Work Text:
Spike doesn’t belong to anyone. At least, Rodney’s pretty sure he doesn’t. Nobody responds to the signs he posts around the neighborhood, but it could be that they don’t recognize the picture because Rodney isn’t the best artist and has no interest in improvement.
It’s been a month since Spike started following him around the neighborhood, a scrappy terrier with a feisty streak. It was scary at first, a strange dog with sharp teeth and sharp claws and a sharp little face, but Spike hadn’t hesitated to jump between Rodney and the bullies on the playground.
He shares his lunches with Spike and takes long walks with Spike and lies in the grass dreaming of the future with Spike. By the time the weather turns cold, Rodney can’t imagine his life without Spike.
Dad’s there the first time Rodney brings Spike home. He takes one look at the little dog, who won’t stop growling from his station at Rodney’s feet, and shrugs.
“Little boys should have dogs,” he says, turning back to his paper. “But you have to clean up after it. And don’t let it near the baby until you teach it some manners. Your mom will have a fit.”
Mom is another story altogether. Instead of growling, Spike tucks his tail and cowers behind Rodney whenever Mom raises her voice—which is almost always when she’s home. It takes him forever to calm down, no matter what Rodney does to soothe him. He feels bad leaving Spike at home, even if it’s warmer and safer than the streets.
Rodney comes home on a bitterly cold February day to find the door open. He could hear Mom and Dad arguing all the way down the block, even over Jeannie’s wailing. Spike is nowhere to be found—not under Rodney’s bed or behind Jeannie’s crib or in the bathtub. He isn’t in the yard or at the park, either.
Spike is gone and Mom and Dad can’t stop arguing long enough to notice.
-
There aren't many times that Rodney feels too young for university, but the first assignment for his winter lab is overwhelming. It’s a stupid course to begin with, a psych lab that experiments on mice, as if they could possibly hold up against a human brain. Especially a brain as advanced as Rodney’s.
But the mice—there are so many of them, all beady-eyed and soft and innocent.
Rodney’s stomach turns at the TA’s instructions—measure, weigh, tag, clip, sort them into trials A, B, and control—and when it comes down to it, he freezes up.
His lab partner rolls her eyes and takes over. She’s efficient, detached from the clinical violence of their task. Rodney excuses himself from the room.
He doesn’t go to the washroom, though. He spends a frantic hour searching for a pet store near campus, one hand tucked into his pocket around a tiny, quivering stowaway.
Back in his dorm, Rodney sets up the cage with everything a mouse could need, including two different types of pellets, because he’d panicked in the food aisle. Minnie seems happy enough, shuffling her way around her new home. She doesn’t seem to notice that she’s alone now, even if Rodney can’t stop thinking about all her brothers and sisters.
Ignoring the sting in his eyes, Rodney sits at his desk and scribbles out a strongly worded letter to the dean. There’s no reason for him to waste his time and money on a psychology course—or any potential biology courses the university might require. They accepted him into their physics program for a reason and he doesn’t hold back any of that as he demands a refund on the lab and a more suitable replacement course.
When he’s finished, he takes Minnie out of her cage and settles her in his breast pocket. She contents herself with a nap, a solid warmth against his heart—the perfect accompaniment to the sound of pen on paper as he starts his homework.
-
Rodney hates being on Earth. He hates that people can find him while he’s on Earth. It’s one of the benefits of living in another galaxy, being unreachable. There are no telemarketers in Pegasus.
John doesn’t hold the same opinion about Rodney’s phone, though, even if he hates his own.
“Come on,” John says from the kitchen, the sound of keys jangling interrupting Rodney’s focus more than anything else. “That was the shelter. They have your cat.”
The words don’t really sink in until Rodney’s sitting in the meet-and-greet room at the shelter with a lap full of purring tabby. Thankfully, John is there to charm the shelter volunteer and sign the paperwork.
By the time they pull back into the apartment parking lot, everything catches up to him. “John.” Rodney clutches tight to Snickers’s cardboard carrier. “I can’t take a cat to Atlantis.”
John shrugs, leaning across the console for a kiss. “We’ll figure it out. You take him inside. I’ll go to the pet store and grab some pizza on the way back.”
It’s surreal, being back in his apartment with Snickers and John and a return date to Pegasus in under a week, but the good kind of surreal—the kind that has him smiling for no good reason as he stays up late to red-pen a report from one of Bill Lee’s minions.
By the time he makes it to bed, John’s already asleep, curled up on his side with Snickers tucked in his arms. Snickers is older and greyer and he’s put on a few pounds in his old age, but he still purrs like a car motor when Rodney strokes the fur along his spine.
Rodney spoons up behind John, smiling when John adjusts to meet him, barely waking.
“We’ll make it work.” John’s voice is soft with sleep.
Draping arm over John to pull him close, tangling his fingers with John’s where they rest on Snickers’s soft fur, Rodney has every confidence that John is right.