when we were ourselves (jonas brothers, joe/nick, pg)
title: when we were ourselves
authors: sarahsan and theskyturnsred
pairing: joe/nick
rating: PG (some language? some kissing? idk)
summary: The one where Nick turns into a puppy by night.
notes: Ahahaha. So. This all started because at some point, inthenameofjuc mentioned something on Twitter about...I think Joe being a were-bulldog? theskyturnsred thought it would make a pretty great story if, say, Nick turned into a puppy by nights and Joe had to take care of him, and I agreed. And then it was longer than my Big Bang fic. \o/ The moral of this story? Be very fucking careful what you say on Twitter. >:3 theskyturnsred is, as usual, to thank for all of the good parts in this fic, especially considering she actually wrote some of them. Thank you so so much, bb. <3
date: 12/26
wordcount: 21,351
In retrospect, Joe should've realized something was up when Nick stopped texting him all of a sudden. They'd been deep in the middle of a conversation about some new music Nick was working on, trying to hash out some lyrics on the fly, when Nick's steady stream of texts had abruptly dried up. He didn't think too much of it at the time, though; Nick often got busy unexpectedly - a phone call or an urgent email, Elvis wreaking disaster on another pair of $400 shoes. And he was almost over to the house by that time, cheap Thai takeout (because the expensive stuff never tasted as good) cooling in the passenger seat of his car. Plus, he got a little distracted singing along to Katy Perry, his radio cranked obscenely loud as he cruised into their neighborhood, but he would deny it under oath.
Their parents were already back in Dallas for the holidays, so Nick was holding down the fort until they'd wrapped up their obligations in LA and could follow. Joe didn't like him being alone in that big house, so he'd casually offered to bring over a late dinner and was planning on "accidentally" staying too late to drive back. Nick would appreciate it, he knew, though his little brother would never own to it.
As Joe got out of the car in the driveway and gathered up the plastic bags of cartons and trays, he heard Elvis going nuts inside, barking his head off at the sound of a car and steps on the walk. Joe grinned. Nick must have headphones in or something, if he wasn't hearing this unbelievable racket and telling his pooch to put a sock in it. That was something Joe had to say for Winston; the little guy rarely made a fuss, and when he did rouse himself enough to bark, it was two or maybe three huffing grunts at most, higher-pitched than a full-sized bulldog but still gruff and unassuming. Elvis had a bark that had been known to wake the dead and send them running in fear of their un-lives.
Joe let himself in, putting a foot inside the door first to hold Elvis back, stop him rushing out at him. "Okay, okay, boy, calm down, it's just me, you're not going anywhere right this second."
That was the moment Joe realized something was wrong, because, instead of his customary leap-and-flatten greeting, Elvis did a one-eighty and went tearing off through the house, still barking like a maniac, almost like he was scared of Joe, running from him. Joe immediately frowned as he came in, ears still ringing from all the barking, and clicked the door shut again behind him. Elvis had never reacted like that before in all the time Nick had had him.
"Nick?" Joe called, setting the bags of food and his keys down on the hall table. "What is wrong with your hellhound?"
No answer. Joe hadn't really expected one; Nick must be seriously listening to his music at a deafening level to miss all the noise. Joe bounded up the stairs and knocked cursorily on Nick's bedroom door before pushing it open.
Nick wasn't there. Joe just had time to wonder at that when Elvis came ripping out of Frankie's vacated room and nearly bowled Joe over as he shoved into Nick's room, his barking blessedly exchanged for high, frantic whining now.
“Wha--oof, Elvis, what is wrong with you?” Joe asked, falling into the door frame, barely catching himself as Elvis started sniffing and nosing under the bed with a vengeance, too big to fit underneath, but desperate to get at something there. He was scraping at the carpet, trying to shove himself under the edge of the bed, and Joe had a momentary vision of him tearing the rug to pieces.
“You weirdo,” he muttered at Nick’s spazzy dog, rolling his eyes and coming into the room, wondering where his brother was. Bathroom maybe? Joe reached down and got a hold of Elvis’ collar to haul him back from half-under the bed.
Elvis wheeled on him and snapped at his hand so fast and hard Joe heard his jaws clack together, barely missing his fingers.
“Whoa!!” He nearly fell backwards, recoiling fast. “What the fuck, dog! What are you after?” Joe stood there blinking at Elvis’ frantic behavior, hesitant to go near him again; he was acting about half-possessed, nothing like his normally sweet, somewhat dumb, even-tempered self. There was clearly something under the bed. The only things Joe could think of that would be under a bed at this time of night were an intruder, or a rat. Possibly a snake. And the bed frame was too low for any but the skinniest human being Joe had ever seen, which left the option of a wild and possibly poisonous animal. Joe was more than half-tempted to leave Elvis to scare it out and take care of it, but then felt a pang of guilt. If it was poisonous and bit Nick’s dog, Joe would never forgive himself.
So, cautiously, he crept around to the other side of the bed and knelt down on the carpet, reluctantly bending down on all fours to peer underneath.
Something moved, up against the wall at the head of the bed. Joe’s eyes widened and he struggled not to jump back.
Suddenly the thing - definitely an animal, small, but more critter-shaped, not a snake or a lizard but something furry - seemed to turn and look at Joe, glitter of dark eyes in the shadows under the bed blinking at him, and then it whined, high-pitched and soft, the tiniest little crying sound.
“What the...” Joe murmured. It sounded like there was a puppy under Nick’s bed, or maybe a very small dog. “How the hell did you get in here?” he wondered, frowning. Had Nick let him in? Into a house with a much bigger adult animal? He kind of doubted it. He crept a little closer and slid his hand slowly across the carpet toward the little thing where it hunkered dark and small against the wall. Joe had no idea whether this was smart; if the thing bit him, it could have rabies, it could tear his hand to shreds, and here Joe was sticking his arm in after it like an idiot. But he wasn’t sure what else to do. He couldn’t very well leave it there, and Elvis was losing his mind on the other side of the bed, pawing and nosing at the carpet, whimpering pathetically, wanting at the other dog so bad it was killing him. And Joe didn’t want to call animal control yet, not til he was sure what the animal was and whether it belonged to anyone.
“C’mere,” he murmured in a soft, high voice, the kind you use with babies and pets. “C’mere, boy. What’re you doing in here? Are you from one of the neighbors’?”
The little dog blinked at him some more and then Joe thought he saw it lower its head, lean a little closer, cautiously, sniffing at Joe’s outstretched fingers. It whined again, louder, and started shuffling out from under the bed on its belly, far enough that Joe could reach in and carefully put his hands around it, pull it out.
It was a puppy, small and healthy-looking, with a glossy, curly golden-brown coat and floppy ears and a short, stubby little tail barely longer than a bob that started wagging the second Joe picked him up. Its little furry body was trembling, shaking with fear, and no wonder. Elvis, realizing the puppy was no longer under the bed, loped around to Joe’s side and began trying to get near the strange dog, half-whining, half-growling in his throat and making the little one shiver even harder.
“Elvis, butt out,” Joe told him, nudging him aside with his elbow and tucking the puppy in the crook of his arm. The puppy nosed at his chest and his neck, snuffling, growing more wriggly and frantic by the moment, until it got to Joe’s face and started licking it, over and over, darting little slobbery swipes of its velvety pink tongue. Joe laughed, incredulous, and tried to hang on to the little thing and keep his eyes and nose averted from the puppy’s loving wet attention as much as possible. Suddenly he felt warmth on his thigh that translated quickly to wetness that Joe instantly realized, horrified, was the puppy peeing on him, whining as it kept trying to lick every square inch of Joe’s face. Joe made a distressed noise but couldn’t put him off his lap or risk making a mess on the carpet. He figured that would be harder to clean than his clothes and, resigned, just groaned as the little puppy left a wet spot on him nearly the whole length of Joe’s thigh. He sighed heavily and let the little thing lick his nose, nipping at the end of it just a little. Joe wanted to be mad, he did, but...well. It’s hard to be mad at a puppy. Especially one so clearly excited to see him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked it resignedly, because clearly it was going to answer him, and felt around for a collar and tags. He found none.
“Nick!” he yelled toward the doorway, trying to keep the puppy from climbing up onto his shoulders, “Why is there a new puppy in your house?”
The puppy yipped, bright and ringing, which made Elvis bark and whine. Joe shook his head at both of them and got himself to his feet. He winced at the leg of his jeans, soaked and clinging, and looked around the room, hoping maybe Nick had left a bath towel lying around or something. But, predictably, Nick’s room was completely immaculate, the kind of clean that suggested long periods of absence, except, strangely, for a shirt on the seat of his desk chair and a pair of jeans piled in the floor next to it. Nick must be in the shower, Joe reasoned, though it was taking him plenty long enough.
“I’m gonna put you down for a second, now. Don’t run off,” Joe warned his little furry charge, toeing Elvis aside as the bigger dog tried to crowd against him and get a better sniff of the intruder. Joe shooed him away and set the puppy on Nick’s bed, quickly stripping off his wet jeans and balling them up, tossing them onto the top of Nick’s hamper. He snatched up Nick’s discarded jeans and pulled them on, struggling a little to button them around his too-wide hips. The puppy, to Joe’s surprise, settled himself almost instantly on the bed and didn’t offer to jump down, though that may have had to do with Elvis pacing around the bed like a shark circling in the water, held back from jumping up after the puppy only by Nick’s long-standing injunction against letting Elvis sleep on the bed. He was clearly not pleased that some stranger had been given a privilege he hadn’t had since he was a puppy himself.
Dry again, Joe sat down on the edge of the bed and moved the puppy, still wagging his rear end frantically, onto his lap, getting a good look at him. He was well-groomed, not like a stray at all, and looked well-fed, too, from what Joe could tell. He was an even chestnut color with a dark nose and bright, clear brown eyes, but he had a little ruff of white around his neck, tufting at his curly chest, and another band of white around his right paw. He was beautiful, and completely baffling in his very existence.
“Where did you come from, little man?” Joe murmured, petting his downy-soft head and scritching behind his ears. Elvis was turning circles at the foot of the bed, agitated, but he was no longer growling or barking, so when he tried to nose in at the puppy again, Joe carefully allowed him, making sure to keep an arm between them, letting them sniff each other. “Oh, whoops,” Joe added absently. “Guess I better be sure you are a little man...oh, yes, you are.” Joe put the puppy’s rear leg down again and grinned at it. The puppy had already tired of investigating Elvis, and at the sound of Joe’s voice started wiggling and trying to climb on him again, licking at his shirt, leaving warm wet spots on the fabric that cooled immediately. Joe grinned a little and made a mental note to wash this shirt before he left, too. “And where in the name of common sense,” he added, frustrated, looking around the room as if he might have missed looking in some corner, “is Nicholas?”
The puppy barked again, jumping a little, excitedly. “Yeah, exactly,” Joe agreed, nodding and stroking down the pup’s spine. “He shouldn’t have left you like this, with Elvis going crazy. C’mon.” Standing, he cradled the little thing, warm and wriggling in his arms, careful not to hold him too tight, and the puppy whined a little and pressed his nose up under Joe’s right arm as Joe went down the hall to the upstairs bathroom. He frowned when he saw no light on from under the door and, opening it, found the bathroom empty and - flipping on the light - the shower dry as a bone.
“Alright, I give,” he muttered, shifting the puppy to one arm, pulling his phone from his pocket, and flipping it open, speed-dialing his brother. It rang once and Joe heard the melancholy strains of Band of Horses playing, tinny and muffled, from down the hall - I’d like to think I’m the mess you could wear with pride, Nick’s ringtone for Joe, coming from Nick’s bedroom.
Quietly, Joe began to panic. Nick was supposed to be here. Joe had been talking to him not even a half hour ago, and now suddenly he was gone? This wasn’t right; it was already almost eleven, too late for Nick to be going out by himself, he never went out this late by himself. And he wouldn’t have left, surely, when he knew Joe was on his way over. Joe chewed his lip, moving to place the puppy on the sink counter while he rechecked his messages, made sure he hadn’t missed one from his brother.
you don’t think that’s too overdone? was the last text he’d received and the last in his conversation tray with Nick, talking about a song about heartbreak, before his own, unanswered, its a love song nicky. its overodne bc its classic. :) Nothing after that, and that had been less than ten minutes before he’d gotten to the house. That was weird, and Joe felt a deep unease all of a sudden.
The puppy seemed to pick up on his distress, padding across the counter to him and pressing his cold nose to the center of Joe’s chest, whining a little. Joe’s hand came up, cradled the back of his little head while he stared at his phone, distracted and confused and really starting to freak out, actually. The puppy snuffled at him, snagged his t-shirt in his sharp little teeth and tugged on him, surprisingly strong for his size, nearly pulling Joe off-balance.
“Hey,” Joe scolded softly, but he didn’t really care that much, couldn’t, was too busy worrying about Nick just then. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Elvis clicked into the bathroom and butted up against the backs of his legs, tail wagging lazily and swishing against the wall; he seemed to have declared a cease-fire, disinclined to let his suspicion of the new puppy stop him from getting just as much attention. Joe looked down at him helplessly.
“Where’s Nick?” he wondered aloud, and at his elbow, the puppy barked.
Joe frowned at him, suddenly realizing something. “Nick,” he said again, this time right to the puppy, who wagged his tail hard and yapped again, taking hold of Joe’s shirt and giving it another tug, then letting go and looking up at him, panting. Joe blinked at him and said, “Nick?”
The puppy whined, watching Joe very intently, more intently than he’d ever seen a dog look. He pushed his nose into Joe’s chest again and then looked up once more.
Joe whuffed out a sigh, curling a hand tightly into his hair to stop it shaking. “I must be going nuts,” he muttered. He dialed Nick’s number again, heard Nick’s phone going off; scooping up the puppy and with Elvis trotting along at his heels, he returned to Nick’s room and looked around for his phone. There it was, on the desk next to Nick’s open, hibernating laptop.
He flipped his own phone shut again and set the fuzzball down in Nick’s desk chair, picking up Nick’s phone and clearing away the two missed calls. Nick had been in the middle of a reply to Joe’s text when he’d set the phone down; seeing the half-finished message like a plate of half-eaten food in Pompeii raised the hairs on the nape of Joe’s neck, fear curling cold in his stomach.
Movement out the corner of his eye made him look down at the puppy, currently wrestling with Nick’s t-shirt and growling playfully, tangling himself in it. Joe reached down to take it away from him - that’s all he needed, to get chewed out by Nick, if he ever turned up, for letting the puppy eat one of his Harley shirts - but the puppy whined and pounced on Joe’s hand, nosing into the neck of the t-shirt and shoving his head through one of the sleeves, his muzzle poking out and his big brown eyes, framed by dark curls, looking out at Joe as if begging him to look, look, pay attention.
Joe blinked twice while the puppy just stared back at him, and then sat down hard.
***
“This is crazy,” he kept repeating to himself, over and over, as he pulled the containers of take-out from the plastic bags and set them all out on the coffee table in the living room. The puppy sat quietly watching him, only his little tail wagging back and forth, while Elvis paced around and sidled ever-closer to the table every time Joe tried to push him away, the lure of human food too much for his meager self-control.
“I mean, seriously, this is nuts,” Joe told them matter-of-factly, snapping plastic carton lids off. The food smelled amazing, making Joe’s stomach rumble, but he honestly did not feel like eating right now. Or maybe ever. Here his brother was missing, god knew where or why, and he was about to feed his brother’s dog and some curly-haired stray puppy the take-out he’d bought for himself and Nick, in an attempt to prove...
Well. All he was gonna prove was that he was losing his actual mind.
“Okay. Here we go,” he muttered under his breath as he set the last container lid aside and took hold of Elvis’ collar to stop him going nose-first into the kang pa. Joe realized his hands were trembling and laughed once, sharply, feeling a little hysterical with panic. God, this was so fucking ridiculous; where was Nick? Fear buzzed under his skin and he just wanted to start calling everyone, their parents, friends, their security detail, the LAPD, the fucking FBI...whoever it took to figure out where his brother had gone off to in the blink of an eye, because something about this whole thing was just wrong, something wasn’t right, but how was he going to make anybody listen to him when Nick had only been “missing” less than an hour and Joe was sitting here feeding Thai to--
The puppy was crawling over Joe’s lap and sniffing interestedly along the edge of the table, flaring his nostrils and licking his mouth. He stood up on his hind legs, front paws scrabbling on the top of the table as he poked his nose toward a couple of the containers, sniffing them interestedly and then, immediately upon smelling the Thai barbecue, nearly jumped up onto the table entirely to snag a piece of it out of the carton and scarf it down almost before Joe could blink. He reached out and pulled that tray down into the floor and the puppy went to town, demolishing the barbecued beef as if he’d never eaten before in his life.
Joe slumped, boneless, back against the front of the couch, and Elvis finally escaped his hold, making a beeline for one of the cartons of chicken while Joe just helplessly watched the puppy eat the better part of the carton of Nick’s favorite takeout food.
He flopped his head back on the couch, stunned and terrified. I’ve finally cracked. I have finally lost it, he thought, but when he turned his head and looked down at the puppy, who raised his head and licked his chops and wagged enthusiastically as if to say Thank you!! then all Joe could manage to say was, “Nicky?” in a pale, scared voice.
The puppy barked, loud, and abandoned the container of food to clamber onto Joe’s lap and attempt to lick his face again, breath smelling of barbecued beef. Joe put his hands up, petting back the puppy’s floppy ears, trying to see his eyes as the little dog kept trying to lick every inch of Joe’s face just in case he’d missed any spots on prior attempts. They were just a dog’s eyes, liquid and clear, but he looked at Joe with a calm that was strange and almost weird on a wiggly little puppy. A shiver ran down Joe’s back and he bit his lip a little.
“Bark if you understand me,” Joe said, looking straight back at the puppy (his brain was already calling him Nick, what was wrong with his brain?). The puppy cocked his head at Joe, ears perking a little as he whined in his throat, tail still going a mile a minute. Joe sighed. “Nick?” he said again, feeling pretty ridiculous, and the puppy promptly barked.
“Great,” Joe said, irritated at himself and his own stupidity. “So you know your owner’s name. Fantastic. But where is he?”
The puppy whined again and nuzzled at Joe’s stomach, circling around in his crossed legs and flopping down, mass of soft shiny curls, right in the hollow between his thighs. Joe sighed and pulled a plastic fork free of one of the takeout bags, pulling over a tin of pad thai that Elvis hadn’t gotten to yet. He picked at it disinterestedly, heart pounding with fear and unease but the puppy warm across his legs, and he told himself as he chewed distractedly that he wasn’t allowed to officially freak out over Nick being incommunicado until tomorrow morning.
Unofficially, however, he sent a mass text to everybody in Nick’s phone book except their own family, asking whether anyone had seen or heard from his little brother.
part ii
authors: sarahsan and theskyturnsred
pairing: joe/nick
rating: PG (some language? some kissing? idk)
summary: The one where Nick turns into a puppy by night.
notes: Ahahaha. So. This all started because at some point, inthenameofjuc mentioned something on Twitter about...I think Joe being a were-bulldog? theskyturnsred thought it would make a pretty great story if, say, Nick turned into a puppy by nights and Joe had to take care of him, and I agreed. And then it was longer than my Big Bang fic. \o/ The moral of this story? Be very fucking careful what you say on Twitter. >:3 theskyturnsred is, as usual, to thank for all of the good parts in this fic, especially considering she actually wrote some of them. Thank you so so much, bb. <3
date: 12/26
wordcount: 21,351
In retrospect, Joe should've realized something was up when Nick stopped texting him all of a sudden. They'd been deep in the middle of a conversation about some new music Nick was working on, trying to hash out some lyrics on the fly, when Nick's steady stream of texts had abruptly dried up. He didn't think too much of it at the time, though; Nick often got busy unexpectedly - a phone call or an urgent email, Elvis wreaking disaster on another pair of $400 shoes. And he was almost over to the house by that time, cheap Thai takeout (because the expensive stuff never tasted as good) cooling in the passenger seat of his car. Plus, he got a little distracted singing along to Katy Perry, his radio cranked obscenely loud as he cruised into their neighborhood, but he would deny it under oath.
Their parents were already back in Dallas for the holidays, so Nick was holding down the fort until they'd wrapped up their obligations in LA and could follow. Joe didn't like him being alone in that big house, so he'd casually offered to bring over a late dinner and was planning on "accidentally" staying too late to drive back. Nick would appreciate it, he knew, though his little brother would never own to it.
As Joe got out of the car in the driveway and gathered up the plastic bags of cartons and trays, he heard Elvis going nuts inside, barking his head off at the sound of a car and steps on the walk. Joe grinned. Nick must have headphones in or something, if he wasn't hearing this unbelievable racket and telling his pooch to put a sock in it. That was something Joe had to say for Winston; the little guy rarely made a fuss, and when he did rouse himself enough to bark, it was two or maybe three huffing grunts at most, higher-pitched than a full-sized bulldog but still gruff and unassuming. Elvis had a bark that had been known to wake the dead and send them running in fear of their un-lives.
Joe let himself in, putting a foot inside the door first to hold Elvis back, stop him rushing out at him. "Okay, okay, boy, calm down, it's just me, you're not going anywhere right this second."
That was the moment Joe realized something was wrong, because, instead of his customary leap-and-flatten greeting, Elvis did a one-eighty and went tearing off through the house, still barking like a maniac, almost like he was scared of Joe, running from him. Joe immediately frowned as he came in, ears still ringing from all the barking, and clicked the door shut again behind him. Elvis had never reacted like that before in all the time Nick had had him.
"Nick?" Joe called, setting the bags of food and his keys down on the hall table. "What is wrong with your hellhound?"
No answer. Joe hadn't really expected one; Nick must be seriously listening to his music at a deafening level to miss all the noise. Joe bounded up the stairs and knocked cursorily on Nick's bedroom door before pushing it open.
Nick wasn't there. Joe just had time to wonder at that when Elvis came ripping out of Frankie's vacated room and nearly bowled Joe over as he shoved into Nick's room, his barking blessedly exchanged for high, frantic whining now.
“Wha--oof, Elvis, what is wrong with you?” Joe asked, falling into the door frame, barely catching himself as Elvis started sniffing and nosing under the bed with a vengeance, too big to fit underneath, but desperate to get at something there. He was scraping at the carpet, trying to shove himself under the edge of the bed, and Joe had a momentary vision of him tearing the rug to pieces.
“You weirdo,” he muttered at Nick’s spazzy dog, rolling his eyes and coming into the room, wondering where his brother was. Bathroom maybe? Joe reached down and got a hold of Elvis’ collar to haul him back from half-under the bed.
Elvis wheeled on him and snapped at his hand so fast and hard Joe heard his jaws clack together, barely missing his fingers.
“Whoa!!” He nearly fell backwards, recoiling fast. “What the fuck, dog! What are you after?” Joe stood there blinking at Elvis’ frantic behavior, hesitant to go near him again; he was acting about half-possessed, nothing like his normally sweet, somewhat dumb, even-tempered self. There was clearly something under the bed. The only things Joe could think of that would be under a bed at this time of night were an intruder, or a rat. Possibly a snake. And the bed frame was too low for any but the skinniest human being Joe had ever seen, which left the option of a wild and possibly poisonous animal. Joe was more than half-tempted to leave Elvis to scare it out and take care of it, but then felt a pang of guilt. If it was poisonous and bit Nick’s dog, Joe would never forgive himself.
So, cautiously, he crept around to the other side of the bed and knelt down on the carpet, reluctantly bending down on all fours to peer underneath.
Something moved, up against the wall at the head of the bed. Joe’s eyes widened and he struggled not to jump back.
Suddenly the thing - definitely an animal, small, but more critter-shaped, not a snake or a lizard but something furry - seemed to turn and look at Joe, glitter of dark eyes in the shadows under the bed blinking at him, and then it whined, high-pitched and soft, the tiniest little crying sound.
“What the...” Joe murmured. It sounded like there was a puppy under Nick’s bed, or maybe a very small dog. “How the hell did you get in here?” he wondered, frowning. Had Nick let him in? Into a house with a much bigger adult animal? He kind of doubted it. He crept a little closer and slid his hand slowly across the carpet toward the little thing where it hunkered dark and small against the wall. Joe had no idea whether this was smart; if the thing bit him, it could have rabies, it could tear his hand to shreds, and here Joe was sticking his arm in after it like an idiot. But he wasn’t sure what else to do. He couldn’t very well leave it there, and Elvis was losing his mind on the other side of the bed, pawing and nosing at the carpet, whimpering pathetically, wanting at the other dog so bad it was killing him. And Joe didn’t want to call animal control yet, not til he was sure what the animal was and whether it belonged to anyone.
“C’mere,” he murmured in a soft, high voice, the kind you use with babies and pets. “C’mere, boy. What’re you doing in here? Are you from one of the neighbors’?”
The little dog blinked at him some more and then Joe thought he saw it lower its head, lean a little closer, cautiously, sniffing at Joe’s outstretched fingers. It whined again, louder, and started shuffling out from under the bed on its belly, far enough that Joe could reach in and carefully put his hands around it, pull it out.
It was a puppy, small and healthy-looking, with a glossy, curly golden-brown coat and floppy ears and a short, stubby little tail barely longer than a bob that started wagging the second Joe picked him up. Its little furry body was trembling, shaking with fear, and no wonder. Elvis, realizing the puppy was no longer under the bed, loped around to Joe’s side and began trying to get near the strange dog, half-whining, half-growling in his throat and making the little one shiver even harder.
“Elvis, butt out,” Joe told him, nudging him aside with his elbow and tucking the puppy in the crook of his arm. The puppy nosed at his chest and his neck, snuffling, growing more wriggly and frantic by the moment, until it got to Joe’s face and started licking it, over and over, darting little slobbery swipes of its velvety pink tongue. Joe laughed, incredulous, and tried to hang on to the little thing and keep his eyes and nose averted from the puppy’s loving wet attention as much as possible. Suddenly he felt warmth on his thigh that translated quickly to wetness that Joe instantly realized, horrified, was the puppy peeing on him, whining as it kept trying to lick every square inch of Joe’s face. Joe made a distressed noise but couldn’t put him off his lap or risk making a mess on the carpet. He figured that would be harder to clean than his clothes and, resigned, just groaned as the little puppy left a wet spot on him nearly the whole length of Joe’s thigh. He sighed heavily and let the little thing lick his nose, nipping at the end of it just a little. Joe wanted to be mad, he did, but...well. It’s hard to be mad at a puppy. Especially one so clearly excited to see him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked it resignedly, because clearly it was going to answer him, and felt around for a collar and tags. He found none.
“Nick!” he yelled toward the doorway, trying to keep the puppy from climbing up onto his shoulders, “Why is there a new puppy in your house?”
The puppy yipped, bright and ringing, which made Elvis bark and whine. Joe shook his head at both of them and got himself to his feet. He winced at the leg of his jeans, soaked and clinging, and looked around the room, hoping maybe Nick had left a bath towel lying around or something. But, predictably, Nick’s room was completely immaculate, the kind of clean that suggested long periods of absence, except, strangely, for a shirt on the seat of his desk chair and a pair of jeans piled in the floor next to it. Nick must be in the shower, Joe reasoned, though it was taking him plenty long enough.
“I’m gonna put you down for a second, now. Don’t run off,” Joe warned his little furry charge, toeing Elvis aside as the bigger dog tried to crowd against him and get a better sniff of the intruder. Joe shooed him away and set the puppy on Nick’s bed, quickly stripping off his wet jeans and balling them up, tossing them onto the top of Nick’s hamper. He snatched up Nick’s discarded jeans and pulled them on, struggling a little to button them around his too-wide hips. The puppy, to Joe’s surprise, settled himself almost instantly on the bed and didn’t offer to jump down, though that may have had to do with Elvis pacing around the bed like a shark circling in the water, held back from jumping up after the puppy only by Nick’s long-standing injunction against letting Elvis sleep on the bed. He was clearly not pleased that some stranger had been given a privilege he hadn’t had since he was a puppy himself.
Dry again, Joe sat down on the edge of the bed and moved the puppy, still wagging his rear end frantically, onto his lap, getting a good look at him. He was well-groomed, not like a stray at all, and looked well-fed, too, from what Joe could tell. He was an even chestnut color with a dark nose and bright, clear brown eyes, but he had a little ruff of white around his neck, tufting at his curly chest, and another band of white around his right paw. He was beautiful, and completely baffling in his very existence.
“Where did you come from, little man?” Joe murmured, petting his downy-soft head and scritching behind his ears. Elvis was turning circles at the foot of the bed, agitated, but he was no longer growling or barking, so when he tried to nose in at the puppy again, Joe carefully allowed him, making sure to keep an arm between them, letting them sniff each other. “Oh, whoops,” Joe added absently. “Guess I better be sure you are a little man...oh, yes, you are.” Joe put the puppy’s rear leg down again and grinned at it. The puppy had already tired of investigating Elvis, and at the sound of Joe’s voice started wiggling and trying to climb on him again, licking at his shirt, leaving warm wet spots on the fabric that cooled immediately. Joe grinned a little and made a mental note to wash this shirt before he left, too. “And where in the name of common sense,” he added, frustrated, looking around the room as if he might have missed looking in some corner, “is Nicholas?”
The puppy barked again, jumping a little, excitedly. “Yeah, exactly,” Joe agreed, nodding and stroking down the pup’s spine. “He shouldn’t have left you like this, with Elvis going crazy. C’mon.” Standing, he cradled the little thing, warm and wriggling in his arms, careful not to hold him too tight, and the puppy whined a little and pressed his nose up under Joe’s right arm as Joe went down the hall to the upstairs bathroom. He frowned when he saw no light on from under the door and, opening it, found the bathroom empty and - flipping on the light - the shower dry as a bone.
“Alright, I give,” he muttered, shifting the puppy to one arm, pulling his phone from his pocket, and flipping it open, speed-dialing his brother. It rang once and Joe heard the melancholy strains of Band of Horses playing, tinny and muffled, from down the hall - I’d like to think I’m the mess you could wear with pride, Nick’s ringtone for Joe, coming from Nick’s bedroom.
Quietly, Joe began to panic. Nick was supposed to be here. Joe had been talking to him not even a half hour ago, and now suddenly he was gone? This wasn’t right; it was already almost eleven, too late for Nick to be going out by himself, he never went out this late by himself. And he wouldn’t have left, surely, when he knew Joe was on his way over. Joe chewed his lip, moving to place the puppy on the sink counter while he rechecked his messages, made sure he hadn’t missed one from his brother.
you don’t think that’s too overdone? was the last text he’d received and the last in his conversation tray with Nick, talking about a song about heartbreak, before his own, unanswered, its a love song nicky. its overodne bc its classic. :) Nothing after that, and that had been less than ten minutes before he’d gotten to the house. That was weird, and Joe felt a deep unease all of a sudden.
The puppy seemed to pick up on his distress, padding across the counter to him and pressing his cold nose to the center of Joe’s chest, whining a little. Joe’s hand came up, cradled the back of his little head while he stared at his phone, distracted and confused and really starting to freak out, actually. The puppy snuffled at him, snagged his t-shirt in his sharp little teeth and tugged on him, surprisingly strong for his size, nearly pulling Joe off-balance.
“Hey,” Joe scolded softly, but he didn’t really care that much, couldn’t, was too busy worrying about Nick just then. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Elvis clicked into the bathroom and butted up against the backs of his legs, tail wagging lazily and swishing against the wall; he seemed to have declared a cease-fire, disinclined to let his suspicion of the new puppy stop him from getting just as much attention. Joe looked down at him helplessly.
“Where’s Nick?” he wondered aloud, and at his elbow, the puppy barked.
Joe frowned at him, suddenly realizing something. “Nick,” he said again, this time right to the puppy, who wagged his tail hard and yapped again, taking hold of Joe’s shirt and giving it another tug, then letting go and looking up at him, panting. Joe blinked at him and said, “Nick?”
The puppy whined, watching Joe very intently, more intently than he’d ever seen a dog look. He pushed his nose into Joe’s chest again and then looked up once more.
Joe whuffed out a sigh, curling a hand tightly into his hair to stop it shaking. “I must be going nuts,” he muttered. He dialed Nick’s number again, heard Nick’s phone going off; scooping up the puppy and with Elvis trotting along at his heels, he returned to Nick’s room and looked around for his phone. There it was, on the desk next to Nick’s open, hibernating laptop.
He flipped his own phone shut again and set the fuzzball down in Nick’s desk chair, picking up Nick’s phone and clearing away the two missed calls. Nick had been in the middle of a reply to Joe’s text when he’d set the phone down; seeing the half-finished message like a plate of half-eaten food in Pompeii raised the hairs on the nape of Joe’s neck, fear curling cold in his stomach.
Movement out the corner of his eye made him look down at the puppy, currently wrestling with Nick’s t-shirt and growling playfully, tangling himself in it. Joe reached down to take it away from him - that’s all he needed, to get chewed out by Nick, if he ever turned up, for letting the puppy eat one of his Harley shirts - but the puppy whined and pounced on Joe’s hand, nosing into the neck of the t-shirt and shoving his head through one of the sleeves, his muzzle poking out and his big brown eyes, framed by dark curls, looking out at Joe as if begging him to look, look, pay attention.
Joe blinked twice while the puppy just stared back at him, and then sat down hard.
***
“This is crazy,” he kept repeating to himself, over and over, as he pulled the containers of take-out from the plastic bags and set them all out on the coffee table in the living room. The puppy sat quietly watching him, only his little tail wagging back and forth, while Elvis paced around and sidled ever-closer to the table every time Joe tried to push him away, the lure of human food too much for his meager self-control.
“I mean, seriously, this is nuts,” Joe told them matter-of-factly, snapping plastic carton lids off. The food smelled amazing, making Joe’s stomach rumble, but he honestly did not feel like eating right now. Or maybe ever. Here his brother was missing, god knew where or why, and he was about to feed his brother’s dog and some curly-haired stray puppy the take-out he’d bought for himself and Nick, in an attempt to prove...
Well. All he was gonna prove was that he was losing his actual mind.
“Okay. Here we go,” he muttered under his breath as he set the last container lid aside and took hold of Elvis’ collar to stop him going nose-first into the kang pa. Joe realized his hands were trembling and laughed once, sharply, feeling a little hysterical with panic. God, this was so fucking ridiculous; where was Nick? Fear buzzed under his skin and he just wanted to start calling everyone, their parents, friends, their security detail, the LAPD, the fucking FBI...whoever it took to figure out where his brother had gone off to in the blink of an eye, because something about this whole thing was just wrong, something wasn’t right, but how was he going to make anybody listen to him when Nick had only been “missing” less than an hour and Joe was sitting here feeding Thai to--
The puppy was crawling over Joe’s lap and sniffing interestedly along the edge of the table, flaring his nostrils and licking his mouth. He stood up on his hind legs, front paws scrabbling on the top of the table as he poked his nose toward a couple of the containers, sniffing them interestedly and then, immediately upon smelling the Thai barbecue, nearly jumped up onto the table entirely to snag a piece of it out of the carton and scarf it down almost before Joe could blink. He reached out and pulled that tray down into the floor and the puppy went to town, demolishing the barbecued beef as if he’d never eaten before in his life.
Joe slumped, boneless, back against the front of the couch, and Elvis finally escaped his hold, making a beeline for one of the cartons of chicken while Joe just helplessly watched the puppy eat the better part of the carton of Nick’s favorite takeout food.
He flopped his head back on the couch, stunned and terrified. I’ve finally cracked. I have finally lost it, he thought, but when he turned his head and looked down at the puppy, who raised his head and licked his chops and wagged enthusiastically as if to say Thank you!! then all Joe could manage to say was, “Nicky?” in a pale, scared voice.
The puppy barked, loud, and abandoned the container of food to clamber onto Joe’s lap and attempt to lick his face again, breath smelling of barbecued beef. Joe put his hands up, petting back the puppy’s floppy ears, trying to see his eyes as the little dog kept trying to lick every inch of Joe’s face just in case he’d missed any spots on prior attempts. They were just a dog’s eyes, liquid and clear, but he looked at Joe with a calm that was strange and almost weird on a wiggly little puppy. A shiver ran down Joe’s back and he bit his lip a little.
“Bark if you understand me,” Joe said, looking straight back at the puppy (his brain was already calling him Nick, what was wrong with his brain?). The puppy cocked his head at Joe, ears perking a little as he whined in his throat, tail still going a mile a minute. Joe sighed. “Nick?” he said again, feeling pretty ridiculous, and the puppy promptly barked.
“Great,” Joe said, irritated at himself and his own stupidity. “So you know your owner’s name. Fantastic. But where is he?”
The puppy whined again and nuzzled at Joe’s stomach, circling around in his crossed legs and flopping down, mass of soft shiny curls, right in the hollow between his thighs. Joe sighed and pulled a plastic fork free of one of the takeout bags, pulling over a tin of pad thai that Elvis hadn’t gotten to yet. He picked at it disinterestedly, heart pounding with fear and unease but the puppy warm across his legs, and he told himself as he chewed distractedly that he wasn’t allowed to officially freak out over Nick being incommunicado until tomorrow morning.
Unofficially, however, he sent a mass text to everybody in Nick’s phone book except their own family, asking whether anyone had seen or heard from his little brother.
part ii