On a different day, a lizard based interlude would have been a welcome, amusing--downright charming--change to what happened to be terrible monotony on the station whenever it wasn't falling apart, but right on the heels of everything that happened, Ro was still stuck in that headspace somewhere past overwhelmed, and, frankly, he simply needed a time out.

Somewhere with a different scenery, ideally, one that wasn't trying to actively kill him one way or another, but Ronan had given up just about any hope for it happening and that, somehow, weighed heavier on him than he would have expected it to. The urge to crawl under a rock somewhere and maybe, just for a few weeks, not to deal with anything was incredibly strong, and his own moodiness was already driving himself insane.

How Cael still put up with him was a mystery, considering he was pretty sure he had settled firmly in territory where no company was better than his.

Still, carrying heavy things ranked high on his otherwise limited skill list, so accompanying Cael to whatever spot he had picked out to buy 'lizard equipment,' whatever that would turn out to be. Whether that lizard would turn out to be real or not. Somehow, not in spite of but because of his reliably chaotic nature, Cael had become one of the more normal parts of his every day, and Ro, as always, rolled with it.

"What, exactly, makes you so sure you saw a lizard?" Ronan wondered out loud, arms crossed over his chest as he looked around without any real interest, eyes not catching on anything in particular. "I think it's white mice that people generally start seeing."

Being the optimistic half of well, anything, wasn't a position Cael ever expected to find himself in, not that he really qualified overly much on that front. Less pessimistic was probably a more accurate analysis. That Ronan was moody company wasn't anything new. He had certainly been that before they had started dating and it wasn't a part of his personality that bothered Cael. It was perplexing that Ro seemed to think it would be more of a problem now that they openly admitted to caring about each other, but given his own track record with logic, that, too, was something he could accept.

This didn't place him in the business of trying to cheer anyone up, since he was fairly certain the only one who'd hate that more than he would would be Ronan, so Cael certainly had his own lapses here and there when Ronan did too good a job at trying to get Cael to fuck off, but. Even on a bad day, he'd rather have Ro's company than not.

"So, I told you Beckett and I tried to liberate some geckos, right?" Cael had, rather literally, brought them back to the scene of the crime, since there weren't that many pet stores on Terminus that catered to more than cats and dogs. List in his head of what he needed to get for the new addition to his apartment, he glanced over at Ro, leading them toward some terraria. " I was pretty sure we only sang to them, since the next morning all I woke up with was a hangover, but. What I saw scurry under the oven had the same back dots and coloring of the one I remember holding. Plus, I'm pretty sure we can both easily imagine me drunkenly bringing a gecko home and telling it to roam free in my apartment like nature intended."

"Can you maybe-- drop your voice a little." That this was the very place Beckett and Cael had, presumably, broken into was both obvious and giving him a headache, and Ronan drew his lips in a thin line in obvious distaste. He was still here, of course, but he wasn't going to pretend he approved of this in any way, and did not necessarily want to expand his reputation to ' guy who probably steals from pet stores.'

Ronan grunted noncommittally in what was without a doubt enough response (yes, he could imagine that, yes, they both knew that), arms still crossed as he leaned down a bit to peer into one of the few containers on display and watched a turtle meander at glacial pace through its terrarium before it dropped into the half of it that was water with a satisfying little plop. He wondered how many of these animals were real instead of robotic in nature, and whether that mattered to people.

"How many lizards did you liberate, exactly?" At the last word, Ro's tone slipped into a heavily sardonic drawl that suggested just how little he thought of that endeavor. "How much does a lizard even cost?"

Cael hadn't been speaking particularly loudly and the one worker he saw was the disinterested cashier behind the counter, but he went along with it. Ro's judgment wasn't a surprise; sometimes Cael did wonder what someone who was quite so law-abiding saw in him. Would it eventually be more of a problem? There couldn't be any way Ro hadn't considered it as a possibility and Cael's relationship with the law wasn't likely to improve more than 'loose at best' anytime soon.

"You are the one who chooses to associate with me publicly, darling," he returned, though his voice was pitched lower to only carry to Ro. His gaze was on him as he watched the turtle, which was strangely endearing. "Depends on how you mean. We had friendship lizards, then the rest were given the option of freedom to roam the store as they saw fit. And one hundred fifty credits, according to this tag."

From what Cael could see now, a couple weeks and a station disaster later, there didn't seem to be any appreciable impact, other than a 'do not pet the geckos' sign added to their tank. The little guys were curled up under sunlamps and didn't seem to be paying much mind to anything. His hand brushed absently against Ro's back as he passed by him to look at potential habitats. "Does this terrarium seem large enough to you?" he asked, indicating one that was probably large enough for several geckos.

Thanks to what had to be a truly ridiculous amount of bias and goodwill, Ronan did have fewer issues overlooking Cael's less than law abiding tendencies than expected--which was one of the reasons he doubted he would mesh well with his circle of friends, since Ro didn't think that was a courtesy he would manage to extend to anyone else and he had a hard time imagining them to be the rule following sorts.

"Do you want me to leave? Because I could be at home, could be a nice, secret boyfriend'..." Ro trailed off as he shot Cael a sidelong glance, eyebrows raised, before he straightened up again to follow Cael to wherever he had found gecko-keeping equipment, arms still crossed. "But thank you, that doesn't remotely answer my question." The price tag made him grimace, which offered very little variety to the expression he already wore, but Ro didn't comment on it in favor of checking out the terrarium Cael was referring to.

"I don't know how large your lizard is. If it's imaginary, then yes, that's probably going to be more than plenty of space." Ro shrugged, back rigid, and completely unversed in keeping pets. Wild ones he had his encounters with, pets? Not so much. "If it's the size of a small alligator, then no, this might be too small." Which-- would Ro have been surprised to run into an alligator in Cael's apartment? Probably not. Definitely no more than he was by the knowledge that a gecko was skittering about loose in it.

For the most part, Cael's friends these days largely amounted to the ones he had listed off for Ro, or were mutually their chaotic neighbor group, but he wasn't going to invite Ro on any crime sprees. Not that Cael was much the spree sort himself, especially lately, he just didn't want to put Ronan into an awkward spot. "That's a very emphatic no on leaving, considering I dragged you out here," Cael said with a roll of his eyes. "Then an even bigger no to having a secret boyfriend."

Mostly, he couldn't be sure if any of the lizards had escaped their tanks, he just knew that specifically he and Beckett had only taken two. But Cael didn't try to clarify further since he wasn't much sure it mattered. Was lizard insurance a thing? Should he get a credit chip and leave it somewhere in the store?

"I'd offer to pick up a gecko for size comparison, but that seems like pushing things," he said. He'd never had a pet of his own but he had been willing to take an alien lizard when Beckett said it was a possibility. Cael wouldn't have considered it when he was drifting between places the past years, but his place now definitely felt more like a home, which contributed to him not simply trying to trap the gecko and sneak it back in. He picked up what seemed to be a large terrarium and held it out for Ro to take. "Why are you so insistent that I might be hallucinating lizards, someone took the fruit Lobby tossed around and it definitely wasn't either of us."

Ronan shot him an unimpressed look. "Then try not to make me want to leave, would you." It wasn't Cael's fault that his mood was worse than usual, and it certainly wasn't fair making him deal with it, but as long as he kept insisting on his company, they would both have to suffer it, even as Ronan's assurance to himself that this would pass any day now was getting stretched thinner and thinner.

Maybe it should have been strange still that they so overtly spent time together, and there was a small voice at the back of his mind that tried to, sometimes, remind him that if ever they ran into the wrong person together, the jig would be very much up and the consequences of all of this would catch up with them.

Ronan ignored that voice with surprising ease.

"Not that long ago we had rats everywhere, and even you being you, that seems slightly more likely than an actual gecko popping up randomly now. And in no way do I put it beyond you that you've forgotten where Lobby tossed fruit, or that you just kicked it under a cupboard." Of course, Ronan still took the terrarium without question or complaint, finally uncrossing his arms to do so. "What else do you need?"

Since the station emergency had ended, Cael was largely relieved, so he only somewhat understood the downward pitch to Ronan's mood. They had had a fight not that long ago, their vacation seemed to be cursed, and he had already been stretched thin with whatever he had faced on their last mission, so Cael assumed it was a lot of that catching up to him. Still, the comment about making Ro want to leave rubbed the wrong way, unexpectedly stung a little, so he ignored it. "Yeah, yeah. I will never admit that you have a point since I don't want the universe to collapse on itself, but."

Trying to keep himself from lapsing into quiet, which he knew was an obvious tell when something had upset him, Cael instead focused on the more practical question. "If the extranet can be trusted, a heat lamp, food, water dish, a small humidifier, and whatever to make it look more festive and not just like the weird glass prison it is," he said, picking up a couple of the items as he listed them off before migrating further into the store, pausing to look at a cat curled up in the window of a display, apparently named 'Mittens' according to the holographic info card next to him. "Would you have preferred I become a weird rat person instead of a lizard one?"

While Ronan knew he could be abrasive, whether he meant to or not, he never meant to be hurtful which was one of the reasons he had been, for now unsuccessfully, trying to sequester himself away from the people he cared about lately. Then again, he reasoned his personality would do the job for him sooner rather than later.

"Yes, I would be worried if you did. More worried than you seeing lizards where there are none." Considering Cael was already leaning full tilt into lizard ownership, he had to be rather certain, Ronan reasoned, and it wasn't like he was going to talk him about of it--if he were genuinely concerned there was no gecko, he probably would have tried to talk Cael out of this, but. At this rate, if they didn't find it, Ro reasoned they would just be buying one.

Ro tilted the terrarium in a way to suggest that Cael toss whatever he picked up in there, and shook his head. "No, I think I strongly prefer lizard over rat in this scenario." Because those had been unpleasantly sized buggers, and Ro was happy not to be tripping over them anymore in Gasworks. "What kind of interior decorating does a lizard like?"

That they were still spending time together was at Cael's insistence wasn't lost on him; even in their mutually antagonistic days, Ronan could be an ass, as they both were, but hadn't struck Cael as a malicious person, which was largely why he wanted to brush off whatever. Intent mattered and he didn't want Ro to make himself feel worse. If they stripped down to only seeing each other during high points, it wasn't the sort of relationship they had plunged into so far and backing off wasn't a change Cael wanted to make. Plus, he just disliked the idea of Ro walling himself up and being miserable alone.

"There is a lizard though. You'll see," Cael said, somewhat ominously. At this rate, if he had imagined anything, he might just have to sneak a gecko into his place out of sheer stubbornness. Taking the invitation, he placed the items in the terrarium, giving Ro's shoulder an affectionate, appreciative, squeeze, hand lingering a moment long, as usual.

"I did clear lizard with you ahead of time, also." Given the amount of time they had already been spending together, it had seemed worth checking. " I read they like hiding places, which I think is what these are for?" He held up some hollowed out rocks to display before also putting them in with everything else. "Something to climb on, too, and dry-weather plants, but that's maybe a separate trip. I have admittedly spent more time on gecko interior decorating than my own place, in the sense that I looked anything up."

"I'm sure I will, dearest." At any other time, this was the kind of shenanigans Ro would have found terribly endearing despite his better efforts, though currently he found it hard to muster the energy for anything much at all. He knew getting out of his apartment was better than not, but-- inflicting himself on anyone currently seemed like a particularly unkind thing to do.

"You don't exactly have to clear pets with me beforehand," Ro pointed out, not that he reasoned that he needed to. If Cael wanted to get twelve lizards or a whole jungle of flesh-eating plants, it wasn't really up to Ro to tell him not to. Tell him he's an idiot, certainly, but tell him no? That was not his place. It had surprised him that Cael had asked at all, and he still wasn't particularly sure how much his answer would have mattered, in the end.

Still. "Yes, that seems very relatable." A hollowed rock seemed like his ideal spot for the foreseeable future, but he doubted the station would provide, or that Cael wouldn't turn over every proverbial stone to drag him out from under it. He shifted the terrarium a little for the added weight in it, then arched a brow. "Why a separate trip? Worried the cashiers didn't get a good enough look at you yet?"

For anything Cael particularly had his mind set on, he'd probably just go for it if he were going to go for it, but for things that fell in the would like, but might impact the person I want to spend all my time with' category, it didn't seem like it hurt to ask. "I know I don't have to, but it would be rude if you had a lizard allergy, or a fear of them, to bring one around unexpectedly considering how often we spend time together," he said with a shrug, since that wasn't something he was looking to do less of.

Before he could be accused of being nice or anything of the sort, he rolled his eyes. "I can't imagine they pay the cashiers here enough for them to deal with any level of crime, not that I'm saying I committed one." Besides, what would T-sec even do? They didn't seem to be particularly ept. "It's more that I. Need to read up more on what dry weather plant means and which ones aren't toxic to lizards since getting fake ones seems weird."

Was he even sure that the geckos in this store were real? Not that he would treat a robot pet any differently than a fleshy one, even if he wasn't especially into the idea of them. Adding some climbing sticks into the increasingly full terrarium, he picked up a heat lamp, too. "This probably would have been nice to have last week, if they came in a large version."

"Can you be allergic to lizards? It's not like they shed or anything." They might peel, Ronan thought, but was not particularly certain of. Unless Cael would have wanted to adopt something particularly heinously deadly, he had a hard time imagining it would keep him out of his apartment, but then, he had his own, anyway. "As long as they are smaller than a tram, no, not particularly scared of them." Had there been giant reptiles on murder planet? Ro wasn't sure anymore, which

suggested terrible things about just how much he had seen on that planet, but that, like many other things, was one he would not dwell on.

"With our luck, it would definitely not have worked. Maybe set the whole place on fire, instead, and, well." Ro shrugged, best he could with an arm full of a terrarium that was slowly but surely growing heavy. "You would know all about that." And Ro, at least, would have prepared no repeats of that, and he hadn't even been present for it.

"You do realize you could probably ask the employees, right?" Not that it was the highest priority. If there was a lizard, they just had to catch it and keep it warm and fed first, and it likely wouldn't care too much for interior decor just yet. Ronan briefly wondered whether he had maybe been a lizard in a past life. "But if this is where you want to get picky with the design, I won't say a thing."

"They shed, but all their skin and not just hair. I think I can resist the tram sized ones regardless," Cael said. His medical knowledge was strictly limited to human anatomy, mostly about vein and organ placement with a side of liver facts, so who knew how allergies worked? The threshold he imagined of what would or wouldn't keep Ronan away fluctuated; the past couple days, for example, seemed like it wouldn't take much. Cael figured to at least some extent that Ro must want to be around him, though it was less confident compared to when Ro sought out his company. "Being set on fire could have been worse."

Did the latest brush with death just goad Ronan more toward realizing he was wasting his time caring about someone like Cael? He wasn't the easiest person, something he had already known and only had confirmed, so was he just being selfish not letting Ronan go his own way more?

It wasn't the best path to start down in a fluorescently lit pet store, so Cael tried to pull himself back. "Dear, I thought you said I shouldn't let the employees get a better look at my face," he said, a little absently while he busied himself looking for a humidifier that would only take up a corner of the tank. "I'll get a plant to start and if it's the kind that'll kill my lizard I'll hide it somewhere." Seeing that the terrarium was a bit full, he tucked the humidifier under one arm. "Though I do think I have to ask them for insects, since I don't see boxes of them just laying out."

Ronan shrugged, best he could weighed down with a terrarium. "I don't know. The more I get to know you, the more I am convinced you would in fact adopt a tram sized reptile if it asked nicely enough." Which was something that would have surprised him in the past, but certainly didn't now. As much as Ro called him a nice guy to annoy him, it was also rather apparently true; whether it was dropping pizzas off for their overworked neighbors or making sure he was still alive via breakfasts long before they had ever admitted to being friends, Cael had turned out a far more caring guy than he admitted to. "At least until it sheds its skin for the first time."

"I would still rather you avoid getting set on fire, again," Ro told him. "Arguably I am not dating you only for your skin, but. For your sake I'd rather you keep it." Frankly, he would prefer if any of them could avoid disasters for a little while, but his brain hadn't quite managed to switch back from emergency mode, expecting the next problem right around the corner.

He imagined at the very latest after plantmageddon a store like this would have had to learn to batten down the hatches in a way to prepare for disaster, and Ro reasoned keeping live insects out fell deeply into the recipe for disaster category. "I mean, I guess I'm just here for decorative purposes, but I could ask, too, you know," he suggested with a raised brow, then looked down at the assorted collection of things stacked into the terrarium. "Is this everything, you think?"

Cael rolled his eyes. "How would I even get a tram sized lizard into the elevator?" he said. There had been a point in his life where he was much, much better at not letting on he cared. So he liked to tell himself, anyway, never mind that what he had done with his life was arguably motivated inherently by caring about the plight of other people, even if that had failed to go anywhere. Somehow, Ro had come to have a rather front row view of that, between Terminus being the smallest intergalactic hub in existence and throwing emergencies at them.

"It's not high on my list of repeat activities, so I will try my best," Cael offered. "Though dating me for my skin in any capacity sounds like you're trying to hold out to make a nice jacket." He was more concerned with Ronan's well-being than his own at any given time, but Cael was trying to follow through on at least trying to not die.

Asking for help was still something Cael didn't much think of to do, so he blinked at Ronan's offer, catching himself from denying it reflexively. "Yes, I'm sure you wouldn't argue with me calling you eye candy at all." Looking at the items in the terrarium, then at a shelf, Cael picked up a hopefully real plant, even if it felt a bit waxy, and put it inside, looking back at Ronan with a grin. "I think so, yes, so if you don't mind asking that would be appreciated, darling. Maybe at least the crickets will have a nice terrarium setup if the gecko is determined to keep calling my oven home."

As much as he would've been offended by the mere suggestion just a few short months ago, Ro had long concluded that Cael was without a doubt the kinder one between the two of them. Something a younger Ronan would have absolutely struggled with--how could he be, when he was on the wrong side of the Alliance?--but the world had ceased existing in black and white for him a while ago. And as surprising as this side of Cael had been, Ro couldn't pretend he wasn't rather endeared by it.

"Yes, there is quite the lack of really pale jackets in my closet, now that you mention it." Telling Cael to stay out of trouble was as likely to be successful as it would be telling Ro to get to safety when someone else was in danger, so Ro wasn't holding out for anything of the sort, but-- it was one of the many things he liked about him, too, whether it happened to keep him awake with concern or not. "Whatever makes you keep me around, love."

Ro nodded, then briefly looked around for the register before heading that way. The terrarium and contents were set down a bit heavily on the counter, and he turned to the bored looking cashier again. "We need some crickets, please. Or whatever else a gecko eats, I'm new to this," he told them, suddenly very aware of how little he knew about lizards, how often they needed to be fed and what, or, really, anything else. The cashier seemed appropriately disinterested, then walked away only to return with a plastic container full of crickets. Ro found that it unexpectedly made his skin crawl, and his 'thanks' came out a little more tersely than intended, his expression having slipped from stoic somewhere into deeply displeased. "I'd also like to pay for one gecko, please."

Following after Ronan, Cael set the humidifier down as well, leaning against the counter while he let Ro take the lead talking. The latter half of his request drew Cael to look over at him. He wasn't surprised by it, not really; where he was still calculating some kind of convoluted plan for possible lizard reimbursement, of course Ro would just. State it.

There was a lot about Ro that had won Cael over and left him ridiculously fondly disposed toward him, even if he had trouble properly articulating. Ro's moral compass and tendency toward doing the right thing, despite being someone who'd spent so many years with the Alliance, was maybe one of the more surprising aspects that Cael appreciated, even if it sometimes gave him a headache. He trusted Ro and his judgment (except for when it came to his own well-being), even if he didn't always agree with it. It was all more charming than it should be.

"Yeah, just show me which one you picked out," the cashier said, sighing a little as they moved to step back out from around the counter again.

"No, we're just going to pay for one," Cael said before they could, modulating his tone as though this were a perfectly ordinary request that shouldn't be surprising at all.

The cashier's look turned nonplussed, as they looked to Cael, then back at Ronan, like maybe this was some kind of weird joke. "So you're buying this gecko habitat, paying for a gecko, but not taking a gecko," they said.

"That does sum it up," Cael said pleasantly, but offered no further explanation. The cashier eyed them another moment, gave up, and started ringing them up, including the cost of one gecko. Once he had paid, he took the crickets and humidifier bagged separately, leaving Ronan to continue with his carrying offer for the rest. "Do you feel better about my under the oven gecko now that we've paid for him?" he asked, once they were outside the store, glancing over at Ro with amusement.

Ronan did not, in the slightest, have the charisma to make his request seem normal the way Cael did, but he did have a stony faced seriousness that made people not question him overly much, so as strange of a match as they were, Ronan wasn't particularly surprised the cashier duly did as told, though he hadn't necessarily expected Cael to pay for the gecko himself. Not that he minded, of course, and Ro picked up the terrarium and its contents, silently grateful those didn't contain the crickets.

"Yes," Ro told him, plainly, as they set out on their walk back to the apartment, because he did, "And I was going to pay for it, you didn't have to." It didn't particularly matter to him that Cael paid for the ill-begotten gecko, just that it was rightly paid for, in the end, and he hadn't meant to make him pay for it. Had Cael managed to produce a number for how many geckos had been released into the station, Ronan probably would have tried to pay for all of them, but this way at least his vacation fund stayed intact.

"But it is going to be doubly ridiculous now if that gecko isn't real," he added, with a doubtful sidelong glance at his boyfriend. "Have you picked out a hideous name for it yet?"

"I know you would have, dear, but you didn't have to," Cael said, not quite able to suppress a smile as he glanced over at Ronan. Probably had he expected Cael to pay up for his light lizard larceny, he would have been less on board to do so, but since Ro had been ready to ease his conscience by paying himself, Cael hadn't minded. It was probably a circuitous path as far as logic went, but he'd never pretended to be a straightforward person.

"The gecko is definitely real," he insisted, somewhat out of stubbornness as much as anything; if it were imaginary, would paying for a gecko now then justify breaking back in to steal one to make things even? He was sure Ronan would say no, but it was the sort of thing Cael could reason himself into.

Catching the look, Cael rolled his eyes as they made the familiar walk back to their building. "You do enjoy giving a lot of naming criticism for someone who just kept lob bot's name as Lob Bot and your plant as Plant Senior." The words were said more fondly than they ought to be, but that, too, wasn't anything unusual. "I was considering the name Hubert, which isn't any of my dead relatives, if you want to go wild critiquing it."

"Someone had to," was all Ro said to that, though he in no way managed to sound chiding or like it would have bothered him to be that person. As long as things were made right in the end, well. That was what mattered to him. Very simple, really.

"Mhm. The gecko you have seen once after 'liberating' it days, weeks, ago? Of course." This was a lot of dedication for a gecko Cael had spotted just once, so he assumed he had to be certain. Or would be getting a gecko right after this, if the other one turned out to be nonexistent. Maybe this was just a particularly long, convoluted way of getting a gecko without admitting he wanted one, which, come to think of it, was something he would not put past him at all.

Ronan pulled a face. "You know exactly what you're getting with both of them based on name alone, so I do not see your point at all here," he pointed out, then pursed his lips. "I guess it's a name as old as the other ones, so at least they will fit right in. Probably as likely to kill you as anything else you've named."

"They dislike the cold and when the temperature dips low enough they go into hibernation, so I'm guessing that's what happened with the little guy," Cael said, by way of explanation. If he had the option of going into hibernation when it got especially cold, he would have considered it. Not pursued it as a path, but theoretically it sounded nice. "And now that it's back to normal, he's up for scavenging berries."

Far as Cael concerned, there was a gecko under his oven and it was the one he had liberated, because the alternative was not knowing what happened to the one he had taken and he didn't need a tiny gecko corpse weighing on his conscience, or admitting Ro was right on the hallucination front.

Cael huffed, though it wasn't nearly as put upon as it could have been. Bickering with Ronan was, rather genuinely, something Cael enjoyed. "Hey, none of my grandmas ever tried to kill me, so I think Henrietta's disposition was independent of her name," he said. "Hubert probably won't try to eat me." Not that it would change his approach regardless, since he didn't think geckos were inherently nefarious. "We can set up his tank, then I'll try to lure him out with a cricket? Maybe if I put one on a string." The last part wasn't serious and he was looping Ronan into further helping with this, but Cael assumed he'd just go to his own apartment if he got fed up.

"Your grandmas weren't named eighty years older than they were, I assume," Ronan pointed out, shifting the terrarium again when the corners started digging too much into the meat of his hands, "And fifty percent of the things you've named tried to kill you, that's not a great statistic for you, you know." It didn't matter that all the other alien plants had also turned out to be a little peckish, he was putting the blame for that on Cael as much as Lob Bot's recent dysfunction simply because he could. And it had yet failed to get a reaction from him.

Being looped into helping with this a while longer Ronan didn't mind, but-- "I think I have to. Go. When the crickets come out." For some reason, just the thought of having to deal with bugs sat very badly with him--'some reason' not being particularly hard to figure out, if he were to think about it at all, but that was something he very much did not intend to do. "If it's even still under your oven at all."

"Ah, yeah, my family used to hold to the fine tradition of not bestowing names until they reached the ripe age of eighty, just to be sure the whole living thing was going to stick a while," Cael returned. He knew that wasn't what Ronan meant, but he'd never claimed to not be purposefully difficult when he chose to be. "I'm confident that Henrietta's name was not a problem, there were so many more murder plants that probably had contemporary and fashionable names." The last was not said in a grumbling fashion, though it could be mistaken for such, maybe.

"Alright, darling. I didn't know you had a bug thing." Granted, with as controlled an environment as Terminus was, it wasn't really a problem here. Currently, anyway. He'd have to be sure none of the crickets got loose from their plastic tub. "I'm sure he is, unless he migrated elsewhere." There was no basis for referring to the gecko as a 'he' rather than an 'it', but like with robots, Cael over-personalized anything with a face by default. "But the crickets won't be out all night, so I'll summon you back after." There was, in the back of Cael's mind, a concern that he was being too needy with his demands of falling asleep next to Ronan, but it wasn't enough for him to do anything about it.

"Until they came to you, and no one even had to give you a strange name to turn out stab-happy," Ro shot him a pointed look, though it was lacking any of the affront it would have once carried, then made a beeline for the staircase once they got to their building. "For all I know they all gave their plants terrible names, because Plant Sr has at no point tried to as much as accost me, nor did it decide to rise up when all the other plants did, so." It was, however, something of a surprise that his plant had stayed alive as long as it did.

"Me either," Ronan responded, sincerely, because he hadn't known up until this moment, and considering the amount of time he had spent outside both as a child and in professional capacity, being irked by insects made very little sense, but. It certainly wasn't going to make his life easier, he was pretty sure, and as rare as insects were on the station, that was something he would have to move past sooner rather than later. Just not right now. "Do lizards have gender? Not as a concept, but, I mean." A pause. "Not that I think Hubert is much of a name in the first place."

"I have trouble imagining the flesh-eating plants of Winlock Park were named anything more complicated than Plant One and Plant Thirty, which is spiritually closer to Plant Senior than Henrietta," Cael insisted, since this was a low-stakes thing that didn't actually needed to be argued. But why wouldn't he? It wasn't like there was any actual explanation given out for what did happen with any sort of clarity, since that would have required T-Sec acknowledge anything to begin with.

Following Ro toward the stairwell habitually, Cael opened the door since Ro's hands were occupied with terrarium as they walked upstairs. "Yes, you have made your feelings about Hubert abundantly clear." There was more amusement than anything in his tone. "But they do have gender in the way you mean. Several of what came up was mostly about lizard breeding, which isn't anything I am looking to get into." While they walked, Cael fished out his key, since he had been getting better at locking up now that he had possessions he'd be annoyed to lose. Not that a plant called Wilhelmina was likely to be high on any thief's list. "I know fuck all about lizards really, so I spent too long reading about all of this after the gecko sighting."

"I think they were all related to Henrietta, so if anything we can probably trace this whole outbreak back to your naming conventions." If Cortez hadn't assured him that the specimen they had brought back from Tidlosa had nothing to do with what had happened on the station, Ronan would not have been this confident making ridiculous claims of this sort, but there was always something enjoyable about prodding Cael and his prodding in return.

"Please don't get into cricket breeding, either." If left up to him, they would've caught the lizard first, then gotten equipment, but since he was currently carrying it up several flights of stairs, he certainly wasn't doing anything to discourage his boyfriend. "I do want to see you catch this. Just. Not deal with any crickets." Which would likely raise the difficulty quite a bit, but then, Ro wouldn't fight it if Cael decided to do this on his own rather than work around this. "Mostly so I can make sure you don't actually secretly buy one before I see you again." That they would be seeing each other by the end of the evening again at the latest was something Ronan didn't even question, thoroughly accustomed to it as he was.

"Oh, so now you're trying to saddle me with plant zero? There were a couple other raffle winners who had equally flesh-eating plants that all came onto the station together," Cael said, rolling his eyes at Ronan, fondly. He had still found it surprisingly sweet that Ro had sent holopics of the plant to other people for further information. That was still at a point in time where Cael hadn't expected Ronan to be quite as concerned as he had been, though in retrospect it probably should have been more obvious.

"I think cricket breeding is even less appealing." Cael wasn't ready to let his entire apartment be overrun with lizards, much less crickets, which is what he reasoned would happen. "Fine, fine, I can try to catch it the old-fashioned way first." Arguably, luring with food was the old-fashioned way, but he preferred to have Ronan's company. "And you've got such a suspicious mind, sweetheart," Cael said, glancing at him askance. It was definitely something he'd considered. He held open the stairwell door for Ro when they hit their floor, then made toward his apartment, keycard in one hand, bag in the other. "I feel like returning to the pet store yet again would really be pushing my luck."

"They could have been some kind of hive mind, and taken collective offence at the name, and that is why they tried to strangle you, too." If Ronan actually believed any of that to be true, of course, he wouldn't be accusing Cael of it, but it wasn't like any of them had any real idea what had happened. Which was not particularly comforting, but such was life on Terminus, he was beginning to learn. Mostly he was glad they had gotten out of it as well as they could, despite Cael's dubious forays into the sewers.

"I mean, apparently it likes berries, or it's just taken issue with the state of your place and decided to take it upon itself to clean up." Which was another thing Ronan didn't take any real issue with, though it stood in stark contrast with the kind of impersonal, military ingrained clean and tidy he personally kept. "So, while we're at it, are there any other animals I should be concerned about running into in your apartment? Anything else you might've tried to liberate and failed to mention?" Asked while he pushed the door to their floor open with his shoulder and kept it open to let Cael through, then trailed after him to his apartment. "I think we've established now that if it's bugs I will have to leave."

"They tried to strangle plenty of people who weren't me, so it wasn't that targeted. Like they tried ot murder Pin before we set them on fire, who would want to kill him?" Cael asked, since the kid was unnervingly good-spirited. Since he had survived being strangled, thanks to Ronan, maybe going to the sewers hadn't been the best idea, but. It was one that he would likely have still done regardless since being boxed in on the heels of being stranded hadn't left him in the stablest mental state.

Cael huffed. "My place isn't that bad," he said. He did the bare minimum of cleaning up, since it never really bothered him, though he'd done a bit more now that he had regular company over, if only because the number of dishes he owned were limited. "No, not unless Tuck realizes he loves me more and moves in." He unlocked his door and held it open for Ronan, pushing it closed behind him as Cael glanced around the kitchen, but no clear gecko sighting. "Set the terrarium on the counter, love? Thank you," he said, only specifying because his coffee table, the normal option, was still maybe in need of repair.

Placing the crickets and humidifier out of the way as well, Cael got down on his floor and tried to peer under the oven. He didn't think Hubert would enjoy having a bright light put in his face, so there was only so much to see. "I could always try singing to him more, I guess," he said with a sigh, straightening up.