Chapter Text
The plan had sounded perfectly reasonable when they said it out loud. After all, it was just a dog bath. What could it possibly involve? A quick rinse, a little soap, maybe a towel dry; something simple and necessary. Swerve had put it best: "She smells like sun-baked dumpster." It wasn’t even a judgment, just a factual observation about the unfortunate blend of odors Trouble had picked up. They couldn’t sleep in the room with her like this, not unless they all wanted to wake up smelling like abandoned sandwich wrappers and dried dog saliva.
Adam had nodded in solemn agreement and pulled the nearest clean towel off the bathroom rack, tossing it over to Will as if they were preparing for surgery instead of pet care. “Ten minutes,” he’d said, sounding confident. “In and out, like a car wash.”
Trouble, meanwhile, remained unconvinced. She was still curled up on the bed as if she were finally truly experiencing the luxury life owed her (she was and it did), her head lifting slightly when Will clapped his hands in that bright, encouraging way people used when they were trying to trick a child into doing something unpleasant. Her eyes tracked him without enthusiasm. She did not move. She looked entirely done with all three of them.
Will tried anyway.
“Bath time, my girl,” he announced, his voice full of gentle betrayal. He bent down, scooping her up with exaggerated care, and Trouble melted into his arms like an awkward bag of slightly damp bricks or dead batteries. There was no resistance in her form, just a look on her face that clearly said: I know what you’re doing, and I will remember this.
The bathroom was already humid by the time they all squeezed inside. The tap was running too hot, fogging up the mirror. The floor was slick underfoot, the air thick with the cloying scent of hotel-issue lavender soap and nerves. Swerve stood by the faucet, squinting at the tiny shampoo bottle like it might suddenly become enough to wash a medium-sized dog with six layers of city grime caked into her fur. Adam was unrolling a second towel, clearly unsure of how many this situation would take. Will, still holding Trouble, glanced around the tiny room like a man about to stage a heist.
“She’s gonna bolt,” Swerve said, not moving.
“She’s not gonna bolt,” Will insisted, right before Trouble performed an impressively coordinated wiggle-and-jump maneuver and slipped right out of his arms like a wriggling eel.
Chaos erupted instantly.
“She’s behind the toilet!” Swerve shouted, diving low and nearly smacking his head against the sink. Trouble vanished under the vanity shelf, tail disappearing like a final “screw you” to the whole operation. Adam tried to block the doorway like a human barricade, but Trouble was already wedged in tight right where she was, refusing to leave, her body a compact blur of damp fur and betrayed looks.
Will dropped to his knees and pressed his cheek to the floor to get a good look.
“She’s curled up like a little angry cinnamon bun,” he said.
“Talk to her,” Swerve said, wiping a hand across his face. “She likes you.”
Will sighed, stretching out flat on the tile like he was about to deliver a bedtime story. “Trouble, sweet girl, I know you’ve been through a lot today. Dumpster diving. Getting adopted. Becoming an accessory to a hotel-related felonies. That’s a heavy load.”
Under the vanity, Trouble shifted slightly but remained put.
“But you gotta trust me. I’m not gonna use cold water. I swear. This will be a spa experience. Five stars.”
She blinked, unimpressed.
“Three treats,” he added.
That got her.
With the weary sigh of someone resigned to bad decisions, Trouble crept forward inch by inch. Will scooped her up the moment she was within arm’s reach, hoisting her like a prize won at a fair instead of the generous sack of potatoes she actually was.
“Got her,” he said, triumphant.
They moved fast. The water was ready, lukewarm and shallow. Swerve took his position at the tap, Adam blocked the door again, and Will stepped carefully into the tub barefoot, gently setting Trouble down. She stood still, frozen for one fragile second, then launched herself into the air with the energy of someone escaping a prison break.
Adam caught her mid-leap. “She’s got ups,” he muttered, staggering back under the full weight of a damp, wriggling, slightly panicked dog.
“Reset!” Swerve barked. “Defensive triangle. Let’s do this.”
They regrouped. The water was running fast. The towels were ready. The shampoo was deployed. The battle began.
Trouble twisted and shook and howled like she was being asked to surrender her dignity in exchange for cleanliness. Will got a face full of soap on the first rinse. Adam lost control of the towel. Swerve nearly knocked over the entire shampoo caddy. The bottle of lavender hotel shampoo made a sad, bubbly farewell as it slipped through his fingers and disappeared down the drain with a tragic little glug.
The bath became an athletic event. Trouble flung herself into Adam’s arms, scrambled halfway up Will’s leg, managed to wedge her back paws into the curve of the faucet, and sent a full-body shake spray across the bathroom that soaked all three of them. Swerve screamed. Will slipped. Adam ended up halfway in the tub, trying to pin her down like he was wrestling a greased-up opponent that he didn't want to be in the ring with.
Eventually, it ended. Ten minutes later, the floor was covered in water and fur. A used towel was hanging from the light fixture. One of Swerve’s socks was floating in the sink for reasons no one could explain. Trouble, now clean and wrapped up burrito-style in a fluffy towel, blinked at them from Will’s lap like nothing at all had happened.
“We can never come back here,” Will said softly, staring at the mess around them with wide eyes.
Adam sat down on the closed toilet lid, looking dazed. “She does smell better.”
Swerve rubbed his hands through his damp locs and glanced over at Trouble, who gave him one slow blink and a little lick of her nose. “You know what? Worth it.”
Trouble shifted slightly in Will’s lap and let out a soft, contented huff. Her tail thumped once. The steam in the bathroom started to clear, and the air finally cooled. For a brief, silent moment, it felt like they’d survived something monumental together. They were soaked, exhausted, and lightly traumatized, but they’d pulled it off.
Then the bathroom fan sputtered, gave a mechanical cough, and died with a wheezing clunk.
The silence that followed was heavy with dread.
“We broke the fan,” Swerve said slowly.
“We definitely broke the fan,” Adam echoed.
Trouble licked Will’s chin and snuggled further into her towel, looking extremely pleased with herself.
Will gave her a crooked smile. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”
She thumped her tail again, harder this time. The tile underfoot was cold now. The room still smelled vaguely like lavender and dog. There was no way they weren't at LEAST losing their incidental deposit, but as she looked up at them with big brown eyes, no one could find it in their heart to be angry about that.
After a few more minutes of drying attempts and whispered reassurances, they were all back in the bedroom. The television flickered low and wordless across the foot of the beds, showing some game show that none of them were truly paying attention to. The sound was muted, but the light cast a pale glow across the carpet, just bright enough to catch the faint sparkle of dog fur still floating lazily through the air like some kind of allergen-ridden snow.
Swerve lay sprawled diagonally across the nearest bed, one arm flopped across his face, the other lazily dangling a bag of trail mix he had found in his gear bag. Now and then, he tossed a cashew toward his mouth with variable success. One had bounced off his chin. Another had been snatched mid-air by Trouble, who now lay half-curled at the end of the bed on a nest made from two towels, Will’s hoodie, and what might have been Adam’s backup t-shirt.
She was clean now, at least. Her coat was mildly puffed out, slightly uneven in places where they hadn’t quite dried her fully. Still, she looked settled and calm, her eyes half-closed, her tail twitching just slightly each time one of them shifted on the mattresses.
Will sat on the floor, back resting against the wall just below the room’s AC unit, one leg bent up and the other stretched out. His hair was still damp and curling wildly, and he held a warm, damp washcloth against the bruise he’d gotten from head-butting the bathroom cabinet mid-bath. His eyes flicked toward the dog, then toward the others, then down to the band of his hoodie sleeve twisted between his fingers.
“You know,” he said softly, “I really thought we were gonna get kicked out after she peed in the elevator.”
Adam, lying on the opposite bed with his head propped up by a pillow folded in half, let out a low hum of agreement. “I thought it’d be the shampoo bottle down the drain. That drain sounded… real final.”
Swerve snorted. “I thought it’d be when you slipped and said something like ‘my goddamn spine is in orbit.’ Pretty sure someone in the next room gasped.”
“I did hit the faucet pretty hard,” Adam admitted. “My ass has a bruise shaped like the Hilton logo.”
That made Will laugh, a breathy, tired sound that echoed faintly in the quiet. Trouble lifted her head briefly, eyes half-lidded, and let out a low snort before settling again, head on her front paws.
“She’s out,” Will said, softer now.
They all fell quiet for a beat, long enough that the hum of the AC and the soft pop of the baseboard heater began to dominate the room. It felt peaceful in a way that only came after mess, the kind of stillness earned through chaos and cooperation.
Adam’s voice broke the silence, lower now, thoughtful.
“She didn’t trust us at first.”
“Smart girl,” Swerve murmured, rolling onto his side to face the rest of them. “We were three idiots trying to sneak a dog into a hotel with nothing but blind optimism.”
Will smiled at that, rubbing a thumb over his eyebrow. “Still. She came around.”
“Eventually,” Adam agreed. “She just… needed to see we weren’t gonna bail.”
That quiet truth seemed to hang in the air longer than it should have. They weren’t talking about the dog anymore, not really. Trouble had curled into their lives with the kind of ease that made it easy to forget how hard it had been, at first, to work together, to even be in the same room. But now they were here. Smelling faintly of soap and wet fur. Resting like some long-haul team that had somehow survived the night without being evicted.
Swerve nudged the trail mix bag toward the center of the bed and looked over at Adam. “We actually pulled it off, huh?”
Adam let his head fall sideways toward him, his hair slightly damp still from where Trouble had jumped into his lap mid-bath. “Depends. You count not getting caught yet as success?”
Will stretched his legs out in front of him, groaning as his back cracked audibly. “I count being here. Like this. That’s a win.”
The quiet that followed was thicker than the last one. Not awkward. Just full of all the unsaid things that didn’t need naming. The small victories. The shared dog. The way the room didn’t feel like a stopover anymore, but something else, something almost like home.
As the first hints of sunrise flitted through the crack of the hotel curtains, Trouble let out a deep, satisfied sigh and rolled over onto her back, legs splayed at comical angles. Her belly was round from stolen snacks, her breathing deep and slow. The light from the television mixed with the soft light from the curtains and glinted off her damp fur like gold leaf catching in the cracks.
“I still don’t know what the hell we’re gonna do tomorrow,” Swerve said eventually.
"Today," Adam corrected, with faux annoyance. “Same thing we've been doing,” Adam replied with a slow smile replacing the previous look. “Try not to get caught.”
Will grinned. “And take care of her.”
Swerve looked down at the dog and chuckled. “Yeah. That too.”
The lights remained off. The TV flickered. Trouble didn’t move. And for once, neither did anyone else. The three who were always fighting, always flying, always moving, were finally still in some sort of peace that none of them would have admitted aloud was precisely what they needed.