Three Reunions
i.
Jared leaves at four o'clock in the
morning. He kisses Jensen at the door, squeezes his shoulder, scratches
Sadie's ears and Harley's ruff, then drags his suitcase out to where
the cab is waiting, bright and garish yellow against the pastel
backdrop of the McDonnell's house across the street.
He leaves, cab pulling away, and
Jensen stands in the doorway, staring out into the darkness as Harley
noses around the span of fence closest to the driveway, as Sadie looks
back at him, head cocked just slightly to the side, as if trying to
understand what's going on.
He says, "Yeah, yeah. He'll be back
in a few days, guys," and Sadie makes a whuffing sort of sound, which
causes Harley to *actually* bark, and yeah. It's still four o'clock in
the morning, and despite the fact that Jared's cab has barely made it
to the corner, is still in sight, Jensen turns back to the house, claps
his hands.
"Come on, girl," he says to Sadie,
who's now sitting down on the stoop, just in front of him. Then,
"Harley, come on. Come on, buddy." He moves, and amazingly enough
that's all it takes to get Harley coming back to the house, bounding up
the stairs and in through the open kitchen door. Sadie, on the other
hand, stays where she is.
Her tail twitches once when Jensen
rests his hand on top of her head, but she's still staring out at the
street, where the cab had been sitting.
He says, "Sadie," again, softly,
then scritches his fingers down to where her collar is, tugging
lightly, just enough to draw her attention. She looks up at him, runs
her tongue along her muzzle, then, after another tug of her collar,
stands up and walks slowly back into the house.
By the time Jensen looks back down
the street again, Jared's cab is gone.
*
It's not that Jensen thinks the dogs
don't *know* Jared's gone. There was a suitcase, after all—a scary
thing—and Jensen is the one to fill their bowls up that morning and to
take them out for their walks: one after his own breakfast, another
before dinner. Plus, both dogs prick up their ears every time a car
drives down the street outside. It's just, well, that they don't seem
actively bothered by it.
Some of that, Jensen thinks, is
because he's still there, just like he's been there constantly for two
months now, with pretty frequent extended visits for a whole heck of a
lot longer than that.
Jensen is familiar; Jensen belongs.
Part of it, though, is that they're
used to Jared working long days. They're used to him leaving early in
the morning to get to set and not getting home again until late at
night.
So, aside from the suitcase,
everything is mostly normal until Jensen starts getting ready for bed
that night. That's when Harley starts looking more anxiously at the
door. That's when Sadie starts shadowing his every movement, like if
she lets Jensen out of her sight, he might disappear, too.
They both follow him upstairs to the
bedroom, curling up in their beds as Jensen pulls on his pajama pants,
his t-shirt. He turns out the overhead light, turns on the bedside
lamp, and reads for a while: a script his agent couriered to him the
day before. It's interesting enough, but he was also up hellaciously
early, so it's not too long before he turns out the light. He curls up
on his side, fluffs his pillow, and finds himself shifting a bit
towards the center of the bed, because, well.
Because.
After the light's out, though, it's
only a few heartbeats before he hears the sounds of padding feet and
nails on the hardwood floor, slowly approaching. They stop on the
opposite side of the bed—Jared's side—and then there's a long breath of
silence. Only one, though, before Jensen feels the bed dip under the
weight of two paws, then further under four. He opens one eye and sees
Sadie standing in the middle of Jared's spot looking at him steadily,
almost challenging him to tell her to get down.
He doesn't.
Just like he doesn't tell Harley to
get down when he joins them a few minutes later.
The bed doesn't seem so large
anymore.
*
It's not a very long trip. A
supporting role, only three days worth of shooting, and Jared gets back
in the middle of the night.
Jensen's expecting him, and he tries
to stay up. He makes it through the late late show, then starts one of
the books from his overflowing 'to read' pile, but in the end he still
drifts off. Light on, limp fingers holding the book open, Sadie's paw
draped over his ankle.
He's not sure how long he's asleep
before the bed jerks suddenly underneath him and he wakes to the sound
of two dogs hitting the ground, paws sliding over wood as they make
their way out the bedroom door, as they bound down the stairs.
He stays where he is, though, and
turns out the light. He makes like he was actually truly asleep,
beating his pillow down, then crawling under the covers. He hears the
back door open, then joyful barking and Jared's own muffled greeting.
Jensen can picture it: Jared
smiling, kneeling down, a hand buried in each dog's fur as they try to
get as close to Jared as possible.
Jensen had planned on staying in
bed, perhaps pretending to be asleep when Jared walked in the room,
letting Jared 'wake' him, but suddenly he can't. He's pushing the
covers back before he even realizes he's doing it, then standing,
making his way out into the hallway, towards the stairs.
When Jensen looks down at him, he
sees that Jared's not kneeling, not like Jensen pictured; instead he's
sitting on the bottom step, already looking up at Jensen, grinning as
widely as Jensen's ever seen him grin.
"Hi," Jared says, and Jensen grins
too, helplessly, and says, "Hi," in return.
There are a few moments of silence
then, until Harley barks, once, oh so happy. Jared glances down at him,
but as Jensen watches, he looks back up and says, "Yeah, boy. I'm glad
to be home, too."
ii.
They'd left something like three
pages of handwritten instructions for the dog-sitter.
Privately, Jensen thought it was
pretty ridiculous. Especially since the sitter was a professional,
recommended by one of the crewmembers on Jared's last movie. Or maybe
not so privately, as he might have mentioned his opinion on the subject
more than once.
In the end, though, Jared told
Jensen he didn't really have any room to talk. Jensen had, after all,
been the one to add the bit about Harley doing just about anything to
get an extra milkbone. And about Sadie's trick of carrying her leash
around inside the house in order to give you a hint you really couldn't
ignore.
Until, that is, you actually
*wanted* to go for a walk, and it proved to be impossible to find the
place where she'd actually dropped the leash. (Thus the reason for the
second leash in the hall closet.)
So, three pages of instructions, a
professional dog-sitter, four days of unconsciously (and futilely)
reaching out a hand to scratch Sadie's ears or rub Harley's tummy while
he sat through the parties at the network upfronts, and on the cab ride
back to the house, Jensen's listening to Jared say things like: "They
are going to be so mad at us," and, "Man, we're going to get scolded
from one end of the house to the other."
"Or," Jensen says, "they'll be so
happy to see you—"
"—us—" Jared interrupts.
"—they just won't care."
He's seen Sadie scold Jared before,
after all—it's actually pretty funny—but mostly she and Harley are just
so happy to have him back, they forget to be mad. He's seen that more
often.
They don't have to wonder about
their reception any longer, though, because the cab is pulling up in
front of the house and when Jensen looks towards the kitchen door, he
can see the dogs already pacing inside, pressing their noses to the
glass.
Jared gets out first, making his way
to the trunk of the car to get their bags, while Jensen pays the
driver. Then, together, they make their way to the house. Already
Jensen can hear the howling—Sadie—and the frantic barking—Harley—and
the dogs are going in circles, both trying to get as close to the door
as possible.
Jared's laughing, fumbling in his
pocket for his keys, and Jensen's seen the dogs' greeting Jared after
*any* sort of absence (even a trip to the grocery store) enough times
that he stands back, out of the line of fire.
Harley gets out the door first,
Sadie half a body length behind, and Jared has to drop to his knees in
order to keep his balance, stop himself from tumbling to the ground.
Jensen laughs at the face Jared makes when Harley's tongue swipes
across his neck, as Jared's lost in a knot of dogs.
It's just like normal, except that
this time, Sadie noses at Jared's ear one more time before launching
herself down the stairs to where Jensen's standing. She circles
Jensen's legs, tail thwapping at his knees, and then Harley's running
back and forth between Jared and Jensen, and together they throw their
heads back, almost yodeling: you've been gone forever and ever and I
missed you and you left me and forever and ever and ever.
Jared's still kneeling, looking up
at Jensen.
"See," he says. "I told you we were
going to get scolded."
"Yeah, yeah," Jensen says, reaching
out a hand, and Sadie bumps at it with her head.
iii.
He flies home for a wedding.
It's his second cousin's, a girl he
hasn't seen since they were about twelve and fifteen respectively and
the last time they talked, he's pretty sure she spent most of the
conversation teasing him for being so shy. Still, she's family and his
mom asked him to come since he wasn't filming, and he hadn't seen most
of the people in years.
"They'd love to see you, Jensen,"
she said. Then, "It's been too long since you were home, honey," and,
well, that Jensen agreed with.
So did Jared, actually. As soon as
Jensen mentioned his mother's request, Jared said, "Yeah, yeah. It has
been. We should go."
Jared didn't go with Jensen, though.
He'd planned on it, but then his agent had arranged a meeting about a
part in a film scheduled to shoot during their winter hiatus, and so he
drove Jensen to the airport, squeezed his shoulder, and said, "We'll
see you Monday, all right?"
We, because of course he wasn't
going to leave the dogs at home. Not when they were going *home*.
So, wedding.
Jensen goes. He talks, he gets roped
into dancing. He maybe drinks a little bit too much champagne.
He has a pretty good time.
*
When Monday morning comes (far too
soon), Jensen's head is a little fuzzy from the champagne, and he
thinks he should be sleeping still—no reason to get up after all—but he
knows why he isn't, can't. So he gets up.
He heads down to the kitchen and
drinks orange juice and eats dry toast while his mother drinks her iced
tea and rehashes all of the family gossip that she'd picked up from
various relatives. Cousin Billy, who'd dropped out of law school, much
to his mother's chagrin; Aunt Bette, who was most of the way towards
landing her third husband, if the huge rock on her finger was any
indication; little Jennifer—two years younger than Jensen—who was going
to have her fourth child in about a month.
Jensen listens, adding in what bits
and pieces he picked up, and every once in awhile he finds himself
looking out the kitchen window, towards the street outside.
It's a nice day, although it's warm
enough already that Jensen's pretty sure it's going to be a scorcher,
and after about half an hour, his mom heads outside to water her flower
boxes. Jensen goes back up to his room, lies down on the bed and thinks
about going back to sleep. He ends up staring at the ceiling, though,
and while it feels like it's for hours, it's not. He's back downstairs
and in the living room again before his mother comes back inside.
There's a newspaper sitting on the
couch, though, and he picks it up, flips the pages, then starts in on
the crossword puzzle, the word search, the sudoku puzzle, and that
actually takes some time, because the next thing he hears is the sound
of a car pulling into the driveway.
He looks up.
It's not one he recognizes, but he
doesn't need to, because through the living room window he can see
Jared sitting in the car, the dogs in the back seat. Then the driver's
side door is opening, and Jensen is up and off of the couch and halfway
to the door before he even realizes he's moved.
He's outside on the stoop before
Jared can open the door to the back seat, and Jared turns to him,
grinning, even as he pries the handle open.
This is what Jensen expects: for the
dogs to jump out, start smelling around his mother's flowers, possibly
marking this as their territory, too. He expects them to follow Jared
up to Jensen's house, twining around their legs and making a nuisance
of themselves as Jensen and Jared have *their* reunion.
This is what happens: the dogs leap
out of the back seat, and Harley starts sniffing around the tires, but
Sadie doesn't even look at the nice green lawn stretching out beside
her. She bounds in Jensen's direction as soon as her paws hit the
driveway, tail going, barking happily, and after a quick sniff, Harley
follows right after her. Sadie pushes at Jensen's legs with her body,
but Harley jumps up, paws going to his chest, and Jensen has to kneel
down so that he doesn't fall over. When he does, he gets a nose at his
ear, another at his shoulder, and his two hands aren't nearly enough to
satisfy the wiggling bodies, the lapping tongues.
"Hey," he says. "Hey, guys. Hey."
When he looks up, raising his eyes
above brown fur and pricked ears, he sees Jared watching him, a warm
look in his eyes, a smile spreading his lips.
"They slept in your spot on the bed
for the two nights before we left," Jared says after a moment. "This
morning, when I told them we were coming to see you, Sadie started
looking around my parents' house for you. She even checked out the
front window." He paused. "They've missed you."
As Jared speaks, Sadie tries to
crawl into Jensen's lap, despite the fact that he's not really sitting
down, is only leaning back on his heels.
"Yeah," he says. "I'm sort of
starting to get that idea."
He presses his face to the fur at
her shoulder, doesn't shrug away when Harley swipes his tongue across
his arm, and smiles, thinking, yeah.
Yeah.
End.