It was over a month since he first met his human. Over a month of confused feelings, sideways glances, long nights of wondering and wandering. It was made clear by the old grouchy man (who Rosemary had seemed to grow a fondness for) that a relationship between him and Charlie was out of the question. It was reckless and dangerous. Risking her life for the sake of a crush? It was selfish and on some level, Royce understood that. He didn't want any harm to come to Charlie. She was sweet, innocent and good-hearted.
Even Rosemary had started to be nicer to her. Sort of. The she-wolf still tried nipping at her heels but it was more of a nibble and less of a bite. And Royce was sure that Rosey only did it because she was bored. He did feel guilty for that. There wasn't much for her to do at the clinic and she refused to come over in her human form. Mostly because in her human form, she'd be expected to clean and Royce knew how much she hated to clean. On top of that, she had stopped hanging around him and Charlie so much and opted for bothering the old man. And by bothering, that included stealing his food when he wasn't looking, chewing on the ends of his shoelaces or just sitting somewhere and staring until he bugged out and went out for a smoke (which led to more food stealing). As bored as his friend seemed to be with their current situation, she was getting by and was surprisingly quiet with her complaints.
Odd but he never brought it up. Silence from Rosemary was rare and he liked it.
It would be nice if she helped around the clinic though. Knowing her, she was probably somewhere bothering the old man. Lazy bum. He wasn't gonna start whining about all the work because it honestly wasn't that much work but he had never been fond of cleaning up animal crap. Mostly because of the smell. And it was gross. But at least he was allowed to do this disgusting job to old goodies like Led Zeppelin and Queen. And the occasional R&B song found its way in. He normally wasn't into that kind of thing but it was growing on him.
He finished another cage with a satisfied smile. It was gross but he got a weird sense of accomplishment after each job done. This cage had a fox with a mangled ear, healing rather nicely thanks to Charlie, and though he had been apprehensive about Royce, the fox did look happier with the end result. The next cage had a grumpy squirrel, a squirrel of all things, that looked ready to bite all of his fingers off in one go. Before tackling on that fun task, Royce stood up and stretched. He ran his hands through his hair but then realized he had dirty gloves on and stopped halfway, cringing at the thought of that muck now in his hair. Crap.
He looked around the shed for his water bottle, intending on getting a drink and going right back to work but he caught Charlie sticking her tongue out at her own reflection and geez, he just had to know what that was all about. Grinning, he came up behind her and looked back and forth between her and the other red-head in the window. "What are you doing? Having an internal fight with yourself? You know, my sister does that and I'm pretty sure that's a sign of crazy." He was joking, of course. About her being crazy. He was fairly certain that Rosemary was some kind of crazy. Which kind, he didn't know. "You ever have yourself checked for crazy? I heard it could be contagious."