This… intimacy. It’s too much. It’s too close.

My first instinct, my only instinct, is to run. To carefully, surgically extract myself from this embrace, roll off the mattress, grab my things, and just… disappear. I could be gone before anyone else is even awake. I could walk back to my cold, empty apartment and just… wait. Wait for the power to come back on. Wait for the roads to clear. Wait for my flight to be rescheduled.

Wait to die, as my own traitorous mind whispered to me just a few days ago.

I try to move my arm, the one pinned beneath me. It’s numb, tingling with pins and needles. I shift my weight, just a fraction of an inch, and the movement causes a change in the rhythm of Rofi’s breathing. He murmurs something in his sleep, a soft, nonsensical sound, and his arm tightens around me, pulling me even closer. His nose bumps against the back of my head, and he lets out a contented sigh, nuzzling into my fur.

And I… I freeze.

Every muscle in my body locks up. The panic is still there, a high, keening whine in the back of my skull, but something else is rising to meet it. That warmth. That impossible, traitorous warmth. It’s seeping into my nerve endings, calming the frantic bird in my chest. My tail, which had been a tight knot of anxiety, slowly, tentatively, begins to uncurl.

*He feels… safe.*

The thought is a betrayal. A violation of every defensive wall I’ve spent the last decade building. Safety is an illusion. Connection is a trap. I learned that lesson the hard way. The day I had to look this same dog in the eyes and tell him I was leaving, the memory of his crushed expression has been the ghost that haunts my every attempt at closeness.

Why isn’t he haunted? Why isn’t he angry? He should hate me. He should resent me for disappearing, for letting our friendship wither and die. He should see me as the awkward, broken thing I am. He shouldn’t be holding me like I’m something precious, something he was afraid of losing.

I can feel his heartbeat now, a slow, steady counterpoint to my own frantic rhythm. *Thump… thump… thump…* It’s the sound of untroubled sleep. The sound of a clean conscience.

Maybe he doesn’t remember. Maybe the past doesn’t weigh on him the way it does on me. For him, maybe this is just… helping a friend. A physical, uncomplicated act of kindness, like offering a blanket or a cup of tea. Typical dog behavior, as Artemis would probably say. Open, affectionate, without the million layers of guilt and self-recrimination that I, the solitary, overthinking cat, project onto everything.

I’m the one making this complicated. I’m the one turning this into… something more.

Slowly, carefully, I let myself relax into the embrace. Just for a second. I let my head sink back into the pillow. I let my breathing sync with his. I let myself feel the solid, reassuring weight of him against my back.

And for a single, terrifying, beautiful moment, the world goes quiet. The anxious monologue in my head just… stops. There is no past. There is no future. There is only the stillness of this room, the soft morning light, and the warmth of the dog holding me like he never intends to let go.

It’s a dangerous feeling. It’s the feeling of a promise. And I don’t know if I have any of those left to give.

Note:
hi guys :3 I’ve never done this fanfiction thing before so please kudos and subscribe (if you even call it that) and I will see you next chapter <3

Chapter Text

I wake up all at once, the way I always do. One moment, I’m chasing something in a dream—a squirrel? a frisbee? a particularly interesting leaf?—and the next, my eyes are open and the world is right here. No fade-in, no grogginess. Just… on.

And the first thing I see is him.

Leo. He’s here. He’s still here.

My tail gives a single, powerful thump-thump against the air mattress before I can even think to stop it. Yes! He stayed! The thought is a sunbeam bursting through my skull. He didn’t disappear in the middle of the night. He didn’t let the weirdness and the drama of yesterday scare him away. He’s here, curled up, his back pressed against my chest. His fur is so incredibly soft, thick, and spotted, and smelling faintly of… snow and anxiety. And him. Just him.

I want to hug him tighter. I want to bury my nose in his fur and tell him how unbelievably, ridiculously happy I am that he’s here. I want to tell him that finding him again after all this time feels like finding a part of myself I didn’t even realize was missing. But I don’t. I rein it in. Easy, Rofi. Be cool. Don’t be too much.

He’s so still. For a snow leopard, a cat, he’s always been preternaturally still, but this is different. This is the stillness of a rabbit that’s heard a hawk overhead. His breathing is shallow, his ears are angled back just slightly, listening. He’s awake. He’s been awake for a while, I think. And he’s pretending to be asleep.

My heart does a little squeeze. It’s not a sad squeeze, exactly. It’s… a tender one. He’s so scared. He’s been scared since the moment I saw him standing in Theo’s living room, looking like a ghost. Scared and tired and so, so thin. It makes me want to cook him a thousand meals and wrap him in a hundred blankets.

I remember when we were kids. He’d get that same look on his face sometimes. When my parents would come over to his house and their voices would get too loud. Or when we’d be playing by the creek and a bigger kid would walk by. He’d just… freeze. Go quiet. Try to make himself smaller. My job, back then, was to be big enough and loud enough for the both of us. To be a distraction. A shield.

I guess some things don’t change.

Okay. Operation: Make Leo Feel Safe. Step one: pretend I’m still half-asleep. I let out a big, goofy sigh, the kind my dad always hates, and stretch my legs out, bumping his gently. I want him to know I’m awake, but not in a sudden, startling way. I give him an out. A chance to “wake up” naturally.

I feel a tiny, almost imperceptible shift in his posture. Acknowledgment. He’s still tense, a coiled spring of a cat, but he’s aware of me.

“Mmmph,” I mumble into his fur, my voice thick with fake sleep. “Leo?”

He doesn’t answer for a long moment. I can practically hear the gears turning in his head, the thousands of calculations and worst-case scenarios. Is he mad? Is this weird? Should I run?

“...Yeah?” His voice is a quiet rasp, barely a whisper.

Success! He answered. That’s a win. My tail gives another involuntary thump. “Mornin’,” I say, and I finally let myself pull back a little, giving him some space. The loss of contact is immediate, a sudden cold spot against my chest. I miss the warmth already. But this isn’t about me. It’s about him. About making sure he doesn’t bolt.

He slowly, carefully, rolls onto his back, putting a few precious inches of distance between us. His eyes are wide, the pupils huge in the dim light. He looks like he’s been caught doing something wrong.

“Morning,” he says, and his gaze darts around the room, anywhere but at my face. “Sorry. I, uh… I didn’t mean to…” He gestures vaguely at the space between us, at the rumpled blankets.

“Didn’t mean to what? Sleep?” I ask, keeping my voice light and teasing. I prop myself up on one elbow. “Dude, it’s a bed. That’s what you do in it. Besides,” I add, leaning in just a little, giving him my best puppy-dog eyes, “you’re like a furnace. A super-soft, spotted furnace. It was awesome.”

A tiny, almost invisible blush rises on his cheeks. He looks down at his paws, which are fiddling with a loose thread on the blanket. “Oh.”

He’s so cute when he’s flustered. Okay, Rofi, back off. Give him air.

“I’m starving,” I announce to the room at large, swinging my legs over the side of the mattress. “I bet Artemis is already making coffee. He gets all grumpy if he doesn’t have his special pour-over thingy by 8 a.m. sharp.” I stand up and do a big, full-body stretch, shaking my fur out. Action. Movement. A change of subject. That’s what he needs.

I glance back at him. He’s still sitting there, watching me with those wide, worried eyes. He looks so small on that big mattress, like a kid who’s been shipwrecked.

My heart gives that tender squeeze again. I want to scoop him up. I want to fix everything that put that look in his eyes. But I can’t. That’s not how it works. All I can do is be here. Be normal. Be his friend.

“You coming?” I ask, my voice softer this time. I hold out a paw to him. An invitation. No pressure. Just… an offer.

He stares at my paw for a long, long time. I can see the war going on behind his eyes. The instinct to retreat versus the tiny, flickering hope that maybe, just maybe, this is real. That this is okay.

Come on, Leo. Just take it.

Slowly, hesitantly, he raises his own paw. His claws are sheathed, I notice. A good sign. His pads are a soft, dusty pink. I remember tracing them with my finger when we were kids, under the shade of our tree.

His paw touches mine. It’s trembling, just slightly. I curl my fingers around his, my grip firm but gentle. His fur is just as soft as I imagined.

“There you go,” I say, and my voice is full of a warmth I don’t have to fake. I give his paw a little squeeze and then let go, not wanting to hold on for too long. Not yet.

“Come on,” I say again, my tail starting up its rhythmic thump-thump-thump against my legs. “Let’s go get some coffee. My treat.”

He gives me a small, tentative smile. It’s the first one I’ve seen this morning. It’s a fragile, precious thing, and I feel a fierce, protective surge in my chest.

Yeah. I can do this. I can be patient. I can be whatever he needs me to be. I waited ten years to see that smile again. I can wait a little longer for the rest of him to come home.

Chapter Text

The warmth of Rofi's paw in mine was a fleeting, dangerous thing. A single spark in the overwhelming cold of my anxiety. I held onto the memory of it, the ghost of his touch, as I followed him out of the den and towards the kitchen. Every step was a conscious effort. Left paw, right paw. Just walk. Just be normal.

The house was alive with the low hum of morning activity. The scent of coffee—strong and dark and slightly bitter—was a welcome assault on my senses, cutting through the lingering smell of the pine-scented cleaner Theo must have used on the den floor. From upstairs, I could hear the faint, rhythmic thump-thump-thump of a bassline, which meant Hunter was probably awake.

As we entered the kitchen, the scene that greeted me was one of domestic tranquility. Or, it would have been for a normal person. For me, it was a social gauntlet. Theo was at the counter, meticulously wiping it down with a cloth, his movements calm and efficient. He offered us a warm, paternal smile. "Morning, boys. Sleep well?"

"Like a log!" Rofi chirped, his tail giving a happy wag. He bounded over to the coffee machine, grabbing a mug with a picture of a cartoon dog on it that said "The Dogfather." Of course.

"Yeah," I mumbled, my voice barely audible. "Fine." The word felt like a lie. Sleep had been a battlefield, and "fine" was a country I hadn't visited in years.

Artemis was leaning against the far counter, a steaming mug cradled in his hands. He was already dressed in a stylishly distressed dark sweater, looking effortlessly cool, as always. He raised an eyebrow at me over the rim of his mug. His gaze was sharp, analytical. I felt like a specimen under a microscope. A particularly clumsy, awkward specimen.

"You look like you've seen a ghost, Leo," he commented, his voice laced with its usual dry wit.

I am a ghost, I thought. I'm haunting my own life.

"Just tired," I said, my eyes fixed on a spot on the floor. I couldn't look at him. I couldn't look at anyone. It was too much. Too many people. Too much potential for judgment.

"Coffee?" Theo asked, his voice gentle. He held up the pot, an offering. A lifeline.

I nodded, my throat too tight to speak. He poured a generous amount into a plain white mug and slid it across the counter to me. My paw trembled as I reached for it. The ceramic was warm, solid. I wrapped both paws around it, anchoring myself to its heat.

"So," Rofi said, his voice bright and loud in the quiet room. He leaned against the counter next to me, his presence a solid, radiating warmth that was both comforting and terrifying. "What's the plan for today? Operation: Dig Out? Operation: Build a Snow Fort?"

"Operation: Find a Shovel, for starters," Artemis deadpanned. "Theo, did your aunt happen to have a snowblower in that magical garage of hers? Or perhaps a team of trained sled dogs?"

"Alas, no," Theo said with a chuckle. "Just a couple of sturdy shovels. Hunter's already claimed one. He was out there at dawn, said he needed to 'get a pump on.'"

Rofi laughed, a loud, barking sound that filled the kitchen. "Of course he did."

They were all talking. Bantering. It was so easy for them. The conversation flowed around me, a river of words I couldn't bring myself to step into. I just stood there, clutching my mug, taking small, scalding sips of coffee. I felt like I was behind a pane of glass, watching a scene I wasn't a part of. I was an intruder. A stray cat who had wandered into a warm house and was moments away from being shooed back out into the cold.

I needed to say something. Anything. Just to prove I was a real, functioning person. Just say something normal, Leo. Anything.

My eyes landed on the box of cereal on the counter. It was a brand I didn't recognize, with a cartoon bear on the front. "Is that… for anyone?" I asked, and my voice came out as a croak.

The conversation stopped. All three of them looked at me. The silence was deafening. My heart hammered against my ribs. Oh, god, I said the wrong thing. It was a stupid question. Of course it's for anyone. Why did I even speak?

It was Theo who broke the silence, his expression softening. "Of course, Leo. Help yourself. There's milk in the fridge, bowls in the cupboard to your left."

"Right," I said, my face burning with shame. I felt like a child who had just asked for permission to breathe. I moved to the cupboard, my movements stiff and clumsy. I fumbled with the handle, my claws scraping against the wood. I finally got it open and reached for a bowl.

And, of course, my trembling paws betrayed me. The bowl, slick and ceramic, slipped from my grasp. It fell to the floor with a clatter that sounded, to my ears, as loud as a gunshot. It didn't break, thank god. It just spun on the linoleum, a perfect, accusing circle of my own incompetence.

For a moment, nobody moved. The world seemed to hold its breath. And in that moment, my internal monologue screamed at me, a torrent of self-hatred.

Idiot! Clumsy, useless idiot! You can't do anything right. You can't even hold a bowl. Now they all know. They all see what a wreck you are. A burden. Just a burden.

I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable judgment. The pity. The annoyance.

But it didn't come.

"Whoa, careful there." It was Rofi's voice, close by my side. He bent down and picked up the bowl, his movements easy and fluid. He inspected it for cracks and then handed it back to me, his paw brushing against mine. "No harm done. Those things are sturdy."

I took the bowl, my paw still trembling. I couldn't look at him. "Sorry," I whispered to the floor.

"Don't be sorry," Theo said, his voice firm but kind from across the room. "It's just a bowl, Leo. And this house has a strict 'no apologies before coffee' policy."

Artemis let out a small snort. "It's true. He gets very serious about it."

I risked a glance up. Rofi was smiling at me, a gentle, reassuring smile. Theo was watching me with an expression of genuine concern. Even Artemis's usual sarcastic mask seemed to have softened slightly. There was no judgment in their eyes. No annoyance. Just… a quiet, unassuming kindness.

It was almost worse than judgment. Judgment, I could understand. I could accept. It aligned with my own view of myself. But this… this undeserved grace… it left me feeling exposed and raw. It was a kindness I hadn't earned, and I didn't know what to do with it.

I just nodded, unable to form words, and turned back to the counter. I poured the cereal, my movements slow and deliberate, focusing all my energy on not messing up this one simple task. Cereal in the bowl. Milk in the bowl. Spoon in the bowl. I could do this. I could be normal.

But as I took the first bite, the taste of the sugary flakes turning to ash in my mouth, I knew it was a lie. I was an actor on a stage, playing the part of a person who belonged. And I was terrified that at any moment, they would all see through the performance.

Chapter Text

Coffee. The smell of it is like a starter pistol for my brain. Bang! And we're off to the races. I grabbed my favorite mug—the one Ollie got me for my birthday last year—and poured myself a cup, the rich, dark liquid promising a much-needed jolt of energy. I felt good. More than good. I felt… bouncy. Leo was here. He hadn't run away. We'd shared a bed and it wasn't weird. Well, it was a little weird, but it was a good weird. A promising weird.

I leaned against the counter, taking a happy slurp of coffee, and watched him as he came into the kitchen. And the bounciness just… deflated. Not all of it, but a good chunk of it. It was like watching a turtle pull its head into its shell. The moment he saw Theo and Artemis, his shoulders hunched forward, his tail gave a nervous little twitch, and his eyes went to the floor. He was gone. The tentative, fragile connection we'd had in the den, the soft smile he'd given me—it all vanished, replaced by the same haunted, anxious mask he'd been wearing since he arrived.

My tail, which had been wagging a mile a minute, slowed to a low, uncertain thump against my leg. Okay, Rofi. Be cool. He's just nervous.

Theo, bless his big, fluffy fox heart, handled it perfectly. He was so calm, so gentle. He didn't push, just offered a simple "Good morning" that was as warm and comforting as the fireplace in the living room. But I saw the way Leo flinched, the way he mumbled his reply to his paws. He was drowning, right here in the middle of Theo's cheerful, yellow kitchen.

Then Artemis opened his mouth. I love Artie, I really do. He's one of the best people I know. But his sense of humor is an acquired taste, and for someone like Leo, it's like sandpaper on a sunburn.

"You look like you've seen a ghost, Leo."

I shot Artemis a look over my mug. It was a subtle one, just a quick flick of the eyes, but he caught it. He's smart. He knows me. He saw the look and his expression, for just a fraction of a second, softened. He was just making conversation, trying to include Leo in his own weird, sarcastic way. He didn't mean for it to land like a punch to the gut. But it did. I saw the impact ripple through Leo's posture.

I had to do something. I jumped in with my usual high-energy chatter, talking about snow forts and shovels, trying to fill the silence and draw the attention away from Leo. It's a tactic I learned as a kid. If I'm loud and goofy enough, nobody notices the quiet, scared kid standing behind me. It usually works.

And it seemed to be working now. Theo and Artemis were bantering with me, the mood was light, and Leo was safely hidden in the background, clutching his coffee mug like it was a life raft. He was still tense, but at least he wasn't the center of attention.

Then he asked about the cereal.

His voice was so small, so full of apology, it broke my heart. He was asking for permission to eat. In Theo's house. Theo, who had practically adopted the entire neighborhood, who would probably cook a seven-course meal for a stray mouse if it knocked on his door.

The silence that followed his question was awful. I saw the panic flash in Leo's eyes. He thought he'd made a mistake. He thought he'd overstepped. I opened my mouth to say something, to make a joke, but Theo beat me to it, his voice a wave of pure, uncomplicated kindness.

And then came the bowl.

The clatter of it hitting the floor was like a physical blow. I saw Leo flinch, saw him squeeze his eyes shut. I could feel the wave of self-hatred rolling off him. It was so strong it was almost a physical presence in the room. Idiot. Burden. Wreck.

My paws moved before my brain did. I was by his side in a second, scooping up the bowl. "Whoa, careful there," I said, keeping my voice as light and breezy as I could. I made a show of checking the bowl for damage, trying to inject a bit of normalcy into the moment. "No harm done."

I handed it back to him, making sure my paw brushed against his. A little bit of contact. A reminder. I'm here. You're not alone.

Theo and Artemis played their parts perfectly. Theo with his gentle, firm reassurance and his silly "no apologies before coffee" rule. Artemis with his dry, supporting comment. It was a good team effort. We were all, in our own ways, trying to build a net for Leo to fall into. But he was so used to falling on hard ground that he didn't know how to accept it.

He took the bowl and turned back to the counter, his movements slow and robotic. He was trying so hard. So, so hard to just be normal. It was painful to watch. He was safe. He was with people who cared about him. But his own mind was a prison, and he was trapped inside it.

I stood next to him, sipping my coffee, my mind racing. This wasn't working. The group setting was too much for him. He needed an escape. He needed a mission. A purpose. Something to focus on besides the terrifying, high-stakes task of… eating breakfast.

I glanced towards the den. The boarded-up window. The memory of the crash. It was a bad memory, sure. But it was also… an excuse.

"Hey, Leo," I said, my voice low, just for him. He flinched, startled, as if he'd forgotten I was standing right there.

"Yeah?" he mumbled into his cereal.

"You wanna do me a favor?" I asked. "I was gonna go check on the den, see how the boards are holding up. Make sure no snow is getting in. But I don't want to go by myself. It's kinda… creepy in there now."

It was a lie, of course. I'm not scared of the den. But it was a good lie. It gave him a role. A purpose. He wasn't the victim being rescued. He was the friend, helping me out.

He looked up at me, his spoon hovering over his bowl. I could see the confusion in his eyes, the suspicion. He was probably trying to figure out my angle. My ulterior motive.

So I gave him my secret weapon. The one that has never failed me. I let my ears droop just a little. I widened my eyes. I gave him the full, uncut, high-potency puppy-dog look.

"Please?" I whispered.

A million different emotions flickered across his face. Doubt. Fear. Annoyance. But then… something else. A flicker of reluctant acceptance. He was still trapped, but I had, at least, found the right key.

He let out a long, slow sigh. "Okay, Rofi," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "Okay. I'll go with you."

My tail started wagging again, a slow, happy rhythm. Yes! It was a small victory, but it was a victory nonetheless. I had given him a way out. A way back to the quiet, one-on-one space where he seemed to feel, if not safe, then at least… safer.

"Awesome!" I said, turning to the others. "We're gonna go on a damage assessment mission. We'll be right back."

Theo nodded, his eyes full of a quiet understanding. He knew exactly what I was doing. Artemis just grunted into his mug, which was his version of a blessing.

I put my mug in the sink and gave Leo a gentle nudge towards the door. "Come on, partner," I said, my voice back to its usual cheerful volume. "Let's go be brave together."

He didn't smile. But he did follow me. And for now, that was more than enough.

Chapter Text

(Leo's POV)

The den was colder than the rest of the house. It was a damp, biting cold that had nothing to do with the furnace and everything to do with the hastily nailed boards over the window. The air smelled of sawdust, wet plaster, and the sharp, clean scent of the blizzard outside. It was the smell of a wound.

I stood in the doorway, my paws frozen to the floorboards. Rofi was already inside, his head tilted as he examined the makeshift repair job Theo and Hunter had done. The sight of the room, the scene of my breakdown yesterday, sent a fresh wave of shame washing over me. The air mattress, now deflated and folded in a corner, was a silent testament to my weakness. The faint outline in the carpet where Theo's favorite armchair used to be was an accusation.

"Looks like they did a pretty good job," Rofi said, his voice echoing slightly in the empty room. He ran a paw over the plywood, his claws making a soft scratching sound. "It's not pretty, but it's holding. No snow getting in."

I just nodded, unable to speak. My gaze was fixed on the window. On the jagged hole in the wall. On the splintered wood of the frame. My dream. The memory of it was so vivid, so visceral, it was like it was happening all over again. The crack of lightning. The plummeting branch. The feeling of tackling Rofi, of bracing for an impact that never came… until it did. In real life.

It's my fault, the familiar, insidious voice whispered in my head. I dreamed it. I made it happen. I brought this destruction into this peaceful house.

I could feel the panic starting to build again, a tightening in my chest, a shortness of breath. The walls of the room seemed to be closing in on me. I needed to get out. I needed to run.

"Leo?" Rofi's voice cut through the fog. He had turned to look at me, his expression full of a concern that I didn't deserve. "You okay? You're looking a little pale."

"I'm fine," I lied, the word tasting like ash in my mouth. "It's just… cold in here."

He didn't look convinced. He took a step towards me, his brow furrowed. "Yeah, it is." He looked around the room, at the bare walls and the empty spaces. "It feels… sad in here now, doesn't it?"

I was so startled by the observation, by the simple, honest truth of it, that I could only nod again. "Yeah. It does."

He sighed, a long, slow exhalation of breath that turned into a small white cloud in the cold air. He walked over to the wall opposite the broken window and slid down to sit on the floor, leaning his back against the plaster. He patted the space next to him on the carpet.

"Come on," he said softly. "Sit with me for a minute. My paws are tired."

I shouldn't have. I should have made an excuse. I should have fled. But my legs, seemingly of their own accord, carried me across the room. I sat down next to him, pulling my knees to my chest, wrapping my tail around my paws. I kept a careful, deliberate distance between us, a buffer zone of at least a foot.

We sat in silence for a long time. It wasn't a comfortable silence. It was thick with unspoken things, with the weight of the last ten years and the last twenty-four hours. I stared at the boarded-up window, my mind a maelstrom of guilt and fear.

I was so lost in my own head that I almost didn't hear him when he spoke.

"I had a bad dream last night, too," he said, his voice quiet and low.

(Rofi's POV)

I watched him as he stared at the window. He was a million miles away, lost in that dark, scary place inside his own head. I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his tail was wrapped around himself like a shield. He was so fragile, so brittle, I was afraid he might just shatter, like the windowpane.

I had to do something. But what? My usual tactics—jokes, distractions, relentless positivity—they weren't going to work here. They would just bounce off the thick wall of his guilt. I needed to try something else. Something… real.

So I sat down. And I invited him to sit with me. And to my surprise, he did. He sat down like a little, self-contained statue of anxiety, all sharp angles and defensive postures. But he was here. He hadn't run away. That was a start.

We sat in silence. I could feel the misery radiating off him. It was a cold, heavy thing. And I realized that I couldn't pull him out of it. Not by myself. So maybe… maybe I could join him in it. Just for a minute.

"I had a bad dream last night, too," I said. The words felt heavy and strange in my mouth. I don't talk about my bad dreams. Not to anyone. They're my own private darkness, the one place my sunny disposition can't reach.

He turned his head to look at me, his eyes wide with surprise. The first genuine, un-panicked expression I'd seen on his face all morning. "You did?"

I nodded, looking down at my own paws. "Yeah. I have them sometimes. My mom calls them my 'mean dreams.'" I tried for a small, self-deprecating laugh, but it came out weak. "Stupid, I know."

"No, it's not," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "What… what was it about?"

I took a deep breath. This was the hard part. The vulnerable part. "It was about my dad," I said. "He was… he was yelling at me. Like he used to. Telling me I was a disappointment. That I'd never amount to anything. That I was a screw-up for not being a doctor, for just being a PA."

The words hung in the cold air between us. It was an old hurt, a familiar one, but saying it out loud to someone else… to him… it felt raw. Exposed.

"He, uh… he wanted me to be a surgeon," I continued, my voice a little shaky. "He had my whole life planned out. And when I told him I wanted to be a PA, that I wanted to help people without the… the pressure, the prestige… he didn't take it well." I finally risked a glance at him. He was listening. Really listening. His gaze was fixed on me, his expression unreadable.

"I woke up and my heart was pounding," I admitted. "And for a second, I… I believed it. I believed I was a failure. It felt so real."

(Leo's POV)

I listened to him, my own anxieties momentarily forgotten. Rofi. Cheerful, confident, energetic Rofi. The dog who seemed to have it all figured out, who was so effortlessly himself. He had… demons. Just like me. His were different, they wore a different face, but they were there. In the quiet of the night, they whispered the same poison into his ears that mine whispered into mine. You're not good enough. You're a disappointment. You're a failure.

For the first time since I'd returned, I saw him not as a symbol of my own past, not as a caretaker or a potential judge, but as… a person. A person who was just as capable of being hurt, of being scared, as I was.

And in that moment, something inside me shifted. A tiny, tectonic plate of my own self-absorption slid into a new position. He wasn't just being nice to me because he pitied me. He was being kind to me because he understood.

"You're not a failure, Rofi," I said, and the words came out with a firmness that surprised me. My voice was still quiet, but it was steady. "You're… you're the most capable person I know. You saved my foot yesterday. You're the one everyone relies on. You're… amazing."

The last word hung in the air, shimmering with a terrifying sincerity. I couldn't believe I'd said it. My face flushed hot with embarrassment.

But Rofi didn't laugh. He didn't look away. He just looked at me, and his eyes were shining. A slow, genuine smile spread across his face. It was a different kind of smile than his usual boisterous grins. This one was smaller, softer. And it reached all the way to his eyes.

"Thanks, Leo," he said, his voice thick with emotion. "That… that means a lot. Coming from you."

He nudged my shoulder with his, a gentle, playful bump. And this time, I didn't flinch. I didn't pull away. I let myself lean into the touch, just for a second. The foot of distance between us suddenly felt… smaller.

The den was still cold. The window was still broken. The smell of the wound was still in the air. But it wasn't as lonely anymore. It was a shared space. A shared silence. A shared brokenness.

And for the first time, that felt less like a tragedy, and more like a beginning.

And for the first time, that felt less like a tragedy, and more like a beginning.

Chapter Text

The sound was subtle at first, almost unnoticeable beneath the everyday noises of the house—the murmur of conversation from the living room, the clatter of pans from the kitchen where Artemis was, once again, working his culinary magic. It was a soft, rhythmic drip… drip… drip… coming from outside.

A few days ago, I wouldn’t have even registered it. But after the profound, muffling silence of the blizzard, it sounded as loud as a drumbeat. I was sitting on the couch, pretending to read a book I’d found on Theo’s shelf, but my attention was snagged by that sound. I got up and walked to the front window, peering through a small gap in the curtains.

The world was changing. The pristine, monolithic mountains of snow were starting to lose their sharp edges. The brilliant, almost blinding white was becoming duller, heavier, waterlogged. And from the edge of the roof, a steady trickle of water was falling, hitting the porch railing with that persistent, rhythmic drip. The thaw had begun.

The sight should have been a relief. It was a sign of progress, of a return to normalcy. It meant the roads would soon be clear. The power lines would be repaired. My flight would be rescheduled. It meant freedom. It meant escape.

So why did it feel like a death sentence?

A cold, heavy dread pooled in my stomach, a feeling I was intimately familiar with. This was the feeling that had been my constant companion for the past year. The feeling I had been so desperate to flee. The feeling of being trapped. But the trap had changed. It was no longer the town itself, but the thought of leaving it.

Leaving him.

Rofi was sitting on the floor across the room, deep in conversation with Ollie. They were talking about some video game, their heads bent together over Ollie’s laptop. Rofi was listening intently, his expression open and engaged, his tail giving a soft, lazy thump on the rug every now and then. He looked… happy. Content. He looked like he belonged here.

And I was a ghost. A temporary visitor. A footnote in his life, soon to be erased again.

The fragile peace I had found in the den with him yesterday, the shared vulnerability, the tentative connection—it all felt like a fantasy now. A beautiful, impossible dream that was melting away with the snow. Reality was the drip, drip, drip of the water outside, each drop a tick of a clock counting down to my departure.

You have to tell him, a voice in my head said. It was a calm, rational voice, which made it all the more terrifying. You can’t just… let this continue. You can’t let him think you’re staying.

The thought of that conversation made me physically ill. How would I even begin? “Hey, Rofi, thanks for saving my life and sharing your deepest insecurities with me. By the way, I’m leaving forever as soon as the roads are clear. K, thanks, bye.”

I could picture his face. The smile faltering. The light in his eyes dimming. The confusion, the hurt. The same crushed look he’d had when we were kids, a look I had sworn I would never cause again. And yet, here I was, poised to do it all over again. Only this time, it would be worse. So much worse.

Because this time, there was hope. This time, there was the memory of his arm around me in the dark, the scent of him, the sound of his steady breathing. This time, there was the shared secret of our “mean dreams.” This time, there was something real to lose.

I felt a wave of self-loathing so intense it made me dizzy. I was a coward. A selfish, pathetic coward. I had come back to this town, a place I knew was full of ghosts, and I had been too afraid to even speak to the most important person from my past. And now, through a random act of God—a snowstorm—I had been thrown back into his life, and I was doing it all wrong. I was letting him get close. I was letting myself feel something. I was building a house of cards on a foundation of lies.

“Leo? You okay?”

It was Hunter. He had come to stand beside me at the window, a mug of what smelled like hot chocolate in his paws. He was looking at me with his usual friendly, uncomplicated concern.

“Yeah,” I lied, my voice hoarse. “Just… watching the snow melt.”

“Sweet,” he said, taking a sip from his mug. “Means I can get back to the gym soon. My gains are weeping.” He flexed a bicep, and it was so absurd, so typically Hunter, that it almost made me smile.

“But,” he added, his voice dropping a little, “it also means the party’s almost over, huh?”

I looked at him, surprised. For a goofy, muscle-bound raccoon, he could be surprisingly perceptive.

“Yeah,” I said, my gaze drifting back to Rofi. “I guess it is.”

“You gonna stick around this time?” he asked, his tone casual, but his eyes were sharp. “Or are you gonna pull another disappearing act?”

The question hit me like a physical blow. “What?”

He shrugged, taking another sip of his hot chocolate. “Rofi told me you’ve been back in town for a year. And that he only just saw you two days ago. Dude’s been pretty torn up about it. Pretends he’s not, but he is.”

Shame, hot and acidic, rose in my throat. Of course Rofi had told him. They were friends. Of course Hunter knew. They all probably knew. They probably all talked about it. The sad, pathetic snow leopard who was too scared to even say hello to his old best friend.

“It’s complicated,” I mumbled, my eyes fixed on the floor.

“Is it?” Hunter asked, his voice gentle but firm. “Or are you making it complicated? Look, man, I don’t know your life. But I know that dog over there. And he’s a good dude. The best. And he missed you. A lot.” He clapped a heavy, warm paw on my shoulder. “Whatever you’re gonna do, just… be straight with him. He can handle it. He’s stronger than you think.”

He gave my shoulder a squeeze and then walked away, leaving me alone with his words and the steady, relentless drip, drip, drip from outside.

He was right. Hunter, the happy-go-lucky jock, was right. I was the one making it complicated. I was the one hiding, the one running. And I was hurting people. I was hurting him.

I looked over at Rofi again. He had looked up from the laptop and was watching me, a small, questioning smile on his face. He caught my eye and gave a little wave. My heart ached. It was a physical, painful throb in my chest.

I had to tell him. I had to tell him the truth. I had to watch that smile fade from his face, and I had to live with the consequences. It was the right thing to do. The only thing to do.

But as I stood there, frozen to the spot, I knew with a sickening certainty that I wasn’t going to do it. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. I was going to keep my secret, and I was going to let this beautiful, fragile thing between us grow, even though I knew I was the one who was going to have to kill it.

I was a coward. And I hated myself for it.

Chapter Text

The conversation with Ollie was a welcome distraction. We were deep in the weeds, debating the narrative merits of a branching dialogue system in his favorite RPG, “Tales of Weal and Woe.” Ollie, when he got going on a topic he was passionate about, was a force of nature. The stutter vanished, the shyness melted away, and he became this articulate, passionate analyst. It was awesome.

But even as I was nodding along to his point about player agency, part of my attention was elsewhere. It was on the silent, brooding figure by the window. Leo.

He’d been standing there for a while, just staring out at the melting snow. I saw Hunter go over to talk to him. I saw the heavy paw on the shoulder. And I saw the way Leo seemed to shrink in on himself after Hunter walked away. He looked like he was carrying the weight of the whole world on his shoulders. I wanted to go to him, to ask what was wrong, but I knew it would be like trying to approach a startled deer. One wrong move and he’d be gone.

I was trying to figure out a new plan, a new mission, a new way to get him out of his own head, when my phone, which I’d left on the coffee table, started to buzz. The screen lit up with a picture of a smiling golden retriever and the name: “Mom.”

My stomach immediately tied itself into a knot. A familiar, cold dread washed over me, a feeling completely at odds with the warm, cheerful atmosphere of Theo’s living room. I loved my mom, I really did. But talking to her was… a minefield.

“Oh, uh, sorry, Ollie,” I said, cutting him off mid-sentence. “I gotta take this. Be right back.”

He nodded, his focus already returning to the glowing screen of his laptop. I grabbed the phone and quickly walked out of the living room and into the relative privacy of the kitchen, my heart thumping a nervous rhythm against my ribs. I swiped to answer, bracing myself.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, trying to inject a note of cheerfulness into my voice that I absolutely did not feel.

“Rofi, darling! Finally! I’ve been calling for days! Your father and I have been worried sick! A tree on the power line? Are you alright? Are you warm? Are you eating properly?”

Her voice was a torrent, a wave of frantic energy that was so different from Theo’s calm, reassuring presence. It was the energy of anxiety, of control disguised as concern. I could picture her perfectly, pacing back and forth in her pristine, beige living room, her cordless phone clutched in a white-knuckled grip.

“I’m fine, Mom. I’m great,” I said, leaning against the counter. “I’m staying at a neighbor’s house. He has power. It’s really nice. There’s a whole group of us here. It’s actually been… kinda fun.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. I knew what was coming.

“Fun?” she repeated, her voice dripping with disapproval. “Rofi, there’s a state of emergency. This isn’t a vacation. Are you being responsible? You’re not just… goofing off, are you? Your father says you need to be careful who you associate with. Are these people… good people?”

Here we go. “They’re my neighbors, Mom. They’re wonderful people. The host, Theo, is incredibly kind. And Artemis and Ollie are here, you know them. And Hunter, he’s a friend from the gym.” I hesitated, my heart giving a little flutter. “And… Leo is here.”

The silence on the other end of the line was so profound I thought she might have hung up.

“Leo?” she finally said, her voice sharp, suspicious. “Your old friend? The one who… left?”

The way she said the word “left” made it sound like a crime. Like he had personally betrayed our entire family.

“Yeah, Mom,” I said, my grip tightening on the phone. “He’s back in town. He lives just down the street. His power was out, too.”

“Well, I never,” she sniffed. “After all these years. Not a word. And he just shows up on your doorstep? The nerve. Your father will not be pleased to hear this. He always said that boy was a bad influence. Too quiet. Too… moody.”

A hot spike of anger shot through me. It was an old, familiar anger, the kind that had simmered under my skin for most of my childhood. “He’s not a bad influence, Mom. He’s my friend. And he didn’t just ‘show up on my doorstep.’ He’s my neighbor, and he needed help. And I’m helping him. It’s what good people do.”

“Don’t you take that tone with me, young man,” she snapped. “I’m just concerned for your well-being. You’re too trusting, Rofi. You always have been. You let people walk all over you.”

I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose. This was the core of it. The fundamental difference in how we saw the world. She saw danger, threats, and potential betrayals. I saw neighbors, friends, and people who needed help. Her love was a fortress, with high walls and a locked gate. Mine was an open door.

“I have to go, Mom,” I said, my voice flat. “My… uh… my phone is about to die.” A lie, but a necessary one.

“Well, you should have charged it!” she huffed. “Call me back as soon as you can. And Rofi?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful around that Leo boy,” she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “There’s a sadness to him. Don’t let him drag you down.”

And then she hung up.

I stood there in the quiet kitchen, the dial tone buzzing in my ear. The anger had faded, replaced by a deep, weary sadness. She wasn’t wrong about Leo. There was a sadness to him. A profound, soul-deep sadness that clung to him like his own shadow. But she was wrong about everything else. It wasn’t something to be avoided. It wasn’t a disease he was going to spread. It was… a part of him. A part of him that needed to be handled with care. A part of him that needed… a friend.

I thought about my “mean dreams.” About my father’s disappointed face, his cutting words. My own sadness. My own secret baggage. We were all just carrying our own invisible burdens, weren’t we? Leo’s was just… heavier than most.

I took a deep breath, trying to shake off the suffocating weight of my mother’s anxiety. I had to get back out there. I had to get back to him. He needed me. And maybe, just maybe, I needed him, too.

I pushed myself off the counter and walked back into the living room, forcing a smile onto my face. It felt a little brittle, a little fake, but it was the best I could do. I was Rofi. I was the cheerful one. The one who didn’t get dragged down. It was a role I had been playing my whole life. And most of the time, I was pretty good at it.

But as I saw Leo, still standing by the window, looking so lost and alone, I felt the mask slip, just for a second. And I wondered, with a sudden, sharp pang of fear, if my mother was right. I wondered if his sadness was a current too strong for me to swim against. I wondered if we were both just going to end up drowning.

Chapter Text

The rest of the afternoon passed in a strange, tense haze. I tried to keep to myself, retreating back to the corner of the couch with my book, but my focus was shot. The words on the page were just meaningless black squiggles. My mind was a frantic hamster on a wheel, replaying Hunter’s words, the sight of the melting snow, and the look on Rofi’s face when he came back from his phone call.

He’d been different. The smile was there, the bright, energetic Rofi-smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. There was a new tension in his shoulders, a subtle dimming of his usual high-wattage energy. Something had happened on that call. Something that had upset him. I wanted to ask, to offer some small measure of the comfort he had so freely given me, but I didn’t know how. The words were stuck in my throat, tangled in the web of my own cowardice and deceit.

So I said nothing. I just watched him from behind the shield of my book as he tried to re-engage with Ollie, his laughter a little too loud, his movements a little too jerky. He was hurting, and I was a silent, useless observer.

Dinner was a quiet affair, at least for me. Artemis had made a spectacular-looking lasagna, and the others were all laughing and talking, their voices a warm, comforting buzz. I ate mechanically, my food tasteless, the conversation flowing around me like a language I had forgotten how to speak. Rofi sat next to me, and our legs brushed against each other under the table. The contact was electric, a jolt of warmth that was both a comfort and an agony. It was a reminder of what I was going to lose. What I was going to throw away.

After dinner, Ollie suggested a movie. It was a popular choice. Theo, ever the gracious host, got the projector in the basement set up, while Hunter and Artemis argued good-naturedly about the proper popcorn-to-butter ratio. I found myself swept along with the group, a piece of driftwood in the current of their enthusiasm.

We were all settling in on the various couches and beanbags in Theo’s cozy basement when it happened.

Ollie, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor, looked up at me and Rofi, who had ended up sharing a small loveseat. There was an innocent, curious expression on his face.

“So,” he said, his voice soft but clear in the pre-movie quiet. “Are you two, like… together? Or…?”

The question hung in the air, a sudden, sharp object in the comfortable, dimly lit room. The world seemed to stop. The friendly chatter died. The rustling of popcorn bags ceased. Everyone was looking at us.

My blood ran cold. My mind went completely, terrifyingly blank. It was as if a switch had been flipped, cutting power to my entire brain. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. I could only feel the sudden, intense heat of a dozen pairs of eyes on me.

Together? The word echoed in the silent, cavernous space of my skull. What does that even mean? What are we? We were a decade of silence. We were a chance encounter in a snowstorm. We were a shared bed and a whispered confession in a broken room. We were a lie, a ticking time bomb, a tragedy waiting to happen.

I felt Rofi shift beside me. I couldn’t look at him. I was terrified of what I would see in his eyes. Confusion? Hope? Annoyance? Was he waiting for me to answer? What was the right answer? What was the safe answer? A “no” would be a denial, a rejection, a slap in the face after everything. A “yes” would be a lie, a cruel, unforgivable lie that would make the inevitable end a thousand times more painful.

My mouth opened, but no sound came out. I was paralyzed, trapped in the blinding headlights of Ollie’s innocent, devastating question.

It was Rofi who finally broke the silence. He let out a short, easy laugh, a sound so normal, so unconcerned, that it was like a splash of cold water to my face.

“Whoa there, Ollie,” he said, his voice full of a playful, teasing warmth. “Buying me dinner first is traditional, you know.”

Hunter snorted with laughter. Artemis let out a dry chuckle. Theo smiled, a gentle, knowing smile. The tension in the room instantly evaporated, dissipated by the sheer force of Rofi’s casual, disarming charm. He had, once again, saved me. He had deflected the question, turned it into a joke, and shielded me from having to answer.

But as the others started talking again, as the movie started to play, I was still frozen. Because Rofi’s answer hadn’t actually been an answer. It wasn’t a “yes.” And it wasn’t a “no.” It was a perfect, elegant, non-committal deflection. It was a shield not just for me, but for him, too.

And that, somehow, was worse.

It meant he didn’t know either. It meant he was just as uncertain about this… this thing between us as I was. Or, even more terrifyingly, it meant he knew exactly what this was—a temporary, circumstantial reunion—and he was just being kind, playing along until the snow melted and the ghost in his house finally moved on.

I risked a glance at him. He was watching the movie, his face illuminated by the flickering light from the screen. His expression was relaxed, his smile easy. He looked completely untroubled. But I could see the subtle tension in his jaw, the way his paw was rhythmically tapping against his knee. He wasn’t as calm as he was pretending to be.

Ollie’s question had been a stone thrown into a still pond. And now the ripples were spreading, distorting everything. What were we? Were we friends? Best friends, reunited after a decade? Were we something more? Something new? Something fragile and undefined that was growing in the strange, insulated world of this snowbound house?

I wanted to be. I wanted it with an ache so sharp, so profound, it felt like a physical pain. I wanted to be “together” with him. I wanted to be able to say “yes” and have it be the truth. I wanted to build a life with him, a real one, one that wasn’t built on a foundation of secrets and lies.

But I couldn’t. I had a plan. A one-way ticket out of this town, out of this life. A plan that was, with every passing moment, feeling less like an escape and more like a self-inflicted wound.

The movie played on, a generic comedy full of loud noises and bright colors. I didn’t see a single frame of it. I just sat there in the dark, next to the warm, solid, and suddenly unknowable presence of the dog I was pretty sure I was falling in love with, and I felt like I was being torn in two.

Chapter Text

My inventory was a mess. I’d been putting off organizing it for weeks, and now it was a chaotic jumble of crafting materials, duplicate armor sets, and quest items from storylines I’d completed ages ago. It was inefficient. It was illogical. And it was starting to give me a low-grade, background hum of anxiety..

I was sitting on the floor of my temporary room, my laptop humming softly in front of me. The movie downstairs was still going, but the loud noises and predictable plot twists were more of a distraction than an entertainment. My mind, as it often did, felt more at home in the structured, rule-based world of “Tales of Weal and Woe.” Here, things made sense. If you gathered the right materials and had a high enough skill level, you could craft a superior piece of armor. If you followed the quest markers, you would find your objective. Actions had clear, predictable consequences.

Real life was… messier.

I hadn’t meant to cause a problem with my question. It was a logical inquiry, based on the available data. Data point A: Rofi and Leo have a shared history. Data point B: They have been almost inseparable since Leo’s arrival. Data point C: They slept in the same room, and the ambient emotional energy between them is… significant. The logical conclusion was to inquire about their relationship status. It was, in its own way, a form of inventory management. I was trying to sort the people around me into the correct categories. Friends. Roommates. Romantic partners.

But my question had landed like a critical hit in the middle of a friendly sparring match. The silence that followed was… uncomfortable. I saw the look on Leo’s face. It was a look I knew very well. It was the look of a player character who has accidentally triggered a high-level boss fight they are absolutely not prepared for. Pure, wide-eyed panic.

I felt a hot flush of shame. I had been clumsy. I had been indelicate. I had taken a complex, multi-faceted social situation and tried to apply a binary sorting algorithm to it. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Rofi, of course, had handled it with his usual high-charisma stat. He’d used a deflection, a joke, a perfect conversational parry that had reset the room’s aggro meter back to neutral. He was good at that. He was the group’s tank, in a way. Drawing all the attention, absorbing all the social damage.

But I had seen the look in his eyes, too. A flicker of something I couldn’t quite identify. It wasn’t panic, not like Leo’s. It was… something more complicated. Something that looked a lot like the face my own character makes when they’re trying to solve a particularly difficult puzzle.

I sighed, dragging a stack of Iron Ingots into my storage chest. The problem was, I liked them. Both of them. Rofi was… Rofi. He was sunshine and boundless energy and he never, ever made me feel weird for infodumping about the lore of the Wealish Empire for twenty minutes straight. He just listened, and asked questions, and seemed genuinely interested.

And Leo… Leo was quiet. He was a closed book. But he wasn’t an empty one. I could see the stories behind his eyes. He was like one of those tragic, non-player characters you find in the corner of a tavern, the ones with a questline full of heartbreak and unresolved history. The ones you know are going to have the best, most emotionally resonant story arc if you can just figure out the right dialogue options to unlock it.

When he’d looked at my gaming setup, he hadn’t just seen a bunch of monitors. He’d seen the potential. He’d understood the desire for immersion, for a world that was more compelling than the real one. He got it. And when he talked about preferring stories that grappled with real-world pain, I felt a kinship with him. He wasn’t afraid of the dark parts of the story. He knew that’s where the best loot was hidden.

There was a soft knock on my door. I jumped, my heart doing a nervous flutter-kick in my chest.

“Uh, y-yes?” I stammered.

The door opened a crack, and Artemis’s head poked in. “Hey,” he said, his voice low. “You’re not still beating yourself up about that, are you?”

I looked down at my keyboard, my face burning. “I… I was clumsy. I made it weird.”

He came into the room, closing the door softly behind him. He came and sat on the floor next to me, leaning against the wall. He smelled like buttered popcorn and his usual, faint scent of cedar and sarcasm.

“It was already weird, Ollie,” he said gently. “You just… said the quiet part out loud.”

“But Leo looked so… scared,” I whispered.

“Leo always looks scared,” Artemis countered, not unkindly. “That’s, like, his default setting. But you’re not wrong. He looked extra scared.” He was quiet for a moment, watching the screen of my laptop. “You know, for a guy who spends all his time fighting dragons and saving kingdoms, you’re not very good at fighting your own battles.”

“It’s different,” I mumbled. “In the game, I know the rules.”

“So?” he said. “The rules in here aren’t that different. You just have to pay attention.” He nudged my shoulder. “What does your game teach you?”

The question caught me off guard. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what’s the point of it all?” he asked. “All the quests, the grinding, the leveling up. What’s the goal?”

“To… to complete the story,” I said. “To see the world, to help people, to become stronger. To protect the people you care about.”

“Exactly,” he said, a rare, genuine smile touching his beak. “To protect the people you care about. You have a high perception stat, Ollie. Higher than anyone else in this house. You see things other people miss.”

I looked at him, confused. “I do?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You were the one who figured out the circuit breaker. You’re the one who knows everyone’s favorite kind of tea. And you’re the one who sees that Leo and Rofi are… whatever they are. And that it’s important. And fragile.”

He leaned his head back against the wall, looking up at the ceiling. “Look. All I’m saying is, don’t let a little social awkwardness stop you from doing what you’re good at. Which is caring. You care about them. So just… keep doing that. Don’t be afraid to talk to them. Just… maybe use a few more dialogue options next time. Don’t just jump to the final boss question.”

I looked at my screen, at my character standing at a crossroads. One path led to the dark woods, the other to the bustling city. A choice. Everything was always about choices.

“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay. I can do that.”

He nodded, satisfied. “Good.” He stood up, stretching his wings. “Now, are you going to come finish this terrible movie with us, or are you going to stay up here and organize your virtual sock drawer all night?”

“It’s not a sock drawer,” I mumbled, but a small smile was playing on my lips. “It’s a… a reagent bank.”

“Whatever, nerd,” he said, his voice full of an affection he would never admit to. “Come on. Hunter’s about to start quoting all the lines, and it’s my sworn duty to make fun of him for it.”

He left, leaving the door open. I looked back at my screen, at the messy inventory. It was still illogical. It was still inefficient. But it didn’t seem as important anymore. The real quest wasn’t on the screen. It was downstairs, in the messy, illogical, and beautiful world of my friends.

I saved my game, closed my laptop, and went to join them.

Chapter Text

(Rofi’s POV)

The movie ended, as most comedies do, with a big, loud, happy ending. The guy got the girl, the misunderstanding was cleared up, and everyone hugged it out. Credits rolled over a peppy pop song. Hunter, who had indeed been quoting lines for the last twenty minutes, cheered loudly. Artemis rolled his eyes so hard I was surprised he didn’t sprain something. It was all very normal. Very… easy.

But my heart felt like a lead weight in my chest. My joke, my easy deflection of Ollie’s question, had worked. It had smoothed over the awkwardness, made everyone laugh, and, most importantly, it had taken the spotlight off Leo. But it felt… hollow. It felt like a lie.

Because I had seen the look on Leo’s face. In the split second before I’d jumped in with my stupid joke, I’d seen the sheer, unadulterated terror in his eyes. He looked like a cornered animal. And I was the one who had cornered him. Not Ollie. Me. I was the one who had created this… this thing between us, this undefined, emotionally charged space. This love is good, this love is alive, but it was also terrifying. I had pushed for it. I had wanted it. And I had been so focused on what I wanted—on having him back in my life—that I hadn’t stopped to think about whether he was ready for it, or if I closed my fist around something delicate.

After the movie, people started to drift upstairs. Theo, ever the responsible host, began collecting empty popcorn bowls. Ollie and Artemis were having a quiet, whispered conversation that I was pretty sure was about me and Leo. I felt like a bug under a microscope. Is it cool that I said all that? I wondered, my own joke turning sour in my stomach. Is it chill that you’re in my head?

I needed some air. “Hey, I’m gonna… uh… check on the porch,” I mumbled to no one in particular, and slipped out of the basement before anyone could ask any questions.

The kitchen was dark and quiet. I didn’t turn on the light. I just walked to the back door and stepped out onto the small, covered porch. The cold was a shock, a welcome, bracing slap in the face. The relentless drip-drip-drip of the melting snow was the only sound, and I was catching my breath, staring out an open door, catching my death.

I leaned against the railing, the rough, cold wood pressing against my back, and looked out at the transformed world. The moonlight was bright on the snow, making it glitter and sparkle. It was beautiful. But it was a sad kind of beautiful. The beauty of something ending.

“Are you two, like… together?”

Ollie’s question echoed in my head. What was the answer? What did I want the answer to be? Yes. The answer was yes. A loud, resounding, tail-waggingly enthusiastic yes. I wanted to be “together” with Leo. I wanted to be his boyfriend, his partner, his everything. I wanted to wake up next to him every morning for the rest of my life. The thought was so clear, so powerful, it almost knocked the wind out of me. You’re my Achilles heel.

But what did he want? He wanted to run. I knew it. I could feel it in his every tense muscle, in his every averted gaze. He was a flight risk. He had been since the day he moved away, and he still was now. He was a snow leopard, a solitary, elusive creature. A haunted man. And I was a dog, a loud, needy, pack animal. We were fundamentally, elementally different.

My mom’s voice whispered in my ear. “There’s a sadness to him. Don’t let him drag you down.”

Was that what I was doing? Was I trying to be a hero? Was I trying to “fix” him? The thought made me feel sick. I didn’t want to fix him. I didn’t think he was broken. He was… wounded. And I wanted to help him heal. But what if I was just making the wounds deeper? What if my presence, my affection, my need, was just salt in those wounds? Who could ever leave me, darling? But who could stay?

I thought about the stories I used to love as a kid. The ones about brave knights saving cursed princes from their towers. I had always imagined myself as the knight. The hero. The one who would slay the dragon and break the spell. For a while, it had even felt like we had the time of our lives fighting dragons together. But this wasn’t a fairy tale. Leo wasn’t a prince in a tower. He was a real person, with real, complex trauma. And maybe the last thing he needed was a clumsy, overeager dog trying to be his knight in shining armor.

Maybe he needed to save himself.

The thought was a painful one. It went against every instinct in my body. My instincts told me to protect him, to shield him, to love him so fiercely that all the sad parts of him would just… disappear. But that wasn’t love. That was… possession. It was the same kind of controlling, suffocating “love” that my parents specialized in.

I felt a wave of nausea. Was I just like them? Was my desperate need to be close to Leo just a different flavor of my parents’ desperate need to control me? The thought was horrifying. It was my deepest fear. That I would become the thing I had spent my whole life running from. Hi, I thought with a grim, internal wave, it’s me. I’m the problem, it’s me.

I pushed myself off the railing and started to pace the small porch, my paws silent on the cold wood. I had to be better. I had to be smarter. I had to… let him go. Not literally. Not yet. But I had to let go of this idea of him, this fantasy of us. I had to stop pushing. I had to give him space. I had to let him choose.

And if he chose to leave… I had to be okay with that. I think I’ve seen this film before and I didn’t like the ending. But this time, I had to be strong enough to watch him walk away again. I’d have to just sit and watch him go. And I had to do it with a smile on my face, so he wouldn’t be burdened by my own sadness.

It felt like an impossible task. It felt like being asked to rip my own heart out. But it was the only way. It was the only right thing to do. If I truly loved him, I had to be willing to lose him.

I stopped pacing and looked up at the moon, a perfect, silver disc in the inky black sky. I took a deep breath, the cold air burning my lungs. I could do this. I had to do this. I was not the hero of this story. I was a supporting character. And my role was to help the real hero find his own way home. Maybe then, long story short, he’d survive. Whatever, and wherever, that might be.

I stayed out on the porch for a long time, until the cold had seeped deep into my bones, until my heart felt a little less like a frantic, trapped bird and a little more like a steady, resolute drum. Then I went back inside, back into the warmth, back to the complicated, messy, and beautiful reality of the life I was trying so hard not to ruin.

The 12 Taylor Swift lyric references in this chapter are, in order of appearance: This Love, coney island, Delicate, cardigan, State of Grace, my tears ricochet, The Archer, Long Live, Anti-Hero, exile, tolerate it, and long story short.

Chapter Text

(Leo’s POV)

The next morning, the atmosphere in the house was… different. The thaw was more pronounced now; the dripping from the roof was a constant, steady rhythm, and patches of muddy grass were beginning to appear at the edges of the snowbanks like continents emerging from a white sea. The world was slowly returning to its normal shape. And so, it seemed, was Rofi.

He was polite. He was friendly. He smiled and made jokes and played his part as the cheerful, energetic center of the group. But something was missing. The easy intimacy, the casual touches, the shared, secret glances—they were gone. He still sat near me at breakfast, but he left a careful, deliberate space between us. When he talked to me, his eyes didn’t quite meet mine. He was treating me like he treated everyone else. Like a friend. A neighbor. A roommate.

And it was killing me.

My mind, a master of self-torture, immediately jumped to the worst possible conclusion. I had done something wrong. I had messed up. My silence after Ollie’s question, my awkward, frozen panic—it had been the final straw. I had shown him just how broken I was, and he had, quite logically, decided to back away. He had seen the full extent of my damage, and he was done. The kindness, the affection, it had all been a temporary measure, an emergency response to a crisis. And now that the crisis was over, so was the intimacy.

It was exactly what I had feared. And yet, it was a thousand times more painful than I could have imagined. The warmth of the last few days had made the cold of my own loneliness feel so much colder.

I needed to get out of the house. I couldn’t stand being in the same room with him, feeling the chasm that had opened up between us. I needed a mission. A purpose. An excuse to be anywhere else.

“I, uh… I need to go back to my apartment,” I announced to Theo, who was wiping down the already spotless kitchen counter. “I need to get some more clothes. And my laptop.”

Theo looked up, his expression full of his usual, gentle concern. “Are you sure, Leo? The roads are still pretty slushy.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said, my voice more clipped than I intended. “It’s not that far. I need the walk.”

“I can go with you!” Rofi offered from the living room. His voice was bright, helpful. But it was the voice he would have used for anyone. It wasn’t special. It wasn’t for me.

“No,” I said, too quickly. “No, it’s fine. I… I need to go alone.”

The hurt that flickered in his eyes was so fast I might have imagined it. But it was there. I had hurt him. I had rejected his offer of help, just as he seemed to be rejecting me. We were two people, standing on opposite sides of a growing canyon, throwing stones at each other.

“Okay,” he said, his voice quiet. He turned back to the TV, and that was that.

The walk to my apartment was a miserable, wet affair. The slush soaked through my boots, chilling my paws. The air was damp and heavy. The world was a dreary, grey-and-white mess, a perfect reflection of my own internal state.

When I finally reached my apartment building, I fumbled with the keys, my paws numb with cold and anxiety. The lock clicked, and I pushed the door open. The air that hit me was stale, frigid, and silent. It was the air of a tomb.

My apartment was exactly as I had left it. Neat, sterile, and empty. The boxes I had packed for my move were still stacked against the wall, silent monuments to my failed escape. The furniture was covered in white sheets, making the room look like a graveyard of a life that had never really been lived.

I walked through the silent rooms, the sound of my own footsteps echoing unnervingly. This was what I had been so desperate to get back to? This… nothingness? This profound, soul-crushing emptiness? I had been so focused on escaping the ghosts of my past that I hadn’t realized I had built myself a new prison, one of my own design.

I went into the bedroom and opened my closet. My remaining clothes hung there, limp and lifeless. I pulled out a few sweaters, a pair of jeans, and stuffed them into a backpack. I grabbed my laptop from the desk. The screen was dark, reflective. I could see my own face in it. The face of a stranger. A sad, lonely snow leopard who looked just as lost and out of place here as he did in Theo’s warm, loud, and lively house.

I stood in the middle of the living room, surrounded by the ghosts of my own making. The ghost of my ambition. The ghost of my independence. The ghost of my self-imposed isolation. They were all here, whispering to me in the silent, cold air. See? they seemed to say. This is who you are. This is where you belong. Alone.

But for the first time, I didn’t believe them.

Because my mind, my traitorous, hopeful mind, was filled with the memory of other things. The warmth of Rofi’s arm around me. The sound of his laughter. The taste of Artemis’s lasagna. The sight of Ollie’s passionate, excited face as he talked about his game. The feeling of Hunter’s heavy paw on my shoulder. The gentle, paternal kindness in Theo’s eyes.

That was real. That was life. This… this was just waiting.

I looked at the boxes again. My escape plan. My one-way ticket to a new, and probably just as lonely, life. And I felt… nothing. No excitement. No anticipation. Just a deep, weary sadness.

I didn’t belong here anymore. I had thought this apartment, this solitude, was my safe place. My fortress. But it wasn’t. It was a cage. And the door had been open all along.

I zipped up my backpack, my movements slow and deliberate. I took one last look around the sterile, empty room. It wasn’t a home. It had never been a home. It was just a place I had been hiding.

I walked out of the apartment, locking the door behind me. I didn’t look back. The walk back to Theo’s house was just as cold and wet as the walk to my apartment had been. But something had changed. The cold didn’t seem to bother me as much. The slush under my paws felt less like a miserable obstacle and more like… a path. A path that was leading me somewhere.

I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t know what I was going to say. The future was still a terrifying, unknown country. But for the first time, I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my bones, that I didn’t want to go there alone.

I reached the front door of Theo’s house and hesitated, my paw hovering over the doorknob. I could hear the sounds of life inside. Laughter. Music. The sounds of a home. My heart was pounding, but it wasn’t just with anxiety anymore. It was with something else. Something that felt a lot like hope.

I took a deep breath, and I opened the door.

Chapter Text

(Leo’s POV)

I walked back into the house feeling… different. The cold, hard knot of dread in my stomach had been replaced by a strange, fluttering warmth. It wasn’t confidence, not exactly. It was more like… resolve. I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want the cold, silent emptiness of my apartment. I didn’t want to be alone. And that knowledge, as terrifying as it was, gave me a strange sense of purpose.

I found Rofi in the kitchen, ostensibly helping Artemis prepare lunch. But he wasn’t really helping. He was just standing there, leaning against the counter, watching Artemis chop vegetables with a detached, distant look in his eyes. He looked as miserable as I felt.

The sight of him, so close and yet so far away, made the fluttering warmth in my chest ignite into a small, hot flame of frustration. This was stupid. This silence, this distance—it was a self-inflicted wound. And I was tired of bleeding.

“Can I talk to you?” I asked, my voice coming out stronger, clearer than it had in days. Both he and Artemis looked up, surprised.

Rofi’s eyes widened slightly. “Uh, yeah. Sure. What’s up?” He tried for a casual smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Alone,” I said, my gaze steady. I was done with hiding. I was done with being scared.

Artemis raised an eyebrow, wiped his knife on a towel, and made a show of leaving the kitchen. “Don’t mind me,” he said dryly. “I’ll just be in the living room, enjoying the distinct lack of emotional turmoil.” He walked out, leaving us alone in the suddenly very quiet room.

I took a deep breath. “Why are you avoiding me?”

The question was blunt, direct. It was not my usual style. But I was tired of my usual style. My usual style was what had gotten me into this mess.

Rofi flinched, his ears drooping slightly. “I’m not avoiding you,” he lied, and the lie was so obvious, so transparent, it was almost insulting.

“Yes, you are,” I insisted, taking a step closer. The flame in my chest was growing hotter. “Ever since last night. Ever since Ollie asked that… that stupid question. You’ve been treating me like… like I have the plague. What did I do wrong?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Leo,” he said, his voice low. He wouldn’t look at me. He was staring at the floor, at the space between my paws.

“Then what is it?” I pressed, my voice rising. “Are you tired of me? Are you sick of dealing with my… my issues? Was this all just some… some charity project for you? ‘Help the sad, pathetic snow leopard until the snow melts’? Is that it?”

“No!” he said, finally looking up at me. And the look in his eyes wasn’t annoyance. It wasn’t pity. It was… pain. He looked as hurt as I felt. “No, Leo, it’s not that at all. It’s the opposite.”

“Then what is it?” I almost shouted the words. “Talk to me, Rofi! For once in your life, just… just be straight with me!”

(Rofi’s POV)

His words hit me like a physical blow. “Be straight with me.” Me. The one who was always accused of being too open, too honest, too much. And he was accusing me of hiding. The irony was so bitter it almost made me laugh.

But he was right. I was hiding. I was trying to be noble. I was trying to be the “good guy,” the supporting character who selflessly steps aside. I was trying to give him space. And in doing so, I had created a chasm between us. I had hurt him. The one thing I had been trying to avoid.

“I… I was trying to give you space,” I stammered, my carefully constructed resolve from last night crumbling into dust. “I thought I was… pushing you. I thought I was being too much. I didn’t want to scare you away.”

“Scare me away?” he asked, his voice incredulous. He let out a short, harsh laugh that had no humor in it. “By being my friend? By being the only person who has made me feel… anything… in years? That’s what you think is scaring me away?”

“I don’t know what to think, Leo!” I said, my own frustration boiling over. “You’re… you’re impossible to read! One minute, you’re leaning into me, you’re telling me I’m amazing. The next, you look at me like I’m a monster. You’re hot and you’re cold, you’re here and you’re gone. I don’t know what you want from me!”

“I want you to be my friend!” he yelled, his voice cracking with an emotion he could no longer contain. “I want you to be my Rofi! The one I remember! The one who doesn’t just… give up!”

“I’m not giving up!” I yelled back, my own volume matching his. “I’m trying to protect you! And me! This is… it’s complicated, Leo! It’s not like it was when we were kids!”

“I know that!” he said, his eyes shining with unshed tears. And then he said the words that shattered my entire world.

“I’m in love with you, you idiot.”

(Leo’s POV)

The words were out. They were just… out. Hanging in the air between us, terrifying and undeniable. I hadn’t meant to say them. They had just… escaped. A desperate, frantic confession from the deepest, most guarded part of my heart.

I stared at him, my chest heaving, my heart pounding in my ears. I had done it. I had finally, irrevocably, ruined everything.

Rofi’s face was a mask of pure, unadulterated shock. His jaw was slack, his eyes wide, his ears frozen in a state of high alert. He looked like he had been struck by lightning.

We stood there for an eternity, frozen in a tableau of raw, exposed emotion. The silence was deafening, broken only by the sound of our own ragged breathing and the steady, indifferent drip-drip-drip from outside.

Then, slowly, agonizingly, his expression began to change. The shock melted away, replaced by a wave of emotion so intense, so complex, I couldn’t begin to decipher it. There was pain in his eyes, yes. But there was also… relief. And hope. And a terrifying, overwhelming tenderness.

He took a step towards me. And another. Until he was standing right in front of me, so close I could feel the heat radiating off his body. He raised a paw, his movements slow, hesitant, as if he was afraid I might bolt. He gently, so gently, cupped my cheek. His paw was warm and slightly trembling.

“Leo,” he whispered, his voice thick with a thousand unspoken things.

And then he did the one thing I was not expecting. He closed the small distance between us and he kissed me.

It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It was clumsy, and desperate, and messy. It was the kiss of two people who had been starving for something they didn’t even know they were allowed to want. It was a kiss full of a decade of missed chances and unspoken feelings and the raw, terrifying, beautiful hope of a new beginning.

When he finally pulled back, we were both breathless. He rested his forehead against mine, his eyes closed. I could feel his heart hammering against his chest, a frantic rhythm that matched my own.

“I’m in love with you, too,” he whispered, and the words were not a confession. They were a promise. A vow. A truth that settled deep in my bones and chased away the last of the cold.

The fight was over. The silence was broken. And in the quiet, messy, beautiful aftermath, something new was beginning to grow.

Chapter Text

(Leo’s POV)

My first coherent thought after the kiss was that I couldn’t feel my paws. My entire body was a livewire, humming with a frantic, joyful energy I had never experienced before. My mind, usually a chaotic whirlwind of anxiety, was completely, blessedly silent. There was only the feeling of Rofi’s forehead pressed against mine, the warmth of his paw on my cheek, and the echo of his words in my ears. “I’m in love with you, too.”

It didn’t feel real. It felt like a dream, a fantasy, a scene from one of the cheesy rom-coms Rofi loved so much. But it was real. The scent of him—dog and cinnamon and that unique, comforting Rofi-scent—was real. The slight tremor in his paw was real. The sound of his ragged breathing, a perfect match to my own, was real.

He pulled back slowly, his eyes searching mine. His face was a mess of emotions. There was relief, yes, and a deep, soul-shaking happiness that made my own heart ache with joy. But there was also a hint of fear, of uncertainty. Because the kiss, the confessions… they hadn’t solved everything. They had just… changed the shape of the problem.

We were still just two people standing in a kitchen, surrounded by the wreckage of our own making. The silence that stretched between us now wasn’t angry, but it was heavy with the weight of everything that still needed to be said.

And for the first time, I wanted to be the one to say it.

The old Leo, the one from just an hour ago, would have bolted. He would have mumbled an excuse, retreated to a corner, and spent the next several days overthinking every single second of this encounter until he had twisted it into something ugly and unrecognizable. But the old Leo was… gone. Or at least, he was quieter now. In his place was someone new. Someone who was still scared, but who was more scared of the silence than he was of the truth.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and the words were quiet, but they felt solid. Real.

Rofi’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Sorry? For what? For… for kissing me? For being in love with me? Because if that’s what you’re sorry for, then I think we have a problem.”

A small, genuine laugh escaped my lips. It felt like a foreign sound. “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Not for that. I’m… I’m not sorry for that.” I took a deep breath, gathering my courage. “I’m sorry for… for everything else. For being a coward. For pushing you away this morning. For assuming you were tired of me, when… when I was the one who was tired of myself.”

I looked down at my paws, my face flushing with a familiar shame, but I forced myself to continue. To say the words. To own my own mess.

“I was scared,” I admitted. “When you started being so… distant… I thought I’d broken something. I thought you’d finally seen how much of a wreck I am and you were… done. And instead of just talking to you, I… I retreated. It’s what I do. I run. And I’m sorry. It wasn’t fair to you.”

He listened to me, his expression softening with every word. When I finally risked a glance up at him, his eyes were full of a gentle, aching tenderness.

“Oh, Leo,” he whispered. He reached out and took both of my paws in his. His grip was warm, steady. Grounding. “I’m” the one who should be sorry. I’m the one who pulled away. I… I had this stupid, noble idea in my head that I was being ‘too much,’ that I needed to give you space to choose. I thought I was being a hero, letting you go. But I was just being an idiot. I was hurting you. And I was hurting myself. I’m so sorry.”

His apology was so sincere, so heartfelt, it disarmed me completely. We were both just… a mess. A mess of good intentions and bad communication. Two people who were so afraid of losing each other that we had almost managed to destroy the very thing we were trying to protect.

“So,” I said, a small, watery smile on my face. “We’re both idiots.”

“The biggest,” he agreed, his own smile mirroring mine. His tail, for the first time all day, gave a slow, happy thump against the kitchen cabinets.

The sound was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.

“We need to talk,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “Like, for real. No more assumptions. No more running.”

He nodded, his expression turning serious. “Yeah. We do.” He squeezed my paws. “But maybe… not here?” He glanced around the kitchen, which suddenly felt very public, very exposed.

“My room?” he suggested. “It’s private. We can… we can just sit. And talk. For as long as it takes.”

My heart did a nervous flutter-kick at the thought of being alone with him in his room, but I pushed the anxiety down. This was what I wanted. This was what I had asked for. Honesty. Intimacy. A real conversation.

“Okay,” I said, my voice steady. “Your room.”

He gave me a small, grateful smile and then let go of my paws. The loss of contact was immediate, a sudden pang of cold, but it was okay. This wasn’t a retreat. It was a regrouping.

He led the way out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Every step felt momentous, historic. We were walking towards something new, something unknown. It was terrifying. And it was wonderful.

We were about to build something real. And the first step, I knew, was to tell him the one secret I was still holding onto. The one that had the power to destroy everything we had just found.

I had to tell him I was leaving.

Chapter Text

**(Theo’s POV)**

The house had a heartbeat. It was something I’d come to learn in the years since my aunt had passed and left it to me. When it was empty, it was just a collection of wood and plaster, a silent, hollow thing. But when it was full, it came alive. The floorboards creaked with the rhythm of footsteps, the pipes hummed with the flow of hot water, and the air vibrated with the energy of the people within it. For the past week, the house had had a strong, steady, and wonderfully chaotic heartbeat.

From my vantage point in the living room, where I was pretending to read a book on arctic horticulture, I had a clear view of the kitchen. I had heard the raised voices. I had felt the sudden, sharp spike of tension in the house’s rhythm. It wasn’t my place to interfere. Artemis had made a wise retreat, and I had remained where I was, a silent, unobtrusive presence, ready to step in only if things truly escalated.

But they hadn’t escalated. They had… imploded. The shouting had stopped, replaced by a silence so profound, so heavy with unspoken things, that it was louder than the argument itself. And then, I had seen them. Leo and Rofi. Standing in the kitchen, not fighting, but… connecting. I saw Rofi reach out, saw the gentle touch, the kiss. It was a moment of such raw, private intensity that I had immediately looked down at my book, feeling like an intruder.

My own heart had ached with a familiar, bittersweet pang. It was a feeling I knew well. The ghost of a memory. The memory of another kitchen, another lifetime ago. The memory of a love that had been just as fierce, just as complicated, and just as fragile.

I’d been a young man then, not much older than Rofi. And he had been a whirlwind, a force of nature, a traveling artist who had blown into my quiet, predictable life like a summer storm. His name was Elias, and he had been my everything. Our love had been a thing of secret glances and stolen moments, of whispered conversations in quiet corners, much like the one I was witnessing now.

He had lived with me in this very house, for a time. My aunt, a woman of quiet wisdom and boundless compassion, had welcomed him with open arms. She had never asked questions, never passed judgment. She had simply made him a part of our small, unconventional family. This house had been a sanctuary for us, a safe harbor in a world that was not always kind.

But Elias had been a bird of passage. He was not meant to stay in one place for long. And I, a creature of habit and deep roots, could not bring myself to leave. Our love had been a beautiful, impossible thing. And like all impossible things, it had eventually come to an end. He had left, not with a fight, but with a quiet, tearful goodbye on a grey autumn morning. He had promised to write. He had promised to return. He never did.

For a long time, the house had been silent again. The heartbeat had faded. And I had been left with the ghosts. The ghost of his laughter in the hallway. The ghost of his paint-splattered hands on my own. The ghost of a future that had never come to be.

It had taken me years to learn how to live with those ghosts. To understand that they were not a curse, but a blessing. They were a reminder that I had loved. That I had been loved. That for a brief, shining moment, my life had been a thing of beauty and passion.

And now, I was watching two young men begin their own story in this same house. A story that was so different, and yet so achingly familiar. Leo, with his quiet, wounded spirit, so much like my own. And Rofi, with his bright, boundless energy, so much like my Elias.

I saw them walk out of the kitchen, their faces a mixture of terror and hope. They were heading upstairs, to Rofi’s room. To talk. To begin the difficult, messy, and beautiful work of building something real.

I felt a surge of fierce, paternal affection for them. For all of them. For Hunter, with his simple, good-natured strength. For Artemis, with his sharp wit and his fiercely loyal heart. For Ollie, with his quiet wisdom and his gentle soul. They had filled this house with life again. They had given it back its heartbeat. They had become my found family, my pack, my… my boys.

I knew the conversation they were about to have would be a difficult one. I knew there were still obstacles in their path. Leo’s fear. Rofi’s insecurity. The ghosts of their own pasts. But as I watched them disappear up the stairs, I felt a sense of peace. A sense of hope.

This house was a good house. It was a house built on a foundation of love and acceptance. It had been a sanctuary for me and my Elias. And now, it was a sanctuary for them. It was a place where they could be safe. A place where they could heal. A place where they could, perhaps, build a future that was not as impossible as my own had been.

I picked up my book again, but I didn’t read it. I just sat there, in the quiet living room, and I listened to the steady, rhythmic heartbeat of the house. It was a good sound. It was the sound of home.

Chapter Text

(Rofi’s POV)

The Conversation. With a capital T and a capital C. It had lasted for hours. We’d sat on the floor of my room, facing each other, and we had talked. And talked. And talked. There were tears. There were long, painful silences. There were moments of misunderstanding and moments of crystal-clear clarity. It was the hardest conversation I’d ever had in my life. And it was the best.

He told me everything. About the job offer in another city. About the plane ticket he’d bought. About the feeling of being a ghost in his own life, of his desperate need to escape. He told me about the year he’d spent in town, too afraid to call me, too ashamed to face the past. He laid all his cards on the table, his voice trembling but steady, his eyes never leaving mine.

And I listened. I didn’t interrupt. I didn’t try to fix it. I just… listened. I listened to the pain and the fear and the loneliness he had been carrying all by himself for so long. And my heart, which I had thought might break with the news of his planned departure, did something else instead. It… expanded. It made room for his sadness, for his confusion. It made room for him.

When he was done, when all the secrets were out, he looked at me, his expression stripped bare, his eyes full of a terrifying vulnerability. He was waiting for my judgment. For my anger. For me to walk away.

So I told him my own secrets. I told him about my parents, about the pressure, about the “mean dreams.” I told him about my own fear, my own insecurity, my own desperate, clumsy attempts to be the hero I thought he needed. I told him that the thought of him leaving felt like ripping a part of myself out. But I also told him that I understood. And that I would… survive. That we would survive. No matter what he chose.

We didn’t solve everything. There were no easy answers. He hadn’t un-bought the plane ticket. He hadn’t declined the job offer. The future was still a big, scary, undefined question mark. But we were facing it together. We were a “we.” And that changed everything.

Now, two days later, the house was quiet. Theo and Hunter had gone on a supply run, the roads finally being clear enough for Theo’s big truck. Artemis and Ollie were holed up in Ollie’s room, probably deep in some co-op gaming session. For the first time in what felt like forever, Leo and I were completely, totally alone.

And it was… awkward.

We were sitting on the couch in the living room, a respectable, chaste foot of space between us. The TV was on, but neither of us was watching it. We were… a couple? We were boyfriends? We had said “I love you.” We had kissed. But we had no idea what to do next. We were like two people who had just been given a strange, new piece of furniture, and we were walking around it, trying to figure out how it worked.

I had to do something. I couldn’t stand the silence. It was too much like the old silence, the one that had lasted for ten years.

“So,” I said, my voice a little too loud in the quiet room. “This is… nice.”

Leo looked at me, a small, nervous smile on his face. “Yeah. It is.”

“Just… you and me,” I continued, my brain scrambling for something, anything, to say. “Alone. In a house. With a TV. And… couches.” Smooth, Rofi. Real smooth.

He let out a little huff of a laugh. “Eloquent.”

“Hey, I’m a PA, not a poet,” I said, puffing out my chest in mock indignation. “I save lives, I don’t… write sonnets about them.”

He laughed again, a real laugh this time. The sound was like music. It made my tail give a happy thump-thump against the couch cushions.

“Okay,” I said, turning to face him, a sudden, brilliant idea blooming in my head. “This is stupid. We’re being stupid. We’re… whatever we are. And we’re alone. So… we should go on a date.”

His eyes widened. “A date? Now? Where would we even go?”

“Here!” I said, my enthusiasm growing. “It’s the perfect spot! It’s private, it’s free, and the food is… well, the food is whatever Artemis left in the fridge.” I jumped up from the couch, my mind racing. “We can have a real date. A proper one. I’ll even let you pick the movie this time. No cheesy rom-coms, I promise.”

He looked at me, a slow, beautiful smile spreading across his face. It was the kind of smile that made my stomach do a little flip-flop. “A date,” he repeated, as if tasting the word. “Okay, Rofi. Okay. Let’s go on a date.”

“Yes!” I whisper-shouted, pumping my fist in the air. “Operation: First Date is a go!”

For the next hour, we were a whirlwind of activity. I was the director, the producer, the set designer. I insisted that he go upstairs and “get ready,” while I transformed the basement into the most romantic spot in the house. I dimmed the lights, I lit a few of Theo’s scented candles (vanilla and sandalwood, very classy), and I even found a clean tablecloth to drape over the coffee table.

For food, I found a container of leftover chili that Artemis had made. It wasn’t exactly five-star cuisine, but I heated it up and put it in two nice bowls. I even found a bag of fancy-looking tortilla chips in the back of the pantry. For drinks, I poured us both glasses of water, but I put them in wine glasses, because, you know, romance.

When I was done, I stood back and admired my handiwork. It was… perfect. It was goofy, and a little bit pathetic, but it was perfect.

I went to the bottom of the stairs and called up to him. “Your chariot awaits, my good sir!”

A moment later, he appeared at the top of the stairs. He had changed into a clean, dark sweater. He had brushed his fur. He looked… handsome. So handsome it almost hurt to look at him.

He walked down the stairs, his eyes wide as he took in the scene. “Rofi,” he said, his voice soft with wonder. “What… what did you do?”

“I told you,” I said, my chest puffing out with pride. “A proper date.” I pulled out a chair for him—a dining room chair I had dragged down from upstairs—and gestured for him to sit. “Your table, monsieur.”

He laughed, a real, genuine, happy laugh, and sat down. I sat across from him, my heart feeling like it was going to beat its way out of my chest. We ate our chili and our fancy chips, and we talked. We talked about everything and nothing. About our favorite movies, about our childhood memories, about our dreams for the future. It was easy. It was natural. It was… us.

After dinner, we moved to the couch to watch the movie he had picked—a quiet, thoughtful documentary about a man who builds intricate sculptures out of driftwood. It was the kind of movie I would usually fall asleep in. But I didn’t. I was too aware of him, of his presence beside me.

Halfway through the movie, his paw, as if of its own accord, crept across the space between us and found mine. He laced his fingers through mine, his grip hesitant but firm. I looked at him, and he looked at me, and in the flickering light of the screen, I saw something in his eyes I had never seen before. Not just love. Not just hope. But… peace. He was at peace.

I squeezed his paw, and he squeezed back. We didn’t say anything. We didn’t have to. We just sat there, in the quiet, candlelit basement, our paws intertwined, and we watched the man on the screen build something beautiful out of the broken things the sea had left behind.

And I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my soul, that that was exactly what we were doing, too.

Chapter Text

(Leo’s POV)

That night, we slept in Rofi’s bed. His real bed, in his real room. It was a significant, unspoken step, a migration from the neutral, emergency-born territory of the air mattress to a space that was intimately and completely his. The room smelled of him, of clean laundry and dog and a faint, lingering trace of the vanilla and sandalwood candles from our date. It was the safest I had ever felt in my life.

We didn’t… do anything. We just slept. Curled up together, my back pressed against his chest, his arm thrown possessively over my waist. It was a mirror of that first morning in the den, but this time, there was no fear. There was no panic. There was just a quiet, profound sense of rightness. Of belonging.

For the first time in as long as I could remember, I fell asleep without the usual litany of anxieties and self-recriminations. My mind was quiet. My heart was calm. I was home.

I was woken up sometime in the deep, dark hours of the night by a sound. A small, choked whimper. It was so quiet, so full of pain, that at first, I thought it was part of my own dream.

But then I heard it again. A soft, distressed noise, followed by a sudden, violent twitch of the body behind me. I came fully awake in an instant, my heart pounding with a sudden, sharp alarm.

“Rofi?” I whispered into the darkness.

He didn’t answer. He just whimpered again, a sound so unlike his usual, cheerful self that it sent a chill down my spine. He was dreaming. One of his “mean dreams.”

I carefully, gently, untangled myself from his embrace and rolled over to face him. In the dim moonlight filtering through his window, I could see his face. It was a mask of anguish. His brow was furrowed, his lips were pulled back in a slight snarl, and his paws were twitching, his claws extending and retracting into the blankets. He was trapped. Lost in some dark, private hell.

My first instinct was my old one. Fear. A helpless, paralyzing fear. I didn’t know what to do. I was the one who had nightmares. I was the one who needed comforting. I didn’t know how to be the strong one. I didn’t have the tools.

But then I looked at his face again. At the raw, unfiltered pain etched into his features. And a new instinct, one I didn’t even know I possessed, rose up to meet the fear. It was a fierce, protective surge, a powerful, undeniable need to do something. To help him. To pull him out of whatever darkness had him in its grip.

He wasn’t the invincible, ever-cheerful hero I had always seen him as. He was just Rofi. My Rofi. And he was hurting.

“Hey,” I said, my voice soft but firm. I reached out a hesitant paw and touched his shoulder. His muscles were tense, coiled like a spring. “Hey, wake up. You’re dreaming.”

He didn’t respond. He just let out another soft cry, and his legs kicked out, tangling in the sheets. He was fighting something. Or running from it.

I had to be bolder. I shuffled closer to him, my own anxieties a distant, buzzing noise in the back of my head. I put my paw on his cheek, my thumb stroking his fur. It was damp with a cold sweat.

“Rofi,” I said, my voice louder this time, more insistent. “It’s me. It’s Leo. You’re safe. You’re here, with me. Wake up.”

I leaned in close, my own forehead almost touching his. I channeled all the warmth, all the safety, all the love I felt for him into my touch, into my voice. “Come on, Rofi. Come back to me.”

His thrashing slowly subsided. The tense lines on his face began to soften. He let out a long, shuddering breath, and his eyes, which had been moving frantically beneath his lids, grew still.

A moment later, they fluttered open. They were wide, unfocused, and full of a raw, primal fear. He stared at me, through me, as if he didn’t recognize me.

“Hey,” I whispered, my thumb still stroking his cheek. “You’re okay. You’re awake now.”

His gaze slowly, slowly came into focus. The fear began to recede, replaced by a dawning, confused recognition. “L-Leo?” he stammered, his voice thick with sleep and fear.

“I’m here,” I said, my voice trembling slightly. “You were having a nightmare.”

“Oh,” he said, a world of shame and embarrassment in that one small word. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if he couldn’t bear to look at me. “Oh, god. I’m sorry. Did I… did I wake you?”

“It’s okay,” I said, my voice fierce with a sincerity that surprised me. “Don’t be sorry. It’s okay.”

He took a shaky breath, and then another. He was still trembling, a fine, high-frequency tremor that shook his entire body. He looked… small. And vulnerable. And so, so tired.

And in that moment, I knew exactly what to do. I didn’t have to think about it. I just… did it. I slid my arm under his neck, pulled him close, and held him. I held him tight, my face buried in the warm, familiar fur of his chest. I could feel his heart hammering against my own, a frantic, terrified rhythm.

He was stiff at first, resistant. But then, slowly, he began to relax into the embrace. He let out a long, shuddering sigh, and his own arms came up to wrap around me, his hands clutching at my back as if he was afraid I might disappear. He buried his face in my shoulder, and I felt the dampness of his tears soaking through my fur.

We lay there like that for a long time, in the quiet darkness of his room. I didn’t say anything. I just held him. I poured all the comfort, all the safety, all the love I had into that simple, silent embrace. I was his anchor. His shield. His safe harbor.

I was, for the first time in my life, the one doing the comforting. And it felt… right. It felt like a part of me I had never known existed had finally clicked into place.

Eventually, the trembling stopped. His breathing deepened, evening out into a slow, steady rhythm. His grip on my back loosened. He was asleep again. A real sleep this time. A peaceful one.

I stayed awake for a long time after that, just listening to the sound of his breathing. The fear, the anxiety, the self-doubt—it was all still there, a quiet hum in the background. But it was no longer the only thing I could hear. There was a new sound now. A stronger one. The sound of his heart, beating steadily against mine. The sound of a promise. The sound of a partnership.

I was not a hero. I was not a knight in shining armor. I was just… Leo. And he was just Rofi. And we were just two people, holding each other in the dark, chasing away the nightmares, together.

And for the first time, I truly believed that that was enough.

Chapter Text

(Hunter’s POV)

My morning routine is simple. Wake up, drink a protein shake, and hit the weights. Since Theo’s basement wasn’t exactly a fully equipped gym, I’d had to get creative. I’d been using a couple of heavy-duty water jugs as makeshift dumbbells. It wasn’t perfect, but it got the blood flowing. A guy’s gotta maintain his pump, you know?

I was halfway through a set of bicep curls when the basement door opened. I glanced over, expecting to see Theo on his way to do laundry or something. But it was Leo. He was just… standing there. Watching me. He had that look on his face again. The one that made him look like a lost kitten. A really, really sad lost kitten.

“Hey, man,” I said, finishing my set and putting the water jugs down with a soft thud. “What’s up? You’re up early.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he mumbled, his eyes darting around the basement, anywhere but at me. He was fiddling with the sleeve of his sweater, a nervous habit I’d noticed he had.

I grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat off my face. “Yeah? Something on your mind?” I asked, keeping my voice casual. I’d learned that with Leo, you couldn’t be too direct. You had to… ease into it. Like stretching before a heavy lift.

He was quiet for a long time. I just let him be, pretending to be busy organizing my makeshift weights. I knew he’d talk when he was ready. Or he wouldn’t. Either way was cool with me.

“It’s… it’s about Rofi,” he finally said, his voice so quiet I had to strain to hear him.

“Figured,” I said with a nod. “You guys are… intense. It’s kinda like watching one of those nature documentaries. The ones about the weird, dramatic birds that do complicated dances to impress each other.”

A small, surprised laugh escaped his lips. “I… I don’t think we’re doing any complicated dances.”

“Dude,” I said, turning to face him, a grin on my face. “You’re always doing complicated dances. You’re the king of complicated dances. Rofi’s just… Rofi. He’s a golden retriever in a dog’s body. You throw a ball, he’ll chase it. You tell him he’s a good boy, he’ll wag his tail. It’s not that deep.”

He looked at me, a confused little frown on his face. “It… it feels deep.”

“Yeah, because you’re making it deep,” I said, sitting down on the edge of the couch. I patted the spot next to me. “Take a load off, man. You look like you’re about to vibrate through the floor.”

He hesitated for a moment, then came and sat next to me, perching on the edge of the cushion as if he was ready to bolt at any second.

“Look,” I said, my voice softening. “I’m not a genius, okay? I’m just a guy who likes to lift heavy things and eat a lot of protein. But I know a few things. And one of the things I know is Rofi. He’s my best bro. And I’ve never, ever seen him look at anyone the way he looks at you.”

Leo’s ears perked up at that. He was listening. Really listening.

“When you were gone,” I continued, “he talked about you sometimes. Not a lot. But when he did, he’d get this… this sad look in his eyes. Like he’d lost his favorite chew toy and he didn’t know where to find it. He was happy, sure. He’s Rofi. He’s always happy. But he wasn’t… whole. You know?”

Leo just nodded, his eyes wide.

“And now you’re back,” I said. “And he’s whole again. It’s that simple. He loves you, dude. Like, a lot. It’s so obvious it’s almost stupid.”

“But… what if I’m not good for him?” Leo whispered, his voice full of a genuine, painful doubt. “What if I… what if I break him?”

I sighed. This was the part I wasn’t so good at. The feelings part. But I had to try. For Rofi. And for this sad, complicated cat who had somehow become my friend.

“Leo,” I said, turning to look him straight in the eye. “You’re not gonna break him. He’s not a piece of glass. He’s… a dog. He’s strong. He’s resilient. And he’s tougher than you think. The only way you could break him is if you left again. If you… if you threw the ball and then just walked away while he was chasing it.”

The metaphor was a little clumsy, but it was the best I could do. And it seemed to land. I saw a flicker of understanding in his eyes.

“You guys are good for each other,” I said, my voice firm with a certainty I truly felt. “You’re like… yin and yang. Or… peanut butter and jelly. Or… protein and carbs. You balance each other out. He brings you out of your shell. And you… you make him think. You make him… deeper. It’s a good combo.”

I stood up and stretched, my muscles pleasantly sore. “Look. All I’m saying is, stop overthinking it. Stop trying to predict the future. Just… be here. Now. With him. Let him be happy. And for god’s sake, man, let yourself be happy, too. It’s not a trap. It’s just… life. And it’s pretty sweet, if you let it be.”

I clapped him on the shoulder, a friendly, solid gesture. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with a couple of water jugs. These pythons,” I said, flexing a bicep, “aren’t gonna feed themselves.”

I left him there, sitting on the couch, a thoughtful, contemplative look on his face. I didn’t know if I’d helped. I didn’t know if my simple, meathead wisdom had gotten through his thick skull. But I’d tried. I’d done my part.

As I picked up my weights and started my next set, I glanced over at him again. He was still sitting there. But he looked… different. A little lighter. A little less like a lost kitten, and a little more like… a leopard. A snow leopard. A strong, beautiful, and incredibly rare creature who was finally starting to realize that he wasn’t made of glass, either.

And I had a feeling that he and Rofi were going to be just fine.

Chapter Text

(Rofi’s POV)

The morning after I had the nightmare, I woke up feeling… fragile. The edges of the dream were still sharp in my mind, my father’s voice still echoing in my ears. But the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was Leo, curled up beside me, his face peaceful in sleep. He’d held me through the night, a solid, warm presence in the darkness. The memory of it, of his strength, of his quiet, unwavering support, was a balm to my frayed nerves.

We were a team. We were in this together. The thought gave me a strength I hadn’t known I possessed.

I needed it. Because that afternoon, all hell broke loose.

We were all in the living room. Hunter was trying to teach Theo how to play a video game, which was hilarious. Artemis was reading a book, occasionally making a dry, witty comment without looking up. Leo was sitting on the floor, sketching in a small notebook he’d brought back from his apartment. He looked more relaxed than I’d ever seen him, a small, contented smile on his face. I was on the couch, just… watching him. Soaking in the sight of him, so happy and peaceful. My heart felt full to bursting.

And then the doorbell rang.

It was a sharp, insistent sound, a jarring intrusion into our peaceful, snowbound world. Everyone looked up. Theo, being the host, got up to answer it.

“Are we expecting anyone?” Ollie asked, his voice a nervous whisper.

Theo just shrugged, a confused look on his face. He opened the door, and my blood ran cold.

Standing on the porch, bundled up in expensive-looking winter coats, were my parents.

My mother, a perfectly coiffed golden retriever with a look of intense, anxious disapproval on her face. And my father, a stern-faced German shepherd whose mere presence seemed to suck all the warmth out of the room. They were not supposed to be here. They were supposed to be fifty miles away, in their pristine, beige house, in their pristine, beige life.

“Mom? Dad?” I stammered, my voice barely a whisper. “What… what are you doing here?”

“Rofi, darling!” my mother exclaimed, pushing past Theo and rushing towards me. She grabbed my face in her paws, inspecting me as if I was a piece of produce she was considering buying. “We were so worried! You didn’t call back! We had to make sure you were alright! Your father insisted.”

My father stepped into the room, his eyes sweeping over the scene with a look of profound disdain. He looked at the mismatched furniture, at Hunter in his tank top, at Ollie with his laptop. He looked at all my friends, my found family, as if they were something he had scraped off the bottom of his shoe.

“This is where you’ve been staying?” he asked, his voice a low, rumbling growl of disapproval. “It looks… cluttered.”

“It’s my home, sir,” Theo said, his voice polite but firm. He was standing his ground, the quiet, dignified protector of his domain. “And these are our guests.”

My father just grunted, his gaze continuing its sweep of the room. And then, his eyes landed on Leo.

Leo had frozen, his sketchbook clutched in his paws. He looked like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. He was pale, his eyes wide with a familiar, hunted look that I hadn’t seen in days. All the progress we had made, all the peace he had found, it was all gone, shattered by the arrival of my parents.

“Well, well,” my father said, a cruel, thin smile on his face. “Look what the cat dragged in. Or, in this case, what the dog dragged in. Leo. After all these years.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Miller,” Leo said, his voice a choked whisper. He scrambled to his feet, his movements clumsy and awkward.

“Don’t you dare speak to him like that,” I snapped, my own voice shaking with a sudden, hot rage. I pulled away from my mother’s grasp and went to stand by Leo’s side, a protective, instinctive gesture. I could feel him trembling.

My father just laughed, a short, harsh sound. “Protective, are we? I see some things haven’t changed. You always did have a soft spot for strays.”

“He’s not a stray,” I said, my voice low and dangerous. “He’s my… he’s my boyfriend.”

The words hung in the air, a declaration of war. I hadn’t planned to say them. Not like this. But my father’s cruelty, his casual, dismissive bigotry, had pushed me to a place I didn’t know I had. A place of fierce, unwavering defiance.

The silence in the room was absolute. My mother gasped, her paw flying to her mouth. Hunter’s jaw was on the floor. Artemis had actually lowered his book, his eyes wide with shock. Theo’s expression was unreadable, but there was a new, hard glint in his eyes.

Leo just stared at me, his expression a mixture of terror and a fragile, dawning hope.

My father was the first to recover. He threw his head back and laughed, a loud, booming, ugly sound. “Boyfriend? Don’t be ridiculous, Rofi. You’re just confused. You’re in a stressful situation. You’re not thinking clearly.”

“I’ve never been more clear in my life,” I said, my voice ringing with a conviction that surprised even me. I reached out and took Leo’s paw in mine. It was cold as ice, but I held it tight. “I love him. And if you can’t accept that, then you can leave.”

“How dare you,” my mother whispered, her eyes filling with tears. “After everything we’ve done for you. After all the sacrifices we’ve made.”

“The sacrifices you made?” I asked, my voice dripping with a decade of repressed anger. “You mean the life you planned for me? The future you wanted? That wasn’t a sacrifice. That was a cage. And I’m done. I’m done being your perfect, obedient son. I’m a grown man. And I get to choose who I love.”

I looked at Leo, at his terrified, beautiful face. And I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my bones, that I had made the right choice.

My father’s face was a mask of thunderous rage. He took a step towards me, his hand raised as if to strike me. But he was stopped by a solid, unmovable force.

Hunter had risen to his feet and was standing between us, his arms crossed over his massive chest. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. His presence was a silent, powerful statement. You will not touch him.

My father, for the first time in his life, seemed to be at a loss for words. He looked at Hunter, at Theo, at Artemis and Ollie, who had all risen to their feet, a silent, united front. He looked at the family I had chosen, the family I had built. And he saw that he had no power here.

He let out a disgusted sigh and turned to my mother. “Come on, Helen,” he snarled. “We’re leaving. This… this is a waste of time.”

My mother gave me one last, pleading look, her eyes full of a genuine, painful confusion. “Rofi…” she whispered.

I just shook my head. There was nothing left to say.

They left, slamming the door behind them, leaving a trail of cold, silent fury in their wake. The house was quiet for a long moment. The only sound was the steady, rhythmic thump-thump-thump of my own heart.

Then, slowly, Leo’s paw squeezed mine. I looked at him. He was still pale, still trembling. But he was looking at me with an expression of such profound, overwhelming love and admiration that it took my breath away.

“You… you called me your boyfriend,” he whispered.

“Yeah,” I said, a shaky, triumphant grin spreading across my face. “I guess I did.”

The fight was over. The storm had passed. And in the aftermath, surrounded by my real family, holding the paw of the man I loved, I felt, for the first time in my entire life, completely and totally free.

Chapter Text

(Leo’s POV)

In the days following the disastrous visit from Rofi’s parents, the house settled into a new kind of normal. The atmosphere was thick with a strange mixture of triumph and trepidation. Rofi had been magnificent. He had been a warrior, a lion, standing up to the two people who had caused him so much pain, all to protect me. To protect us. He had called me his boyfriend. He had said “I love you” not as a whispered confession in a quiet kitchen, but as a defiant roar in the face of bigotry and hate.

And I had never been more proud of him. Or more terrified.

Because with every passing day, with every casual touch, with every shared smile, the secret I was still carrying felt heavier, sharper, more poisonous. He had blown up his life for me. He had severed ties with his family, the only one he had ever known, for me. And I… I was still planning to leave.

The thought was a constant, sickening thrum in the back of my mind. The plane ticket, the job offer—they were no longer a potential escape. They were a betrayal. A time bomb ticking down to the moment I would have to destroy the beautiful, fragile thing we were building.

I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t the same. That Rofi was strong. That he had his found family. That he would be okay. But I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the bone, that it would break him. After he had finally, finally stood his ground, after he had chosen me, for me to then choose to leave… it was unthinkable. It was cruel. It was the most monstrous thing I could possibly do.

And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to undo it. The fear was too deep. The habit of running was too ingrained. The idea of staying, of truly planting roots, of trusting that this happiness was real and not just a temporary illusion… it was still the most terrifying thing in the world.

And then, the anniversary came.

I woke up that morning with a familiar, hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. It took me a moment to place it. It was the ghost of an old grief, a phantom limb of a pain I had tried so hard to amputate. It was the anniversary of the day I had left. The day I had stood under our tree with Rofi, a teenager with a heart full of a love he didn’t know how to name, and told him I was moving away.

The memory was so vivid it was almost a physical presence in the room. The dappled sunlight through the leaves. The sticky sweetness of the ice cream sandwiches we were sharing. The look on his face when I told him. The way his smile had just… crumbled. The way his light had gone out. It was the single worst memory of my life. And here it was, back again, fresh and raw as if it had happened yesterday.

I slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Rofi. He was sleeping soundly, his face peaceful, free of the nightmares that had plagued him. He looked so young, so innocent. So full of a faith in me that I had done nothing to deserve.

I wandered through the quiet house, my feet carrying me to the front window. The world outside was a different place now. The snow was almost gone, replaced by the muddy, messy, and hopeful signs of spring. The thaw was complete. The roads were clear. There was nothing stopping me from leaving anymore. Nothing except my own heart.

I felt a wave of self-loathing so intense it almost brought me to my knees. I was a coward. A fraud. I was a ghost, haunting the lives of good people, pretending to be one of them. I was wearing the skin of a loving boyfriend, but underneath, I was still the same scared, selfish kid who had run away all those years ago.

I had to get out. I couldn’t breathe. The walls of this warm, happy house were closing in on me, suffocating me with a love I wasn’t worthy of.

I pulled on my boots, grabbed my coat, and slipped out the front door without leaving a note. I didn’t know where I was going. I just… walked.

My paws, seemingly with a mind of their own, carried me through the familiar streets of my childhood. Past the old movie theater. Past the library. Past the park where we used to play. Every corner was a memory. Every tree was a ghost.

And then, I was there. Standing in front of it. Our tree.

It was bigger now, its branches thicker, its roots deeper. But it was the same tree. The bark was still scarred with the initials we had carved into it one summer, a crude “L + R” inside a lopsided heart. It was still there. Faded, but still there. A permanent record of a temporary promise.

I reached out and touched the carving, my claws tracing the familiar lines. And then, the grief I had been holding back for a decade finally, finally broke through.

I slid down to the base of the tree, my back against the rough bark, and I cried. I cried for the boy I had been, and the man I had become. I cried for the friend I had abandoned, and the love I was about to destroy. I cried for all the years we had lost, and for the future I was too scared to claim. I cried until I was empty, until there were no tears left, until I was just a hollow, aching shell of a person, sitting at the foot of a tree full of ghosts.

I don’t know how long I sat there. Time had lost its meaning. But eventually, through the blur of my own misery, I heard a sound. The sound of footsteps, soft on the damp earth.

I looked up, my heart seizing with a sudden, sharp panic. And there he was.

Rofi. He was standing a few feet away, his hands shoved in his pockets, his expression a mixture of concern and a deep, knowing sadness. He wasn’t surprised to see me here. Of course he wasn’t. This was our place. He knew.

“I woke up and you were gone,” he said, his voice quiet, gentle. He didn’t sound angry. Just… sad. “I had a feeling you might be here.”

I couldn’t speak. I just looked at him, my face a mess of tears and shame.

He came and sat down next to me, his back against the tree, our shoulders brushing. He didn’t try to hug me. He didn’t try to comfort me. He just… sat with me. A silent, solid presence in the overwhelming noise of my own self-hatred.

“It’s today, isn’t it?” he asked, his voice a low murmur. “The anniversary.”

I just nodded, unable to form the words.

We sat in silence for a long time, watching the clouds drift by. The silence wasn’t empty. It was full of everything we weren’t saying. Full of the past, and the present, and the terrifying, uncertain future.

“You know,” he said finally, his gaze fixed on the horizon. “For a long time, I hated this day. I would just stay in my room, and I would be so… angry. At you. At the world. At everything.”

I flinched, the word “angry” a physical blow.

“But I’m not angry anymore,” he continued, his voice soft. He turned to look at me, his eyes full of a deep, unwavering love that I could feel in the marrow of my bones. “I’m just… glad you’re here now.”

He reached out and took my paw in his. His grip was warm, and strong, and real. “Whatever you decide to do, Leo,” he said, his voice steady and sure. “Whatever choice you make. We’ll face it together. You don’t have to be alone anymore.”

He wasn’t giving me an ultimatum. He wasn’t trying to force my hand. He was just… loving me. Unconditionally. With a grace and a strength that I had never known. He was giving me the one thing I had never had. A choice. A real choice. Not between staying and leaving. But between fear and love.

I looked at our paws, intertwined. I looked at our initials, carved into the bark of our tree. I looked at his face, at the man who had loved me through a decade of silence, who had faced down his own demons and his own family for me, who was willing to let me go if that’s what I needed.

And for the first time, the fear began to recede. Not all of it. But enough. Enough for me to see the path forward. A new path. A path that wasn’t about running away, but about running towards something. Towards him.

“I don’t want to be alone anymore,” I whispered, my voice hoarse with unshed tears. “I… I think I want to come home.”

His smile was like the sun breaking through the clouds. And in that moment, under the branches of our tree, surrounded by the ghosts of our past, I finally, finally felt like I was home, too.

Chapter Text

(Leo’s POV)

Saying the words—“I think I want to come home”—felt like setting down a burden I had been carrying for my entire adult life. A wave of relief so profound, so all-encompassing, washed over me, leaving me feeling light-headed and dizzy. The world seemed brighter, the colors more vibrant. The air itself felt easier to breathe.

We didn’t stay at the tree much longer. The emotional weight of the place, of the memories, was still too heavy. Rofi, with his usual, quiet understanding, seemed to sense this. He squeezed my paw, helped me to my feet, and we walked back to Theo’s house in a comfortable, companionable silence. We were holding paws. In public. And for the first time, it didn’t feel terrifying. It just felt… right.

That evening, the atmosphere in the house was celebratory. Not in a loud, boisterous way. But in a quiet, deeply felt way. It was as if everyone could sense the shift in me, in us. The storm had finally, truly passed. Theo made a special dinner, Artemis baked a cake, and even Ollie seemed less anxious, engaging in a lively debate with Hunter about the physics of superhero movies.

I felt… present. I was a part of it. I wasn’t a ghost, haunting the edges of their happiness. I was a member of this strange, wonderful, found family. I was home.

Later that night, Rofi and I were in his room, getting ready for bed. The awkwardness that had defined our first few nights together was gone, replaced by an easy, domestic intimacy. I was borrowing a pair of his sweatpants, which were a little too big for me, and he was humming a cheerful, off-key tune as he brushed his teeth. It was so normal, so mundane, it was the most romantic thing I had ever experienced.

I was sitting on the edge of his bed, watching him, a small, genuine smile on my face. He caught my eye in the bathroom mirror and grinned, his mouth full of toothpaste. I laughed, a real, unforced laugh. And in that moment, I felt a surge of love for him so powerful it almost stole my breath away.

He finished brushing his teeth and came to sit next to me on the bed. He took my paw in his, his expression turning serious.

“Are you… are you sure?” he asked, his voice low, his eyes searching mine. “About… staying?”

“I’m sure,” I said, my voice steady, without a hint of doubt. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

He let out a long, shuddering breath, as if he had been holding it in all day. “Good,” he whispered. “That’s… that’s really good.”

He was quiet for a moment, and I could see he was wrestling with something. He kept glancing at the small, wooden box on his nightstand. Finally, with a look of nervous resolve on his face, he reached over and picked it up.

“I, uh… I have something for you,” he said, his voice a little shaky. He held the box in his paws, turning it over and over. “I was… I was going to give it to you, no matter what you decided. As a… a reminder. Or a promise. Or… something.”

He took a deep breath and opened the box. And my own breath caught in my throat.

Inside, nestled on a bed of black velvet, was a simple, silver ring. It was a plain, unadorned band, but it was beautiful. It shone in the soft light of the lamp, a perfect, unbroken circle.

(Rofi’s POV)

My paws were trembling as I held the box out to him. This was it. The moment of truth. I had bought the ring a few days ago, in a fit of desperate, hopeful madness. It had felt like a crazy thing to do. A reckless, impulsive gesture. But I knew I had to do it. I had to give him something tangible. Something to hold onto. A physical manifestation of the promise I was making to him, and to myself.

I had practiced what I was going to say a hundred times in my head. I had a whole speech prepared, full of soaring, romantic words about destiny and second chances. But now, looking at his face, at the raw, stunned emotion in his eyes, all those carefully rehearsed words flew out of my head.

“It’s not… it’s not an engagement ring,” I stammered, my face flushing hot. “Or, I mean, it doesn’t have to be. Not yet. Unless you want it to be. No, that’s not right. It’s… it’s a promise ring.”

Smooth, Rofi. Real smooth.

I took a deep breath and started again, my voice steadier this time. “It’s a promise,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “It’s my promise to you. That I’m here. That I’m not going anywhere. That I will love you, and support you, and be your partner, and your friend, and your family, no matter what. It’s a promise that you’re not alone anymore.”

He just stared at the ring, his eyes shining with unshed tears. He was speechless. For a moment, a terrible, cold fear gripped me. I had misread everything. I had been too much. I had scared him away again.

But then, he looked up at me, and his face was transformed by a smile so beautiful, so full of love and acceptance, that it felt like the sun coming out from behind the clouds.

“Rofi,” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. “It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah?” I asked, my own voice choked up.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding, the tears finally spilling over and tracing paths down his cheeks. “It’s… it’s perfect.”

My heart felt like it was going to burst. I took the ring out of the box, my fingers clumsy and trembling. “Can I…?”

He nodded again, holding out his left paw. I took it in mine. It was so much smaller than my own, so delicate. I carefully, gently, slid the silver band onto his fourth finger. It was a perfect fit.

He held his paw up, looking at the ring, a look of pure, unadulterated wonder on his face. The simple, silver band seemed to glow on his finger, a small, steady light in the quiet room.

“My turn,” he whispered.

(Leo’s POV)

The ring on my finger was a solid, comforting weight. It was real. It was a promise. It was everything I had never allowed myself to want, and it was mine. It was ours.

I looked up at Rofi, at his dear, familiar face, at the tears of happiness shining in his eyes. And I knew what I had to do. I had to give him a promise in return.

I reached into the pocket of the jeans I had worn earlier, my heart pounding with a new, fierce resolve. My fingers closed around the small, metal object I had retrieved from my apartment. The key.

I pulled it out and held it in the palm of my paw. It was just a simple, brass key. A key to a place I never wanted to see again. A key to a life I was leaving behind.

“I have something for you, too,” I said, my voice steady and sure. I held the key out to him. “It’s not as beautiful as the ring. But… it’s a promise, too.”

He looked at the key, a confused frown on his face. “Your apartment key?”

“My old apartment key,” I corrected him gently. “I’m… I’m going to call the landlord tomorrow. I’m going to tell him I’m not taking the new job. I’m going to tell him I’m breaking the lease. I’m… I’m getting rid of it.”

I closed his paw around the key, my own paws wrapping around his. “This is my promise to you,” I said, my voice ringing with the truth of the words. “I’m done running. I’m done being a ghost. I’m staying. With you. For as long as you’ll have me.”

He stared at the key in his paw, and then he looked at me, his expression a mixture of shock, and awe, and a love so profound it seemed to fill the entire room. He didn’t say anything. He just surged forward, wrapping his arms around me in a fierce, desperate hug. I buried my face in his shoulder, breathing in the scent of him, the scent of my home.

We were just two people, in a quiet room, holding onto a ring and a key. A promise made, and a promise returned. An unbroken circle, and an unlocked door. A past let go, and a future just beginning.

And for the first time, I wasn’t afraid of what was on the other side.

Chapter Text

(Leo’s POV)

The next day, I made the call. My paw trembled as I dialed the number for my landlord, my heart pounding a nervous rhythm against my ribs. It was one thing to make a promise in the quiet intimacy of Rofi’s bedroom. It was another thing entirely to take the concrete, irreversible step of severing ties with my old life.

But Rofi was sitting next to me on the couch, his leg pressed against mine, a silent, solid source of strength. He’d insisted on being there, not to pressure me, but just to support me. I took a deep breath, and I did it. I told my landlord I wouldn’t be taking the job. I told him I needed to break my lease. I told him I was moving out.

He was surprisingly understanding. There would be a penalty, of course. A fee to be paid. But it was just money. A small price to pay for a new life. When I hung up the phone, a wave of relief so powerful it almost made me weep washed over me. It was done. The last escape route was closed. And I had never felt so free.

“You okay?” Rofi asked, his voice soft.

“Yeah,” I said, a real, genuine smile spreading across my face. “I’m great.”

And now, we had a new mission. Operation: Move In.

Theo, in an act of incredible generosity that was becoming his trademark, offered the use of his truck. Hunter, predictably, was practically vibrating with excitement at the prospect of lifting heavy boxes. Even Artemis and Ollie insisted on helping. And so, our strange, wonderful, found family descended on my old apartment, a chaotic, cheerful, and incredibly efficient moving crew.

The apartment, which had felt so vast and empty when I was there alone, was suddenly full of life. Full of laughter and friendly banter and the sound of Hunter’s ridiculously upbeat workout playlist blasting from a portable speaker. It was a stark contrast to the silent, sterile tomb I had been living in. And it was a confirmation, if I still needed one, that I had made the right choice.

I had expected the process to be painful, a sad, final tour of my failed attempt at an independent life. But it wasn’t. It was… joyful. Every box we sealed, every piece of furniture we carried out, felt less like an ending and more like a beginning. We were dismantling a prison, not a home.

I worked alongside them, my own anxieties a distant, forgotten hum. I was a part of the team. I was lifting, and carrying, and laughing along with their stupid jokes. I felt… useful. Capable. Normal.

The most surreal moment came when we were clearing out my bedroom. Rofi and I were in my closet, packing up the last of my clothes. He held up a drab, grey sweater, a look of profound distaste on his face.

“What is this?” he asked, his nose wrinkled. “This is the saddest sweater I have ever seen. It looks like it’s depressed.”

I laughed. “It probably is. I think I wore that for most of last winter.”

“Well, its reign of terror is over,” he declared, tossing it into a box labeled “DONATE.” “I’m buying you a new sweater. Something with color. Something… happy.” He looked at me, a soft, affectionate smile on his face. “You deserve to be happy, Leo.”

My heart did a familiar, pleasant little flip-flop. “I am happy,” I said, and the words were true. I was happy. Standing in a sterile, empty apartment, surrounded by boxes and the scent of dust, with the man I loved. I was deliriously, terrifyingly, wonderfully happy.

By the end of the afternoon, the apartment was empty. We stood in the doorway, looking back at the bare walls and the clean-swept floors. It was a blank slate. A closed chapter. I felt a brief, fleeting pang of… something. Not sadness. Not regret. Just… a quiet acknowledgment of the person I had been when I had lived here. The lonely, scared person who had thought this was all he deserved.

Rofi seemed to sense it. He came and stood beside me, slipping his paw into mine. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, squeezing his paw. “I’m just… saying goodbye.”

“Goodbye, sad apartment,” Rofi said cheerfully to the empty room. “Thanks for keeping my boyfriend safe, but he’s with me now. His lease is up.”

I laughed, a real, genuine laugh that echoed in the empty space. “You’re an idiot.”

“But I’m your idiot,” he said, bumping his shoulder against mine.

We drove back to Theo’s house, the back of the truck full of the meager contents of my life. And then came the second, even more surreal part of the day. Moving in. For real.

We carried the boxes up to Rofi’s room, a space that was already so familiar, so comforting. But now, it was becoming… ours. We unpacked my clothes and put them in his dresser, next to his own brightly colored t-shirts and goofy socks. We set up my laptop on his desk, next to his own. We put my books on his bookshelf, their drab, serious spines a stark contrast to his collection of fantasy novels and comic books.

With every item we unpacked, our lives became more intertwined. More real. This wasn’t a temporary arrangement anymore. This wasn’t a sleepover. This was my life now. This was our life.

That night, as we lay in bed, surrounded by the quiet, comforting clutter of our shared space, I looked at the silver ring on my finger, gleaming in the moonlight. It was a promise. A promise I had made, and a promise I was keeping.

“Hey, Rofi?” I whispered into the darkness.

“Yeah?” he mumbled, his voice thick with sleep.

“Thank you,” I said. “For… for everything. For not giving up on me.”

He shifted, pulling me closer, his arm wrapping around me in a familiar, comforting embrace. “You were worth the wait,” he whispered into my fur.

I closed my eyes, a feeling of profound peace settling over me. The ghosts were still there, I knew. My anxiety, my fear, my past—they hadn’t magically disappeared. But they were quieter now. They were just a part of my story, not the whole thing. The final chapter was still unwritten. But for the first time, I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my soul, that I wouldn’t be writing it alone.