GARY JOHNSON + SAM WADDINGTON
ROOMMATE BONDING + GIANT DOG
G | COMPLETE
The sun was setting through the mountains, but its last fingers nonetheless reached the window-seat that Sam Waddington was currently sprawled out on as he moved through the tv channels despairingly. Nothing on. And he wasn’t picky - he’d watch anything from an old movie to a nature program about the herding tendencies of meerkats if it was on. Sam left the TV on the Home Shopping Network and stretched, having run out of chips.
Vegging out was rare for him. His job was an active one, and he usually had the late shift, but this morning he’d left around 3:00pm, having worked most of the night. Sam didn’t mind the hours, but sometimes he was left waiting for friends to show due to their more-typical schedules. Luckily he heard Gary’s key in the door and perked, like a golden retriever excited that a loved one was home.
“I ate all your chips and there’s nothing on the tv, so entertain me,” he announced as soon as Gary entered the living room with what he hoped was a winning smile. “Welcome to your evening.”
All the heavy new year cleaning had been done for weeks, but the school still found plenty of extra work for Gary to do every day outside of his normal routine. You’d think he was the school handyman with how often he was conscripted for various minor repairs. And between errands for staff and even helping with decorating classrooms, the days were long whether the halls were full or not. Not that he was complaining. He was relieved the school was back on. The halls were so damned quiet during summer deep cleaning.
Thankfully, his apartment wasn’t. He made a show of freezing in the door, squinting at Sam and then starting to go right back out again, but Bark jumped up from his sprawl on the kitchen tile and ran over to ram into his legs.
“Oof. You’re both the worst, I hope you know that.” Gary finally came all the way inside, giving his dog an affectionate all over scritch as he went. He dropped the mail and his keys haphazardly on a side table and kicked off his shoes. Maybe he'd pick them up later. “I shouldn’t tell you this, since you are a chip thief and should feel the consequences of your choices, but there are Cutthroat Kitchen episodes saved on the dvr.”
The dog took a swipe Sam’s way and nearly knocked him off the window-seat in his enthusiasm. Sam scratched Bark’s ears and used a disgusting baby voice to tell him what a good boy he was before Gary’s words reached him, and he perked up. “Really? My hero!”
Cutthroat Kitchen was an old fav. Sam wasn’t good at cooking but that had never slowed him down from critiquing the personalities on the show, and its competitive silliness sounded like just the thing right about now. Sliding off the window-seat, Sam took his usual side of the couch and fumbled for the remote to the DVR. “When do the kids come back to ruin all your hard work, again?” Thank God he hadn’t been assigned traffic duty this year. He liked kids just fine but policing hyper parents and their massive cars wasn’t much fun no matter which way you cut it.
“The twenty-second?...The twenty-third? I don’t know somewhere around there.” Gary wandered into the kitchen that opened off the living room, scratching his belly as he went. When he returned, he had three beer bottles tucked under one arm and a giant container of cheese puffs. He managed to plop down onto the second sofa before Bark jumped up into his lap.
“Ah, no--dog, I swear to Christ…” Bark ignored his put upon tone and went for the container but Gary was quick enough to tuck it behind him. “Sit and maybe I’ll share, you mongrel.” The dog knew him well enough to know that was extremely likely, but was also stubborn enough to consider laying down half on top of him as “sitting”. Gary just sighed, smirking despite his complaints, and sat the beer bottles on the end table between him and Sam. “Why are you home, anyway? Did you—“ He faked a cough into his fist and lifted an eyebrow. “—Call in sick?”
Sam reached for a beer bottle with a quick flash of a grin and tucked his feet underneath him in a lazy version of sitting criss-cross applesauce. Bark often sat near him, or beside him, but as soon as Dad walked through the door, all bets were off. He snorted at the notion of ‘calling in sick’ - Sam was a terrible liar in all ways - and shook his head. “Nah, had an early shift, for once. Don’t get used to it. I’ll be back on the social life killer before you can say “pain and suffering”.
He wasn’t too upset about it. Sam knew that patience would pay off in the end, even if it really was difficult to sustain a normal life with a schedule that changed so wildly. It had been a partial cause of his breakup with Liz, point of fact, but both of them were adults: careers mattered. Besides, it wasn’t as if her own nursing schedule was particularly predictable.
Focusing on the television, Sam squinted as the DVR booted up. “I hope we get pretentious assholes too good to cook pancakes. He was a fav of mine.”
“In case you were curious, I don’t in any way envy your job,” Gary said, before he rubbed at Bark’s giant head with one hand and stuffed cheese puffs in his face with the other. Crunching loudly, he propped his feet up on the coffee table and rolled his neck until it cracked. He kind of loved his job, which he knew was weird, but whatever. He was good at cleaning up after other people’s messes. Mostly. It hadn’t gone terribly wrong in the last few years at least! Glowering at his thought process, he reached over to grab one of the other beers and then stared at the cap like it offended him.
“You can have your pretentious assholes who hate pancakes, I just want someone to be forced to open a beer bottle with nothing but what’s within arm reach of me.” Gary banged the tip of his beer bottle against the side table. “That and somebody being forced to use a spreader bar again. We were up to five of those at last count.”
“Ah yes, the spreader bar! A magical time to be alive,” Sam agreed with an uncharitable snicker as the credits played and the contestants were introduced. As a person who genuinely saw good in more-or-less anyone, only mean-spirited pretension was the trait that tended to grind his gears… and on cooking shows, well, that type was usually in full display.
He knocked back some of his beer. “What does Lucas think of this show? Besides the fact that it’s awesome, obviously.” Imagining the academic getting into reality competitions was a fun adventure; Sam would bet cold hard cash that there was a lot of temple-rubbing and frustration outbursts at the screen given Lucas’s personality.
Gary smirked, finally cracking the cap off his beer to take a swig. He barely swallowed before speaking. That was the price Sam paid for bringing up Gary’s favorite subject.
“He pretends he can’t stand reality shows, but god he gets so. Invested.” Bark huffed a happy sound, either because he liked hearing about Lucas (he was fond) or because he was trying to boss Gary into feeding him cheese puffs. Gary crunched on a puff and fed two to Bark with his voice going purposefully into obnoxious baby talk. “But he loves Alton Brown, doesn’t he, Bark? He’s got a soft spot for trolls. Thank god.”
Sam’s mouth had curved into a smile, and he peered at his roommate out of the corner of his eye. Gary’s adoration of Lucas was obvious, and Sam appreciated how bare it was - he was an absolute sucker for romance, and it was even better when it was his closest friends so enamored with one another. If his own love life was in indefinite hold, well, at least he could live vicariously with rooting on Gary and Lucas.
“That soft spot for trolls surely comes in handy,” Sam agreed with a thoughtful swallow of beer, the joke creeping through his mild words. “Alton Brown, though. Doesn’t that just figure.”
Gary pointed at Sam with a cheese puff clutched between his orange-stained fingers. “Hey, no talking shit about Alton Brown!...Unless it’s hilarious shit, then I’ll make an exception.” It would’ve been entirely too easy to sidestep around his spur of the moment proposal and never, ever speak of it until literally the day of his wedding. Especially with Sam. They’d always meshed well in that regard - if something needed ignoring by one, the other was a great distraction.
But Gary sighed and scratched absentmindedly between Bark’s ears. He kept his gaze on the tv even though he wasn’t watching it. “Do you think I’m crazy? Barely start dating the man I’ve been pining after for a decade and now we’re engaged…”
Sam had been about to launch into a teasing critique of Alton Brown’s communication style and/or his fussy suits when Gary’s question caught him off-guard. He didn’t mind the conversational shift; it was just that he and Gary had a pretty good feel for emotional avoidance. Which meant that Gary must really be mulling over the subject. “I don’t think you’re crazy,” Sam answered after a pause. “Impulsive, maybe, but not crazy. You and Lucas knew one another as well as anyone does, so it’s not as if you were perfect strangers.”
Not lovers either, perhaps, but Sam was certain the rest of the equation had been balanced. Even if he was a little stuck in the life of a bachelor, he admired Gary’s tendency to throw himself headfirst into whatever he was passionate about. “I think it was brave,” he added, and ruined the touching moment with a loud burp.
Gary didn’t have any regrets about the proposal – besides wishing he hadn’t been ten minutes from a sunburn-fueled coma in the passenger seat on the way home. But he did care what his nearest and dearest thought of his life choices. Even if he was generally excellent at pretending otherwise. It was all part of the hot mess package. Pretend to give zero fucks while secretly giving all the fucks, all the time. He smiled first, softer than his usual trollish leer, and then laughed at Sam’s follow-up point.
“Nice.” Bark licked his face and then jumped over him to fling himself into Sam’s lap. “Wow. Traitor. Just because I stopped feeding you for five seconds so I could have a little heart-to-heart!” Gary sank further into the sofa and nursed his beer. His smile turned dopey, even though he tried to stifle it. “I keep waiting to freak out about it, but…” He shrugged and took a swig of beer. “I mostly keep thinking I better make damn sure he never regrets it.”
Sam caught the dog as best as he was able - Bark was no laughing matter in any capacity, even with Sam’s recent gym obsession - and buried his face in Bark’s fur. That was, after all, the net positive of a cuddly hairy dog attempting to commandeer your lap. “Well, the rest of us are just glad you two came to your senses at long freaking last,” he said, voice muffled by all the dog. “Do you know how much money I lost on bets when you two would leave a bar together and nothing happened?”
Sam was kidding, of course - mostly, for he and Isabelle had certainly joked about how Gary and Lucas needed to freaking figure it out already - but he turned his head Gary’s way and flashed a smile to underline the joke. “And hey, just let me know if you need me to bail. My feelings aren’t hurt if you and Lucas want to get an actual house for Bark to destroy.” And that was true as well - sure, Sam enjoyed living the bachelor life with Gary, but he also knew that being the third wheel for a married couple might be a little weird, and he’d used up a lot of weird points with dating and breaking up with Gary’s sister, so…
Gary rolled his eyes at the teasing. He knew it had taken a dog’s age to step up and take a risk where Lucas was concerned, and while he regretted all the years they could’ve been seeing each other naked, he didn’t feel like he’d missed out by taking his time. He did frown, though. At the thought of moving out, not anything about Lucas.
“Hm,” he grunted, nose wrinkling as he crunched on another handful of cheese puffs. “I haven’t talked to Lucas about the house situation yet. I don’t—“ He brushed off his hands in a I’ll-vacuum-that-later way and then massaged at the back of his neck. Weird that a wedding was all good, but the thought of changing even more about his current life made him tense. “There’s no rush, obviously. We’re talking about a wedding next year, for god’s sake.”
Sam gave Bark a final pat and released the dog, reaching for his beer once again. Gary’s evasion didn’t surprise him, really - the only surprising thing was that they were managing a semi-serious discussion for longer than thirty seconds. Privately, Sam worried that his lingering presence might be a little awkward for the happy couple, and perhaps it would be a self-solving issue, but he only smiled at his friend. He’d worry about it later; finding a new place wouldn’t be too hard, even with his unpredictable schedule.
“No rush,” he echoed. “I’ll keep my eyes open for any great deals on places in the meantime. You know, I’ve got a pal back at the station; works in homicide, and knows ALL the best cleaners in Breckenridge. All you and Lucas need is one small murder, and my friend can get that place neat and spiffy before it’s even on the market… and hey, bonus ghosts!”
“Don’t toy with my emotions,” Gary laughed. “You know I’d kill for a haunted house.” That bad joke delivered – and with an overacted wink thrown in for good measure, he turned to stretch his legs out across the sofa. Bark immediately hopped up to settle into a sprawl across his legs, big head propped on the arm closest to the container of cheese puffs. It was so normal that it eased some of the mild panic roiling through Gary’s gut. As a result, the smile he tossed over his shoulder was more genuine.
“I suppose I should check in on you now that you’ve put up with all this adulting.” He raised his eyebrows “Any big news or drama going on?”
Sam was so used to Gary’s jokes that he didn’t even bother to roll his eyes at the haunted crack, even if he shot him a thumbs up in reply. Living with Gary meant living with his puns, taunts, and jibes, after all. At his roommate’s question, he shook his head, taking a sip of his beer and leaning back.
“Nah, no big news. No drama,” he confirmed. Sam tended to be unflappable in most things. Sure, he could get down in the dumps as anyone, but usually Sam was drama adjacent rather than drama centric. “Just, you know. Trying to steady out my schedule so I can have a life, man. The kind of life where I can remember to DVR cooking competitions, you know?”
Are you dating my sister again in this life? The question was on the tip of Gary’s tongue, but he knew he could be pushy and the last thing he really wanted was to be a factor in Sam staying away from Elizabeth. So he filled his stupid gob with cheese puffs and gave a crunchy nod before risking any commentary at all.
“Seems like a worthwhile goal. Well, that and being available to dog sit after our eventual and obviously tearful separation.” Smiling lopsidedly, Gary reclaimed his beer and held it out to clink against Sam’s. The distance was a little too much, though, so he just kind of dangled stupidly over the sofa’s arm, giant dog still pinning him to the cushions. “Oh my god. Clink me so we can end this maturity and start mocking trained professional chefs.”
Sam had to stretch to make it, and he temporarily destablized and very nearly fell on his ass - but his daily yoga saw him through and he made it to Gary’s beer with a cheerful clink. “I’d never leave you hanging, man,” he said, settling back into his nook and returning most of his attention to the television. “Whether we’re talking about your latest crazy choice or making fun of someone using the word ‘curdful’. ‘Cause really. What the hell?”