“I’m going home, Nick. Get me that booking.” Walter hung up and sighed. He was supposed to spend Sundays planning his own show; not writing content for someone else’s.

Far more tired than he felt like he should have been, Walter started his car and pulled into traffic. Nasty, nasty Portland afternoon traffic. He carefully navigated through the maze of narrow, one-way streets before finding one that would take him back up into the hills. By the time he got home, the helicopters in the sky were gone, and it didn’t seem like any more of the hill had slid away, so maybe the day was looking up. There didn’t seem to be any warnings about instability to his property, or anything ominous, which Walter took as a sign that he was safe to relax and forget about his neighbor’s woes and impending mountain of bills and fines.

There was, however, an enormous amount of trash covering the street and leading around to the side of his house. He pulled into his driveway and carefully got out, not wanting to step in any of the soggy, wet trash that had been spread everywhere. Suddenly, he was greeted with something crashing to the ground just out of sight around the house, followed immediately by something leaping right over the wooden fence keeping the neighborhood brats out of his swimming pool. The thing sped right past Walter before he even had time to react, and shot like a bolt out onto the street.

“Fucking hell,” Walter shouted, turning sharply to see what it was.

It was fast, but as it turned the sharp corner down the road, Walter could make out the shape of a spindly, feral dog. This wasn’t supposed to be the sort of area that was supposed to have stray dogs. And yet, Walter found himself spending his day off cleaning up trash in the rain. It took him nearly an hour to pick up every last scrap of soggy cardboard and loose plastic that had been dragged everywhere, some impossible to pick up at all as the rain poured from the sky. The food scraps, Walter let stay without even bothering to try. Cardboard and plastic were disgusting enough, and he knew the feral crows and that one psychotic neighborhood feral peacock would descend upon it as soon as he was out of the way.

Finally done, Walter trudged back inside, going through the garage so he could strip off everything as soon as he was inside, and toss it all into the washing machine. His brand new shoes were already filthy, but they couldn’t go into the machine with everything else. He’d have to wipe those down later, but he was not in the mood to do anything about them at that moment. Wearing just his underwear, Walter took his phone and his new shoes upstairs and dropped the shoes off in the guest bathroom next to his study, to be dealt with later. He may have been able to get away with skipping a shower after the gym, but now he was truly gross. He walked straight to the en suite, locking the door behind him before he shucked his underwear and started the shower. The water was cold as he stepped beneath it, but he didn’t care. His thick fur protected him from most of it, and his main priority was getting his fur free of mud and grime. He spent a few long minutes scrubbing everywhere he could reach before plugging the bath and switching the water to run from the tap instead. Above everything, Walter needed to just relax. As the water quickly warmed up and filled the tub, Walter slid down to let himself be slowly submerged. He picked up his phone from where he’d dropped it on the rug next to his underwear and pulled up a vintage jazz playlist. Then he dropped his phone back down onto the rug and leaned back against the tub, closing his eyes for a moment. For the first time all week, Walter felt properly tired, but he knew it wouldn’t last. The second he stepped out of the water, he would just wake right back up, just like always. Instead, he sat up to start scrubbing himself clean. He started first with his footpaws, pulling bits of sock and running shoe from beneath his claws and between his toes.

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The pads on the bottoms of his four toes seemed a little more blistered than he’d expected, though he wasn’t sure if it was from the shoes that had been falling apart, or the new ones which got more of a breaking in than he’d intended. Even the rough patches on his heels felt like they’d taken an extra pounding, but Walter was positive he was imagining things, and his exhaustion had only exaggerated his pain and discomfort.

His tail was always a pain to clean. He had to slide down into the water to be able to better reach the base, which he was otherwise sitting on. His tail was easier to clean while showering, but then he couldn’t see it and always missed something. Instead, he hunched over low in the bath, scrubbing his claws through the dense fur, which was almost matted in some areas where the heavy fabric from his jeans rubbed against his tail. He grumbled and growled to himself as he worked carefully to work the tangles free. The last thing he needed was a big bald patch right on the base of his tail. For a moment, he thought he might have to cut the matted fur out, but he finally managed to work it apart with enough scrubbing and conditioner. Finally he was able to scrub the rest of his tail, working through the long fur all the way to the tip. His tail wasn’t long like some other canids; its tip fell barely below his knees, and with his dense winter coat, was almost completely ball-shaped. It was a lot of fur to work through, and sometimes when Walter felt like he’d come across another matt or some foreign object buried deep down, he’d lose it almost immediately.

Rather than relaxing like he’d intended, Walter spent the rest of his bath scrubbing his fur, getting every last speck of dirt and grime out his claws could find, careful to keep the soap out of his freshly-dyed hair. Once he was done, he scrubbed under his claws to get all the new grime he’d picked up out from under them. Now with water that was a soapy, furry mess, Walter drained the tub and stood to shower again, this time to rinse everything out. The drain catch quickly clogged up, but Walter left it there to keep anything from slipping through, focused instead on rinsing his fur clean. He was exhausted, but by the time he was done, he felt miles better and considerably less disgusting. Before stepping out of the bath, he bent to pick up his phone from the floor and put it on the toilet. He dropped a towel down onto the floor, covering the rug and covering up the tile beyond the rug. Using the other towel from the rack, Walter quickly dried himself as much as possible, still dripping when he stepped out. With both towels soaked beyond usefulness, Walter plugged in the blow dryer and turned it on its highest setting. Its loud whir drowned out the music from his phone as he used it first on his hair, careful not to blow the hot air right into his face. He didn’t dry completely, but moved down his body until he was dry enough to not track water through the house, a task that still felt like it took ages. Eventually satisfied, Walter put the dryer away and unlocked the bathroom door to his bedroom. A quick step over to his dresser, Walter pulled open the bottom drawer and quickly grabbed a pair of loose basketball shorts. Unlike his jeans, the shorts had looser back overlap that wouldn’t ride on his tail as harshly. He put them on quickly, using one paw to pull them up over his waist, and the other to pull his tail through the overlap.

Now at least moderately clothed, Walter returned to the bathroom to clean up the towels and fetch his phone. He mopped up as much water as he could from the floor and took the towels downstairs to the garage, tossing them into the rest of the laundry and starting a quick load. On his way back up the stairs, he turned off the music on his phone and shoved it into his pocket. He grabbed another towel from the closet in the guest bathroom upstairs, and draped it over the back of his chair. Walter almost sat down immediately, but remembered the japchae in the fridge from the night before. He had worked up a bit of an appetite from cleaning up in the rain, and then cleaning himself up, so he fetched the Tupperware from the fridge, and took it and a pair of chopsticks to his chair to just eat cold. He collapsed into the chair, debating getting back up to fetch one of the bottles of pills from his dresser. But he was already down and comfortable, and didn’t trust himself to wake up on time if he drugged himself to sleep. Instead, he turned the news back on and opened his leftovers. Sundays were busy days, and he needed to be awake for them.