JE/NEWS- "A Dog's Life"
Title: A Dog’s Life
Universe: JE ( Doggy AU)
Theme/Topic: NEWS
Rating: PG for some cursing
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (and Johnny)
Warnings/Spoilers: CRACK. AND CRACK.
Word Count: 8,802
Summary: Life and all its ups and downs. As a dog.
Dedication: Ryo’s birthday fic! Where he’s a dog. No really. Here, have pictures. Also for Nico and Christine, happy birthday as well!
A/N: Yeah, that’s right. I couldn’t think of ANYTHING ELSE to write Ryo except a request from MY OWN request list. LOL Call me self-centered with no ill-intentions. (KAT-TUN doesn't show up because clearly they are not dogs, they are show cats.) >> Also, I don’t know if Japan has junkyards. Or how they do the whole landfill/garbage thing at all. So if I’m wrong whatever; the junkyard doesn’t matter anyway.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
Ryo’s earliest memories are of his mother and his brothers and his sister beside him, all of them curled close together and content. His world is small but warm in those initial weeks of life, and the sounds and smells he experiences with each passing day all eventually become comfortable and familiar to him. Even though he can’t see anything at first, it still feels safe anyway, because he knows that he’s not alone.
And so those first experiences of his life are good and full of food and play and mischief; he remembers wrestling with his brothers and protecting his sister from bugs and the gentle touch of his mother’s nose against his head at night.
He’s happy.
It lasts up until the evening when he suddenly gets picked up by the scruff of his neck by one of the humans who his mother is rather fond of; he gets examined all over without warning or reason.
Ryo-naturally- snaps at the human (despite his mother always telling him that they aren’t supposed to do such things).
The human whaps him on the nose in response and then puts him back down. “The markings aren’t ideal on that one,” the human says then, to another of the humans, the one who yells at them whenever someone poops on the rug. “And he has a bad attitude.”
“Mmm,” the second human agrees, and the next thing Ryo knows, he is being thrown into a rusty cage and taken away while his mother barks in distress and his siblings whine after him.
It is late at night and dark outside when Ryo is abandoned on a lonely roadside that doesn’t sound or smell very familiar at all.
For the very first time in his life he’s alone and cold and scared; he spends the next few hours sitting huddled and miserable against a telephone pole to block out the harsh January winds.
That night, he decides he hates humans more than anything.
~~~~~
Days later, when it finally sinks in that no one is coming to find him-not his mother or his brothers or his sister-he decides to move, following the distant smells of food because he’s hungry beyond all reason. He sticks to the shadows as he travels, in order to avoid the various humans who walk down the streets like they own them.
It takes him two more days, but his nose finally leads him to the gates of a junkyard that’s piled high with garbage. And food.
There are seven other dogs that already live there when he arrives, most bigger than him and older than him but not all; he can see the slits of glowing eyes silently appraising him from self-dug shelters as he wanders into their kingdom of garbage that first evening, on shaky legs.
He wonders if maybe he should leave before he gets attacked, but the smell of food is overwhelming and makes him hesitate, leaves him standing out in the open unguarded and unsure.
Then, before he can decide either way, a head pokes out from under one of the garbage heaps; it belongs to a much more elegant looking animal than Ryo had imagined would ever live in a dark place like this. It’s an afghan puppy, even younger than Ryo but already much bigger anyway.
“So what do you want, pet?” the afghan asks with its nose in the air after a beat, looking Ryo over appraisingly.
Ryo glares back at that overbearing attitude on instinct. “Food, what else?”
Laughter follows from the other dogs, as they finally slink out into the open as well.
“Lemme guess,” a flea-infested, snaggle-toothed mutt asks Ryo around a lopsided grin, “some humans got sick of you and dumped you on the roadside too, huh kid?”
Ryo looks away. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“He’s so tiny!” a brown boxer-mix laughs, tongue hanging out of his mouth on one side and left ear torn, probably from saying something horribly obnoxious to the wrong person at the wrong time.
Ryo’s lip curls back and he wonders if he can jump high enough to take out the other ear.
“Hey, hey, leave him alone,” a fluffy blond mutt whimpers sadly, “he’s probably scared and lonely!”
In the back, a chocolate lab-mix silently pushes forward some dried up beef neck bones in offering. They roll to a stop in front of Ryo. Then, the lab-mix calmly turns around and pads back to wherever it is he’d come from without a word either way.
“Eh, those are the good ones!” an older terrier with mange problems whines after the lab-mix, “you’re really gonna let him have all of them? Just like that?”
Ryo doesn’t give the lab-mix the chance to reconsider the offer; the minute he sees the bones he tears into them, while the others eventually grow bored of watching him eat and head back to their shelters to nap.
Only the afghan stays behind, watching Ryo curiously.
“You’re drooling all over yourself,” he feels the need to point out, helpfully.
“So sorry, your majesty,” Ryo drawls back, around a mouthful of cartilage.
The afghan grins, in a horribly prissy way. “My name’s Uchi,” he announces, like Ryo was right just now and he is in actuality, some sort of foreign royalty. Then he snatches one of the bones for himself and prances off on those long legs of his, laughing over his shoulder at Ryo the whole time.
Ryo’s life in the junkyard begins just like that, around a mouthful of dried up bones on top of a mountain made of garbage.
~~~~~
Life in a junkyard- as Ryo soon learns- is not easy.
People-mostly bratty kids with too much time on their hands-come by on some days and throw rocks at the eight junkyard strays; they tease them through the fence and taunt them with food that they can’t have. The first time Ryo encounters this kind of behavior, he gets hit in the back with a concrete chip.
He learns to dodge those eventually, and after that, learns to dodge falling piles of garbage too, on the days that the city workers come by to dump their trash on top of the dogs’ homes. He learns how to dig through the fresh rubbish right after the city workers leave too, looking for food that might still be at least a little bit tasty, and with time, he even learns how to follow the dumb terrier mix so that he can figure out where he hides his extra food stashes; Ryo and Uchi both take turns pinching the better finds from his piles when food is scarce and they know the terrier isn’t looking.
Ryo also learns that sometimes there is so much food at the dump that you can make yourself sick eating it all and that sometimes there just isn’t anything. More often than not it’s not that extreme in either way though. There is always something-because the humans are wasteful- it’s just usually completely unpalatable.
None of the other junkyard dogs seem to understand that point except for he and Uchi, which mostly just ends up being their own loss.
Today they find themselves in another one of those situations, as the two puppies stare down at a rotting, maggot infested piece of raw beef steak, both good and bad smells coming off of it at the same time and making them hesitate.
“You try it first,” Uchi urges him, like the kid he is.
“Why do I have to try it first? You’re the one who found it.”
“Yeah but… it stinks.”
“Then don’t eat it!”
“I’m hungry.”
“Then eat it!”
“You’re the same as me, why don’t you suck it up and eat it first? And you're older!”
It’s while they’re arguing like this that one of the older dogs-the dumb-looking one with knotted brown hair and a stump where his tail should be- rounds the corner and leers at them. “Whooo, some attitude from the former pets, eh?” he whistles, and grabs the rotting piece of raw steak for himself without a moment’s hesitation. “Can’t complain when these are the ropes, pups!” he barks, laughing as he prances away with his prize in his mouth.
Uchi pouts. “Your fault,” he sniffs at Ryo, looking mournful as the food gets carted off by a less picky opponent.
Ryo sighs. “C’mon,” he says eventually, “there’s gotta be something else around here.”
But even if there is, they suck at finding it; the only reason they eat at all that night is because the chocolate lab-mix takes pity on them (again) and silently leaves a half-eaten carton of Chinese takeout by the box Ryo has been sleeping in the past few nights.
~~~~~
A few weeks or so after arriving at the junkyard, Ryo has an odd encounter.
He’s sniffing around the outer edges of the new garbage deposits one morning when a strange dog comes bounding up to the edge of the fence, all smiles and excitement. “Hi!” the dog greets without preamble, “I’ve never seen you around here before.”
Ryo blinks at the happy idiot panting in front of him; it’s a golden retriever with the shiniest fur Ryo has ever seen. He’s got a bright red collar around his neck too, with a tag on it that means he has a home and probably a family as well, people who take care of him and love him and make sure to keep that precious coat of his nice and clean.
In other words, he reeks of humans.
Ryo is instantly wary. “What do you want?”
“Want? A belly rub, I guess,” the retriever replies after a moment, and that stupid grin never leaves his face once. “So, what’re you looking for, ne? Treasure? Last time I was here they said there might be treasure.”
Ryo blinks. “You…come here a lot?”
The retriever’s grin broadens. “Sometimes! If I behave, Master takes off the leash and lets me run around. Majide, exercise is great, ne.”
Ryo nearly rolls his eyes. “Of course.”
“Oi, Yamapi!” the snaggle-toothed mutt shouts at the retriever from the top of one of the trash piles, “don’t scare the kid!”
Yamapi laughs. “I’m just introducing myself!”
“Yamapi?” Ryo manages after a beat, blinking.
What a stupid name. It suits him.
The boxer-mix joins Ryo at the fence a moment later, and looks Yamapi over with an air of disapproval. “So?” he asks, around a smirk, “How’s life in the big house, all locked up and nowhere to go?”
Yamapi cocks his head thoughtfully. “The same. I placed in another show last week, ne. And Koyama got honorable mention. We’re really working hard and doing our best every day!”
“Oh how nice for you,” the boxer replies, and isn’t even trying to hide the disdain now.
But apparently he doesn’t have to, because the retriever doesn’t pick up on it anyway. “You guys look like you made some new friends! That’s exciting too, ne,” he says brightly. “Life out here must be really exciting.”
The boxer snorts. “Yeah, real exciting. I ate some moldy bread for lunch today.”
Yamapi wags his tail. “Really? I’ve never had that before. It must have been an adventure.”
The boxer sighs in a helpless sort of way, sarcasm lost on the puppy situated on the other side of the fence. “I’m going to go take a nap,” he says instead, and turns around and ambles off in annoyance.
“Have a good one!” Yamapi calls after him, before turning back to Ryo. “I’m Yamapi! What’s your name?”
Ryo doesn’t really want to tell him, but for some reason, when he looks into those dumb, friendly eyes, all he can say is, “Ryo,” out loud, without meaning to.
“Alright! Ryo-chan then,” Yamapi says, tail wagging even faster now. “It’s nice to meet you!”
“Uh, yeah…” Ryo manages eventually.
Yamapi looks like he’s going to say something else, but then a whistle cuts the air, high and loud and very, very annoying.
“Yabai!” Yamapi says, looking disappointed, “I’ve got to go now. It was nice meeting you, Ryo-chan!” he says, and then turns around and obediently trots off in the direction of the whistle. “I hope you find treasure, ne!” he calls over his shoulder, and sounds like he really means it.
It leaves Ryo at the fence, staring after him in a vaguely confused manner.
“He’s a Master’s pet,” the mangy terrier snorts after a beat, poking his head out from inside a box full of packing foam nearby. “They’re all dumb and pampered like that. Human-lovers.”
“Huh,” Ryo manages, before shrugging mentally and going back to his food hunt.
~~~~~
But despite the junkyard dogs’ apparent distrust and dislike of most humans, Ryo also learns that some humans are good (at least for a free meal); the men who dump things in the junkyard sometimes throw the dogs scraps from their lunches, and there’s a man who passes by most days of the week who always, for some reason, seems to have dog treats in his pocket. He’ll toss the strays tidbits sometimes, and the older dogs always gather eagerly at the fence whenever they smell him coming (despite their self-proclaimed ‘hate all humans’ outlook on life). They fondly call the man Meal Ticket.
Ryo is still a little more wary of people than they are (or maybe less hypocritical about them than they are) and hides whenever those humans stop by despite the free food; as far as he’s concerned, he’s perfectly fine with never relying on another human ever again after what the last group he trusted did to him.
He tells himself to forget the good moments he had before, to forget the luxuries of being fed and petted and groomed and played with. Instead, he settles in for what he thinks is going to be a life of fending for himself.
He’s a stray now, and humans mean nothing to him.
~~~~~
One afternoon some weeks later, when Ryo and Uchi are napping in the sun because there’s no food to be found anywhere (again), Ryo feels someone watching them. He cracks an eye open instinctively and glances around for any trouble; what he sees at the entrance to the junkyard is a little man in a gray suit, studying he and Uchi both very carefully.
Ryo starts to growl, which wakes Uchi up.
“I was just getting to the good part of my dream,” Uchi whines. “There was a mountain of wieners.”
Ryo ignores him. “That guy,” he manages, after a beat. “I don’t like the way he’s looking at us.”
Uchi blinks, then follows Ryo’s eyeline to the man. “Maybe he wants to give us food,” Uchi thinks, and looks around for the others. It seems like the remaining six junkyard dogs are all fast asleep. Uchi grins. “We should go see if he has something tasty, before the rest of those old fogies smell him. Especially since it’s been such slim pickings these last few days.”
Ryo thinks Uchi is dumb sometimes. “I have a bad feeling about him.”
Uchi shrugs and stands. “Your loss,” he says, and pads down the mountain of trash towards the gate, tail wagging.
As it turns out, they’re both right, in their own ways.
Uchi is right in that the man does have food. Lots of it, which he gives to Uchi with a smile and some sweet words about what a good boy Uchi is.
“Hey!” Ryo barks when he sees what’s happening, and struggles down after his friend. “Don’t just eat it like that, stupid! We’ve never seen this guy before!”
“But it’s good!” Uchi assures him around a mouthful, and looks as happy as Ryo has ever seen him.
The man in the gray suit smiles at Ryo too, and tosses him some food as well.
Ryo sniffs at the offerings warily and doesn’t want anything to do with them-especially since they’re coming from a human- but at the same time his nose and stomach urge him to accept, because he hasn’t eaten properly in the last four days.
He’s eating the treats before he can even finish thinking about it all the way through.
And Uchi has a point; it is really good.
Ryo’s hunger gets the best of him after that initial bite and he eagerly starts to pick up the rest of the treats with his tongue, before Uchi gets them all for himself.
But then, a few minutes later, Uchi makes a weird noise from beside him and tips over on his face. “I don’t feel so good,” he murmurs, head lolling once before he passes out.
Afterwards, when Ryo is suddenly fighting to stay conscious while he’s being put in a big metal cage on the flatbed of a small white truck, he tells himself that Uchi is a moron and that he’s never going to listen to him ever again.
~~~~~
When Ryo wakes up sometime later it’s to a strangely familiar mingling of scents; his vision and hearing are still kind of muddled but he can make out just enough to know that he’s still in the same cage as the night before and that there are two men here with him now, both of whose smells he knows. There is the man who drugged them last night-he is wearing a black suit instead of a gray one now- as a different, older man stands next to him, looking at the two drowsy puppies thoughtfully.
“A real gem of a find, eh, Kitagawa-san? Purebred through and through, the both of them. And young!” the black suit man laughs, sweating eagerly and making Ryo’s nose wrinkle with just the sound of his voice. Beside him, Uchi doesn’t notice anything that’s going on; he makes a whining noise (something about wieners again) and rolls over in his sleep.
In the meantime, Ryo tries to growl even though he knows who Kitagawa-san is too; from his smell, it’s the man the others call Meal Ticket. But with the drugs still in his system making it hard for him to do much of anything at will, his growling just ends up sounding more like a whimper, and all he accomplishes with it is give himself an even bigger headache.
After a moment, Meal Ticket smiles. “I’ll take them both,” he announces, and the black suit man looks inordinately pleased at the news. “They both look like they’ll make wonderful show dogs.”
“Of course they will, sir!” the black suit man assures Meal Ticket, and rushes off to prepare two dog carriers for his latest sales while Ryo lays his head back down and closes his eyes, trying to make the pain go away.
That day, Ryo and Uchi are shoved into another dark space and taken to someplace new and unfamiliar, someplace that isn’t the comfortable chaos of the junkyard that they both know.
~~~~
When Ryo opens his eyes again there’s light and grass and water. It’s all in front of him, through the open door of the pet carrier, and Ryo darts right out into it the moment he sees a means of escape.
And he very nearly runs headfirst into a glass door.
But luckily, he manages to skid to a stop right before he hits it at full speed, and only ends up bumping his nose a little (and hurting his pride).
“Ha! I did the same thing my first day here!” a voice cackles from somewhere up above him, and bewildered, Ryo spins around to face its owner.
A grinning shiba inu puppy looks back at him, from where it is lounging in a lawn chair by the door.
Ryo growls instinctively. “Who the hell are you?” he demands.
“Kusano!” the puppy replies, unfazed by the other dog’s hostility (or just not noticing it).
The way he does it, it kind of reminds Ryo of…
“Ryo-chan, is that really you!?” a familiar voice shouts excitedly, and the sound of pounding footsteps like a stampede soon follows.
Ryo barely has time to skitter out of the way before a very familiar, very shiny golden coat is barreling full speed ahead right at him; as it is, he manages to roll to the side just as Yamapi slams into the sliding glass door with an excited “Oof!”
Ryo stares, while Yamapi gets up, shakes himself off, and puts one of his big dumb paws on Ryo’s head. “It is you!” he says. “Hi!”
Ryo ignores him, instead looking around the rest of the enormous yard because clearly, something odd has happened to him in the last few hours and now he is in the land of death doors and happy idiots.
He wonders if this is doggy hell.
In addition to the shiba inu and Yamapi in the yard, Ryo soon discovers that there is also a whining Irish setter over by the pet carriers, peeking into the one that Uchi is still snoozing in. “Are you okay? Are you sick?” it asks Uchi, clearly very worried about Uchi’s health despite Uchi not being all that worried about his own.
There’s a chow chow over in the shade with its nose buried in a food bowl, a husky with its front paws up on a windowsill as it watches the TV that’s on inside the house, and the tiniest Pomeranian Ryo has ever seen, determinedly nosing a proportionally tiny soccer ball through the grass (that coincidentally, comes up to its stomach).
“What the heck is going on?” Ryo demands after a beat. “Where am I?”
Yamapi wags his tail. “This is where I live!”
Ryo groans.
He was right; it is doggy hell.
~~~~~
Uchi wakes up a little while later because there is a wet nose poking him in the cheek.
He screams.
When Uchi screams the Irish setter screams too, and ends up hitting his head on the top of the pet carrier as he hastily scuttles backwards to get away from the screaming afghan.
“Would you shut up, Koyama?” the husky sighs from the windowsill, where he is watching the evening news. “I can’t hear what the weather is going to be like tomorrow.”
“Sorry, Shige!” Koyama whimpers sheepishly, as Uchi blinks and finally deigns to come out of his carrier. “Hi!” Koyama says gently, when he does. “And uh…welcome. Are you okay? I didn’t scare you, did I?”
“Um,” Uchi replies, eloquent as ever as he blinks and looks around, “where am I?”
From where he’s seated by the door, Ryo sighs. “His house,” he says, and nods towards Yamapi.
“Oh.” Uchi looks around some more, this time with interest. “Is there food?”
Yamapi nods. “Plenty!” He pauses and glances over to the food bowls by the side of the porch, where the chow chow is still very busy at work. “Massu!” Yamapi says, “Massu, is there still food left?”
Massu pauses and looks up, smiling happily. “Yup!”
Yamapi looks back at Uchi. “Plenty!” he repeats.
A beat.
Then Uchi shrugs. “Great.”
He pads over to join Massu.
Ryo thinks Uchi is dumb for the umpteenth time that day, while Yamapi drags him over to the food bowls too, saying something along the lines of, “Ryo-chan, if you don’t hurry, Massu will eat it all, ne.”
Ryo’s life in the big house on the hill begins just like that, around a mouthful of organic dog food on the perfectly manicured lawn of some very rich humans.
The first thing he does is try to think of a way to break the hell out.
~~~~~
Ryo does his best to ignore the other dogs at first, because he isn’t going to stick around and will probably never see them again in his lifetime anyway. So instead of trying to get to know them (as much as the Irish setter tries) Ryo goes around inspecting every corner of the yard looking for loose fence posts or holes that he can squeeze out of. When that fails he tries watching the maids as they work, thinking to himself that maybe he can sneak into the house and out the front door when they aren’t looking.
In the meantime Yamapi runs around bringing him toys that they can play together with, while Koyama constantly asks either Ryo or Uchi if they’re comfortable, if they’re used to the environment yet, if they’re getting too much sun. Shige is okay in that he pretty much ignores them back because he’s always trying to get a glimpse of the TV, while Tegoshi bothers Kusano or Massu and Kusano and Massu bother each other and Tegoshi (though sometimes Kusano bothers Uchi and Ryo too).
“What are you thinking?” Uchi asks him eventually, when he gets bored of Ryo’s silence.
“I’m trying to find a way out of here,” Ryo replies naturally.
Uchi gives him an odd look. “Why?” he asks, and seems like he means it. Beat. “Oh, because you still hate people, huh?”
Ryo ignores him.
~~~~~
The first day Meal Ticket tries to play with Ryo, Ryo completely ignores him, treats and all. The others seem puzzled by this odd behavior (they’ve never met a dog who doesn’t want to play or eat treats) but Meal Ticket doesn’t seem overly concerned about the whole thing; he just smiles a little bit and calls Ryo a “good boy” anyway, before dropping some more treats on the ground and walking back into the house calmly.
Ryo feels oddly triumphant when that happens, even as Yamapi pads up to him and says that next time he should try to play back, since Ryo-chan looks lonely just sitting there like that.
“I’m not lonely,” Ryo tells him hastily, “I just don’t see the point in getting a ball he’s just going to throw away again. Humans are dumb and wasteful like that.”
Yamapi doesn’t seem to get what he’s trying to say; instead he just puts one of those big dumb paws of his on Ryo’s head and says, “Don’t be lonely, Ryo-chan.”
Ryo thinks he has to get out of here.
Fast.
~~~~~
“Oh c’mon,” Shige sighs from the other side of the sliding glass door a day or two later, as Ryo and Uchi glare at him from the porch. “Housetraining is so easy. I can’t believe you two don’t…”
“I peed in your bed,” Ryo tells him matter-of-factly.
Shige sputters. “Unsanitary!” he growls, and goes to investigate whether or not Ryo is telling the truth. “Totally unsanitary!”
Koyama smiles worriedly in Shige’s place. “It’s cold outside, ne. Are you sure you’re both warm? If you whine a little, the maids will let you back in once they’re done being cranky, ne.”
“We’re fine,” Ryo insists, “it isn’t even really cold.”
Koyama wags his tail a little. “Ryo-chan sure is strong, ne,” he marvels.
“Well I’m cold,” Uchi sniffs, looking longingly through the glass at the couch that Tegoshi is currently curled up on, fast asleep.
Yamapi puts a paw on the door encouragingly. “Don’t worry, you two,” he says with confidence, “you’ll get it soon, ne! It took me a few weeks to be housetrained too, but I eventually got it!”
Something about that doesn’t sit well with Ryo, or even with Uchi.
For the time being, Ryo puts his escape plan on hold, as a matter of pride.
Two days later, the both of them are fully housetrained.
~~~~~
The second time Master tries to play with Ryo, Ryo outright growls at him. This makes all of the other dogs pause worriedly; Koyama looks sick with concern over Ryo-chan’s health.
But Master is fine with it, just like before, and he calls Ryo “good boy” again, before putting the ball down and going back inside the house.
“Maybe Ryo-chan doesn’t know how to play,” Kusano frowns, looking thoughtful.
Shige snorts. “Any idiot could figure it out just by watching.”
Kusano laughs when Shige says it like that, because it just means Shige is worried too.
~~~~~
Kusano is right; a little while later, when he thinks no one is looking, Shige takes the ball Master had thrown earlier and brings it up to Ryo.
“The object of the game,” Shige tells him, “is to see how fast you can bring it back.”
Ryo blinks at him. “I know that, stupid,” he says, after a minute.
Shige nods understandingly. “Sure you do.”
He gently nudges the ball closer.
~~~~~
“How come you don’t like Master?” Kusano asks out of the blue the next morning, as he flops down right on top of Ryo and starts chewing on Ryo’s ear. While Ryo is in the middle of trying to find a weakness in the fencing he can exploit to get the hell out of here.
Ryo turns to snap at him and make him get off, but Kusano dodges the bite expertly and thinks that it means they’re playing now; he bats at Ryo’s nose gleefully, laughing at the top of his lungs when Ryo is too slow to move out of the way.
Something about the kid’s smile really pisses Ryo off, and he lunges forward before he knows what he’s doing, leaving the fence and his plans behind.
~~~~~
“I don’t like Master because I don’t like humans,” Ryo capitulates breathlessly some time later, when he’s been pinned down on his back and Kusano’s teeth are too close to the soft part of his neck for comfort.
“I win!” Kusano whoops, and bounds away so he can do a victory lap around the yard. “Still champion!”
Ryo sighs and gets to his feet; maybe now he can get back to work.
Except for not, because a few minutes later, Tegoshi pads up to him and cocks his head to the side curiously. “How come?”
Ryo sighs and stops digging at the place where he thinks he can maybe get under the fence. “How come what?”
“You don’t like humans?”
“They’re greedy and selfish,” Ryo responds, like it should be obvious.
Tegoshi smiles cutely. “But you like us, right, Ryo-tan?”
Ryo blinks. “Uh…sure.”
Tegoshi beams. “Yay!” he chirps, and then pads off to his soccer ball again, looking completely content.
A moment.
Then, Ryo growls and takes off after Tegoshi. “Hey! Who the hell said you could call me that?!”
As it turns out, Tegoshi never calls him anything else.
~~~~~
“Aw, c’mon, he’s cute!” Uchi laughs a little while later, after he has spent the better part of the afternoon racing around the yard with Tegoshi’s stolen soccer ball in his mouth (and being no help in the escape plan at all). “Did you see his face when I was playing Keep Away with him?”
Tegoshi, who had pouted and cried but who had never once given up, is currently in an exhausted sleep in his bed, protectively curled around his precious ball.
Ryo sighs at the sight. “Okay,” he acquiesces eventually. “He’s a little bit cute. Now shut up and go to sleep.”
Uchi snorts at him. “You’re so cranky lately, it makes me wonder if Yamapi is actually right,” he says, before lowering his head and doing as he’s told.
Ryo ignores him and tries not to think about it too much; as it turns out, Ryo is starting to believe that everyone here in their new home is kind of cute in their own way, and it’s dangerous. Shige is smart and Koyama is generous and Kusano never holds a grudge. Tegoshi is determined despite being so small and Massu is always smiling while Yamapi always seems to be trying his best, even for the stupidest things (like wrestling contests and treasure hunts).
They’re all the kind of things that are distracting and comforting and make him think of times long past and a home long gone, the easy-going day to day occurrences of dogs who don’t have to worry about their next meal, or of their people betraying them at any moment. They’re the kinds of things that make Ryo forget sometimes, that he’s trying to get the hell out of here and back to the junkyard, where he belongs.
He tells himself it’s dangerous because he doesn’t know how to live like this anymore.
~~~~~
The next day, Koyama and the others are all mysteriously gathered around one of the balls, looking very puzzled.
“Eh, how do I do this, Kei-chan?” Tegoshi asks suddenly, in a very obviously rehearsed manner.
When Koyama answers, it is even more obviously rehearsed than Tegoshi's lines. “Why, Tego-nyan,” Koyama begins, projecting his voice loudly so that Ryo can hear every word the older dog says from where he’s digging by the hedges, “the way you play is really quite simple.”
“Eh, really?” Tegoshi yips, sounding excited. “It looks fun!”
“It really is!” Koyama says. “All you have to do is, when the ball is moving, try to catch it! Then, you bring it back to the person who threw it, and they do it again! Simple, ne?”
“Yes!” Tegoshi agrees, at the top of his surprisingly powerful lungs, “Very simple!!”
The other dogs all make appropriately enlightened sounds as well.
And then turn to look at Ryo.
Very obviously.
Ryo mutters something uncharitable under his breath and goes back to digging, while Uchi laughs his head off behind Kusano.
“I think you insulted him,” Shige hisses under his breath once they all realize that their brilliant plan has failed. “I told you both not to be too obvious about it!”
Koyama looks apologetic, while Tegoshi isn’t listening (because he’s watching a butterfly fly across the yard).
“Maybe,” Yamapi theorizes boldly, “they weren’t being obvious enough!”
A beat.
“No,” Shige says, very patiently, “no, I don’t think that’s it.”
Ryo hears every word of it; he sighs and tells himself to just keep digging because he doesn’t have time for this.
Even if it is kind of flattering, in a completely retarded sort of way.
~~~~~
One of the maids catches Ryo trying to dig under the back fence by the hedges one afternoon a few days later, when she comes outside to hang up the laundry.
To be fair it’s kind of hard to miss, considering how big it is after how long he’s been working on it.
He gets tethered to the porch for three days after that, all while Koyama looks at him heartbrokenly from the window and Tegoshi whimpers at him all day from the inside of the house.
Ryo spends three days and two nights just like that, sitting outside and watching everyone miss him through the glass, the lot of them looking like they never knew what life was like before he became a part of theirs.
He sighs. “Goddammit,” he mutters eventually, and sounds resigned.
On the third night, when it starts to rain, Master is the one who comes to the door and says, “good boy,” as he lets Ryo back inside.
Everyone is really happy to see him.
~~~~~
Ryo gives up on escaping completely when Tegoshi trots up next to him later that evening, looking up with big, hopeful eyes as he asks, “Ryo-tan, you like us, right?”
“Yeah,” Ryo says helplessly, and after that, Tegoshi beams and curls up next to him and refuses to leave his side for the rest of the night.
~~~~~
A few days later, when the rain has let up and it’s sunny again, everyone gets taken back outside.
Master is with them, and he has a shiny new tennis ball in hand. He holds it out to Ryo, who still isn’t really interested.
But the others all give him a significant look.
“Just try it,” Koyama says imploringly.
“It’s fun!” Massu agrees.
“Ryo-tan…” Tegoshi starts, voice on the edge of a whine.
“Okay, okay!” Ryo tells them hastily, snapping irately before they can start to blubber at him like morons.
He takes a deep breath and looks up at the ball in Master’s hand.
And makes himself wag his tail a little.
Master smiles when he sees that and throws the ball. Ryo goes after it, grabs it, and bites down hard. Eventually he even brings it back.
He spits out weird tasting fuzz when he drops it back into Master’s hand, but after seeing his small teeth marks indented on the smooth green surface of the ball after giving it back, he grins a little and finds himself wondering how many times it will take before he can break a hole in the surface of one of those.
“Ryo-chan is laughing!” Yamapi exclaims happily when he sees Ryo’s reaction, and looks triumphant.
When Ryo gets the ball again, he spits the fuzz at Yamapi, who laughs right back at him.
Later, when Ryo is exhausted from all the running around, Master calls him a good boy and gives him some treats. Ryo doesn’t even notice it when Master pats his head.
~~~~~
One day, about a month after Ryo and Uchi first came to this place, Yamapi and Koyama suddenly become very (uncharacteristically) serious. They get taken out by Master a lot more than usual as well, and whenever they come back from wherever it is they’ve been taken to, they’re always too tired to play, no matter how much Tegoshi tries to bug them into joining him.
“What’s going on?” Ryo asks Shige, because Shige seems like he’d know.
The husky gives him one of those obnoxious, nerdy looks of his. “There’s a show coming up,” Shige replies. “Yamashita-kun and Koyama are training for it. Yamashita-kun is our biggest star so far, and the rest of us have to work hard to catch up.”
Ryo blinks.
“What’s a show?”
Shige rolls his eyes at the smaller dog. “You’re joking, right?”
Ryo bites him in the leg.
~~~~~
Shows, as Ryo soon discovers, are what they’re supposed to do for the Master in return for all the food and the grooming and the toys.
One day he and Uchi and the others all get leashes put on them as the Master’s handlers take them out onto a lawn even more magnificent than the one at the front of the house. There are a lot of people already there, dressed up all fancy and watching a bunch of snobby looking dogs gallop across the grass.
“That’s a show,” Shige feels the need to clarify, after his last misunderstanding with Ryo had led to bruised shins. “We go out there and walk around and people judge how representative we are of the ideals of our respective breeds.”
Ryo frowns. “That’s dumb,” he says by rote, just as Yamapi enters the arena.
There is a loud cheer from the audience when they see him, and when Ryo really watches him when he’s out there like that, Ryo can’t help but feel that Yamapi seems at his happiest right there, head held high as he trots at Master’s side looking beautiful.
On the sidelines, a pair of little girls exclaim, “How pretty!” in delight as Yamapi walks by, and Yamapi wags his tail at them a little bit, before coming to a stop in front of the judges.
“It is kind of dumb,” Shige agrees after a moment, but can’t take his eyes off of Yamapi anyway, “but it makes a lot of people happy, too.”
“I guess,” Ryo manages eventually, and feels odd as he watches a dog who looks a lot like himself prance by; the other toy fox terrier pauses for just a moment, to give Ryo a derisive, sideways look.
Ryo feels a growl starting to work up in the back of his throat, but Shige stops him with a nudge. “You can’t fight here,” the husky insists, while the show dog trots out to stand beside Yamapi.
“Says who?” Ryo snaps at him, irate for making him step down from a fight like that.
“Says that,” Shige tells him, indicating a sign that has something strange in human-script written all over it. “It specifically says that there’s to be no outside interference from non-contestant dogs.”
Ryo blinks at him. “You can read?”
Shige tries not to look smug. “I’ve been studying.”
Ryo snorts. “Nerd.” Pause. “And I wasn’t going to fight him. I was just going to say something about his mother.”
Shige sighs. “You shouldn’t do those kinds of things in a place like this. Besides, I’m sure Yamashita-kun will beat him.”
Shige’s right, Yamapi destroys the other dog.
But oddly enough, Ryo doesn’t feel satisfied leaving it at just that.
~~~~~
“Eh, Leader was amazing!” Tegoshi says excitedly after the show is over and they’re all back home again, a brand new ribbon hanging up on the wall next to all of Yamapi’s other ones. “Kei-chan too, ne.”
Koyama laughs a little, “Too bad though,” he says, “I sneezed in that judge’s face when he was looking at my teeth, ne.”
“I can’t wait until we get to compete too,” Kusano whoops, as he flops on top of Massu and starts biting his tufts of fur playfully. “I’m gonna kick ass. From wrestling champion to Best in Show, just like that!”
Massu headbutts him instinctively, but is too lazy to actually try to throw him off. “You get lots of treats from Master if you run right, don’t you?” he sighs, dreamily.
Ryo blinks. “So wait… we get to do those kinds of things too?”
“Yup!” Yamapi tells him, wagging his tail. “Everyone can do it as long as they try their hardest, ne!”
“Right!” the others all agree, and vow to work hard so they can catch up with Leader too.
Ryo-oddly enough- feels the same way they do in that moment; he wonders if wanting to win a dog show one day completely eradicates any street cred he might have earned as a former junkyard dog.
“No,” Uchi reassures him afterwards, when they are settling down to sleep for the night, “that ruined all your street cred.” He nods down at tiny, tiny Tegoshi, who is sleeping blissfully at Ryo’s side.
Ryo decides that if they’re going to go ahead and put him in one of those stupid competitions anyway, then the least he can do is win them.
~~~~~
A week later, everyone begins training in earnest.
When it comes to wanting to make people happy by doing their best, it seems to Ryo that these idiots have an endless supply of energy. He does his best to emulate them in the meantime, copying their posture and their ways of walking and their expressions. But it all seems kind of stiff to him, and he ends up tripping sometimes (though not as much as Shige does, thankfully).
During a break in their practice time later that afternoon, Ryo meets Tegoshi at the water bowls; the younger dog is daintily sipping from the top of Koyama’s dish, as it seems Massu has decimated his own and half of the others’ during his last break.
Despite the hours working in the sun, not a hair looks out of place on Tegoshi.
“Tego-nyan,” Ryo begins after a minute, “what’s that thing you do, at the end of your walk?”
Tegoshi blinks. “Thing I do?” he murmurs, and looks thoughtful. He cocks his head to the side cutely and looks up at Ryo with big eyes. “What thing?”
“That’s the thing, right there. With the…” He trails off when he can’t find the words to describe it and moves to emulate instead.
Tegoshi stares. “I do that?”
Ryo nods.
Tegoshi laughs. “Eh, how funny. Maybe that’s why the maids keep giving me treats, ne. Ryo-tan definitely looked really cute doing it, just now!”
Then, when his trainer calls, he smiles one more time. “I have to get back to work, Ryo-tan!” he says, and trots off obediently.
“Huh,” Ryo mutters, and tries the whole head tilt thing on his next circle.
When he does it, Kusano falls over laughing at him.
Ryo decides that maybe things like that can only work for dogs like Tego-nyan.
~~~~~
After that he tries holding his head high like Shige but he only ends up tripping more than before, because the way Shige does it makes it easy to lose his footing if you lose your rhythm. He tries leaning his body forward and extending his tail like Koyama does but he nearly falls on his face whenever he tries, and when he attempts to stand like Kusano and Massu, with their legs very slightly bent, it just makes him look like he needs to go to the bathroom. He can’t quite get used to strange people prying his mouth open either, and can’t help it when he fidgets impatiently whenever one of the handlers bends down to examine the pads of his feet.
“Maybe,” he grumbles to himself at dinner later, “I should forget all this and try to get my street cred back after all.”
“It’s all in the walk,” Uchi tells him absently, like he’s already some kind of expert or something. “Plus, your street cred is completely and utterly dead.”
Ryo pulls his hair.
~~~~
That night, when Ryo can’t sleep, he gets out of his pet bed and jumps onto the couch so that he can look out through the window, up at a sky full of stars. It reminds him a bit of the nights he’d spent sleeping out in the open air at the junkyard; there’s a big, full moon out tonight too, that looks exactly like the one that some of the other strays would howl at when the feeling got to them.
He kind of wants to howl a little bit now himself, just to work out some of the frustration from the day’s failures.
He knows it will probably just get him tethered to the porch again.
“Ryo-chan,” a worried voice murmurs suddenly, and stirs him from his thoughts. “Ryo-chan, you can’t sleep? Are you feeling alright?”
When Ryo turns around Koyama is there, with his forepaws up on the couch and looking at the smaller dog with eyes full of genuine concern.
“I’m fine,” Ryo tells him, before Koyama starts worrying out loud and wakes everyone else up in the process. “Just thinking.”
“Oh,” Koyama replies, and slumps a little in relief. Then, “About what?”
“About when I used to live in the junkyard,” Ryo admits, because he’s discovered that it’s near impossible to lie to a guy like Koyama without hating yourself a little bit afterwards.
Koyama lights up. “Eh, you used to live at the junkyard? Yamapi loves that place, ne.”
Ryo snorts. “Because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Koyama chuckles softly. “Leader, ne. Leader thinks freedom is the most amazing thing in the world.”
“If that’s the case, then why does he do this?”
Koyama smiles, and it’s very fond. “Because he likes making people happy more.” Pause. “At least, that’s what I think, ne. You’d have to ask Leader himself to know for sure.”
Ryo thinks about the look on Yamapi’s face whenever he’s even just thinking about a show, and thinks that Koyama is probably right.
“So,” Koyama starts, when Ryo doesn’t say anything else for a moment, “do you miss the junkyard a lot?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes not. It’s a place I lived for a while.”
Koyama nods in understanding. “Eh, maybe that’s what was felt different about you and Uchi when you two came here, ne. I knew it had to be something like that.”
Ryo eyes him, and wonders if Koyama is going to say another one of those stupid things pampered pets like to talk about when they don’t understand the first thing about living out in the world on their own. He scoffs a little. “Something like what?” he prompts, out of curiosity.
“Well, when I saw Ryo-chan and Uchi-kun the first time, I thought, wow, those two seem really strong, ne. Invincible.”
Ryo tries not to look pleased at the compliment. “Oh?”
Koyama nods. “It’s because you’ve seen more of the world, ne. So when you walk, it seems like…”
“Like?”
Koyama looks embarrassed. “You know so much more than we do.”
Ryo blinks. “What does that even mean?”
The Irish setter ducks his head sheepishly. “It means, Ryo-chan looks cool just being there, ne.”
It’s Ryo’s turn to be embarrassed. “Stop saying stupid things,” he mutters, but moves aside so Koyama can see the full moon through the window next to him anyway.
Koyama smiles.
~~~~~
The next morning, Ryo stops trying to walk like anyone else. He walks like himself, the dog who lived in the junkyard and who fought for food and shelter and survival on his own every day of the week and didn’t care who saw it.
When he moves like that, he doesn’t fall once.
And when he does it again later, except this time at his first ever actual show, he wins.
Afterwards, the judges all compliment Master on how “spirited” or “bright” or “unique” his new fox terrier is.
Meanwhile, in the husky category, Shige falls on his face mid-run. Twice.
Ryo almost laughs as hard about it as Kusano does.
~~~~
Months later, Ryo has a single line of ribbons on the wall as well, right up next to Yamapi’s.
And even though Ryo knows he’s a champion show dog now, and even though that seems like a far cry from the junkyard he once scrounged around in, he thinks it’s just like Koyama says; there’s something about his experiences out in the world that made him stronger, that made him different from the others.
Not that the others are bad; in fact, as he learns over time, they’re worldly in their own ways as well.
Because after all this time of carefully studying humans, Shige has figured out how to open and close the gate latch with his nose, which gives Ryo the perfect escape route so long as no one is looking.
Which is easy enough to orchestrate as well, because after all his time of being loved by humans, Tegoshi knows that all he has to do to keep the maids from looking is putter around the kitchen with them because they always coo over him and pet him and play with him the moment he pads into the room and looks up at them with his head slightly cocked and his eyes big and his expression playful. In the meantime, Shige will close the gate after Ryo and Uchi, while Koyama and Massu keep a lookout and Yamapi and Kusano distract the Master.
In the meantime, Ryo and Uchi will run free, following their noses once they find distant smells of the junkyard on the breeze. They’ll chase after them until they come up to those familiar broken down gates all over again, until they’re squeezing through the holes in the fences and wading knee deep in garbage just like they used to in the old days.
“Look who decided to come back and grace us with their presence,” the old, mangy junkyard dogs will laugh, only half-derisive as Ryo and Uchi exchange greetings with them and dig around in the waste for snacks or toys like they never left in the first place.
“It was getting a little too domesticated for me in there,” Ryo will often tell them, before rolling around in the dirt to get the smell of shampoo out.
“I just felt sorry for you old fogies, living out here without getting to see the beauty of my youth every once in a while,” Uchi sniffs in response, and goes to dig up one of the old terrier’s secret stash of goodies just because.
“Yeah, well… next time bring us some of Meal Ticket’s fancy treats on your way out, wouldja?” the boxer-mix complains, while swatting absently at Ryo’s head with a big paw.
Ryo is beginning to suspect that it’s at least partially out of fondness, but that doesn’t mean he’s not still aiming to get the boxer’s other ear one day.
Some hours later, when they’re all dirt and trash and filthed out, Yamapi comes bounding up to the fence with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, looking for Ryo and Uchi and a little bit of freedom all his own. “Time to come back, ne,” he says, tail wagging as he examines his housemates over appreciatively. “You two look like you had fun!”
Ryo’s response is to kick dirt at him, until he’s laughing and issuing a race challenge for the entire way home.
~~~~~
Later, when Uchi and Ryo try to get back into the house for the night, the maids take one whiff of them both and end up making them stay outside in the yard instead, until they can have a proper bath in the morning.
That night, the two of them spend a few hours howling at the moon.
END
EDITS?
Universe: JE ( Doggy AU)
Theme/Topic: NEWS
Rating: PG for some cursing
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (and Johnny)
Warnings/Spoilers: CRACK. AND CRACK.
Word Count: 8,802
Summary: Life and all its ups and downs. As a dog.
Dedication: Ryo’s birthday fic! Where he’s a dog. No really. Here, have pictures. Also for Nico and Christine, happy birthday as well!
A/N: Yeah, that’s right. I couldn’t think of ANYTHING ELSE to write Ryo except a request from MY OWN request list. LOL Call me self-centered with no ill-intentions. (KAT-TUN doesn't show up because clearly they are not dogs, they are show cats.) >> Also, I don’t know if Japan has junkyards. Or how they do the whole landfill/garbage thing at all. So if I’m wrong whatever; the junkyard doesn’t matter anyway.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
Ryo’s earliest memories are of his mother and his brothers and his sister beside him, all of them curled close together and content. His world is small but warm in those initial weeks of life, and the sounds and smells he experiences with each passing day all eventually become comfortable and familiar to him. Even though he can’t see anything at first, it still feels safe anyway, because he knows that he’s not alone.
And so those first experiences of his life are good and full of food and play and mischief; he remembers wrestling with his brothers and protecting his sister from bugs and the gentle touch of his mother’s nose against his head at night.
He’s happy.
It lasts up until the evening when he suddenly gets picked up by the scruff of his neck by one of the humans who his mother is rather fond of; he gets examined all over without warning or reason.
Ryo-naturally- snaps at the human (despite his mother always telling him that they aren’t supposed to do such things).
The human whaps him on the nose in response and then puts him back down. “The markings aren’t ideal on that one,” the human says then, to another of the humans, the one who yells at them whenever someone poops on the rug. “And he has a bad attitude.”
“Mmm,” the second human agrees, and the next thing Ryo knows, he is being thrown into a rusty cage and taken away while his mother barks in distress and his siblings whine after him.
It is late at night and dark outside when Ryo is abandoned on a lonely roadside that doesn’t sound or smell very familiar at all.
For the very first time in his life he’s alone and cold and scared; he spends the next few hours sitting huddled and miserable against a telephone pole to block out the harsh January winds.
That night, he decides he hates humans more than anything.
~~~~~
Days later, when it finally sinks in that no one is coming to find him-not his mother or his brothers or his sister-he decides to move, following the distant smells of food because he’s hungry beyond all reason. He sticks to the shadows as he travels, in order to avoid the various humans who walk down the streets like they own them.
It takes him two more days, but his nose finally leads him to the gates of a junkyard that’s piled high with garbage. And food.
There are seven other dogs that already live there when he arrives, most bigger than him and older than him but not all; he can see the slits of glowing eyes silently appraising him from self-dug shelters as he wanders into their kingdom of garbage that first evening, on shaky legs.
He wonders if maybe he should leave before he gets attacked, but the smell of food is overwhelming and makes him hesitate, leaves him standing out in the open unguarded and unsure.
Then, before he can decide either way, a head pokes out from under one of the garbage heaps; it belongs to a much more elegant looking animal than Ryo had imagined would ever live in a dark place like this. It’s an afghan puppy, even younger than Ryo but already much bigger anyway.
“So what do you want, pet?” the afghan asks with its nose in the air after a beat, looking Ryo over appraisingly.
Ryo glares back at that overbearing attitude on instinct. “Food, what else?”
Laughter follows from the other dogs, as they finally slink out into the open as well.
“Lemme guess,” a flea-infested, snaggle-toothed mutt asks Ryo around a lopsided grin, “some humans got sick of you and dumped you on the roadside too, huh kid?”
Ryo looks away. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“He’s so tiny!” a brown boxer-mix laughs, tongue hanging out of his mouth on one side and left ear torn, probably from saying something horribly obnoxious to the wrong person at the wrong time.
Ryo’s lip curls back and he wonders if he can jump high enough to take out the other ear.
“Hey, hey, leave him alone,” a fluffy blond mutt whimpers sadly, “he’s probably scared and lonely!”
In the back, a chocolate lab-mix silently pushes forward some dried up beef neck bones in offering. They roll to a stop in front of Ryo. Then, the lab-mix calmly turns around and pads back to wherever it is he’d come from without a word either way.
“Eh, those are the good ones!” an older terrier with mange problems whines after the lab-mix, “you’re really gonna let him have all of them? Just like that?”
Ryo doesn’t give the lab-mix the chance to reconsider the offer; the minute he sees the bones he tears into them, while the others eventually grow bored of watching him eat and head back to their shelters to nap.
Only the afghan stays behind, watching Ryo curiously.
“You’re drooling all over yourself,” he feels the need to point out, helpfully.
“So sorry, your majesty,” Ryo drawls back, around a mouthful of cartilage.
The afghan grins, in a horribly prissy way. “My name’s Uchi,” he announces, like Ryo was right just now and he is in actuality, some sort of foreign royalty. Then he snatches one of the bones for himself and prances off on those long legs of his, laughing over his shoulder at Ryo the whole time.
Ryo’s life in the junkyard begins just like that, around a mouthful of dried up bones on top of a mountain made of garbage.
~~~~~
Life in a junkyard- as Ryo soon learns- is not easy.
People-mostly bratty kids with too much time on their hands-come by on some days and throw rocks at the eight junkyard strays; they tease them through the fence and taunt them with food that they can’t have. The first time Ryo encounters this kind of behavior, he gets hit in the back with a concrete chip.
He learns to dodge those eventually, and after that, learns to dodge falling piles of garbage too, on the days that the city workers come by to dump their trash on top of the dogs’ homes. He learns how to dig through the fresh rubbish right after the city workers leave too, looking for food that might still be at least a little bit tasty, and with time, he even learns how to follow the dumb terrier mix so that he can figure out where he hides his extra food stashes; Ryo and Uchi both take turns pinching the better finds from his piles when food is scarce and they know the terrier isn’t looking.
Ryo also learns that sometimes there is so much food at the dump that you can make yourself sick eating it all and that sometimes there just isn’t anything. More often than not it’s not that extreme in either way though. There is always something-because the humans are wasteful- it’s just usually completely unpalatable.
None of the other junkyard dogs seem to understand that point except for he and Uchi, which mostly just ends up being their own loss.
Today they find themselves in another one of those situations, as the two puppies stare down at a rotting, maggot infested piece of raw beef steak, both good and bad smells coming off of it at the same time and making them hesitate.
“You try it first,” Uchi urges him, like the kid he is.
“Why do I have to try it first? You’re the one who found it.”
“Yeah but… it stinks.”
“Then don’t eat it!”
“I’m hungry.”
“Then eat it!”
“You’re the same as me, why don’t you suck it up and eat it first? And you're older!”
It’s while they’re arguing like this that one of the older dogs-the dumb-looking one with knotted brown hair and a stump where his tail should be- rounds the corner and leers at them. “Whooo, some attitude from the former pets, eh?” he whistles, and grabs the rotting piece of raw steak for himself without a moment’s hesitation. “Can’t complain when these are the ropes, pups!” he barks, laughing as he prances away with his prize in his mouth.
Uchi pouts. “Your fault,” he sniffs at Ryo, looking mournful as the food gets carted off by a less picky opponent.
Ryo sighs. “C’mon,” he says eventually, “there’s gotta be something else around here.”
But even if there is, they suck at finding it; the only reason they eat at all that night is because the chocolate lab-mix takes pity on them (again) and silently leaves a half-eaten carton of Chinese takeout by the box Ryo has been sleeping in the past few nights.
~~~~~
A few weeks or so after arriving at the junkyard, Ryo has an odd encounter.
He’s sniffing around the outer edges of the new garbage deposits one morning when a strange dog comes bounding up to the edge of the fence, all smiles and excitement. “Hi!” the dog greets without preamble, “I’ve never seen you around here before.”
Ryo blinks at the happy idiot panting in front of him; it’s a golden retriever with the shiniest fur Ryo has ever seen. He’s got a bright red collar around his neck too, with a tag on it that means he has a home and probably a family as well, people who take care of him and love him and make sure to keep that precious coat of his nice and clean.
In other words, he reeks of humans.
Ryo is instantly wary. “What do you want?”
“Want? A belly rub, I guess,” the retriever replies after a moment, and that stupid grin never leaves his face once. “So, what’re you looking for, ne? Treasure? Last time I was here they said there might be treasure.”
Ryo blinks. “You…come here a lot?”
The retriever’s grin broadens. “Sometimes! If I behave, Master takes off the leash and lets me run around. Majide, exercise is great, ne.”
Ryo nearly rolls his eyes. “Of course.”
“Oi, Yamapi!” the snaggle-toothed mutt shouts at the retriever from the top of one of the trash piles, “don’t scare the kid!”
Yamapi laughs. “I’m just introducing myself!”
“Yamapi?” Ryo manages after a beat, blinking.
What a stupid name. It suits him.
The boxer-mix joins Ryo at the fence a moment later, and looks Yamapi over with an air of disapproval. “So?” he asks, around a smirk, “How’s life in the big house, all locked up and nowhere to go?”
Yamapi cocks his head thoughtfully. “The same. I placed in another show last week, ne. And Koyama got honorable mention. We’re really working hard and doing our best every day!”
“Oh how nice for you,” the boxer replies, and isn’t even trying to hide the disdain now.
But apparently he doesn’t have to, because the retriever doesn’t pick up on it anyway. “You guys look like you made some new friends! That’s exciting too, ne,” he says brightly. “Life out here must be really exciting.”
The boxer snorts. “Yeah, real exciting. I ate some moldy bread for lunch today.”
Yamapi wags his tail. “Really? I’ve never had that before. It must have been an adventure.”
The boxer sighs in a helpless sort of way, sarcasm lost on the puppy situated on the other side of the fence. “I’m going to go take a nap,” he says instead, and turns around and ambles off in annoyance.
“Have a good one!” Yamapi calls after him, before turning back to Ryo. “I’m Yamapi! What’s your name?”
Ryo doesn’t really want to tell him, but for some reason, when he looks into those dumb, friendly eyes, all he can say is, “Ryo,” out loud, without meaning to.
“Alright! Ryo-chan then,” Yamapi says, tail wagging even faster now. “It’s nice to meet you!”
“Uh, yeah…” Ryo manages eventually.
Yamapi looks like he’s going to say something else, but then a whistle cuts the air, high and loud and very, very annoying.
“Yabai!” Yamapi says, looking disappointed, “I’ve got to go now. It was nice meeting you, Ryo-chan!” he says, and then turns around and obediently trots off in the direction of the whistle. “I hope you find treasure, ne!” he calls over his shoulder, and sounds like he really means it.
It leaves Ryo at the fence, staring after him in a vaguely confused manner.
“He’s a Master’s pet,” the mangy terrier snorts after a beat, poking his head out from inside a box full of packing foam nearby. “They’re all dumb and pampered like that. Human-lovers.”
“Huh,” Ryo manages, before shrugging mentally and going back to his food hunt.
~~~~~
But despite the junkyard dogs’ apparent distrust and dislike of most humans, Ryo also learns that some humans are good (at least for a free meal); the men who dump things in the junkyard sometimes throw the dogs scraps from their lunches, and there’s a man who passes by most days of the week who always, for some reason, seems to have dog treats in his pocket. He’ll toss the strays tidbits sometimes, and the older dogs always gather eagerly at the fence whenever they smell him coming (despite their self-proclaimed ‘hate all humans’ outlook on life). They fondly call the man Meal Ticket.
Ryo is still a little more wary of people than they are (or maybe less hypocritical about them than they are) and hides whenever those humans stop by despite the free food; as far as he’s concerned, he’s perfectly fine with never relying on another human ever again after what the last group he trusted did to him.
He tells himself to forget the good moments he had before, to forget the luxuries of being fed and petted and groomed and played with. Instead, he settles in for what he thinks is going to be a life of fending for himself.
He’s a stray now, and humans mean nothing to him.
~~~~~
One afternoon some weeks later, when Ryo and Uchi are napping in the sun because there’s no food to be found anywhere (again), Ryo feels someone watching them. He cracks an eye open instinctively and glances around for any trouble; what he sees at the entrance to the junkyard is a little man in a gray suit, studying he and Uchi both very carefully.
Ryo starts to growl, which wakes Uchi up.
“I was just getting to the good part of my dream,” Uchi whines. “There was a mountain of wieners.”
Ryo ignores him. “That guy,” he manages, after a beat. “I don’t like the way he’s looking at us.”
Uchi blinks, then follows Ryo’s eyeline to the man. “Maybe he wants to give us food,” Uchi thinks, and looks around for the others. It seems like the remaining six junkyard dogs are all fast asleep. Uchi grins. “We should go see if he has something tasty, before the rest of those old fogies smell him. Especially since it’s been such slim pickings these last few days.”
Ryo thinks Uchi is dumb sometimes. “I have a bad feeling about him.”
Uchi shrugs and stands. “Your loss,” he says, and pads down the mountain of trash towards the gate, tail wagging.
As it turns out, they’re both right, in their own ways.
Uchi is right in that the man does have food. Lots of it, which he gives to Uchi with a smile and some sweet words about what a good boy Uchi is.
“Hey!” Ryo barks when he sees what’s happening, and struggles down after his friend. “Don’t just eat it like that, stupid! We’ve never seen this guy before!”
“But it’s good!” Uchi assures him around a mouthful, and looks as happy as Ryo has ever seen him.
The man in the gray suit smiles at Ryo too, and tosses him some food as well.
Ryo sniffs at the offerings warily and doesn’t want anything to do with them-especially since they’re coming from a human- but at the same time his nose and stomach urge him to accept, because he hasn’t eaten properly in the last four days.
He’s eating the treats before he can even finish thinking about it all the way through.
And Uchi has a point; it is really good.
Ryo’s hunger gets the best of him after that initial bite and he eagerly starts to pick up the rest of the treats with his tongue, before Uchi gets them all for himself.
But then, a few minutes later, Uchi makes a weird noise from beside him and tips over on his face. “I don’t feel so good,” he murmurs, head lolling once before he passes out.
Afterwards, when Ryo is suddenly fighting to stay conscious while he’s being put in a big metal cage on the flatbed of a small white truck, he tells himself that Uchi is a moron and that he’s never going to listen to him ever again.
~~~~~
When Ryo wakes up sometime later it’s to a strangely familiar mingling of scents; his vision and hearing are still kind of muddled but he can make out just enough to know that he’s still in the same cage as the night before and that there are two men here with him now, both of whose smells he knows. There is the man who drugged them last night-he is wearing a black suit instead of a gray one now- as a different, older man stands next to him, looking at the two drowsy puppies thoughtfully.
“A real gem of a find, eh, Kitagawa-san? Purebred through and through, the both of them. And young!” the black suit man laughs, sweating eagerly and making Ryo’s nose wrinkle with just the sound of his voice. Beside him, Uchi doesn’t notice anything that’s going on; he makes a whining noise (something about wieners again) and rolls over in his sleep.
In the meantime, Ryo tries to growl even though he knows who Kitagawa-san is too; from his smell, it’s the man the others call Meal Ticket. But with the drugs still in his system making it hard for him to do much of anything at will, his growling just ends up sounding more like a whimper, and all he accomplishes with it is give himself an even bigger headache.
After a moment, Meal Ticket smiles. “I’ll take them both,” he announces, and the black suit man looks inordinately pleased at the news. “They both look like they’ll make wonderful show dogs.”
“Of course they will, sir!” the black suit man assures Meal Ticket, and rushes off to prepare two dog carriers for his latest sales while Ryo lays his head back down and closes his eyes, trying to make the pain go away.
That day, Ryo and Uchi are shoved into another dark space and taken to someplace new and unfamiliar, someplace that isn’t the comfortable chaos of the junkyard that they both know.
~~~~
When Ryo opens his eyes again there’s light and grass and water. It’s all in front of him, through the open door of the pet carrier, and Ryo darts right out into it the moment he sees a means of escape.
And he very nearly runs headfirst into a glass door.
But luckily, he manages to skid to a stop right before he hits it at full speed, and only ends up bumping his nose a little (and hurting his pride).
“Ha! I did the same thing my first day here!” a voice cackles from somewhere up above him, and bewildered, Ryo spins around to face its owner.
A grinning shiba inu puppy looks back at him, from where it is lounging in a lawn chair by the door.
Ryo growls instinctively. “Who the hell are you?” he demands.
“Kusano!” the puppy replies, unfazed by the other dog’s hostility (or just not noticing it).
The way he does it, it kind of reminds Ryo of…
“Ryo-chan, is that really you!?” a familiar voice shouts excitedly, and the sound of pounding footsteps like a stampede soon follows.
Ryo barely has time to skitter out of the way before a very familiar, very shiny golden coat is barreling full speed ahead right at him; as it is, he manages to roll to the side just as Yamapi slams into the sliding glass door with an excited “Oof!”
Ryo stares, while Yamapi gets up, shakes himself off, and puts one of his big dumb paws on Ryo’s head. “It is you!” he says. “Hi!”
Ryo ignores him, instead looking around the rest of the enormous yard because clearly, something odd has happened to him in the last few hours and now he is in the land of death doors and happy idiots.
He wonders if this is doggy hell.
In addition to the shiba inu and Yamapi in the yard, Ryo soon discovers that there is also a whining Irish setter over by the pet carriers, peeking into the one that Uchi is still snoozing in. “Are you okay? Are you sick?” it asks Uchi, clearly very worried about Uchi’s health despite Uchi not being all that worried about his own.
There’s a chow chow over in the shade with its nose buried in a food bowl, a husky with its front paws up on a windowsill as it watches the TV that’s on inside the house, and the tiniest Pomeranian Ryo has ever seen, determinedly nosing a proportionally tiny soccer ball through the grass (that coincidentally, comes up to its stomach).
“What the heck is going on?” Ryo demands after a beat. “Where am I?”
Yamapi wags his tail. “This is where I live!”
Ryo groans.
He was right; it is doggy hell.
~~~~~
Uchi wakes up a little while later because there is a wet nose poking him in the cheek.
He screams.
When Uchi screams the Irish setter screams too, and ends up hitting his head on the top of the pet carrier as he hastily scuttles backwards to get away from the screaming afghan.
“Would you shut up, Koyama?” the husky sighs from the windowsill, where he is watching the evening news. “I can’t hear what the weather is going to be like tomorrow.”
“Sorry, Shige!” Koyama whimpers sheepishly, as Uchi blinks and finally deigns to come out of his carrier. “Hi!” Koyama says gently, when he does. “And uh…welcome. Are you okay? I didn’t scare you, did I?”
“Um,” Uchi replies, eloquent as ever as he blinks and looks around, “where am I?”
From where he’s seated by the door, Ryo sighs. “His house,” he says, and nods towards Yamapi.
“Oh.” Uchi looks around some more, this time with interest. “Is there food?”
Yamapi nods. “Plenty!” He pauses and glances over to the food bowls by the side of the porch, where the chow chow is still very busy at work. “Massu!” Yamapi says, “Massu, is there still food left?”
Massu pauses and looks up, smiling happily. “Yup!”
Yamapi looks back at Uchi. “Plenty!” he repeats.
A beat.
Then Uchi shrugs. “Great.”
He pads over to join Massu.
Ryo thinks Uchi is dumb for the umpteenth time that day, while Yamapi drags him over to the food bowls too, saying something along the lines of, “Ryo-chan, if you don’t hurry, Massu will eat it all, ne.”
Ryo’s life in the big house on the hill begins just like that, around a mouthful of organic dog food on the perfectly manicured lawn of some very rich humans.
The first thing he does is try to think of a way to break the hell out.
~~~~~
Ryo does his best to ignore the other dogs at first, because he isn’t going to stick around and will probably never see them again in his lifetime anyway. So instead of trying to get to know them (as much as the Irish setter tries) Ryo goes around inspecting every corner of the yard looking for loose fence posts or holes that he can squeeze out of. When that fails he tries watching the maids as they work, thinking to himself that maybe he can sneak into the house and out the front door when they aren’t looking.
In the meantime Yamapi runs around bringing him toys that they can play together with, while Koyama constantly asks either Ryo or Uchi if they’re comfortable, if they’re used to the environment yet, if they’re getting too much sun. Shige is okay in that he pretty much ignores them back because he’s always trying to get a glimpse of the TV, while Tegoshi bothers Kusano or Massu and Kusano and Massu bother each other and Tegoshi (though sometimes Kusano bothers Uchi and Ryo too).
“What are you thinking?” Uchi asks him eventually, when he gets bored of Ryo’s silence.
“I’m trying to find a way out of here,” Ryo replies naturally.
Uchi gives him an odd look. “Why?” he asks, and seems like he means it. Beat. “Oh, because you still hate people, huh?”
Ryo ignores him.
~~~~~
The first day Meal Ticket tries to play with Ryo, Ryo completely ignores him, treats and all. The others seem puzzled by this odd behavior (they’ve never met a dog who doesn’t want to play or eat treats) but Meal Ticket doesn’t seem overly concerned about the whole thing; he just smiles a little bit and calls Ryo a “good boy” anyway, before dropping some more treats on the ground and walking back into the house calmly.
Ryo feels oddly triumphant when that happens, even as Yamapi pads up to him and says that next time he should try to play back, since Ryo-chan looks lonely just sitting there like that.
“I’m not lonely,” Ryo tells him hastily, “I just don’t see the point in getting a ball he’s just going to throw away again. Humans are dumb and wasteful like that.”
Yamapi doesn’t seem to get what he’s trying to say; instead he just puts one of those big dumb paws of his on Ryo’s head and says, “Don’t be lonely, Ryo-chan.”
Ryo thinks he has to get out of here.
Fast.
~~~~~
“Oh c’mon,” Shige sighs from the other side of the sliding glass door a day or two later, as Ryo and Uchi glare at him from the porch. “Housetraining is so easy. I can’t believe you two don’t…”
“I peed in your bed,” Ryo tells him matter-of-factly.
Shige sputters. “Unsanitary!” he growls, and goes to investigate whether or not Ryo is telling the truth. “Totally unsanitary!”
Koyama smiles worriedly in Shige’s place. “It’s cold outside, ne. Are you sure you’re both warm? If you whine a little, the maids will let you back in once they’re done being cranky, ne.”
“We’re fine,” Ryo insists, “it isn’t even really cold.”
Koyama wags his tail a little. “Ryo-chan sure is strong, ne,” he marvels.
“Well I’m cold,” Uchi sniffs, looking longingly through the glass at the couch that Tegoshi is currently curled up on, fast asleep.
Yamapi puts a paw on the door encouragingly. “Don’t worry, you two,” he says with confidence, “you’ll get it soon, ne! It took me a few weeks to be housetrained too, but I eventually got it!”
Something about that doesn’t sit well with Ryo, or even with Uchi.
For the time being, Ryo puts his escape plan on hold, as a matter of pride.
Two days later, the both of them are fully housetrained.
~~~~~
The second time Master tries to play with Ryo, Ryo outright growls at him. This makes all of the other dogs pause worriedly; Koyama looks sick with concern over Ryo-chan’s health.
But Master is fine with it, just like before, and he calls Ryo “good boy” again, before putting the ball down and going back inside the house.
“Maybe Ryo-chan doesn’t know how to play,” Kusano frowns, looking thoughtful.
Shige snorts. “Any idiot could figure it out just by watching.”
Kusano laughs when Shige says it like that, because it just means Shige is worried too.
~~~~~
Kusano is right; a little while later, when he thinks no one is looking, Shige takes the ball Master had thrown earlier and brings it up to Ryo.
“The object of the game,” Shige tells him, “is to see how fast you can bring it back.”
Ryo blinks at him. “I know that, stupid,” he says, after a minute.
Shige nods understandingly. “Sure you do.”
He gently nudges the ball closer.
~~~~~
“How come you don’t like Master?” Kusano asks out of the blue the next morning, as he flops down right on top of Ryo and starts chewing on Ryo’s ear. While Ryo is in the middle of trying to find a weakness in the fencing he can exploit to get the hell out of here.
Ryo turns to snap at him and make him get off, but Kusano dodges the bite expertly and thinks that it means they’re playing now; he bats at Ryo’s nose gleefully, laughing at the top of his lungs when Ryo is too slow to move out of the way.
Something about the kid’s smile really pisses Ryo off, and he lunges forward before he knows what he’s doing, leaving the fence and his plans behind.
~~~~~
“I don’t like Master because I don’t like humans,” Ryo capitulates breathlessly some time later, when he’s been pinned down on his back and Kusano’s teeth are too close to the soft part of his neck for comfort.
“I win!” Kusano whoops, and bounds away so he can do a victory lap around the yard. “Still champion!”
Ryo sighs and gets to his feet; maybe now he can get back to work.
Except for not, because a few minutes later, Tegoshi pads up to him and cocks his head to the side curiously. “How come?”
Ryo sighs and stops digging at the place where he thinks he can maybe get under the fence. “How come what?”
“You don’t like humans?”
“They’re greedy and selfish,” Ryo responds, like it should be obvious.
Tegoshi smiles cutely. “But you like us, right, Ryo-tan?”
Ryo blinks. “Uh…sure.”
Tegoshi beams. “Yay!” he chirps, and then pads off to his soccer ball again, looking completely content.
A moment.
Then, Ryo growls and takes off after Tegoshi. “Hey! Who the hell said you could call me that?!”
As it turns out, Tegoshi never calls him anything else.
~~~~~
“Aw, c’mon, he’s cute!” Uchi laughs a little while later, after he has spent the better part of the afternoon racing around the yard with Tegoshi’s stolen soccer ball in his mouth (and being no help in the escape plan at all). “Did you see his face when I was playing Keep Away with him?”
Tegoshi, who had pouted and cried but who had never once given up, is currently in an exhausted sleep in his bed, protectively curled around his precious ball.
Ryo sighs at the sight. “Okay,” he acquiesces eventually. “He’s a little bit cute. Now shut up and go to sleep.”
Uchi snorts at him. “You’re so cranky lately, it makes me wonder if Yamapi is actually right,” he says, before lowering his head and doing as he’s told.
Ryo ignores him and tries not to think about it too much; as it turns out, Ryo is starting to believe that everyone here in their new home is kind of cute in their own way, and it’s dangerous. Shige is smart and Koyama is generous and Kusano never holds a grudge. Tegoshi is determined despite being so small and Massu is always smiling while Yamapi always seems to be trying his best, even for the stupidest things (like wrestling contests and treasure hunts).
They’re all the kind of things that are distracting and comforting and make him think of times long past and a home long gone, the easy-going day to day occurrences of dogs who don’t have to worry about their next meal, or of their people betraying them at any moment. They’re the kinds of things that make Ryo forget sometimes, that he’s trying to get the hell out of here and back to the junkyard, where he belongs.
He tells himself it’s dangerous because he doesn’t know how to live like this anymore.
~~~~~
The next day, Koyama and the others are all mysteriously gathered around one of the balls, looking very puzzled.
“Eh, how do I do this, Kei-chan?” Tegoshi asks suddenly, in a very obviously rehearsed manner.
When Koyama answers, it is even more obviously rehearsed than Tegoshi's lines. “Why, Tego-nyan,” Koyama begins, projecting his voice loudly so that Ryo can hear every word the older dog says from where he’s digging by the hedges, “the way you play is really quite simple.”
“Eh, really?” Tegoshi yips, sounding excited. “It looks fun!”
“It really is!” Koyama says. “All you have to do is, when the ball is moving, try to catch it! Then, you bring it back to the person who threw it, and they do it again! Simple, ne?”
“Yes!” Tegoshi agrees, at the top of his surprisingly powerful lungs, “Very simple!!”
The other dogs all make appropriately enlightened sounds as well.
And then turn to look at Ryo.
Very obviously.
Ryo mutters something uncharitable under his breath and goes back to digging, while Uchi laughs his head off behind Kusano.
“I think you insulted him,” Shige hisses under his breath once they all realize that their brilliant plan has failed. “I told you both not to be too obvious about it!”
Koyama looks apologetic, while Tegoshi isn’t listening (because he’s watching a butterfly fly across the yard).
“Maybe,” Yamapi theorizes boldly, “they weren’t being obvious enough!”
A beat.
“No,” Shige says, very patiently, “no, I don’t think that’s it.”
Ryo hears every word of it; he sighs and tells himself to just keep digging because he doesn’t have time for this.
Even if it is kind of flattering, in a completely retarded sort of way.
~~~~~
One of the maids catches Ryo trying to dig under the back fence by the hedges one afternoon a few days later, when she comes outside to hang up the laundry.
To be fair it’s kind of hard to miss, considering how big it is after how long he’s been working on it.
He gets tethered to the porch for three days after that, all while Koyama looks at him heartbrokenly from the window and Tegoshi whimpers at him all day from the inside of the house.
Ryo spends three days and two nights just like that, sitting outside and watching everyone miss him through the glass, the lot of them looking like they never knew what life was like before he became a part of theirs.
He sighs. “Goddammit,” he mutters eventually, and sounds resigned.
On the third night, when it starts to rain, Master is the one who comes to the door and says, “good boy,” as he lets Ryo back inside.
Everyone is really happy to see him.
~~~~~
Ryo gives up on escaping completely when Tegoshi trots up next to him later that evening, looking up with big, hopeful eyes as he asks, “Ryo-tan, you like us, right?”
“Yeah,” Ryo says helplessly, and after that, Tegoshi beams and curls up next to him and refuses to leave his side for the rest of the night.
~~~~~
A few days later, when the rain has let up and it’s sunny again, everyone gets taken back outside.
Master is with them, and he has a shiny new tennis ball in hand. He holds it out to Ryo, who still isn’t really interested.
But the others all give him a significant look.
“Just try it,” Koyama says imploringly.
“It’s fun!” Massu agrees.
“Ryo-tan…” Tegoshi starts, voice on the edge of a whine.
“Okay, okay!” Ryo tells them hastily, snapping irately before they can start to blubber at him like morons.
He takes a deep breath and looks up at the ball in Master’s hand.
And makes himself wag his tail a little.
Master smiles when he sees that and throws the ball. Ryo goes after it, grabs it, and bites down hard. Eventually he even brings it back.
He spits out weird tasting fuzz when he drops it back into Master’s hand, but after seeing his small teeth marks indented on the smooth green surface of the ball after giving it back, he grins a little and finds himself wondering how many times it will take before he can break a hole in the surface of one of those.
“Ryo-chan is laughing!” Yamapi exclaims happily when he sees Ryo’s reaction, and looks triumphant.
When Ryo gets the ball again, he spits the fuzz at Yamapi, who laughs right back at him.
Later, when Ryo is exhausted from all the running around, Master calls him a good boy and gives him some treats. Ryo doesn’t even notice it when Master pats his head.
~~~~~
One day, about a month after Ryo and Uchi first came to this place, Yamapi and Koyama suddenly become very (uncharacteristically) serious. They get taken out by Master a lot more than usual as well, and whenever they come back from wherever it is they’ve been taken to, they’re always too tired to play, no matter how much Tegoshi tries to bug them into joining him.
“What’s going on?” Ryo asks Shige, because Shige seems like he’d know.
The husky gives him one of those obnoxious, nerdy looks of his. “There’s a show coming up,” Shige replies. “Yamashita-kun and Koyama are training for it. Yamashita-kun is our biggest star so far, and the rest of us have to work hard to catch up.”
Ryo blinks.
“What’s a show?”
Shige rolls his eyes at the smaller dog. “You’re joking, right?”
Ryo bites him in the leg.
~~~~~
Shows, as Ryo soon discovers, are what they’re supposed to do for the Master in return for all the food and the grooming and the toys.
One day he and Uchi and the others all get leashes put on them as the Master’s handlers take them out onto a lawn even more magnificent than the one at the front of the house. There are a lot of people already there, dressed up all fancy and watching a bunch of snobby looking dogs gallop across the grass.
“That’s a show,” Shige feels the need to clarify, after his last misunderstanding with Ryo had led to bruised shins. “We go out there and walk around and people judge how representative we are of the ideals of our respective breeds.”
Ryo frowns. “That’s dumb,” he says by rote, just as Yamapi enters the arena.
There is a loud cheer from the audience when they see him, and when Ryo really watches him when he’s out there like that, Ryo can’t help but feel that Yamapi seems at his happiest right there, head held high as he trots at Master’s side looking beautiful.
On the sidelines, a pair of little girls exclaim, “How pretty!” in delight as Yamapi walks by, and Yamapi wags his tail at them a little bit, before coming to a stop in front of the judges.
“It is kind of dumb,” Shige agrees after a moment, but can’t take his eyes off of Yamapi anyway, “but it makes a lot of people happy, too.”
“I guess,” Ryo manages eventually, and feels odd as he watches a dog who looks a lot like himself prance by; the other toy fox terrier pauses for just a moment, to give Ryo a derisive, sideways look.
Ryo feels a growl starting to work up in the back of his throat, but Shige stops him with a nudge. “You can’t fight here,” the husky insists, while the show dog trots out to stand beside Yamapi.
“Says who?” Ryo snaps at him, irate for making him step down from a fight like that.
“Says that,” Shige tells him, indicating a sign that has something strange in human-script written all over it. “It specifically says that there’s to be no outside interference from non-contestant dogs.”
Ryo blinks at him. “You can read?”
Shige tries not to look smug. “I’ve been studying.”
Ryo snorts. “Nerd.” Pause. “And I wasn’t going to fight him. I was just going to say something about his mother.”
Shige sighs. “You shouldn’t do those kinds of things in a place like this. Besides, I’m sure Yamashita-kun will beat him.”
Shige’s right, Yamapi destroys the other dog.
But oddly enough, Ryo doesn’t feel satisfied leaving it at just that.
~~~~~
“Eh, Leader was amazing!” Tegoshi says excitedly after the show is over and they’re all back home again, a brand new ribbon hanging up on the wall next to all of Yamapi’s other ones. “Kei-chan too, ne.”
Koyama laughs a little, “Too bad though,” he says, “I sneezed in that judge’s face when he was looking at my teeth, ne.”
“I can’t wait until we get to compete too,” Kusano whoops, as he flops on top of Massu and starts biting his tufts of fur playfully. “I’m gonna kick ass. From wrestling champion to Best in Show, just like that!”
Massu headbutts him instinctively, but is too lazy to actually try to throw him off. “You get lots of treats from Master if you run right, don’t you?” he sighs, dreamily.
Ryo blinks. “So wait… we get to do those kinds of things too?”
“Yup!” Yamapi tells him, wagging his tail. “Everyone can do it as long as they try their hardest, ne!”
“Right!” the others all agree, and vow to work hard so they can catch up with Leader too.
Ryo-oddly enough- feels the same way they do in that moment; he wonders if wanting to win a dog show one day completely eradicates any street cred he might have earned as a former junkyard dog.
“No,” Uchi reassures him afterwards, when they are settling down to sleep for the night, “that ruined all your street cred.” He nods down at tiny, tiny Tegoshi, who is sleeping blissfully at Ryo’s side.
Ryo decides that if they’re going to go ahead and put him in one of those stupid competitions anyway, then the least he can do is win them.
~~~~~
A week later, everyone begins training in earnest.
When it comes to wanting to make people happy by doing their best, it seems to Ryo that these idiots have an endless supply of energy. He does his best to emulate them in the meantime, copying their posture and their ways of walking and their expressions. But it all seems kind of stiff to him, and he ends up tripping sometimes (though not as much as Shige does, thankfully).
During a break in their practice time later that afternoon, Ryo meets Tegoshi at the water bowls; the younger dog is daintily sipping from the top of Koyama’s dish, as it seems Massu has decimated his own and half of the others’ during his last break.
Despite the hours working in the sun, not a hair looks out of place on Tegoshi.
“Tego-nyan,” Ryo begins after a minute, “what’s that thing you do, at the end of your walk?”
Tegoshi blinks. “Thing I do?” he murmurs, and looks thoughtful. He cocks his head to the side cutely and looks up at Ryo with big eyes. “What thing?”
“That’s the thing, right there. With the…” He trails off when he can’t find the words to describe it and moves to emulate instead.
Tegoshi stares. “I do that?”
Ryo nods.
Tegoshi laughs. “Eh, how funny. Maybe that’s why the maids keep giving me treats, ne. Ryo-tan definitely looked really cute doing it, just now!”
Then, when his trainer calls, he smiles one more time. “I have to get back to work, Ryo-tan!” he says, and trots off obediently.
“Huh,” Ryo mutters, and tries the whole head tilt thing on his next circle.
When he does it, Kusano falls over laughing at him.
Ryo decides that maybe things like that can only work for dogs like Tego-nyan.
~~~~~
After that he tries holding his head high like Shige but he only ends up tripping more than before, because the way Shige does it makes it easy to lose his footing if you lose your rhythm. He tries leaning his body forward and extending his tail like Koyama does but he nearly falls on his face whenever he tries, and when he attempts to stand like Kusano and Massu, with their legs very slightly bent, it just makes him look like he needs to go to the bathroom. He can’t quite get used to strange people prying his mouth open either, and can’t help it when he fidgets impatiently whenever one of the handlers bends down to examine the pads of his feet.
“Maybe,” he grumbles to himself at dinner later, “I should forget all this and try to get my street cred back after all.”
“It’s all in the walk,” Uchi tells him absently, like he’s already some kind of expert or something. “Plus, your street cred is completely and utterly dead.”
Ryo pulls his hair.
~~~~
That night, when Ryo can’t sleep, he gets out of his pet bed and jumps onto the couch so that he can look out through the window, up at a sky full of stars. It reminds him a bit of the nights he’d spent sleeping out in the open air at the junkyard; there’s a big, full moon out tonight too, that looks exactly like the one that some of the other strays would howl at when the feeling got to them.
He kind of wants to howl a little bit now himself, just to work out some of the frustration from the day’s failures.
He knows it will probably just get him tethered to the porch again.
“Ryo-chan,” a worried voice murmurs suddenly, and stirs him from his thoughts. “Ryo-chan, you can’t sleep? Are you feeling alright?”
When Ryo turns around Koyama is there, with his forepaws up on the couch and looking at the smaller dog with eyes full of genuine concern.
“I’m fine,” Ryo tells him, before Koyama starts worrying out loud and wakes everyone else up in the process. “Just thinking.”
“Oh,” Koyama replies, and slumps a little in relief. Then, “About what?”
“About when I used to live in the junkyard,” Ryo admits, because he’s discovered that it’s near impossible to lie to a guy like Koyama without hating yourself a little bit afterwards.
Koyama lights up. “Eh, you used to live at the junkyard? Yamapi loves that place, ne.”
Ryo snorts. “Because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Koyama chuckles softly. “Leader, ne. Leader thinks freedom is the most amazing thing in the world.”
“If that’s the case, then why does he do this?”
Koyama smiles, and it’s very fond. “Because he likes making people happy more.” Pause. “At least, that’s what I think, ne. You’d have to ask Leader himself to know for sure.”
Ryo thinks about the look on Yamapi’s face whenever he’s even just thinking about a show, and thinks that Koyama is probably right.
“So,” Koyama starts, when Ryo doesn’t say anything else for a moment, “do you miss the junkyard a lot?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes not. It’s a place I lived for a while.”
Koyama nods in understanding. “Eh, maybe that’s what was felt different about you and Uchi when you two came here, ne. I knew it had to be something like that.”
Ryo eyes him, and wonders if Koyama is going to say another one of those stupid things pampered pets like to talk about when they don’t understand the first thing about living out in the world on their own. He scoffs a little. “Something like what?” he prompts, out of curiosity.
“Well, when I saw Ryo-chan and Uchi-kun the first time, I thought, wow, those two seem really strong, ne. Invincible.”
Ryo tries not to look pleased at the compliment. “Oh?”
Koyama nods. “It’s because you’ve seen more of the world, ne. So when you walk, it seems like…”
“Like?”
Koyama looks embarrassed. “You know so much more than we do.”
Ryo blinks. “What does that even mean?”
The Irish setter ducks his head sheepishly. “It means, Ryo-chan looks cool just being there, ne.”
It’s Ryo’s turn to be embarrassed. “Stop saying stupid things,” he mutters, but moves aside so Koyama can see the full moon through the window next to him anyway.
Koyama smiles.
~~~~~
The next morning, Ryo stops trying to walk like anyone else. He walks like himself, the dog who lived in the junkyard and who fought for food and shelter and survival on his own every day of the week and didn’t care who saw it.
When he moves like that, he doesn’t fall once.
And when he does it again later, except this time at his first ever actual show, he wins.
Afterwards, the judges all compliment Master on how “spirited” or “bright” or “unique” his new fox terrier is.
Meanwhile, in the husky category, Shige falls on his face mid-run. Twice.
Ryo almost laughs as hard about it as Kusano does.
~~~~
Months later, Ryo has a single line of ribbons on the wall as well, right up next to Yamapi’s.
And even though Ryo knows he’s a champion show dog now, and even though that seems like a far cry from the junkyard he once scrounged around in, he thinks it’s just like Koyama says; there’s something about his experiences out in the world that made him stronger, that made him different from the others.
Not that the others are bad; in fact, as he learns over time, they’re worldly in their own ways as well.
Because after all this time of carefully studying humans, Shige has figured out how to open and close the gate latch with his nose, which gives Ryo the perfect escape route so long as no one is looking.
Which is easy enough to orchestrate as well, because after all his time of being loved by humans, Tegoshi knows that all he has to do to keep the maids from looking is putter around the kitchen with them because they always coo over him and pet him and play with him the moment he pads into the room and looks up at them with his head slightly cocked and his eyes big and his expression playful. In the meantime, Shige will close the gate after Ryo and Uchi, while Koyama and Massu keep a lookout and Yamapi and Kusano distract the Master.
In the meantime, Ryo and Uchi will run free, following their noses once they find distant smells of the junkyard on the breeze. They’ll chase after them until they come up to those familiar broken down gates all over again, until they’re squeezing through the holes in the fences and wading knee deep in garbage just like they used to in the old days.
“Look who decided to come back and grace us with their presence,” the old, mangy junkyard dogs will laugh, only half-derisive as Ryo and Uchi exchange greetings with them and dig around in the waste for snacks or toys like they never left in the first place.
“It was getting a little too domesticated for me in there,” Ryo will often tell them, before rolling around in the dirt to get the smell of shampoo out.
“I just felt sorry for you old fogies, living out here without getting to see the beauty of my youth every once in a while,” Uchi sniffs in response, and goes to dig up one of the old terrier’s secret stash of goodies just because.
“Yeah, well… next time bring us some of Meal Ticket’s fancy treats on your way out, wouldja?” the boxer-mix complains, while swatting absently at Ryo’s head with a big paw.
Ryo is beginning to suspect that it’s at least partially out of fondness, but that doesn’t mean he’s not still aiming to get the boxer’s other ear one day.
Some hours later, when they’re all dirt and trash and filthed out, Yamapi comes bounding up to the fence with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, looking for Ryo and Uchi and a little bit of freedom all his own. “Time to come back, ne,” he says, tail wagging as he examines his housemates over appreciatively. “You two look like you had fun!”
Ryo’s response is to kick dirt at him, until he’s laughing and issuing a race challenge for the entire way home.
~~~~~
Later, when Uchi and Ryo try to get back into the house for the night, the maids take one whiff of them both and end up making them stay outside in the yard instead, until they can have a proper bath in the morning.
That night, the two of them spend a few hours howling at the moon.
END
EDITS?