Chapter Text
Robert woke to the apartment holding its breath around him, the gray morning pressed thin through the blinds and stretched across the ceiling in broken bars, the air stale with old coffee, laundry detergent, and the faint leftover trace of Courtney in the sheets.
Beef was not on him.
That should not have been enough to pull him out of sleep, but it was, because Beef treated Robert’s ribs like a public right-of-way and had never once respected the difference between a sleeping person and furniture. There was usually a paw shoved into his side by now, a snort near his ear, a nose against his hand, the small impatient huff of a dog who wanted breakfast.
The bed stayed still.
Robert shifted under the blanket, the cotton dragging cold against his shoulder, and the emptiness beside him opened wider than it should have.
Courtney’s pillow had a dent in it. The blanket on her side had been kicked down and twisted toward the edge of the mattress, one dark hair clung to the sheet near his wrist. One sock lay half under the bed, inside out, pathetic and accusatory.
Somewhere outside, Beef barked.
Robert pushed himself up, the blanket slipping to his waist, and the cold hit the space where Courtney had been.
On the nightstand, beside his phone and a glass of water with lint floating in it, a piece of paper sat where there had not been one last night.
It had been torn from his own SDN pad.
Her handwriting slashed across the paper, cramped and impatient, each letter leaning forward like it wanted to get the whole thing over with.
took dog
don’t call the cops
-c
The refrigerator hummed from the kitchen.
Beef barked again.
Robert did not lower the note. Not because he needed it. Because putting it away first felt too much like conceding the morning had become normal.
don’t call the cops.
“Unbelievable.”
He got out of bed and found his jeans on the floor where they had been kicked under the chair, one leg turned half inside out, because apparently no object in the apartment had survived the night with dignity. His shirt hung over the back of the chair and smelled faintly like Courtney too, which annoyed him more than it should have, because she had either worn it, slept against it, or handled it long enough to leave proof, and every option felt like evidence for a case he was increasingly unqualified to prosecute.
The hall was dimmer than the bedroom, the apartment slowly coming into focus around him as he moved through it: the throw blanket dragged halfway off the couch, one cushion turned at an angle, the cabinet under the sink left slightly open, his keys shifted six inches from where he had left them on the counter. A glass sat in the sink with lipstick on the rim and no water in it. The room had that specific after-Courtney damage pattern, nothing broken enough to complain about and nothing left alone enough to trust.
At the door, the leash hook was empty.
The harness was gone too.
Robert stood barefoot in front of the hooks, note still pinched between his fingers, and stared at the blank little patch of wall where his morning had apparently been removed from the premises.
Outside, Beef barked again.
“Right.”
He crossed to the window and lifted the blind with one finger.
Courtney was on the sidewalk in his shirt under her jacket. She stood with one hand shoved into her pocket and the other wrapped around Beef’s leash while Beef had his nose buried in a shrub with grim, investigative focus.
Through the glass, Robert saw her say something down at him, her jaw moving around a sentence he could not hear and did not need translated.
Beef sat his fat ass down.
Robert let the blind fall.
“Traitor.”
He went back to the bedroom, picked up the note again, folded it once. His shoes were by the door, one upright and one fallen sideways, the left lace still chewed up.
Courtney’s voice carried faintly up from outside the apartment building, muffled by the window and already irritated.
“Beef, drop it. Drop it. I swear to fucking God.”
Robert paused with his hand on the doorknob.
He opened the door.
By the time Robert reached the sidewalk, Courtney was crouched in front of Beef with two fingers pointed at his face.
“Drop it.”
Beef did not drop it.
“Beef.”
Beef’s mouth stayed closed around something dark and damp.
Courtney leaned closer, eyes narrowed. “I swear to God, if that’s shit, I’m leaving you both.”
“He’s already involved me?” Robert said.
Courtney looked over her shoulder.
No guilt. Not even a courtesy version of guilt. Just her, crouched on the sidewalk in his shirt under her jacket, hair sticking up on one side, expression flat like he was the weird one for interrupting whatever hostage negotiation this had become.
“Oh,” she said. “You’re up.”
Robert held up the note.
The paper had already started to crease between his fingers.
“My dog was gone.”
Courtney looked at the note, then at him, then back at Beef like maybe the dog had a better shot at making this conversation less stupid.
“He was downstairs.”
“With you.”
“Yeah.” She shifted her weight where she crouched, one knee bent, one sleeve of his shirt hanging past her wrist under the jacket. “That’s why I wrote the fucking note.”
The wind moved through the narrow strip of sidewalk between the building and the curb, cold enough to lift the loose pieces of hair from her neck. Morning traffic dragged by in uneven bursts. Somewhere farther down the block, a truck backed up with three flat beeps that made Beef’s ears twitch without convincing him to release whatever damp little treasure he had found near the shrub.
Robert did not lower the note.
“Jesus, Rob, what did you want, a notarized custody form?”
“I wanted to wake up with my dog still in the apartment.”
“He had to piss.”
“He could have pissed with me.”
“He did not ask for you.”
“He’s a dog.”
“And somehow still better at asking for what he wants.”
That landed too close to something, because she looked away first, down at Beef, fingers tightening once around the leash before she covered it by tugging at him again.
“Drop it.”
Beef held his ground.
“Beef.”
His tail thumped against the pavement.
Courtney leaned in, voice dropping into something meaner and more personal, the way she got when a vending machine ate her money or a villain monologued past the point of usefulness.
“Spit it out, you little freak.”
Courtney scratched once behind Beef’s ear, too rough to be tender and too careful to be nothing.
“You could’ve woken me,” Robert said.
“I know.”
Beef nosed at her pocket. She nudged him away with her knee.
“I didn’t feel like doing the thing,” she said.
“What thing.”
“The morning-after thing.” She stood then, fast enough to make Beef step back with her. “The staring. The weird voice. You deciding whether this was a mistake before I even find my pants.”
Robert’s grip tightened around the note.
“Or maybe I just wanted to walk the fucking dog,” she added.
She could have disappeared. It sat there between them, old reflex, old exit, easy as breathing when breathing was working right. One second visible, the next gone, leaving him with the dog and the note and the shape of where she had been.
She didn’t.
She stayed on the sidewalk in his shirt, shoulders up against the cold.
“Are you going to work?” she asked.
The question came out rougher than she meant it to. She fixed it badly by looking down at Beef. “Or are you doing the whole responsible adult martyr thing today.”
“No.”
Courtney looked back at him.
“No?”
“Not today.”
Her expression changed before she could stop it. Not much. Just a small break in the guarded set of her mouth, gone almost immediately.
“Did Dispatch finally realize you’re held together by coffee and unresolved shit?”
Robert pressed his thumb against the folded note in his pocket, feeling the crease through the fabric.
“I took the day off.”
Courtney stared at him like that was worse than any of the other options.
“You took the day off,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“Don’t be cute. You don’t take days. You haunt that desk.”
“I’m taking this one.”
She gave a short laugh that had no humor in it, more air than sound.
“For what?”
Robert looked at Beef, then at her.
“Breakfast.”
Courtney’s face shut down too fast.
“No, what the fuck does that mean, breakfast?”
“I’m taking you to breakfast,” he said.
Courtney swallowed, looked past him toward the building, then down the street, then nowhere useful.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
That almost got her. Her mouth twitched, then flattened.
“Fucking heroic.”
Robert held her gaze.
The street kept moving around them, indifferent and ugly and morning-bright. Courtney looked like she wanted to say no just to keep control of the shape of the thing. Like agreeing made it real. Like staying visible was already taking too much out of her.
Then she lifted the leash a little.
“Is Beef invited.”
“He’s the reason we’re negotiating.”
“Great,” she said, voice dry again, but thinner underneath. “Not bad for an ex-boyfriend.”
Her fingers tightened around the leash as soon as she said it, like even she had heard the wrong edge in the joke.
The joke sat between them, not funny enough to be safe.
Courtney looked at him like she was waiting for the correction.
She had put the word there on purpose, sharp side up, then stood behind it with her chin lifted and Beef’s leash wrapped around her wrist, daring him to step on it wrong.
Robert did not give it back to her.
He looked at Beef instead.
Beef had one ear flipped inside out and a piece of wet leaf stuck to his chin, looking very much like he had survived a difficult private war with the shrub and intended to tell no one.
“We can discuss Beef visitation rights over breakfast,” Robert said.
For a second, Courtney’s face lost the fight.
“Visitation rights,” she muttered.
Beef tried to eat the leaf again.
Courtney moved it out of reach without looking.
She stood there in morning light that made nothing flattering, holding onto Beef like the dog had become a loophole.
“Breakfast,” Robert said.
Courtney exhaled through her nose, sharp and annoyed, but her shoulders dropped a fraction.
“Fine.”
Beef’s tail started going before either of them moved, thumping once against her leg like he had been following the negotiations and approved the settlement.
Robert folded the note in his pocket with his thumb, feeling the crease through the fabric.
Courtney started down the sidewalk first, Beef followed after her, then remembered Robert existed and doubled back, the leash drawing a loose line between all three of them.
Courtney stopped when the leash caught lightly against Robert’s leg.
For a second none of them moved. Beef stood between them, pleased with himself, tail sweeping back and forth while Courtney kept her face turned down like the sidewalk had suddenly become very interesting. The leash had pulled them close enough that Robert could see where the cold had pinked the tip of her nose, where his shirt disappeared crookedly beneath her jacket, where her fingers had tightened around the nylon and then loosened again before he could decide what to do with noticing.
The silence lasted just long enough to be dangerous.
Courtney looked away first, but there was something at the corner of her face she could not quite flatten.
“Breakfast,” she said again, rougher this time. “And if you take me somewhere sad, I’m disappearing.”
“I know.”
“And I’m taking Beef.”
Robert looked at her.
She did not look back, but she did not disappear either.
She walked again, leash loose in her hand, Beef trotting at her side like a victorious accomplice. After a few steps she glanced over her shoulder, hair blown across one eye, his shirt still hanging wrong on her body like proof neither of them had collected.
“You coming or what?”
Robert followed.
The note stayed in his pocket, warm from his hand, while Beef’s tags jingled ahead of them and Courtney walked ahead, doing a terrible job of making it look like she was only staying for the dog.