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Practically hidden behind a dumpster and burrowed among heaps of mouldy newspapers, stinking bags of garbage, and grey, half-frozen slush is a dog. A small dog, yellow fur damp and matted, whimpering at him.
Marvin looks down at it. This was certainly unprecedented. Not that he’s unaccustomed to strays, this was New York City, after all, but this particular dog seemed to be its own brand of pathetic. It’s been in a scrap recently, if the bloody scratches on its face and the ragged stump of its left ear is anything to go by. It’s skinny, clearly starving, and shaking badly. Whether from the cold or hunger or sickness Marvin couldn’t tell, but it was clear it wasn’t going to last much longer. Not in this weather, not in this condition.
He’s never considered himself to be an especially charitable person, but something about leaving this poor, shit-upon animal to its fate sits wrong with him. The least he can do is bring it to a shelter, maybe even have a vet look it over. Give it a warm, dry place to stay for the night.
It doesn’t bark or bite or claw at him as he lifts it off the ground, just leans heavily into Marvin’s chest and lets him carry it to his car.
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He brings the dog to an emergency animal clinic, where a veterinarian cleans its scratches and patches its ear and gives it a bath and runs a few tests and x-rays. She gives it shots for numerous things, and gives Marvin a couple bottles of pills, one for worms, the other for some kind of infection in its liver.
He asks its breed. She says it’s impossible to completely tell; this dog is the definition of a mutt, the product of two crossbreeds. They could run a test, but it would be pricey, and Marvin’s spent more than enough money on this dog that’s not even his, so he declines the offer. He’ll be taking it to the shelter tomorrow, anyway, so there’s hardly a point.
Before he goes, the vet informs him that he saved the dog’s life, that it would’ve died on the streets if he hadn’t intervened, of hypothermia or malnutrition.
Marvin doesn’t know how to feel, whether he should feel honoured or humbled that this mangy animal now owes him a life debt. So he just nods and turns to go, tugging on his newly-purchased leash to urge the dog along.
It follows without hesitation, tail wagging.
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The shelter’s closed by now, so Marvin brings it back to his - thankfully pet-friendly - apartment for the night. It’s a decision he finds himself regretting almost immediately.
In the course of three hours, the dog pisses on the floor, shits on the carpet, rips up a tissue box, and knocks a lamp onto the floor - into the pre-existing puddle of piss. Fed up, Marvin barricades it in the kitchen, blocking the only doorway with a bookcase.
He wasn’t counting on the dog whining incessantly for the rest of the night, a ceaseless, keening noise that’s well on the way to giving Marvin a migraine. Just to make it stop, he releases it from its little prison, but not before spreading newspapers all over the floor in the living room. The dog tries to leap on the couch beside him - Marvin shoves it off.
Eventually, though, it miraculously settles down, curling up by his feet and presumably falling asleep soon after.
In the subsequent silence, only punctuated by the low voices from the television, Marvin feels suddenly, terribly lonely. He shivers, drawing his blanket tighter around himself, attempting to keep out the pervasive chill that constantly looms over him. He turns up the volume on the TV, the sounds of Happy Days filling his living room with the artificial, make-shift illusion of company.
He turns up the heat before bed.
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He heads to the shelter the next day, walking up to the door with the dog on its leash and the pills for the worms and infection in his pocket, ready to hand them over to the shelter staff. Ready to get this responsibility off his back.
Unaware, the dog trots along beside him, practically bouncing.
There’s a sign posted on the door, and Marvin’s hand hesitates on the handle as he reads it.
All pets must be picked up/adopted as soon as possible. Any animals that remain after three weeks will be euthanized.
Marvin swallows, looks down at the dog with a critical eye, trying to put himself in the shoes of some yuppie mid-thirties mom looking for a puppy to gift to her bratty children. He zeroes in on the missing ear, the scratched up face, the patchy fur and visible ribs and mashed-up nose.
No one will adopt it. There’s not a chance in hell.
The dog’s looking at him, tail swishing snow off the step as it sweeps back and forth. It’s so innocent, unassuming, trusting. Something like guilt forms a pit in Marvin’s stomach. Passing the dog off here will be as sure a death sentence as it would’ve had living on the streets.
Marvin’s not a charitable person. But he’s not evil either, and he stands there a while, hand on the door, unmoving. Considering.
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He keeps the dog, because what the fuck else is he supposed to do?
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The dog tries to sit with him that night, and every night after that, apparently taking the empty half of the couch beside Marvin as being reserved for it.
Marvin pushes it away every time, saying no with an increasing amount of annoyance for each attempt it makes. Eventually, it just resorts to whimpering pitifully, front paws resting on the couch cushion, looking like the poster child for an animal rights organization.
Marvin’s learned his lesson from that first night. “No,” he says for the umpteenth time, and bats its paws away.
It always gives up at some point, tonight choosing to sit right on top of Marvin’s feet. He draws them away quickly, the thought of drool and dog hair on his socks less than appealing, and folds them beneath himself like a bird, pulling his blanket more firmly around his body. It does nothing to help the cold.
He’s constantly cold these days, and no matter how high he turns the thermostat or how many sweaters he piles on or how many blankets he wraps himself in, it never lets up. He would like to blame it on the weather, the perpetual sheet of frost that currently has New York City in a choke-hold, but there’d be no point. He’s been cold far longer than the last month.
It’s been ages since he was properly, comfortably warm. He doesn’t know how to fix it, or if it’s something that can be fixed at all. It could just be yet another broken, faulty part of him. He’s always been rife with those, after all, it’d be no shocker.
The dog’s asleep already. Marvin tries not to be jealous of how easily sleep seems to come to animals, when he can barely catch four hours on average.
Broken, faulty parts.
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No one in the family questions the dog’s presence, at least not out loud. That doesn’t mean Marvin can’t read the emotion in their eyes, however. He’s gotten quite good at doing that, given his years of experience with the most unreadable person on the planet.
There’s understanding in Mendel’s, a knowing look that makes Marvin feel kind of sick. Confusion in Trina’s. Pity in Cordelia’s. Sorrow in Charlotte’s.
Accusation in Jason’s.
That one haunts him, as Marvin can practically hear what he’s thinking behind that dark, twelve-year-old glare. You’re trying to replace him with a dog, aren’t you?
The answer is, of course, no. He never could replace him, even if he tried. He had tried, once; the time he’d gone to a bar and drank enough that he managed to get half-hard. That attempt to “move on”, half-assed as it was, had ended with him sobbing into his hands as his date looked on, at a complete loss for what to do.
But Jason never voices his thoughts, so Marvin never explains himself. And the dog stays.
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It’s one of those nights he can’t sleep, can’t even stay in his fucking room. So he drags himself down the hall to the couch in the living room, taking the duvet with him. Every part of him aches, raw like an exposed nerve. He gets like this sometimes, for reasons he can’t explain and doesn’t like to think about too hard.
Happy Days has been playing for fuck knows how long. Marvin’s not really been watching, just letting it drone on as background noise while he stares into space. Then the dog appears in the doorway, apparently having been awoken by a particularly loud burst of laugh track. It crosses the room, toenails clicking against the wood, and hops onto the couch in one sure leap.
Marvin sighs wearily. “Get off,” he mutters, but the rebuke lacks any real heat; he’s too tired to muster the energy to be authoritative. The dog, of course, ignores the plea and slips over in spite of it, crawling into his lap. It puts its head on his knee and looks up at him.
Marvin bites his lip, struggling to swallow against the sudden, inexplicable grief that fills his throat. This happens sometimes, too, and he doesn’t know why. He could be going about his day as normal when, out of the blue, he’s struck by an overwhelmingly visceral feeling of loss, one that hits him with a jarring, intense force akin to a tidal wave crashing against the shoreline.
Every time, it sends him reeling, floating blindly, winded and desperate and clawing for air. It hurts, so bad, enough that he sometimes thinks no time has passed at all, that it’s still that first day all over again. When he stood in his suit in the cemetery and realized what it all meant, that the hospital and the funeral and the fucking coffin wasn’t all some elaborate, horrible nightmare. That this was real, his life, every shitty part of it.
The dog snuffles, adjusts the position of its body so that it’s resting more fully in Marvin’s lap. Marvin looks at it, thrown, momentarily distracted from the exhausting ache in his chest, the permanent cold that, when he wasn’t looking, has sunk down into his bones and is slowly but surely becoming a part of him.
He doesn’t know why, but something compels him to reach forward, to hesitantly place his hand behind the dog’s remaining ear, threading his fingers gently into its fur. A need to know, maybe, that something is there. Something solid and real and warm, keeping him rooted. Grounded.
After another moment, he begins to scratch it lightly. The dog’s pink tongue lolls out serenely, tipping its head into the touch, tail beating rhythmically against Marvin’s leg. Somehow, the feeling, the weight of the dog’s body over his lap - it’s warm, so fucking warm - helps more than any number of sweaters or blankets ever could.
The dog stays up with him until he falls asleep on the couch, keeping him company. Marvin alternates between petting and scratching its head, and if at any point he cries, just a little, no one but he and the dog will ever know.
They stay there until the chill lessens the slightest bit.