Primeval Fic - Feel Like You Still Have A Choice (Secret Santa for lukadreaming) - 1/3
Title: Feel Like You Still Have A Choice (1/3)
Author: x_bellaitalia_x
Rating: PG-13 (some language)
Word count: 12,562
Pairings: Stephen/Ryan pre-slash, Lester/Lyle mentioned.
Summary: Ryan never thought he'd survive to retire from the anomaly project. He never gave much thought to what came next.
A/N: For the Denial Secret Santa fic exchange, for lukadreaming. The prompts I included were...
- Trouble with a Capital T
- Reached out and rearranged the stars
- What do you do when they turn out the lights?
I have to admit, I did twist the prompts slightly to fit what I wanted to write. You also said you like puppies in your fics, which I obviously took and ran with in a big way - woops. Either way, I hope you enjoy it, and Happy Christmas! :)
This story is set in a universe where Ryan survived the trip to the Permian. It also includes Jon Lyle and mentions of Blade, both OCs belonging to fredbassett. Many thanks also go to rain_sleet_snow for proof-reading, general hand-holding and assuring me this wasn't crap. Any mistakes that remain are my own.
There's also a reference in this to Tokyo Joe, which is an old Bogart film about an ex-serviceman, who leaves the army and tries to pick up the pieces of his life.
Title from the Passenger song 'Scare Away The Dark'.
Feel Like You Still Have A ChoiceIt’s December when Ryan retires from the anomaly project. He’s fifty-six and he’s survived far past his luck. He’s tired. Connor and Abby, the only others left from the early days, try and talk him out of it. Ryan thinks they can sense that this is his time though, because they don’t try too hard. They’ve all seen too much now. He smiles and hugs them, and promises to stay in touch. They’ll be safe in Becker’s more than capable hands.
He packs up his office on a Thursday. Most of it gets thrown out, but he keeps a few personal items, stacking them neatly into a box. Down below in the atrium, he hears the all-too-familiar wail of the anomaly detector start to sound. It’s seven o’clock at night and the knowledge that he is not on call - will never be on call again - doesn’t stop the pit of doom from opening in his stomach. He can hear shouts and footsteps echoing through the corridors as the teams pack up and head out, an oiled machine after all these years.
Later, when the ARC has fallen silent again, he drops the plastic dinosaur that Connor bought him into the top of the box and hoists it into his arms.
He doesn’t know what he’s going to do now.
He pauses in the office door and looks back one last time. Then he reaches out, and flicks off the light.
*-*-*-*-*
And so it happens that, for the first time in about three years, Ryan has the fortnight surrounding Christmas off. He never used to mind working. Somebody had to and there were so many men with wives and girlfriends and elderly mothers and six month old babies to whom the festive season was far more important. Ryan could take his leave any time.
Now he finds he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. It’s not that he doesn’t make plans. He does. He goes running and to the gym and to the pub with Lyle. He buys a very expensive bottle of wine for his sister and a pair of socks for her husband and book vouchers for his niece and nephew. His house is quiet, but he’s not particularly lonely. He’s not much of anything, really.
At least, until his phone rings on December 15th and he makes the mistake of answering it. It’s his sister, her voice warm and cheerful and large somehow, echoing and crackling down the line all the way from up north. She seems somewhat surprised to get an answer. Alternating voicemails is their usual method of communication.
“Tom,” she says, somehow extending each letter of his name into an entire delighted syllable, “fancy getting through to you! What on earth are you doing home? I was expecting the machine.”
His first attempt at answering comes out as a croak rather than words. He clears his throat and tries again.
“I’m on leave,” he says. “For Christmas. I’m at home.”
There’s a startled silence.
“For Christmas? As in, the whole of Christmas? Eve and Day?”
Ryan grunts in acknowledgement.
“Well,” Annie says. “That’s a turn up for the books, isn’t it. Who are you spending the holiday with? Is Jon with you?”
“Lyle’s at his partner’s,” Ryan replies, in lieu of answering his current least favourite question.
“So you’re free?” Annie asks, never one to miss a trick. Ryan can’t help but note she uses ‘free’ instead of ‘alone’. It’s kind of her, but the idea that people think he requires that sort of kindness makes him want to spit.
“Yes, I suppose so.”
He can almost hear his sister light up. “Well then, there’s no question about it, you absolutely must come to us! Rick would love a chance to catch up with you properly and the children will be delighted!”
These are both bald-faced lies. Ryan winces. “Annie…”
“No, Tom, I won’t take no for an answer. It’s been far too long since we’ve seen you. We’ll have a proper family Christmas, just like we used to.”
Ryan closes his eyes and reminds himself that it is not Annie’s fault that the proper family Christmases of her childhood only ever took place because his father died and his mother remarried.
“Well,” Annie eventually says, once the silence has stretched too long to be comfortable, “maybe you should take a few days to think about it. It would be lovely though, to see you again properly. I miss my brother.”
“Right,” Ryan says. “Okay.” He refuses to say he’ll think about it, because Annie, like their mother, seems to take that phrase as synonymous with ‘yes’.
“In the meantime,” Annie continues, “I was hoping to ask a favour. We’re coming down to London for a day, just Katie and I, and it’s so much easier on me with the driving if we can stay overnight. I was wondering if we could stay at yours? I didn’t realise you’d be home obviously, but we wouldn’t get in the way. You could put us up on the sofa?”
There is no way to say no without seeming appallingly rude.
“I suppose so,” Ryan says. “What are you doing in London?”
“We thought we’d get a dog,” his sister says cheerfully, “and Katie insists that the only place to get one is from Battersea Dog’s Home. It’s all arranged - we’ve had a home inspection and everything.”
“Oh right,” Ryan says. “Will the dog be coming here?”
There’s a pause. “Well, yes,” Annie says, tentatively, “just for the one night. You don’t mind do you?”
Ryan does, a bit. He’s never been a dog person, but this is something it always seems churlish to admit. “No,” he says, “it’s fine. When are you coming?”
“Oh,” Annie says, sounding the tiniest bit guilty. “Is tomorrow okay?”
*-*-*-*-*
Battersea Dogs’ Home is not as grim as Ryan expected, even if he’s not quite sure how he ended up being dragged along to it. The floors are grey easy-clean concrete, the metal bars and individual cages have a distinctly jail-like feel and the air is saturated with the smell of bleach and musty dog, but the people are cheerful, tails are wagging and there are canine-friendly Christmas decorations on every surface.
They’re greeted in reception by a woman named Judith, who Annie has apparently been emailing. She’s affable and welcoming and makes a concerted effort to include Katie in the proceedings. Ryan mostly hangs back and tries not to get in the way.
Judith briefs them on the dos and don’ts of dog ownership and the policies of the Home and once the necessary paperwork is out of the way, she leads them through into the rehoming centre proper. They wander up and down, through a sea of pens and a cacophony of barking. Judith points out possible candidates and offers up brief titbits of information. Katie comes further and further out of her shell the more dogs they meet, but it’s not until they stop in front of pen 62 that she really lights up.
Pen 62 contains a young Golden Retriever, not quite a puppy but definitely not fully grown. She’s all paws and eyelashes and glamorous golden fluff and as soon as she turns her big brown eyes on Katie, Ryan knows that she’ll be the one coming home with them. Katie visibly melts.
“That one,” she says, an edge of finality in her voice.
Judith opens up the pen and the pup bounds out, made entirely of sheer delighted wiggling and proceeds to charge up and down as though everything about the situation is just too joyful to be contained.
Ryan feels tired just looking at her.
He wanders away, leaving Annie and Katie to coo, and peers into some of the other cages further down the row. There’s a yapping Beagle and a Bull Terrier with a head so square it could have been drawn with a ruler and - right at the end - a lurcher.
At least, Ryan thinks it’s a lurcher. It’s scruffy and gangly and a rather odd shade of grey, lying on its side in a sprawl of knobbly legs and skinny tail. As he stands there, it opens one eye and regards him with a mixture of quiet disinterest and weariness. It doesn’t bother to get up.
“Gosh,” Annie says, appearing suddenly at his side. “He’s a battered old thing, isn’t he. Is that even a breed?”
“I think it’s a lurcher,” Ryan says, feeling an odd prickle of irritation.
“Looks like a bit of a patchwork to me.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
His tone is sharp and Annie looks up at him surprised. “I…” she starts, but Judith interrupts, calling from a little way down the corridor.
“He’s up for adoption that one, you know. Bit of an old boy, but good-natured. We’ve been having some trouble placing him, he’s been here a fair while.”
“Where did you get him from?” Ryan asks.
Judith comes over, dusting golden hairs off her jeans. “His owner died six months ago. Lovely old chap, but no family or friends. No one to take the dog on and so he ended up with us. They were a proper devoted pair apparently. He’s been pining.”
The dog does, indeed, look thoroughly miserable.
“Have you ever thought about adopting a dog, Mr Ryan?” Judith asks. Ryan can feel the burn of her eyes as she peers at him closer. He feels a little bit like prey.
“Just Ryan,” he says automatically, “and no. I work a lot.”
Judith looks a bit disappointed. “Well,” she says, “if you ever change your mind. It would be nice for him to have a home at Christmas.”
Ryan can feel Annie watching him, her scrutiny prickling down his spine. “No,” he says, “it wouldn’t work. Sorry.”
He turns away and gestures for the two women to move ahead of him back down the corridor, to where Katie is all but rolling around on the floor with the puppy.
When he glances back into the cage one last time, the lurcher has raised his head and is watching him unblinkingly.
*-*-*-*-*-*
Katie and Annie name the Retriever pup Trixie. She spends her first night with them in Ryan’s house and in that short space of time manages to destroy a sofa cushion, a sock, the corner of the rug and two mugs. Ryan curses her fluffy golden soul.
Later though, when Katie and Annie have gone up for the night, sharing his room while he’s self-relegated to the sofa, Trixie settles in with a heavy sigh and an even heavier head on his feet. Ryan drinks two beers and reads a few chapters of his book and tries to ignore how the wool of his socks is getting progressively damper with hot doggy breath.
Trixie’s paws twitch in her dreams and occasionally she gives little huffs of utter contentment. Household destruction aside, Ryan may be forced to admit the situation is not entirely unpleasant.
He wonders what the lurcher’s name was.
*-*-*-*-*-*
The next day, Trixie, with Katie and Annie in tow, vanishes back up the M6. Trixie’s tail, both a banner of happiness and a weapon of mass destruction, has broken a cereal bowl and a candle holder. The candle holder was a gift from Ryan’s grandmother, when she was still hoping he might one day meet and marry a woman who would appreciate such things. He’s not too broken up about its loss. Of more immediate concern is the promise to see them all on the 24th, extracted from him by Annie with all the skill of a trained interrogator.
The idea of a big family Christmas makes him want to crawl out of his own skin. He goes for a ten-mile run, nose freezing and numb in the grey December drizzle, and when he gets back the house feels quieter than normal.
There’s dog hair stuck to his doormat.
*-*-*-*-*-*
The lurcher, as it turns out, is nameless.
“Hello, Mr Ryan,” Judith says, when he walks through the door two days later, “I had a hunch we’d be seeing you again.”
The lurcher is in the same pen, in largely the same position. This time though, when Ryan approaches, his head comes up straight away.
“I kept him on hold for you,” Judith says, cheerfully, “just in case. I can always tell.”
“What’s his name?” Ryan asks.
Judith looks sad for a moment. “We don’t know,” she says. “Like I said before, his last owner died and there weren’t any friends or family. He didn’t have a collar and we couldn’t find anyone to ask.”
The lurcher lets out an enormous huff of air and hauls himself into a sitting position. It seems to take him a great deal of effort. It’s cold today - Ryan’s bones can relate.
“We’ve been calling him Muttley,” Judith adds. The lurcher gives a tiny groan in his throat and his eyes meet Ryan’s.
Yes, Ryan thinks, that’s got to go.
Ten minutes later, filling out the various forms in Judith’s office, he pauses for a moment over the box for a name. He thinks of a film he saw as a young man, of the discharge papers locked deep in his safe, and he can’t help a twitch of a grin.
The lurcher lies down in the doorway and sinks his head onto his paws.
Ryan finishes the form. ‘Hello,’ it reads, ‘my name is Tokyo Joe’.
*-*-*-*-*
He’s not allowed to take the lurcher home straight away. Judith tells him he needs to pass a home inspection and an interview first. Ryan is not hugely bothered by this; he’s spent his career passing inspections of one kind or another.
In fact, the respite come as something of a blessing because when Ryan returns home from the shelter, he realises two things. Firstly, that Christmas Eve is in four days, he’s expected in Cumbria and it’s probably considered rude to turn up at someone’s house with a large dog unannounced in tow. Secondly, and possibly of more immediate concern, he has very little idea at all how to take care of a dog, beyond a vague notion of squeaky bones and not too many biscuits.
Perhaps there is a reason that spontaneous decision making is vastly out-of-character for him.
He lights the fire, cracks open a beer and tries asking Google.
This turns out to be a mistake. It appears that half the planet has very exacting ideas about how to best take care of a dog, and although they agree on the salient points - and Ryan feels that he probably knew about the necessity of food and water already - the details are very conflicting.
Ryan closes his laptop with a sigh. Then he reaches for his phone and calls Lyle.
“Alright, mate,” Lyle says, answering on the second ring.
Ryan forgoes a traditional greeting. “I bought a dog and I’ve just realised I have no idea what to do with it.”
There’s a long pause.
“Pub?” Lyle asks.
*-*-*-*-*
They meet at the Stag and Lyle brings a book called ‘Dogs for Dummies’ and doesn’t ask any other questions. There’s a reason they’ve been friends for so many years.
Ryan reads it cover to cover when he gets home and wakes up on the sofa at three in the morning. Both the central heating and the fire have knocked off for the day and his toes are numb. The house around him is silent and the sounds of the city filter in through the blinds, backlit by the sickly yellow glow of the street lamps.
He’s been dreaming but the memory of it eludes him. He sits up and his back groans painfully. Things don’t quite sit together properly anymore. Age and chill.
The metal of his safe gleams dully in the corner of the room. Ryan watches it for a moment. The knowledge of the papers it contains seems to sit particularly heavily on his mind during the early hours. Or perhaps that’s the four beers he had earlier. He’s not a young man anymore, and his liver seems to particularly relish giving him reminders. He fetches a glass of water and three aspirin on the off-chance.
When he returns, ‘Dogs for Dummies’ is lying discarded on the sofa. Sleep seems elusive and chasing it is often more energy than it’s worth, so Ryan settles back onto the sofa and reaches for his laptop. He leafs through the book until he finds the chapter entitled ‘What You Will Need’.
By the time the sun rises at dawn, he’s spent nearly £200 in Pets At Home.
It takes a lorry to deliver it.
*-*-*-*-*Ryan passes the home inspection with flying colours. Judith beams appallingly at the new tartan dog bed in the corner and does a credible job of ignoring how Ryan stumbles over the word ‘retired’ when she asks him about his working hours.
She gives him reams of paperwork and advice about insurance and advice about vaccinations and a date and a time to collect the lurcher and by the time she whirlwinds out the door, Ryan feels like he’s been hit by a truck. A blond motherly truck that smells vaguely of damp canine, but a truck nevertheless.
He lies down on the sofa and fails to sleep for ten minutes. Then he finally gives in to the nagging worry, picks up the phone and calls Annie.
She answers on the first ring, because that seems to be how his life is progressing at the moment. They exchange pleasantries and he tries not to sound too shifty.
Evidently, this is not in his skill set because after five minutes of stilted small talk, Annie says, “Look, Tom, I know why you’re ringing.”
Ryan blinks. “Huh?”
“And I know,” she continues, “I know it must be difficult, what with the things you deal with every day, to just come home at the end of it and try and be normal. And I know you don’t really relate to us, but we’re your family and that’s the point of family, isn’t it? That we’re here to buy you ugly jumpers at Christmas and make you mugs of tea that are never quite right and nag you about whether you have a girlfriend. You don’t have to relate for us to be family. And I know you’re going to say that you don’t want to come at Christmas and you’re going to make up some excuse about being busy with work and I’ve never called you on it before, but I’m going to now. I’m excited to see you and Trixie is excited to see you - although admittedly she’s frequently excited by her own shadow - and the girls have already decorated the spare room for you to make it nice and festive and…” At this point, she is forced to break off abruptly for breath. “And you’re my brother, Tom,” she finishes eventually, “you’re my brother.”
There is a moment of excruciatingly awkward silence, during which Ryan peers fixedly at his curtains. There’s an odd-shaped stain at the bottom of the left one that he’s never noticed before. Peculiar.
“Tom?” Annie asks eventually, “could you say something, please?”
Ryan clears his throat. “I got a dog,” he says. “I was just ringing to see if I could bring him for Christmas.”
There’s another silence.
“It’s okay if not,” he adds. “I can get Lyle to look after him. Probably.”
“Oh,” Annie says, and she sounds slightly teary for reasons Ryan, as a dignified and fully-grown man, does not want to particularly think about. “Oh Tom, of course you can bring him, the more the merrier! What’s his name? How long have you had him? What will I need to buy to feed him?”
“I’m getting him tomorrow,” Ryan says. “And you don’t need to buy anything. I’ve got what I need, I can bring it with me in the car. I don’t want to cause any trouble, he can go in the garage or something.”
“Oh, don’t be so ridiculous, it’ll be freezing in the garage. He can sleep in the lounge, we can bank the fire down overnight so he’ll be nice and warm. In fact, Trixie will love the company.”
The world-weary expression on the lurcher’s face swims through Ryan’s mind. Trixie’s love may be certain but he suspects it will also be unrequited.
“Now,” Annie says, interrupting his thoughts, “now we’ve got it all settled that you’re coming and you’re bringing a guest, we need to discuss the details. We can start with food.”
Ryan settles deeper into the sofa and returns his attention to the stain on the curtain.
*-*-*-*-*
The day of the dog collection, Ryan wakes at four o’clock, hand flying to a holster that’s just a part of history now. Flashes of claws and gunfire thump behind his eyes and the sheets are clammy with cooling sweat. When he swallows, bile burns down the back of his throat.
He presses both hands flat to the mattress and sits up. It takes a good ten minutes for the nightmare to recede enough that he can move to switch on the light.
He watches the sunrise with a whiskey in hand. He wonders what the hell he’s doing with his life.
*-*-*-*-*
When Trixie saw Ryan’s house for the first time, she went mental. Her tail and nose started going nineteen-to-the-dozen and she dashed about, overwhelmingly delighted with each furnishing she came across. The beanbag in the corner was met with positive paroxysms of delight.
The lurcher’s reaction is a little less exuberant. He plods in, waits patiently for Ryan to unclip his lead and then lies down in front of the sofa with a huge sigh and closes his eyes.
Ryan watches for a moment, lest he leap up with a burst of life, but when nothing appears to be forthcoming, he goes to the kitchen and makes a cup of tea.
When he comes back, the lurcher hasn’t moved. Ryan sits down on the sofa and pokes him absently with a toe, just to check he’s still breathing. This is meant by a tiny but somehow infinitely disapproving grunt.
“Okay, then,” Ryan mutters. He slumps back into the sofa and turns on the TV.
They watch Masterchef.
Author: x_bellaitalia_x
Rating: PG-13 (some language)
Word count: 12,562
Pairings: Stephen/Ryan pre-slash, Lester/Lyle mentioned.
Summary: Ryan never thought he'd survive to retire from the anomaly project. He never gave much thought to what came next.
A/N: For the Denial Secret Santa fic exchange, for lukadreaming. The prompts I included were...
- Trouble with a Capital T
- Reached out and rearranged the stars
- What do you do when they turn out the lights?
I have to admit, I did twist the prompts slightly to fit what I wanted to write. You also said you like puppies in your fics, which I obviously took and ran with in a big way - woops. Either way, I hope you enjoy it, and Happy Christmas! :)
This story is set in a universe where Ryan survived the trip to the Permian. It also includes Jon Lyle and mentions of Blade, both OCs belonging to fredbassett. Many thanks also go to rain_sleet_snow for proof-reading, general hand-holding and assuring me this wasn't crap. Any mistakes that remain are my own.
There's also a reference in this to Tokyo Joe, which is an old Bogart film about an ex-serviceman, who leaves the army and tries to pick up the pieces of his life.
Title from the Passenger song 'Scare Away The Dark'.
Feel Like You Still Have A ChoiceIt’s December when Ryan retires from the anomaly project. He’s fifty-six and he’s survived far past his luck. He’s tired. Connor and Abby, the only others left from the early days, try and talk him out of it. Ryan thinks they can sense that this is his time though, because they don’t try too hard. They’ve all seen too much now. He smiles and hugs them, and promises to stay in touch. They’ll be safe in Becker’s more than capable hands.
He packs up his office on a Thursday. Most of it gets thrown out, but he keeps a few personal items, stacking them neatly into a box. Down below in the atrium, he hears the all-too-familiar wail of the anomaly detector start to sound. It’s seven o’clock at night and the knowledge that he is not on call - will never be on call again - doesn’t stop the pit of doom from opening in his stomach. He can hear shouts and footsteps echoing through the corridors as the teams pack up and head out, an oiled machine after all these years.
Later, when the ARC has fallen silent again, he drops the plastic dinosaur that Connor bought him into the top of the box and hoists it into his arms.
He doesn’t know what he’s going to do now.
He pauses in the office door and looks back one last time. Then he reaches out, and flicks off the light.
*-*-*-*-*
And so it happens that, for the first time in about three years, Ryan has the fortnight surrounding Christmas off. He never used to mind working. Somebody had to and there were so many men with wives and girlfriends and elderly mothers and six month old babies to whom the festive season was far more important. Ryan could take his leave any time.
Now he finds he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. It’s not that he doesn’t make plans. He does. He goes running and to the gym and to the pub with Lyle. He buys a very expensive bottle of wine for his sister and a pair of socks for her husband and book vouchers for his niece and nephew. His house is quiet, but he’s not particularly lonely. He’s not much of anything, really.
At least, until his phone rings on December 15th and he makes the mistake of answering it. It’s his sister, her voice warm and cheerful and large somehow, echoing and crackling down the line all the way from up north. She seems somewhat surprised to get an answer. Alternating voicemails is their usual method of communication.
“Tom,” she says, somehow extending each letter of his name into an entire delighted syllable, “fancy getting through to you! What on earth are you doing home? I was expecting the machine.”
His first attempt at answering comes out as a croak rather than words. He clears his throat and tries again.
“I’m on leave,” he says. “For Christmas. I’m at home.”
There’s a startled silence.
“For Christmas? As in, the whole of Christmas? Eve and Day?”
Ryan grunts in acknowledgement.
“Well,” Annie says. “That’s a turn up for the books, isn’t it. Who are you spending the holiday with? Is Jon with you?”
“Lyle’s at his partner’s,” Ryan replies, in lieu of answering his current least favourite question.
“So you’re free?” Annie asks, never one to miss a trick. Ryan can’t help but note she uses ‘free’ instead of ‘alone’. It’s kind of her, but the idea that people think he requires that sort of kindness makes him want to spit.
“Yes, I suppose so.”
He can almost hear his sister light up. “Well then, there’s no question about it, you absolutely must come to us! Rick would love a chance to catch up with you properly and the children will be delighted!”
These are both bald-faced lies. Ryan winces. “Annie…”
“No, Tom, I won’t take no for an answer. It’s been far too long since we’ve seen you. We’ll have a proper family Christmas, just like we used to.”
Ryan closes his eyes and reminds himself that it is not Annie’s fault that the proper family Christmases of her childhood only ever took place because his father died and his mother remarried.
“Well,” Annie eventually says, once the silence has stretched too long to be comfortable, “maybe you should take a few days to think about it. It would be lovely though, to see you again properly. I miss my brother.”
“Right,” Ryan says. “Okay.” He refuses to say he’ll think about it, because Annie, like their mother, seems to take that phrase as synonymous with ‘yes’.
“In the meantime,” Annie continues, “I was hoping to ask a favour. We’re coming down to London for a day, just Katie and I, and it’s so much easier on me with the driving if we can stay overnight. I was wondering if we could stay at yours? I didn’t realise you’d be home obviously, but we wouldn’t get in the way. You could put us up on the sofa?”
There is no way to say no without seeming appallingly rude.
“I suppose so,” Ryan says. “What are you doing in London?”
“We thought we’d get a dog,” his sister says cheerfully, “and Katie insists that the only place to get one is from Battersea Dog’s Home. It’s all arranged - we’ve had a home inspection and everything.”
“Oh right,” Ryan says. “Will the dog be coming here?”
There’s a pause. “Well, yes,” Annie says, tentatively, “just for the one night. You don’t mind do you?”
Ryan does, a bit. He’s never been a dog person, but this is something it always seems churlish to admit. “No,” he says, “it’s fine. When are you coming?”
“Oh,” Annie says, sounding the tiniest bit guilty. “Is tomorrow okay?”
*-*-*-*-*
Battersea Dogs’ Home is not as grim as Ryan expected, even if he’s not quite sure how he ended up being dragged along to it. The floors are grey easy-clean concrete, the metal bars and individual cages have a distinctly jail-like feel and the air is saturated with the smell of bleach and musty dog, but the people are cheerful, tails are wagging and there are canine-friendly Christmas decorations on every surface.
They’re greeted in reception by a woman named Judith, who Annie has apparently been emailing. She’s affable and welcoming and makes a concerted effort to include Katie in the proceedings. Ryan mostly hangs back and tries not to get in the way.
Judith briefs them on the dos and don’ts of dog ownership and the policies of the Home and once the necessary paperwork is out of the way, she leads them through into the rehoming centre proper. They wander up and down, through a sea of pens and a cacophony of barking. Judith points out possible candidates and offers up brief titbits of information. Katie comes further and further out of her shell the more dogs they meet, but it’s not until they stop in front of pen 62 that she really lights up.
Pen 62 contains a young Golden Retriever, not quite a puppy but definitely not fully grown. She’s all paws and eyelashes and glamorous golden fluff and as soon as she turns her big brown eyes on Katie, Ryan knows that she’ll be the one coming home with them. Katie visibly melts.
“That one,” she says, an edge of finality in her voice.
Judith opens up the pen and the pup bounds out, made entirely of sheer delighted wiggling and proceeds to charge up and down as though everything about the situation is just too joyful to be contained.
Ryan feels tired just looking at her.
He wanders away, leaving Annie and Katie to coo, and peers into some of the other cages further down the row. There’s a yapping Beagle and a Bull Terrier with a head so square it could have been drawn with a ruler and - right at the end - a lurcher.
At least, Ryan thinks it’s a lurcher. It’s scruffy and gangly and a rather odd shade of grey, lying on its side in a sprawl of knobbly legs and skinny tail. As he stands there, it opens one eye and regards him with a mixture of quiet disinterest and weariness. It doesn’t bother to get up.
“Gosh,” Annie says, appearing suddenly at his side. “He’s a battered old thing, isn’t he. Is that even a breed?”
“I think it’s a lurcher,” Ryan says, feeling an odd prickle of irritation.
“Looks like a bit of a patchwork to me.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
His tone is sharp and Annie looks up at him surprised. “I…” she starts, but Judith interrupts, calling from a little way down the corridor.
“He’s up for adoption that one, you know. Bit of an old boy, but good-natured. We’ve been having some trouble placing him, he’s been here a fair while.”
“Where did you get him from?” Ryan asks.
Judith comes over, dusting golden hairs off her jeans. “His owner died six months ago. Lovely old chap, but no family or friends. No one to take the dog on and so he ended up with us. They were a proper devoted pair apparently. He’s been pining.”
The dog does, indeed, look thoroughly miserable.
“Have you ever thought about adopting a dog, Mr Ryan?” Judith asks. Ryan can feel the burn of her eyes as she peers at him closer. He feels a little bit like prey.
“Just Ryan,” he says automatically, “and no. I work a lot.”
Judith looks a bit disappointed. “Well,” she says, “if you ever change your mind. It would be nice for him to have a home at Christmas.”
Ryan can feel Annie watching him, her scrutiny prickling down his spine. “No,” he says, “it wouldn’t work. Sorry.”
He turns away and gestures for the two women to move ahead of him back down the corridor, to where Katie is all but rolling around on the floor with the puppy.
When he glances back into the cage one last time, the lurcher has raised his head and is watching him unblinkingly.
*-*-*-*-*-*
Katie and Annie name the Retriever pup Trixie. She spends her first night with them in Ryan’s house and in that short space of time manages to destroy a sofa cushion, a sock, the corner of the rug and two mugs. Ryan curses her fluffy golden soul.
Later though, when Katie and Annie have gone up for the night, sharing his room while he’s self-relegated to the sofa, Trixie settles in with a heavy sigh and an even heavier head on his feet. Ryan drinks two beers and reads a few chapters of his book and tries to ignore how the wool of his socks is getting progressively damper with hot doggy breath.
Trixie’s paws twitch in her dreams and occasionally she gives little huffs of utter contentment. Household destruction aside, Ryan may be forced to admit the situation is not entirely unpleasant.
He wonders what the lurcher’s name was.
*-*-*-*-*-*
The next day, Trixie, with Katie and Annie in tow, vanishes back up the M6. Trixie’s tail, both a banner of happiness and a weapon of mass destruction, has broken a cereal bowl and a candle holder. The candle holder was a gift from Ryan’s grandmother, when she was still hoping he might one day meet and marry a woman who would appreciate such things. He’s not too broken up about its loss. Of more immediate concern is the promise to see them all on the 24th, extracted from him by Annie with all the skill of a trained interrogator.
The idea of a big family Christmas makes him want to crawl out of his own skin. He goes for a ten-mile run, nose freezing and numb in the grey December drizzle, and when he gets back the house feels quieter than normal.
There’s dog hair stuck to his doormat.
*-*-*-*-*-*
The lurcher, as it turns out, is nameless.
“Hello, Mr Ryan,” Judith says, when he walks through the door two days later, “I had a hunch we’d be seeing you again.”
The lurcher is in the same pen, in largely the same position. This time though, when Ryan approaches, his head comes up straight away.
“I kept him on hold for you,” Judith says, cheerfully, “just in case. I can always tell.”
“What’s his name?” Ryan asks.
Judith looks sad for a moment. “We don’t know,” she says. “Like I said before, his last owner died and there weren’t any friends or family. He didn’t have a collar and we couldn’t find anyone to ask.”
The lurcher lets out an enormous huff of air and hauls himself into a sitting position. It seems to take him a great deal of effort. It’s cold today - Ryan’s bones can relate.
“We’ve been calling him Muttley,” Judith adds. The lurcher gives a tiny groan in his throat and his eyes meet Ryan’s.
Yes, Ryan thinks, that’s got to go.
Ten minutes later, filling out the various forms in Judith’s office, he pauses for a moment over the box for a name. He thinks of a film he saw as a young man, of the discharge papers locked deep in his safe, and he can’t help a twitch of a grin.
The lurcher lies down in the doorway and sinks his head onto his paws.
Ryan finishes the form. ‘Hello,’ it reads, ‘my name is Tokyo Joe’.
*-*-*-*-*
He’s not allowed to take the lurcher home straight away. Judith tells him he needs to pass a home inspection and an interview first. Ryan is not hugely bothered by this; he’s spent his career passing inspections of one kind or another.
In fact, the respite come as something of a blessing because when Ryan returns home from the shelter, he realises two things. Firstly, that Christmas Eve is in four days, he’s expected in Cumbria and it’s probably considered rude to turn up at someone’s house with a large dog unannounced in tow. Secondly, and possibly of more immediate concern, he has very little idea at all how to take care of a dog, beyond a vague notion of squeaky bones and not too many biscuits.
Perhaps there is a reason that spontaneous decision making is vastly out-of-character for him.
He lights the fire, cracks open a beer and tries asking Google.
This turns out to be a mistake. It appears that half the planet has very exacting ideas about how to best take care of a dog, and although they agree on the salient points - and Ryan feels that he probably knew about the necessity of food and water already - the details are very conflicting.
Ryan closes his laptop with a sigh. Then he reaches for his phone and calls Lyle.
“Alright, mate,” Lyle says, answering on the second ring.
Ryan forgoes a traditional greeting. “I bought a dog and I’ve just realised I have no idea what to do with it.”
There’s a long pause.
“Pub?” Lyle asks.
*-*-*-*-*
They meet at the Stag and Lyle brings a book called ‘Dogs for Dummies’ and doesn’t ask any other questions. There’s a reason they’ve been friends for so many years.
Ryan reads it cover to cover when he gets home and wakes up on the sofa at three in the morning. Both the central heating and the fire have knocked off for the day and his toes are numb. The house around him is silent and the sounds of the city filter in through the blinds, backlit by the sickly yellow glow of the street lamps.
He’s been dreaming but the memory of it eludes him. He sits up and his back groans painfully. Things don’t quite sit together properly anymore. Age and chill.
The metal of his safe gleams dully in the corner of the room. Ryan watches it for a moment. The knowledge of the papers it contains seems to sit particularly heavily on his mind during the early hours. Or perhaps that’s the four beers he had earlier. He’s not a young man anymore, and his liver seems to particularly relish giving him reminders. He fetches a glass of water and three aspirin on the off-chance.
When he returns, ‘Dogs for Dummies’ is lying discarded on the sofa. Sleep seems elusive and chasing it is often more energy than it’s worth, so Ryan settles back onto the sofa and reaches for his laptop. He leafs through the book until he finds the chapter entitled ‘What You Will Need’.
By the time the sun rises at dawn, he’s spent nearly £200 in Pets At Home.
It takes a lorry to deliver it.
*-*-*-*-*Ryan passes the home inspection with flying colours. Judith beams appallingly at the new tartan dog bed in the corner and does a credible job of ignoring how Ryan stumbles over the word ‘retired’ when she asks him about his working hours.
She gives him reams of paperwork and advice about insurance and advice about vaccinations and a date and a time to collect the lurcher and by the time she whirlwinds out the door, Ryan feels like he’s been hit by a truck. A blond motherly truck that smells vaguely of damp canine, but a truck nevertheless.
He lies down on the sofa and fails to sleep for ten minutes. Then he finally gives in to the nagging worry, picks up the phone and calls Annie.
She answers on the first ring, because that seems to be how his life is progressing at the moment. They exchange pleasantries and he tries not to sound too shifty.
Evidently, this is not in his skill set because after five minutes of stilted small talk, Annie says, “Look, Tom, I know why you’re ringing.”
Ryan blinks. “Huh?”
“And I know,” she continues, “I know it must be difficult, what with the things you deal with every day, to just come home at the end of it and try and be normal. And I know you don’t really relate to us, but we’re your family and that’s the point of family, isn’t it? That we’re here to buy you ugly jumpers at Christmas and make you mugs of tea that are never quite right and nag you about whether you have a girlfriend. You don’t have to relate for us to be family. And I know you’re going to say that you don’t want to come at Christmas and you’re going to make up some excuse about being busy with work and I’ve never called you on it before, but I’m going to now. I’m excited to see you and Trixie is excited to see you - although admittedly she’s frequently excited by her own shadow - and the girls have already decorated the spare room for you to make it nice and festive and…” At this point, she is forced to break off abruptly for breath. “And you’re my brother, Tom,” she finishes eventually, “you’re my brother.”
There is a moment of excruciatingly awkward silence, during which Ryan peers fixedly at his curtains. There’s an odd-shaped stain at the bottom of the left one that he’s never noticed before. Peculiar.
“Tom?” Annie asks eventually, “could you say something, please?”
Ryan clears his throat. “I got a dog,” he says. “I was just ringing to see if I could bring him for Christmas.”
There’s another silence.
“It’s okay if not,” he adds. “I can get Lyle to look after him. Probably.”
“Oh,” Annie says, and she sounds slightly teary for reasons Ryan, as a dignified and fully-grown man, does not want to particularly think about. “Oh Tom, of course you can bring him, the more the merrier! What’s his name? How long have you had him? What will I need to buy to feed him?”
“I’m getting him tomorrow,” Ryan says. “And you don’t need to buy anything. I’ve got what I need, I can bring it with me in the car. I don’t want to cause any trouble, he can go in the garage or something.”
“Oh, don’t be so ridiculous, it’ll be freezing in the garage. He can sleep in the lounge, we can bank the fire down overnight so he’ll be nice and warm. In fact, Trixie will love the company.”
The world-weary expression on the lurcher’s face swims through Ryan’s mind. Trixie’s love may be certain but he suspects it will also be unrequited.
“Now,” Annie says, interrupting his thoughts, “now we’ve got it all settled that you’re coming and you’re bringing a guest, we need to discuss the details. We can start with food.”
Ryan settles deeper into the sofa and returns his attention to the stain on the curtain.
*-*-*-*-*
The day of the dog collection, Ryan wakes at four o’clock, hand flying to a holster that’s just a part of history now. Flashes of claws and gunfire thump behind his eyes and the sheets are clammy with cooling sweat. When he swallows, bile burns down the back of his throat.
He presses both hands flat to the mattress and sits up. It takes a good ten minutes for the nightmare to recede enough that he can move to switch on the light.
He watches the sunrise with a whiskey in hand. He wonders what the hell he’s doing with his life.
*-*-*-*-*
When Trixie saw Ryan’s house for the first time, she went mental. Her tail and nose started going nineteen-to-the-dozen and she dashed about, overwhelmingly delighted with each furnishing she came across. The beanbag in the corner was met with positive paroxysms of delight.
The lurcher’s reaction is a little less exuberant. He plods in, waits patiently for Ryan to unclip his lead and then lies down in front of the sofa with a huge sigh and closes his eyes.
Ryan watches for a moment, lest he leap up with a burst of life, but when nothing appears to be forthcoming, he goes to the kitchen and makes a cup of tea.
When he comes back, the lurcher hasn’t moved. Ryan sits down on the sofa and pokes him absently with a toe, just to check he’s still breathing. This is meant by a tiny but somehow infinitely disapproving grunt.
“Okay, then,” Ryan mutters. He slumps back into the sofa and turns on the TV.
They watch Masterchef.