Title: Puppy Love

Author: Christi (christim@comcast.net)

Rating: PG

Timeline: Somewhere in the back half of Season 2

Category: Errr…mainly Sparky fluff. I tried to avoid the inevitable cliché!ness of it, but not horribly successfully. Just as a warning.

Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah. I know. Not mine.

Author’s Note: This is mostly my sister and control_freak80’s fault—as per usual. See, my sister and I started this thing where when John is happy, we start chanting “happy puppy, happy puppy” because it totally looks like he’s about to start panting and wagging his tail. Of course, I told control_freak80 and she DEMANDED Johnasapuppy fic. So you see, it’s NOT MY FAULT.

As always, kate98 and control_freak80 are wonderful. Also, Robyn is too, for dealing with my title-related flailing.

--

Since getting involved with the Stargate program, Elizabeth liked to think that she had become more open-minded. After all, if you learned that nothing was impossible, then you couldn’t be taken by surprise when finding yourself facing things like life-sucking aliens or a city that flies or even the occasional musical singing number.

However, she did have to admit that occasionally it was nice to know that there were some consistencies in life, facts that you could count on to always be true. Like the fact that the sight of muscular, rough-and-tumble Ronon carefully carrying a tiny, squirming puppy down the halls of Atlantis really was as incongruous as one might think.

Trying not to laugh at the sight, Elizabeth stood to meet them as the unlikely pair entered her office. Still, she couldn’t help but reach out and scratch absently behind one ear of the frantic little creature. “Ronon, where in the world did you find a puppy?”

He didn’t answer right away. When Elizabeth studied him more closely, she could, for perhaps the first since she had met the alien man, read a bit of unease in his features. “Ronon?” she asked again.

Ronon shifted his feet and seemed to be looking everywhere but at her. “Sheppard and I were touring the city.”

“Yes…” That had been their assignment, after all, now that power had finally been restored to the furthest reaches of the city post-Wraith attack. “I remember. But don’t tell me you found a pack of dogs still alive down there.”

“No. Sheppard was taking point, and walked into a room and…” At this point, he seemed to lose the power of speech, instead shrugging and making a strange sort of gesture that might have been flailing, had his arms not been full of puppy.

Catching on, Elizabeth slid her gaze down to the puppy, a mutt of indiscernible origin with wide hazel eyes and fly-away brown fur curling in every direction.

As she bent closer, the puppy strained against Ronon’s grip and placed a big, happy lick on her cheek, followed by a delighted yipping bark.

What was that she been saying about nothing taking her by surprise again?

--

“The good news,” Zelenka said while ruffling John the puppy’s fur and making what Elizabeth had to admit were rather hilarious faces at him, “Is that we don’t think the change is permanent.”

“As always, Professor Glass Half Full, you’re missing the point,” Rodney retorted. “We don’t know how long ‘not permanent’ is! And besides that, we don’t know if there’s something we have to do to switch him back!”

Considering that they had only been working on the problem for forty-five minutes, Elizabeth thought that ‘not permanent’ was pretty good news. “Calm down, Rodney. Let’s think about this rationally. If all you could tell from the door to the room was that the change isn’t permanent, then maybe there’s more information somewhere else. Have you checked the database?”

Now fully in a snit, Rodney rolled his eyes. “We’ve started to, but you know how much information the database contains! We’ve been sorting through it since we got here and still haven’t managed to make a dent. It’s not like we can just google the information we need and discard the rest, you know!”

“I am aware of that, Rodney.” Though, now that she thought about it, that really would be a handy feature. Maybe….

She shook her head, looking over to where John the puppy was playing, now happily chasing his own tail. This was hardly the time to get distracted. “What can you do?”

“We’re going to try and send a MALP into that room in order to get images of any writing that might be engraved in the area. We are fairly confident that it will only turn animate things into dogs," Radek said.

Any reason that the Ancients would have wanted to turn people into dogs in the first place still seemed to be a mystery to everyone. "All right," Elizabeth agreed. "Uh…what should I do with John in the meantime?"

Three pairs of eyes slid down to rest on the little critter. Finally, McKay shrugged and gave John’s tail a solid pull, seeming pleased at the corresponding yelp. "He seems to like you. You'll be fine."

Obviously, McKay was a cat person.

--

In fact, John the puppy seemed determined NOT to be parted with Elizabeth for any length of time. Lorne had volunteered to walk him--a situation that Elizabeth thought highly preferable to the alternative of having to witness John sniffing around for suitable facilities herself. However, as soon as the Major had led him out of view of Elizabeth, John began making the most pathetic howling noises any of them had ever heard.

This is how Dr. Elizabeth Weir ended up walking her military commander on a makeshift leash around the balconies of Atlantis while he searched for a good place to…relieve himself.

“You know, John,” she said thoughtfully as he inspected a spot thoroughly, “I realize that this command is all about teamwork, but I really think that this might be stretching it a little far.”

As though he sensed that she was speaking to him, hazel eyes looked up and yipped in response before scrambling over to a potted plant and waiting, almost as though he was asking for permission.

“Actually, that’s a good idea,” she affirmed. Somehow, she thought it might be easier to look John in the eye after all this was over if she didn’t have to clean up after him.

When he lifted a leg, Elizabeth automatically averted her eyes, immediately feeling a little silly seeing as she was worrying about the privacy of a puppy. Still, better safe than sorry.

--

Dinnertime presented another challenge. It wasn’t like anyone had thought to bring kibble along to the Pegasus galaxy, so Elizabeth was left trying to decide which mystery meat was least likely to come back and haunt both of them later on.

Finally settling on something not quite like roast beef, she was then faced with seating issues. Common sense dictated that John stay on the floor. The problem was that he was rather small in his current form and had a tendency to dart in-between legs at random—there had already been a rather amusing incident earlier in the day that ended with Teyla, Miko, and Radek in a heap on the floor while a wide-eyed John emerged completely unscathed. Combine this tendency with the mess hall’s heavier foot traffic and Elizabeth’s cautious mind could only produce incredibly disastrous scenarios.

She could have leashed him, but when she had tried to keep him on it after their walk, he had just wiggled out.

So, the only logical solution had John sitting securely and happily in Elizabeth’s lap, his food on a plate next to her own. Of course, it seemed that rather than eat his own food, John preferred to nose into her own.

After the seventh or eighth attempt of protecting her meatballs from his investigating, Elizabeth gave up. “Fine, eat it,” she said to him.

As the art of sarcasm is lost on dogs, John proceeded to quite happily.

Elizabeth ended picking at a Chef’s salad—no ham.

--

After dinner all hope of getting more work done had to be abandoned, as John seemed very insistent that they play about fifteen hundred rounds of fetch. Though, she had to admit, there was something sort of adorable—and strangely metaphoric—about the way he’d scramble after the ball only to lose his footing on the smooth floors of Atlantis and go slamming into a wall.

Every.

Single.

Time.

She had managed to get a few reports read in the quiet of her quarters, making the mistake of thinking that John had run himself ragged the last few hours.

When she pulled out of her administrative haze, one of her shoes was tattered beyond all repair, and its mate was close to following suit.

Now, Elizabeth wasn’t normally the type of woman to mind the destruction of a pair of shoes. But it’s not like there was a shoe store around the corner in the Pegasus galaxy, and the idea of sending a requisition form through the gate to General Landry listing ‘a pair of sensibly chic black pumps’ was slightly mortifying.

With a sigh, she picked him up and held him at arm’s length. “I didn’t really think you could be more trouble as a dog,” she said forlornly. “Obviously, I underestimated your powers of destruction.”

John, as a response, wagged his tail. This, of course, made it impossible to stay mad at him—as it turned out, John in any incarnation had an adorable tail.

Marching them both towards the bed, Elizabeth settled him on one side. “We are going to sleep now,” she informed him very seriously. “And if you get up in the middle of the night to finish off that shoe, I swear I’ll find a way to demote you.”

Strangely, John seemed completely amenable to the ‘sleep now’ plan and curled up on the spare pillow.

As she climbed between the sheets, watching him get settled, Elizabeth had to admit to a tiny shred of disappointment. Being a sane, single, straight woman who worked with John Sheppard day in and out, the idea of sharing a bed with him had admittedly been entertained on more than one occasion.

None of those scenarios, however, involved having to worry about whether or not John would piddle on the sheets.

--

Normally a morning person, Elizabeth awoke uncommonly slowly the next morning, opening her eyes to see a mess of brown…hair.

Real, human hair.

As she blinked and John’s slightly amused face came into focus, she smiled. “How very Frog Prince of you.”

He frowned. “What?”

“Never mind. Good to see you. Everything back to normal?”

“Ten fingers, ten toes, absolutely no desire to bark,” he reported proudly, eyes scanning her bed-rumpled figure. “Now, pant, on the other hand….”

The cheesy line confirmed that yes, he was definitely back to normal. Giving in to the urge to ruffle his hair, Elizabeth smiled. “Funny.”

John caught her hand and pulled her closer. “Not joking.”

When he kissed her, she reflected that this was much closer to all those lovely daydreams and proceeded to enjoy it thoroughly. Still, when he pulled away to catch his breath, she couldn’t stop her nose from wrinkling a bit.

This seemed to worry him much more than warranted, though his concerns weren’t anything practical like their working relationship or the appropriateness of his actions. No, John’s first question was, “What? Dog breath?”

Elizabeth grinned. “No, just standard, every day morning breath.”

“Look who’s talking, Princess,” he retorted. In retaliation, Elizabeth hit him with a pillow.

In the midst of laughter, John rolled onto his back, pulling her on top of him. Looking down at him with some measure of amusement and exasperation, Elizabeth informed him, “You owe me a new pair of shoes.”

He pulled her closer. “That’s the wrong fairytale.”