Chapter Text
The first rat’s mostly an accident. One of Macau’s classmates brought it to school after he decided he didn’t want it anymore, keeping it in his locker with whispered plans of releasing it during math class. Macau glimpses it during lunch, this tiny creature in its little cardboard box with holes punched in the top, and…it’s not something he’s thought much about in the greater batshit-crazy sequence of events that led up to his sharing an apartment with his older brother and the ex-spy they’d once made a game of scaring shitless, but. Macau never got to say goodbye to Vegas’s final hedgehog.
Macau had fed that hedgehog with his brother’s hand on his shoulder. He had poked his fingers through the bars of its cage and echoed hey, buddy and who’s a sweet boy as it sniffed him. He had learned to hold it gently in his hands just the way Vegas did it, so that its spikes tickled his thumbs instead of pricking him. And, as with their father, as with all their disposable men and nearly with Vegas, too, Macau didn’t get to say goodbye.
So Macau spends frankly way more than the rat is worth and brings it home with the half-formed but foolproof plan of hiding it in his bedroom until he can sound out Vegas and Pete’s reactions and maybe talk them around to the concept. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?
He sneaks the rat past Pete on the couch, locks himself in his room, and manages to keep the critter secret for all of fifteen minutes before it slips out of his hands, under his door, and straight up Pete’s pajama pantleg.
As first introductions go, Macau would rate it probably a six out of ten. There’s some shouting from Pete, a little bit of initial panic. Vegas nearly rips his stitches when he sprints into the living room with his gun raised only to find Macau kneeling between Pete’s knees frantically groping for the lump on his inner thigh.
Eventually everyone manages to chill the fuck out, and they successfully relocate the rat from Pete’s person into a high-sided storage tub with one of Macau’s pajama shirts to hide in.
Talking Vegas and Pete into keeping it after that requires skillful bargaining--or rather, a thick dose of teenage petulance and several promises about proving his sense of responsibility that have Vegas clenching his fingernails into his legs under the kitchen table.