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When Ponds shows up at Guard HQ holding a wiggly, scruffy bundle of slobber, Fox knows then and there that he’s about the fight the most difficult battle of his short life.
“No,” he says. Twin pairs of shining brown eyes meet his. Because Ponds can never do things by halves, a human lip wobble and the tip of a very pink dog tongue are thrown in for good measure. Did they practice that? He remains unmoved. “No,” he repeats.
Fox is not a man who loses. In fact, if there is something he is stubbornly, self-detrimentally good at, it is refusing to let himself give up on any task, ever.
None of this really serves to explain how, just three hours later, he’s ordering Hound to “Just take it until we find a shelter for the damn thing. You’re the animal expert. We’ve got it now but cannot stay here, Sergeant, that’s an order.”
If anyone asks, he’ll be perfectly happy to blame the entire debacle on Ponds developing some new kind of Force powers.
Of course, because Hound has the same steadfast conviction as a marshmallow in a cup of hot cocoa, the dog does Not go away. Oh, it goes away from Fox’s eyeline, to be sure. Assuming that he’s gone deaf and lost all higher brain functions, he could even believe that the dog has left the premises entirely.
“He’s well-known in the GAR by now. You’re going to have to give him back to someone eventually,” Fox says to Hound one day. Hound, whose hands are definitely not keeping a wiggling, panting animal hidden under his desk while he casually converses with Fox, shoots him a wide grin.
“Give who back, Commander?”
Fox is unimpressed. But Hound is happy, and more than that, the troopers are happy. Grizzer and the other massifs have done good things for morale, but ultimately they’re working animals, with strict training and sleep schedules, and only rarely do they get to be around troopers outside the K-9 unit for social reasons. So Fox sighs, sucks it up, and goes on ignoring the stupidly obvious presence of an additional nuisance in his fucking barracks.
Of course, now he’s shabla regretting it. For the second time this tenday, Fox has walked into his office on a late shift to discover that the creature has already taken up residence there. The first time, it was easy enough to shoo it out. A few placating pats to the head, a few gentle shoves, and the door was sliding shut behind what just became someone else’s problem.
This time, however, it is not so easily swayed. By the time Fox got here, it had already made itself at home on his office chair. Now, curled up sleepily on the woven seat cover one of the handmaidens had gifted to Fox after he foiled a particularly grueling assassination attempt, it shows absolutely zero inclination to move. Now or ever.
“Come on. You’ve got to get up.” Fox nudges it with one brace, trying to be patient. Pitch has pulled him off of stimulants by force again, and he’s suffering the consequences. He is not in the mood to deal with one more thing going wrong.
The mutt blinks open one eye, closes it again. Snores.
“Don’t you have anyone else to bother? His name rhymes with Pound? Which is where you’re going soon, not that you’d know.”
When his continued overtures and more insistent nudging fails, he sighs. Steps back from the desk, shitty corporate carpeting dragging on his boot treads. The natborns that cleared out of this office building before it was converted to Guard HQ left very little in the way of decoration, but the carpets have remained surprisingly intact. One of his hands runs absentmindedly through his hair as he considers the situation. It’s greasy, hasn’t been washed in almost a tenday. He would feel worse about that, if there weren’t about a hundred and seventy far more pressing issues demanding his attention. His hands are shaking. Fuck.
He doesn’t have time for this, damnit.
“I’m not supposed to know you exist , di’kut,” He hisses at the unrepentantly snoozing mutt. “You- I have paperwork! Mission planning! Revie- oh for fuck’s sake.”
The animal has, while maintaining its facade of somnolence, rolled so that it’s curled in the other direction, facing away from Fox. It now looks as though a particularly fuzzy rock has taken up residence on his office chair. He groans, and bends forward over the desk. Presses his slightly feverish face against it. It’s blessedly cool, and he’s seized by the urge to just stay there. Just until he finds the willpower to comm Hound and tell him to take his fucking flea-ridden mongrel back to the kennel.
But his back is already protesting the position he’s in, sending warning twinges up through his neck. If he doesn’t move soon, he’ll throw it out entirely. Giving in, he sinks to the floor with a groan. His office, while not as small as Fenn’s, is still not exactly resplendent with options for getting work done while seated. And he’d honestly rather crawl through a sewer after a perp again than sentence his aching shebs to a night on the unforgiving plastoid of the visitor’s chairs. With that in mind, he unlatches his codpiece, cuisses, and chest plate, shoving them to the side and resigning himself to working on the floor.
Blearily, he checks his brace chrono. 0300.
“Fierfek.” His head thunks back against the wall. He’s been awake for going on maybe 20 hours now? It’s far from the longest shift he’s pulled, but with his supply of stimulants locked up under Pitch’s watchful eye since yesterday, it feels fucking infinite. Withdrawal is still the most novel flavor of agony in his current repertoire and Fox is not enjoying it.
“You better be glad you’re an animal,” he tells the fuzzy lump masquerading as a seat cushion. “You’ve never had to review and annotate a forty page report on security upgrades to Senate elevator systems.”
He glares balefully at the lump, who, to be fair, probably hasn’t really done anything to deserve his ire. The thing is just existing. Just being a dog, he thinks dully. Eating, sleeping, participating in recreation on a regular basis. “Couldn’t be me,” he mumbles to it. It snores again, loudly.
Fox’s eyes wander over its small form. He really takes in, for the first time, the gnarled pale scars stretching across one dark flank, evidence of some fight or close call. Matching ones curl across his snout. They’re long-healed, but he still winces to think of what they must have been like new. No stitches, no bacta to help with healing. The canine’s ears, too, have been chewed up by time and conflict, and the edges are ragged with small chunks missing. Fox suspects more scars would reveal themselves if he sifted his fingers through the soft mane of long fur covering the thing’s body. It’s abundant evidence of a rough life. Hard-fought just for scraps and cold nights on the street. By taking it in, making it part of the GAR, his brothers have given this thing an inconsistent life that’s still filled with more love than the universe dictated this dog was ever supposed to see.
Maybe they’re not so different, Fox and this little dog. It’s just that one of them’s lost his suspicion, grown used to giving and receiving affection for its own sake. Learned how to stop biting. The other one is Fox.
Enough of this maudlin idiocy. I should be doing work, he berates himself. The sooner I finish these reports, the sooner I can sleep . It’s a flimsy promise, though, even in his head.
Because after one report will be another, and then another, and then some urgent crisis in the capital, and then more datawork, and before he knows it he’ll be bent over a ‘fresher sink in two days’ time jamming contraband hypos into his neck behind Pitch’s back just to get through the next shift. Feeling guilty and dirty and so, so relieved as soon as the drug hits his bloodstream. What’s the point? It’s a constant temptation to throw up his hands and throw in the towel. Let the work pile up freely until he’s finally decommissioned for the inadequacy that’s already gotten so many of his Guards killed.
But he won’t. He wouldn’t. He doesn’t think he could. Commander Fox does what’s asked of him, and never knows how to quit.
He will comm Hound. He’ll tell him to get his dikut’la mir’sheb self up here and remove the nuisance so that Fox can get some real work done. In a minute. Right now the floor is just so comfortable, and he’s so tired, and he’s just… he’s just going to rest here. Just for a minute.
Fox jerks awake, entire body buzzing with adrenaline. It takes a moment for his brain to come back online, process where he is. Of course he’d decided it was a good idea to fall asleep slumped over on the floor of his office. He ended up lying on his back, luckily. He’s slept in worse places, but this has done his aching neck no favors.
He grimaces, staring up at the ceiling and stretching his arms out. Three separate things crack resoundingly in his torso. At least it’s warmer than the bunk rooms here. Very warm, and heavy. He jerks awake again, head snapping downwards. Blinking sleepily at him are two watery brown eyes above a scarred snout.
“Absolutely not,” he says to the dog. It makes no move to leave its position draped over his torso. Fox, because he’s not always a fucking monster, does not attempt to remove it by force. Yet.
“I personally know some vendors in this city who would make a fur jacket out of you, ad’ika. And sell it at a discount,” He says. His fingers have sunk into the soft fur at its neck, though, and have begun petting without him consciously deciding to. When the dog closes its eyes, leaning into his hand, Fox could swear it’s smiling.
“You trust me,” he tells it. He’s going to follow that statement up with something sardonic, all the reasons his GAR brothers have already discovered that that’s a truly terrible idea, but then decides he actually hasn’t slid quite low enough on the pathetic self-pity slope for that. Not right now, anyway.
He’s still shaking, has broken out overnight in the kind of cold sweats that have nothing to do with warmth. He’s nauseous, too, head pounding. But he also feels… clearer than he has in a few weeks, and he thinks maybe that’s what Pitch was talking about during his latest intervention speech. You’re a zombie, Fox! Just because you’re functional doesn’t mean you’re well!
The dog shifts, and Fox becomes suddenly aware of every place it’s touching him. Through the thin material of his blacks, the sensation of another body against his is almost too much to bear. It batters at him, makes him tremble with something he can’t name. Then the dog leans up, fitting its head under his chin.
The feeling swells, spills over. “Fuck,” he gasps. His body shakes with sobs he tries desperately to swallow. “This-“ he sniffs. “This is- shabla stupid. Fuck .”
You’re a Marshall Commander, his mind rages at him. That is a damn dog. This is kriffing disgraceful!
It doesn’t help. Once he’s started choking up, he can’t stop no matter how hard he tries. It’s not long before he’s gasping for air, snot and tears running down his face like a tubie. I don’t even know why I’m crying, he thinks hysterically.
Unbidden, medic Rory’s voice floats back to him. Something inconsequential from one of the fifty-odd Wellness Seminars the medics host every year.
‘Soldiers don’t get to choose when their brain will deem it safe to process stressful experiences. But bottling emotions up is only liable to create further risk of harm or instability later.’
The dog shifts, and Fox’s fingers reflexively grip tighter to the fur under his hands. But he isn’t leaving, only wiggling upwards so now the majority of his body weight is leaning on Fox, his paws using Fox’s thighs easily as leverage. Another low, ragged noise tears itself from Fox’s throat, and he muffles it in a face full of fur. There, on his office floor with no one around to see him, he shakes apart.
In a few minutes, he’ll get up. He’ll comm Hound (for real this time), and he’ll figure out what they’re going to do with this fucking canine until one of his brothers comes looking for it.
In a few minutes.