milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

You know what was missing in the bar tonight? That lovely little touch of teenage boy angst. Luckily, Sam's just wandered in to fill that void with that certain kind of face you get when it's the weekend and you have no friends to hang out with and your mom spent the morning listening to French tapes while she cleaned up by throwing out some more of your dad's old stuff you'd been hiding. The discerning might notice the piquant aftertaste of headache in addition to the previous - he's still wearing his dad's glasses.

(He knows it's stupid because it gives him headaches and it's going to fuck up his vision or something. He's going to keep doing it anyway. ~~At least until Someone remembers that her son has perfect vision.~~)

Also he has a sandwich, because teenage boy. Ahhhh, Milliways is now complete.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Angst happens. It is a thing.

Sandwiches also happen. And they attract attention.

Sam, there is a black and grey dog with one blue eye and one brown eye staring intently at your sandwich.

"I don't know if this is on your diet," Sam says to the dog.

Don't worry, a little more of the puppy eyes and he'll fold like freshly-laundered shirts.

The dog keeps right on staring.

Fortunately, a human appears almost immediately, grabbing him by the collar. "I'm so sorry," says the human, who looks to be about twenty or so despite her steel-grey hair. "He always tries to get away with that here- he's not bothering you, is he?"

"Nah, he was just trying to convince me to surrender my lunch with the whole sad eyes thing."

>>

"It was working."

She sighs. "He does that to everyone," she says resignedly. "Dogmeat, I fed you half an hour ago. Go lie down."

The dog whufs, tail slanting downward in annoyance.

"Oh, don't be like that, you know perfectly well you're not supposed to bother people for their food. I'm so sorry, his name is Dogmeat and mine is Ellen."

"Sam."

He offers out a hand somewhat awkwardly. Also: "...'Dogmeat'?"

Ellen reaches to shake the hand. Her palm is rough, with callouses in a few places from spending a long time in the field with various weapons. "Yeah," she says. "When I first found him I didn't know what to call him. A tribal friend of mine told me her tribe had a heroic dog in its history, called Dogmeat, and this one here started barking at the word. We figured that meant it was his name. He doesn't seem to mind."

"Doesn't sound like the ideal name..."

Given that the only thing related thing he can think of is You're dog meat, Goode.

"Well, no," Ellen admits. "But he seems okay with it- aren't you, Dogmeat?"

The dog looks up from nibbling at an itch on one hip. Ellen finds some jerky in her pocket- she's got an overcoat on at the moment- and tosses it to him to snarf down.

"I didn't grow up around animals, so I'm honestly not very good at naming them."

"I used to have one. Only when I was really little, though."

Sam crouches and offers a hand to Dogmeat, as an introduction.

Dogmeat leans forward to sniff at the offered hand. There's no food in it, but it seems all right; he'll lick it and maybe the human will pet him. They do that sometimes, here.

"Are they very common where you come from?" Ellen says curiously. "I don't see a lot of dogs back home, most places. You'd think more people would have them around for company and protection. He's very good at that."

"Pretty common." Petting? Dogmeat can count on that! As much petting as he wants, probably. "There's a lot of them where I live."

Ellen nods. "We're from- well, it used to be the Arlington, Virginia area," she says. "A long time ago, anyway."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only