“Yes, with the psychedelic hit ‘Plant-Based Groove.’”
Between the food and having the best boyfriend in the universe, I was perking right up. “Shame their second album flopped. In hindsight,Hail Seitanwasn’t the right title for its era.”
“AndHardcore Quornwas banned in thirteen countries.”
I gave a nostalgic sigh. “Whatever happened to those guys?”
“Hummus and Rocket quit the business, and Tomato died of a tofu overdose. Tragic really.”
“I’ve always said we needed tougher tofu regulations.”
Oliver gave me a play-serious look. “Lucien,surelyyou know that every attempt to legislate away the tofu issue has succeeded only in stigmatising tofu users and driving the market underground.”
“Oh, fuck me.” I let my head thunk back against the seat.
“What’s wrong now?”
Thenowwas doing a lot of work in that sentence, but I chose to ignore it. “Nothing. I just…” It was kind of hard to roll your eyes at yourself because they were already inside your face. “I, you know. Love you. Like. A lot.”
“Come here.”
I leaned over the gearstick, and Oliver leaned over to meet me, and we kissed way more lingeringly than made sense when one of us tasted of hummus, and the other tasted of pastrami, and the one who tasted of pastrami was being half choked by the seat belt he’d forgotten to take off. Eventually, we remembered that we were in a car park in Battersea and that, hilarious as the irony would be, we didn’t want to get arrested for dogging.
“I love you too,” said Oliver, with far less um-ing and like-ing and y’know-ing than I personally considered normal. “Now let’s go get Spud.”
* * *
Much like when we bought our car and, indeed, our house, Oliver dealt with the paperwork, and I sat in an uncomfortable chair watching Oliver deal with the paperwork. I wouldn’t say that, out of all the things I could watch Oliver doing, it was the most attractive, but it also wasn’t the least attractive. There was something inherently cool and slightly alien to me about someone who looked like they knew what they were doing in an administrative context. Or, for that matter, any context. Probably including sex contexts. Because Oliver flipping me over like he was about to sign me in triplicate hadn’t got old in five years of fucking.
Eventually, after long enough to feel like they were taking the piss but not quite long enough that you could say anything about it without looking like a prick, we were allowed to leave. And when we left, we were allowed to take a box with us. And the box was allowed to have a dog in it.
We secured Spud’s crate in the back of the car and stood for a moment contemplating the fact that our car had a box in it and the box in the car had a dog in it. I squeezed Oliver’s hand.
“We’ve got a dog,” I told him.
“Yes,” he replied.
Spud was looking up at us through the little window like an incredibly trusting prisoner. We’d called him Spud because, when we’d first seen him at the shelter, he’d been smaller and rounder, and looked a whole lot like a potato. And, while Oliver had wanted something more subtle, like Edward (as in King) or Maris (as in Piper), I’d wanted to just steer into it. A few weeks further on, he was still small, and still brown, with big dark eyes and an exceedingly waggy tail, but he was notably more animal-shaped.
“I’m fucking terrified,” I said.
“Mruff,” Spud replied.
“Lucien, it’s fine.” It was Oliver’sshould’ve been tired of reassuring me by now but somehow wasn’tvoice. “People far more irresponsible than us get dogs every day.”
“No, they don’t. They vet you like whoa.”
“Then shouldn’t you take the fact that you’ve been vetted like whoa and they’ve still let you have the dog as evidence that you can, in fact, look after a dog?”
“I think they probably averaged us out.”
“I’m certain they didn’t,” he said firmly. “If they thought one of us was a danger to the dog, the dog would be in danger, irrespective of the good intentions of the other.”
“What if he doesn’t like me?”
“Dogs are pack animals. They like the people they live with unless the people they live with are completely terrible. And,” he went on before I could make the obvious objection, “despite what you might say and how frequently you might say it, you’re not completely terrible.”
“I’m a bit terrible.”
