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“I dunno, Steve.” Sam sipped his coffee and considered the wagging ball of gray and black fur on the floor. “This might not be a puppy you save. This might be a puppy you stop.”
“A puppy I stop?” Steve knelt and bundled the squirming puppy protectively in his arms. “Are you saying put him to sleep?”
With a final wriggle, the puppy oozed out of Steve’s hold and flopped headfirst on the floor. A schick as the door opened, and the pup ran towards it and freedom, tripping over its ear in the process and sliding into Natasha’s foot.
“I’ve got his file,” Natasha called, closing the door behind her before the puppy could right itself. She slide her shoe carefully out from under its belly.
“His—his file?” Steve swiveled toward her. “He has a file?”
“This puppy,” she announced, reading, “has been responsible for twelve of the most flagrant urinary violations over the past fifty years.”
“He is three months old.”
“Most of the veterinary community doesn’t believe he exists,” she continued. “To those that do, he’s known as—”
“Hey, a puppy!” Clint wandered in the door.
“I have asked you to knock,” Steve muttered from the floor.
“The door was open. Hey, buddy.” Clint sauntered over to the pup, now burying its nose in Steve’s gym shoes, and scratched behind its ears. A long, low growl echoed through the shoes. Unperturbed, Clint patted the raised fur on its hackles. “You got a name yet?”
“No,” said Sam and Natasha in unison, and “I’m still thinking,” said Steve.
“You should call him Winter.” Clint issued the pup a final pat. “Because you got him in winter. And his fur looks like half-plowed streets—in winter. And—”
“—and if he keeps chewing on the radiator your apartment will feel like winter,” Nat supplied.
The puppy was, indeed, now chewing on the radiator: on his back under the coils as he gummed them intently. Mid-lick, he lifted his head to stare at Steve, and Steve found himself caught in liquid gray eyes, falling, stable. Then the puppy returned to his work of destroying Steve’s heating fixture and the spell was broken.
“Winter,” Steve tried, whistling. “C’mere, boy.”
Winter’s entire body froze, then huge ears flopped as he wormed himself upright and half-bounded, half-slid across the floor to Steve.
“Winter is coming,” Clint intoned.
Natasha smacked him with the file. Sam snorted into his coffee. Steve half turned around—“… yes, he is”—and Winter swarmed into Steve’s lap, butt wagging, drool stringing down his chin, feet slipping past Steve’s legs as he turned three times and flopped down with his head on Steve’s knee.
“He’s staying,” Steve announced, unnecessarily.