JAWS (Complete)

Chapter 11

Sarge practically dances with glee, but when that almost topples him over, he settles for wagging his tail fiercely and drooling all over Reiner’s foot. Reiner escorts him back to his bed and gets him to lay down, then spreads an old towel under his head so he doesn’t get anything on the carpet. Then he presents Sarge with the bone, and he sets to work on the serious business of gnawing on it while Reiner goes back to the kitchen.

Galliard comes back at around one fifteen, reeking of coffee and in a foul mood. He announces his entrance with a slammed door and a complaint, which gets muffled before it reaches Reiner.

“Can’t hear you!”

“Why not, where the hell…” Galliard comes into the living room, carrying Reiner’s scarf in one hand, already shrugging out of his jacket, and stops dead in his tracks. “What are you doing?”

“Grilling.” The grill has emerged from hibernation, and Reiner is out on the balcony, carefully turning a steak with his tongs. On the upper level of the grill, he has four baked potatoes wrapped in tinfoil cooking away, and on the kitchen table, he’s made a pretty sad excuse for a salad with the slightly wilted lettuce and cucumber he found in the refrigerator.

Galliard’s eyes have gone wide, and Reiner can almost see him drooling. “Uh… that’s a nice grill.”

“Thanks.” The steaks are sizzling, getting some nice grill marks on them, and Reiner estimates they’ll be done in about ten minutes on this heat. “I bought too much, though. Can Sarge have this little one?”

“He’d… really like that.” Galliard’s voice sounds faint. “Just cut it up first.”

“Of course.” Reiner half-turns towards Galliard and smiles with one side of his mouth. “I don’t think I can eat both of the big ones, though.”

Galliard nods. “I’m going to go take a shower. I smell like shit.”

“You smell like coffee.”

“Like I said… like shit.”

“All right.” Reiner turns a potato with the tongs. “Will you help me eat the other one? It’s too big for Sarge.”

“Yeah, okay.”

When Reiner looks up, Galliard is gone and the bathroom door is closed, the only trace of him being a discarded green apron on the floor.

By the time Galliard emerges from the bathroom, flushed pink and followed by a cloud of steam, wearing Reiner’s bathrobe again, the steaks are cooked to a nice medium-rare and the potatoes are baked through. Reiner has everything on the table, and Sarge has already gobbled down his steak and returned to his bone. Galliard plops down without a word and reaches for the butter to slather on his potatoes.

It’s almost alarming, watching Galliard eat; he eats with a single-minded determination that leaves no room for conversation, no room for anything but the food in front of him, like he’s afraid someone is going to snatch it away. That kind of desperation stirs something in Reiner, awakens memories long since buried and forgotten, and he pays attention to his own plate, the only sounds in the room the clink of forks and knives on china, the frantic gulping as Galliard swallows.

Galliard finishes first, polishing off his steak and potatoes in record time, and then attacking the sad little salad. While he’s working on that, Reiner quietly cuts one of his potatoes in half and slips the bigger half onto Galliard’s plate, which he immediately lays into. It’s impressive, in a strange way, how much food he’s able to pack away in a short amount of time, and Reiner half-wonders if he’s going to get sick. He slows down over the last potato, though, and is swaying in his seat by the time Reiner is finished, his eyes at half-mast and looking the most content Reiner has ever seen him.