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"You keep any kind of exercise routine?"

"Uh, no sir. I used to be on the football team in high school, but the last few years..."

"The breakup again?"

"...yessir."

Will gave him the kind of look you would give someone who said they'd blown all their lottery winnings on more lottery tickets.

Will had to be downtown anyway, to pick up Murdoch and Tibbits from the train station, so he'd told Leo to meet him at the cafe nextdoor: not really his sort of place, but he was willing to give them credit for having a pride flag sticker by the door. Might as well get something done while he waited.

The pup worked Saturday mornings, too, as well as weekdays. That went in the notebook.

So far they'd covered 'when was your last sexual partner?' 'when was your most recent STD screening?' 'you have any serious allergies, especially to latex or neoprene?' 'any history of drug use?' and 'what's your safeword?' to which the answers were 'do we count the other night at the-? Oh, then eight, no, eleven years ago,' 'had to, to get a monkeypox shot, so like last year I think, it was all clear,' 'only to shellfish,' 'used to smoke, haven't had a cigarette in a few years now though,' and 'I dunno, sir,' respectively.

"Think of one." Will turned a page in his notebook. "Well, I guess there's no avoiding it: what can you tell me about this Chase guy, and how things ended with him?"

Leo bit his lip and stared into his empty cup of coffee.

"I get you don't want to talk about it, pup," Will said quietly, "but not talking about it has clearly been part of the problem. For years, if I'm understanding your history right."

Leo's shoulders went up.

"Ok, you're gonna need to tell me what you want here." Will said. "I can be patient as hell, if that's what you want, wait till you're ready to talk about it, but you said it's been," he glanced at his notebook, "eight and/or eleven years. If waiting till you're ready to talk was gonna work, it would have already."

Leo raised pleading puppyish eyes to Will but couldn't find any words.

"Would it help if I ordered you to tell me?"

"I... maybe?"

"Tell me what happened, Leo." Will said gravely.

Leo flinched, gritted his teeth, "So, it was the end of high school, yeah? I'm working at the shop, as far as I know as soon as he graduates I'm getting him a job there too. Mama and Dad have already moved here in Payton, left me the house, so he'll move in with me. This is like, before there's gay marriage in the state, I guess if he'd been up for a road trip out to the coast, then I woulda done it in a heartbeat-"

Will cleared his throat.

"Right, sir. Breakup. So, he doesn't tell me he's applied to college till he's already got the acceptance letter. That doesn't go well. I lost my temper."

"Did you," Will asked carefully, "hurt anybody?"

"What? No, no sir, I threw a phone. Chase storms out... and that's the last I see or hear from him for a while."

"That's when you broke up?"

"Well. Yes and no. That's when he broke things off-"

"See, that sounds like a 'yes' there."

"-but he didn't tell me. The next I heard from him was a couple months later. Late at night, out of the blue, he starts dirty texting me, yeah? Just like... sexy flirting. Kinda things we used to say in person before we, well, had sex. So I figure, I guess he WAS mad, but now he's over it and everything's fine again, right?" Leo swallowed, took a deep breath. "I tell myself to wait for him to finish college. He'll still need a home, he'll still need a job, I can still give him those. And he's still texting me! Not very often, but it's still not like... I had no reason to think we weren't still a couple. But now all the rest of the gang's stopped talking to me: some of the gang are at college, too, even the ones who weren't stayed away more and more... I think it was probably that they all knew. And they thought I knew, they thought I was in denial and it was creepy. Which... maybe I woulda been, if anyone had told me, but they didn't!" Leo paused, bit his lip, twisted like the next sentence was physically stuck in him and he was trying to force it out. "Then Chase started showing up."

"You mean, like, visiting?" Will raised an incredulous eyebrow. "While still not telling you things were over?"

"Well, uh, that's... complicated, Sir. He'd stop by for a weekend, as a surprise, hang out, catch up, even cuddle. Even more than cuddle. He would tell me he loved me, that he was looking forward to coming home to me. It was everything I'd been hoping for! I started working out again, keeping the house clean in case he showed up, keeping healthier food in the fridge." Leo's speech petered out.

"Go on," Will ordered.

"So Jenna organized a get together, spring break, last semester before she heads to grad school. Probably going to be the last time we were all together, yeah? And I was really excited that like... that meant everyone would remember Chase and me as a couple. The last they saw of us. That seemed nice. I was thinking of that the entire week, every second I was with Chase."

Will furrowed his brow. "So he and you did get back together, just for this?"

But Leo shook his head. "Chase didn't come."

"But you said you were with him."

"I don't know how to explain it, sir. Even now. I guess I must've... hallucinated him. I thought he was there, but he never left campus. All those visits, all along, he hadn't really been there. As far as I know I've never actually seen him since the fight about college. I don't even know if he actually texted me."

Will leaned forward over the table. "When you said you two did 'more than cuddle,' though?"

"I guess," Leo shrugged, "I must have actually just been jerking off? And somehow not... realized it? I don't know what to tell you, sir, I just know I spent a whole week talking to someone who wasn't there, in front of everyone. And I was convinced they were the ones acting crazy."

"Where was this happening?"

"Uh, over by Echo Canyon, sir. Where we grew up, it's all abandoned now."

That apparently warranted a note in the book.

"I guess everyone else was a little off, too. Carl didn't want to set foot in his place, seemed like TJ was having a panic attack every other minute, and Sydney was just kinda spacing out, like he kept forgetting where he was. Apparently he was on a bunch of bodybuilding steroids, so it mighta just been that." Leo sighed. "Anyway. Jenna chews me out the last day before she left, said I ruined the reunion. I didn't know what she was talking about till she called me creepy and selfish for pretending Chase was here all week. Said it wasn't funny. I told her it wasn't supposed to be, and was she crazy, Chase was right beside us! She looked at me like, well, I was crazy. I remember I put my arm on Chase's shoulders, and he smiled at me, and I said "He's right here where he belongs." Then Jenna said, really slow 'Leo, there's nobody there.' She like... waved her hand toward him, and... I dunno. It looked like a tape in a messed up VCR, yeah? Like he just... blipped backward away from her, without moving."

"I guess I must have looked, I dunno, bad, reacting to seeing that. Cause she backed away to her taxi without taking her eyes off me or saying another word." Leo was genuinely surprised he was so calm. He would have expected to be a mess of tears by now. "I guess she told the others I'd lost it cause none of them answered when I messaged them. And... that's all there is, sir." He swallowed, looked up, expecting to see disgust or worse, pity, on Will's face, but all the coyote's face wore was puzzled concern. "You're the first person I've ever told this, sir."

"Well, it sounds like I'm the first who asked." Will held out a paw. "That's a hell of a story, man."

"I won't blame you for wanting nothing to do with me," Leo hunched his shoulders. "I don't know if I'm crazy, or-"

"Whatever happened," Will cut him off, "it happened while you were isolated. Cause you were isolated, sounds like. More isolation isn't gonna help."

Leo looked at the outstretched hand like it was an eldritch abomination, alien and unknowable.

"Take my hand, pup" Will insisted, quietly. When the wolf's paw landed hesitant in his, he squeezed.

Leo closed his eyes, let the gentle noise of the underpopulated cafe fade into a barely-perceptible hum, and just focused on the feeling of the strong, weighty paw wrapped around his. He felt like he'd just run a marathon. But he didn't exactly feel bad, either. It was as if a loud radio, blaring static and feedback, that had been left on for so long that you stopped noticing it at all, had suddenly been switched off. He kinda just wanted to enjoy the quiet.

Will let him do that a while, then cleared his throat. "Ok there?"

"...yes sir." Leo took a deep breath. Saying what he was about to say was probably a bad idea, but what did he have to lose?. "I've thought of a safeword, sir."

"Go ahead."

Another deep breath, swallow the hesitation. "Chula, sir."

If Will found that significant he gave no sign, just wrote it down and shut the notebook. "Well, I guess that takes care of my checklist. You got any place else to be this evening?"

"Uh, no sir."

"Good. You can lend a hand with the baggage."

"...what, sir? Why?"

"What do you mean, 'why?' It's baggage! It's heavy!"