JAWS (Complete)

Chapter 4

                            *Sarge*

The alarm shrills to life, blasting its klaxon call through the dark, silent apartment, and Galliard jolts awake. He slams his hand down on his alarm clock, temporarily stilling its insistent blare, and then waits, poised and tense on his futon.

A few taunt seconds pass, and then he hears shuffling from the floor beside him, followed by a heavy sigh, and he relaxes. Galliard drops his hand over the side of the futon and finds the rough, wiry fur he knows is down there, and gently strokes it. More shuffling, and then the slow, steady beat of a tail wagging and hitting against the futon legs.

“Good boy,” he mutters, and closes his eyes to snatch a few more moments of sleep.

The alarm goes off again, and Galliard slaps it off before sitting up with a groan. He fumbles for the lamp, and floods the room with light.

Sarge looks up at him from the floor, his tail still wagging slowly and his ears perked forward. Once, he’d been a yellow lab, but now he’s mostly grizzled and gray, his fur gone wiry and stiff, and missing in patches, his eyes clouded by cataracts. But his nose still works as well as ever, and he twitches it, snuffling as he turns his head to sniff Galliard’s ankle and then lick it.

“Hey, buddy.” Galliard leans over and pets the dog for another moment, but he doesn’t have time to give Sarge the love he deserves. He hauls himself to his feet, wincing a little as his ass twinges. He’ll have to wash his toys today, if he’s going to cam again tonight. He could take a night off, if he wanted to; iamayam and titan23 got into another bidding war last night, and even with the thirty percent cut the cam website takes, he’s making much better money than normal. But there are always more bills, more things demanding his attention, and it would be nice to have some kind of nest egg put away.

Galliard’s first stop of the day is the refrigerator, where he takes out a cube of bright yellow cheese. From the living room, he can hear Sarge’s tail pick up its beat; the dog knows what’s coming. Galliard unscrews a bottle of baby aspirin on the counter and tucks two into the cheese. Then it’s back to the futon, where he crouches near Sarge’s head and offers him the cheese. The dog slurps it up, swallowing his treat whole, and then licks the palm of Galliard’s hand with a slobbery pink tongue.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re my buddy too.” Galliard pets him again, then rises to his feet and pads to the bathroom.

The shower creaks and groans, but he’s up early enough that the building still has some hot water, and Galliard stands under the spray, letting it cascade around him. It beats at his chest and shoulders, and he holds his breath before ducking his face down and letting it wash over his head and down his back. It’s the only time of the day where he’ll be alone, and he lets his thoughts wander as the heat slowly unkinks his muscles and relaxes his aches and pain.

His thought turn, as they frequently have lately, to the big blond fuck, his stalker from the club. Reiner Braun. A very Germanic name, one he’d looked up at the gym; it had taken some serious flirting to get Hannah to let him see the membership records, but then Franz had come over and distracted her, and Galliard had taken his shot.

Reiner Braun: twenty nine years old but looks and acts a lot older; been a member at the gym for three years; has his membership dues on automatic payment; lives in the fancy part of downtown, where all the rich people live. Nothing really surprising, except for his age, and Galliard had closed the program in a hurry, afraid that Hannah would eventually get tired of flirting and come back to chase him away. He’s already taken enough risks regarding Reiner Braun; he doesn’t need to make it worse.