It's Puppy Time!
[OOC: so I'm not sure if we're still running or what but we had a log we finished and figured we'd still go ahead and post it. So here it is]
Who: Alex and Miguel What: Meeting the puppies When: Evening Where: Miguel’s house Rating/Warnings: PG.
It was good, Miguel thought, that he barely ever got sick. It gave him an excuse to take a day off, something he hadn’t done for years. And now he’d taken two. There were things to do, though, baby-gates to purchase and a house to fortify against eight little puppies. He’d managed to move the dogs downstairs, into the living room, which had the least amount of furniture and things that the puppies might destroy. For Teresa, he’d gotten a kiddie pool - inflatable - and packed it with towels, in hopes that she’d settle there and stop moving the puppies back to his bed. Miguel had been banished to the couch more than once in his life, but never before by a dog. It was an odd feeling.
He’d finally managed to get some sleep, though, in between fortifying the basement - again - and removing a few of the booby traps. Just in case.
The puppies, for their part, were squalling like crows. They hadn’t appreciated going to the vet. The biggest one, the red girl, had started screaming the moment she felt the exam table and then the others followed suit.
That had been about an hour ago. The noise hadn’t stopped yet.
Miguel had a headache.
Teresa, for her part, looked rather pleased with herself. Perhaps she was deaf. Either way, the squalling didn’t seem to bother her.
Alex logged out of her email account, sighing. She was going to have to do some digging, figure out who was sending her these emails but today she couldn't deal with it. Today she just wanted some light, frivolous fun and that's why she'd asked Miguel if she could swing by to see the puppies. After confirming it was okay, Alex headed out. Miguel actually lived pretty close by, just a little further up Seven Oak, and on the other side of the street.
It was a pretty short walk from number 42, so in no time at all, Alex was there at number 106. Tucking her cell phone into her bag, she rang the doorbell. She could already hear high pitched sounds coming from inside and she couldn't help smiling. Poor Miguel. What had his dog gotten him into?
Apparently Teresa wasn’t deaf after all. She lifted her head and sneezed when the doorbell rang. She wasn’t a big dog; rather scrawny, actually, and nearly dwarfed by her pile of crying babies. Only a few had her red fur. The others were speckled and brown, and a few were all black. The runt, though, was gray, with a little white spot on his muzzle. Miguel had held that one a few times, letting the puppy bump its nose against his fingers. The runt cried less than the others, moved slower.
That one might die, the vet had said. It was so small, and Teresa was so skinny.
Miguel had also gotten bottles and puppy formula.
Why not try, at least?
But. The door.
Miguel set the runt down with the others and went to answer. “Hello, Ms. Jessup.”
There wasn’t anything special about Miguel’s house. It was relatively clean, had changed little since he’d moved in, and only had books as personalization; everything else had come with the place. The basement was another story, but that was locked.
"Please just call me Alex," she replied with a smile. Miguel's politeness reminded her of back home though, where near everyone called each other polite titles unless they were close friends. Since she'd left Virginia as a teen, she hadn't experienced it much on the receiving end, but it was still a sudden flash of memory. "It sounds busy and, ah, well. Loud in there.
What she could see of Miguel's house didn't look so different from her own. There was probably a generic slate the builders worked off of, leaving it to the owners or renters to add their own style and flair. Alex had added colors and accessories that looked straight out of the fifties. Whatever hadn't worked in her shop had come home with her instead.
"How are you doing?" she asked. "Did the little beasts let you get any sleep last night?"
Miguel nodded slowly, backing up to let her in. “Very loud.”
Indeed, the babies were still squalling. He wondered briefly if this was what having children was like. Possibly. He didn’t really like children. “I’ve gotten my bed back,” Miguel murmured. “I appreciate that. Do you want something to drink?”
Alex stepped in, getting a better view of the house as she did. "Well that's a plus at least. I hear sometimes when an animal gives birth in a specific location, it's hard to get her to leave. And the babies would be even worse," she added.
She shook her head as she started to follow him."Thank you for the offer, but no, I'm all right for now. Have you started thinking about what you're going to do with all the puppies?"
“Hmm.”
Miguel eyed his books for a moment, wondering what his house looked like to Alex. Visitors were something other people did, and the novelty of having a house, not just a few rooms in a crowded building, hadn’t yet worn off. His place was quiet, though, more empty space than anything.
Well. Aside from the puppies.
Miguel led the way into the living room, where he’d put the baby gates up. Teresa lifted her head, ears pricked. The puppies didn’t appear to notice anything was different. It’d be a while before their eyes were open. “I’ll keep a few. Give the others away, I suppose. Do you want one?”
Alex had moved on from Miguel's interior decorating and onto the puppies. She saw the mother first, looking to Alex as tired and yet proud as any human mother would. The puppies themselves were tiny, smaller than she had expected. She'd never seen puppies this young; the last time she'd seen any, and friend of a friend had also had a surprise litter happen, but Alex hadn't seen them until they were around five weeks old.
The desire for a puppy then was just as strong as it was now. If only she had a roommate or a job she didn't have to be out of the house for so many hours at a time. She had gotten a cat simply because she at least the cat could use the litter box. Someone would have to take to dog out while she was gone and at the moment, she didn't have anyone who could do that. She came closer to the puppies, not reaching to pick any of them up. Their eyes weren't even open yet.
"I wish I could take one, you have no idea," Alex said, her expression reiterating her words. "I just don't have the ability to take care of a puppy. Or a dog of any size, for that matter. No one to take care of him or her while I'm out." She looked back up at Miguel. Not to mention my cat would take serious issue I think." She shifted her attention back to the, "On the plus side, they are so cute I don't think you'll have any trouble finding homes for them."
Miguel knelt down to rub Teresa’s ears as she panted, sniffing at her babies. Even now she was skinny, barely gaining any weight though she seemed to eat all the time. But that was what puppies did to a dog, he supposed. She was sweet, though. Gentle and quiet. “I understand. She’s my first dog.”
He paused. “Well. She was.”
Now he had nine.
Not that Miguel minded, really. Even the squealing wasn’t so bad, once you got used to it. Or invested in ear plugs. He picked the little gray runt up to show Alex. “This is Samson. He’s the smallest one.”
Alex couldn't help the sound that came out of her throat. Miguel had just picked up a puppy so tiny, it was impossible to believe it was a real living creature. A little tiny pink tongue stuck out of the puppy's mouth as he breathed, his eyes shut just as tight as his siblings.
"Oh my God, his little face is unreal." She glanced up at Miguel. "Can I-- Is it all right to hold him?" She wasn't sure if it was okay for her to handle them when they were still so small. Miguel was one thing: the puppies' mother knew him and trusted him. She didn't want to upset the mother by holding her tiniest baby.
Miguel held the puppy out carefully, with two hands. “Here.”
So long as she was gentle, it was fine. Teresa was watching, but only a little. Samson made a little chirping sound, nosing against Miguel’s fingers.
Alex carefully took the puppy from Miguel's hands. Despite the fact that her hands were smaller than his, there still seemed to be so much hands and so little puppy in them when she took it. Tiny Samson, his eyes still shut, seemed to notice a change and he went from nosing Miguel's fingers to nosing Alex's. Oh god it was going to be so hard to say no to taking one of these puppies, but Alex was going to have to find a way to be firm. Unless she got a roommate who stayed at home or worked opposite hours to her, she just wouldn't be able to devote the time to caring for a puppy.
But oh did she want to.
Her husky voice dropping to a whisper, she directed her words at Samson. "Hey there little guy. I hope you're up to the task of growing into your name. I think you can do it." She carefully stroked on finger over the puppy from head to tail, a gentle petting since she was leery about petting him any more firmly. "Did you name the others too?" She directed the question at Miguel despite not taken her eyes off Samson.
Samson made small sounds, grunts more than anything. Such a little thing. The smallest of eight, he was the quietest as well. He didn’t squall like his siblings. He was quiet even when Miguel fed him with a bottle, to keep the puppy strong. Miguel smiled just a little. “A few. The big red girl, she’s Katherine. And the white one is Francis.”
Somehow, they’d all ended up named after saints or biblical figures.
Those sounds were absolutely crawling their way right into her heart. Oh, this was a mistake. She was already falling in love with these puppies, especially the tiniest one right there in her hand. "Am I sensing a religious theme there or is that just to Southern upbringing rearing it's head?"
She shifted her gaze to the other puppies, and to mom. They varied in coloring, making her wonder who the father was. "You have any idea who fathered these puppies?"
Miguel shrugged, not really an answer. His sister had been a nun for a while. Gave it up after three years. He didn’t really know why. It had been a long time since they’d been able to talk to each other. “No. Another stray, I suppose.”
Miguel wasn't exactly a big talker, but luckily for them, Alex could talk enough for three people. "A friend of mine had a dog who went and got herself knocked up and we thought it was a stray too. Turns out it was the dog that belonged to a neighbor who lived two streets over. He was a husky. When we saw those puppies? We knew right away."
Those puppies had been adorable balls of pure fluff with amazing eyes. There'd been only one husky in the neighborhood. Alex still remembered going over to the neighbor's house with two puppies and an amused smile to let him know what his dog had been up to. It had gone over well; he'd come by to see the puppies and he and Alex's friend had hit it off. Not to mention all the little pups had gotten homes. Alex told the whole story without any prompting, still carefully petting Samson.
Teresa had begun to clean one of the pups, washing it loudly with her tongue. Gently, though. Miguel liked her. The quiet little dog who’d sat down in front of his truck one day. He’d keep her and at least one of the pups. Probably Samson, if the little one survived. “They would have been lovely dogs,” Miguel said softly. “Some of Teresa’s look like her, I think.”
Alex nodded in response. "They were. I wish I could have kept one then too, but I did some dogsitting while there were date nights happening." Her own boyfriend-slash-tattooist-she-was-apprenticed-to sometimes would help. It was a pretty decent time in her life despite the massive breakup and falling out that came after. That part of the story Alex didn't bother to tell. "Yeah some of them do. She's gorgeous; it would have been a shame if none of them took after her."
In her hands, Samson made another tiny snuffling noise, yawned and curled up into an impossibly smaller ball. Alex's heart melted a little more. "So Miguel, what do you do? If you don't mind my asking?"
“I’m an engineer.”
More or less. There were other ways of saying it.
Miguel knelt to pick up one of the other pups, one of the girls. This one didn’t have a name, just a nubby little tail and a brindle coat. He’d looked up the color online, unable to describe it but knowing that it had a name, somewhere. It reminded him of tiger stripes just a little. “These days I mostly design blueprints and teach others how to be safe.”
Again, not quite a lie.
Alex raised her eyebrows at that, "An engineer! Wow that's cool. I don't think I've met an engineer before. Is there as much math involved as we're led to believe?" Alex's math skills went as far as calculating payroll and using Turbotax to do her taxes. She wasn't terrible but it wasn't her strength either.
Alex looked over at the puppies Miguel had picked up. That one was another gorgeous one. All stripey. She's never seen that coloring on a dog before.
“As much as one would expect, I think.” Miguel had always been good at math. It had been one of his best subjects. He liked the rules. The uniformity of everything. He set the brindle girl back down with the others, touching two fingers to her back as she nosed her way back to Teresa’s belly. “There is an element of design as well.”
There was an interestingly gentle quality Miguel displayed as he set the little puppy back down and watched her wiggle back over to her mother. "Design I can understand," Alex replied. "I suppose we both have something in common there. Designing and building from it - that's at the core of every tattoo I create. I can imagine it's at the core of what you create too."
Alex as reluctant to hand back Samson, but she did, knowing it would be even harder later. "Hey if it turns out you need some help watching the puppies and I'm not working, I wouldn't mind swinging by."
“Indeed,” Miguel agreed as he took the puppy back. Art was something he respected greatly. Tattoos in particular had their own….impact. He rubbed at his absently. It had begun to fade years ago. “Hmm. I’ll keep that in mind, should something come up.”
It wouldn’t. Miguel didn’t let anyone stay in his house unsupervised. But that wasn’t the sort of thing you said to a person.
Samson chuffed, little paws wiggling. Miguel liked him the best, out of all Teresa’s puppies. “I would like to make an appointment sometime, for some touch-up work. Since we’re talking about tattoos.”
Alex had made the offer frivolously - she wasn't sure Miguel would take her up on it, but if he did, she'd honor it if she could. She was about to say something more on the subject, but then little Samson made the world most adorable sound and she returned her attention to him. "I just can't believe how tiny he is," she said, her smile lighting up her face again."
She hauled herself back to the conversation - especially since they were still on the subject of tattoos. "Sure! My hours are usually Monday through Saturday, 11 AM to 6 PM, but if that doesn't work, I can be flexible. Just let me know when would work for you and we can figure out the rest." People might have thought that touching up tattoos wouldn't be very fulfilling work, but Alex loved to look at it as breathing new life into a fading, beautiful creation. She always tried her hardest to be faithful to the original look, restoring it like an expert would an old painting.
Miguel smiled a little, rubbing Samson’s ears. “He’s the runt. Though he may get bigger, in time.”
Maybe not, though.
“Mornings work better for me,” Miguel said after a moment. “Perhaps on Friday? I could come around eleven.”
Alex's lips pursed and a pleased little expression. "It'd be funny if he turned out bigger than the rest when they're all grown."
She nodded at the suggested time. "Eleven works. I don't have an appointment that early on Friday so that would be perfect. And speaking of time, I've probably taken up enough of yours. I should probably head out. Thank you for letting me come by and see the puppies."
“Perhaps.”
Almost anything was possible. Miguel nodded slowly. “It was good to see you.”