Work Text:
"There is an animal on your desk," says Dorian.
Leonard has other things to worry about than a weirdly judgy android who had apparently known his great great great grandmother’s first cousin once removed, and who still remembered him, and fondly at that; Leonard can’t imagine being remembered fondly by anybody other than Jim and Jim would never admit it anyway. Jim feels that if he admits to being actually fond of someone in any other way than smacking their shoulder or ass as they go by and making passive aggressive comments about how they’ll never get away from him now, evil villain laugh, the universe will take them away.
Leonard’s working on it. Leonard had a depressing realization not three nights ago that the person who was most likely to be his ally in dragging Jim kicking and screaming into the bright daylight world of semi-normal human relationships was the actual Vulcan, and he hates everything right now.
Anyway: the judging android staring at his desk, and the orange tabby blob spreading over most of his paper work.
"Oh, that’s just Fat Bill," he says indifferently. "Who isn’t allowed on my desk,” he adds pointedly. Fat Bill flicks one ear at him, waits thirty seconds while Leonard shuffles papers, sits up and presents Dorian with a terrifying view of his nethers as he gives himself a few cursory licks, stands up to stretch out and then finally incidentally jumps off the desk with a heavy thump about two seconds before Leonard’s hand actually reaches the water bottle.
"It’s a cat," breathes Dorian, as if he’s never seen a cat before, or at least a cat like Fat Bill, which Leonard supposes is fair. They ran a DNA sequence on him once and the lab sent back a report that said "Let us never speak of this again" and refused to process any more DNA samples for a week. "Why is there a cat on a starship? Wait," he says, and his face lights up with the thin blue lines that mean his processors are working double speed, "I see more cat hair. Black. And dog hair. You have animals on the ship?"
Fat Bill gives Dorian the unimpressed squint that Jim sometimes also gives people, looks up at Leonard and meows. Then he rubs his head against Leonard as a special mark of favor, and, to Leonard’s mild surprise, pauses to rub his flank companionably against Dorian’s calf and transfer gold tabby fur to Dorian’s impeccable black trouser leg before wandering out to cause chaos and despair elsewhere.
"Huh," says Leonard.
Dorian says, “That is a sign of affection from a cat, is it not?”
"Mostly," says Leonard. "Well — sure. For a cat."
Dorian smiles, and for a such a small and quiet expression, it’s almost blinding.