In retrospect, Trip should have realized sooner that his profession wasn’t exactly best lent to taking care of a small animal, let alone one that was going to grow up to be big. But he’d been thinking about it for a while, even back when he was on Garrett’s team. Now that he was assigned to the Academy for the foreseeable future, it certainly couldn’t hurt, right?
His shoes would beg to differ. Two hours after coming home from the animal shelter with a black and white bumbling bundle of border collie, his apartment was a mess, but he was the happiest he’d been in months. The puppy never stopped moving - much like a freshman ops student on too much coffee - and when Trip turned his back for one minute, it had somehow managed to nudge the door open and run out of the apartment.
Trip chased the puppy down the hallway and outside onto the quad. “Come back!” he yelled, realizing that she didn’t yet have a name, let alone answer to one. Her name had been Daisy at the shelter, but she was still young and untrained. Still, it never hurt to try it. “Daisy!” he called, but the faster he ran after the puppy, the faster she ran away. He’d just committed at least twelve years of his life to this.
And he loved it.
If the faint, high-pitched barking wasn’t alarming at first, the sound of claws against the hardwood floor getting closer to her certainly was. She spun around on her heels to what was a either a genetic mutation gone wrong in one of the labs or - yep. A dog. The less likely option. And the only person crazy enough to take one in other than Fitz was Trip, who then appeared round the corner as if she’d summoned him by knowing the man too well, exasperated but not in a bad way. Skye knelt down to greet the puppy with open arms as it pattered towards her with as much vigour as it’s tiny legs would allow, “It’s mine now,” she declared when Daisy was safely enveloped in her arms, pulling it closer against her chest as not to let it go again, “Finders keepers, and you are already proving to be a horrible fucking parent.”
