Stick Because I'm Stuck on You [NC17] Jared/Jensen, Mike/Misha
Title: Stick Because I'm Stuck on You
Author: queenklu
Beta by: dugindeep
Pairing: Jared/Jensen, Mike/Misha [insert shameless plug for m2_homegoods here]
Rating: NC17
Word Count: 25Kish
Summary: Orphan. Fine. Big-brother-turned-Dad. Jensen can deal. New dog? Who may or may not be a fairly decent looking human being and/or alien? Jensen is so over his fucking head.
A/N: written for j2_everafter , and based on the movie Lilo & Stitch. Mmmmyeah.
Mac’s flip-flops slapped the dark grey rocks as she ran, tide lapping at her heels and stinging in the shallow cuts on her ankle. Big Bob and his stupid tourist traps-didn’t he know she wasn’t a stupid malihini? She’d been coming here alone since she was seven and a half, so that was a long time now that she was nearly eight. Any other day she’d look in the surf for something gross to leave on Bob’s doorstep. Like a tuna. A big rotting tuna so maybe he’d think twice about stringing up barbed wire where you couldn’t see it.
The waterfall slid from behind the curtain of leaves sheltering it from view, soft hush of spray getting steadily louder as she outran the waves. She stuffed the tough end of a ziplock between her teeth as she flattened herself between the rock face and the harshest push of the water, slipping behind it into the cavern beyond, crawling on her hands and knees to the tiny shrine she’d built to the Kupua. Carefully emptying the ziplock into her hands and then stripping the warm offering of its coverings, she placed it on the rock and sat back on her haunches.
“Okay!” she called into the darkness. The ceiling dripped. “We’ve talked about my parents, and I know you feel bad about that, so I won’t yell at you again. But this is for my brother, okay?” Gravel was digging into her knees, but she was careful to keep still. “So don’t you take him, too. Alright?”
She waited just a moment to see if there was an answer, but there never was. She was used to it, used to sometimes finding last week’s offerings untouched and kind of moldy-it wasn’t about if they took it, it was about if you left it.
“Enjoy your hot pocket!”
Mac barely managed not to break an ankle leaving-Jensen was so gonna kill her, she was so late-so she didn’t hear the soft snuffling from the darkest corner of the cave. Or see the scuffed and bloodied fingers that closed around the pastry with a quiet trill.
~*~
“Well, do you know where she might’ve-Mac!”
“I’m here! I’m am, lookit, I’m here!”
The knots in Jensen Ackles’s stomach didn’t let up when his baby sister skidded to a stop, her hair in a wild ponytail their mother would’ve pitched a fit about, but not as much as she would’ve objected to scratches on Mac’s ankles. Jensen caught one of her prettier classmates giving her a sniff of disapproval for them, or maybe for the dirt on her clothes, and the discomfort spread to his ribs.
Mac hadn’t exactly been Little Miss Popular before the accident, but Jensen was starting to realize that she might not be making friends at all. Or keeping the few she’d had.
“It’s your fault!” She stopped to kick ineffectually at his shin, and he winced at yet another pair of trashed sandals. “You ate the last hot pocket!”
“Mac, you can’t do that,” he hissed, dropping down into a crouch as she collapsed onto the school steps. “Skipping class? Huge no-no. But actually crawling out a window while class is still going on-“
“’No-no?’” she blurted, then pouted so hard he had to fight back the urge to squish her lips together like when she was littler and thought he’d made the stars out of mango ice cream. “Jensen, the Kupua-“
“Mac,” he cut her off, exasperated and just. So damn tired. “There is no such thing as K-“
“Shut up!” she screeched, leaping to her feet, eyes wide. “You wanna die too?”
Jensen froze, trying to remember how to breathe as a couple teachers looked their way. “Mac,” he said, “that’s-“
She shoved him, fifty pounds of pissed off sister knocking him on his ass before he knew she was moving. She took off faster than he could scramble upright, bony legs sprinting her out of sight behind a row of plumeria shrubs running along the main road.
“At least she’s heading towards the house this time,” he muttered, running after her with his blinders on.
So he didn’t see the gigantic mass of muscle until he’d nearly dislocated his shoulder slamming into it.
The muscles were stuffed into a black suit, blond balding head shaved into a buzz cut, bottomless sunglasses perched on a slightly burnt nose and a completely expressionless face. Jensen snapped an apology and sidestepped, but the suit moved to block his way. “Excuse me,” Jensen bit out, trying to get an elbow around the guy to move him out of the way.
“What do you mean,” Mr. Muscle rumbled, his buzz cut looking particularly threatening, “’this time?’”
“Um, none of your fucking business,” Jensen informed him, quietly in case the teachers had an ear turned their direction. He jerked his arm out of the way of Muscle’s grasp-“Seriously?”-and shoved past the lolo to get to his sister, thanks so fucking much.
He had to stop a couple times to pick up the remains of her flip-flops so they wouldn’t litter. No matter how many years they’d lived on Maui, the people of Hana always kept a special eye on the malihini-Ackles. Especially since…yeah. Especially since that. It was a small town, the last undeveloped one in Hawaii according to the tourist brochures-so yeah, close knit community. Lots of room for outsiders.
Who the hell’s business was it for some actual malihini-because Jensen knew every last soul in this town at least by sight if not name, so he knew a newbie when he saw one-to butt into their lives?
Well, besides the social worker dropping by in half an hour. Fuck.
Jensen sprinted across the driveway and tore up the stairs, cursing his fair skin every time his legs flashed their freckles below his shorts, the faint pink of his arms clashing with the flowery salmon-colored material of his obligatory work shirt. Mac had it so much easier-she browned in the sun, sometimes to an absurd degree if he didn’t make her lather in sun block like he did. Sometimes they didn’t even look like siblings. Sometimes he got skeezy looks from people wondering why a guy in his mid-twenties was wandering around with a girl not even out of third grade.
Maybe that’s what Muscles was thinking. Which was just…great. He loved looking skeezy around his kid sister.
“Mac!” he hollered the instant their rickety door caved under the shove of his shoulder. It stuck sometimes after a storm. Okay, it stuck all the time but especially after a storm. “We really don’t-Jesus Christ.”
“You swore,” Mackenzie sniffled from her post halfway up the stairs, ready to bolt again. Not that he would’ve had a hard time finding her, all he had to do was follow the blood trail.
“Mac,” he choked, “What the-What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything!” she protested, voice rising in what was promising to be a good wail.
“It looks like someone murdered a small animal in the foyer!”
“It’s my foot!” she snapped, shoving it straight out at him to show off the long but shallow cut along her instep. “It’s not my fault! I didn’t have shoes!”
“You didn’t have shoes?” a low voice rumbled from just behind Jensen, making him jump so hard he cracked his skull on the top of the doorframe.
“Sh-ow,” he switched. He didn’t curse in front of Mackenzie if he could help it, but-oh come on, didn’t Muscles have anything better to do than follow him home? Wasn’t his life fucking hard enough? “Okay, man,” Jensen growled through his teeth, instantly moving to block the way and Mac from view, “She’s my sister, alright? No need to call protective services or whatever, you can back-“
“I am…protective services,” Muscles said, eyebrow arching over his needlessly dark sunglasses.
Jensen felt cold. “…Yeah right.”
“You are Jensen Ackles. This is your considerably younger sibling, Mackenzie,” he rattled off in a deceptively bored drawl, “Your parents died in a car crash six months ago and I have been scheduled to meet with you on this day and time for the last two weeks. You have been given ample opportunity to provide a suitable reason for an alternate appointment and have failed to do so. Now that I am here, failure to permit entry and an interview with yourself and your sister will result in an immediate inquest, even more dire than the measures you have been subjected to thus far. And believe me, Mr. Ackles, your situation is dire enough.”
Jensen tried to keep his face blank, but his fingers were starting to ache where his nails were digging into the doorframe. “…You’re early,” he forced out after a moment, “by half an hour.”
“Sometimes,” the man hummed with a humorless curl to his smile, “half an hour is all it takes.”
“O…kay then,” Jensen said, trying his best to calm the fuck down. He cleared his throat. “Would you like to come in?”
“That would be the purpose of the mission, yes.”
Jensen bit down on a surge of soul-draining hysteria as the social worker lumbered through their door and instantly took in the state of their floor, red smears across the hardwood like some scene out of a horror flick. Then he shoved his game-face back on.
“Mackenzie, honey, you want me to take a look at your foot?”
Mac aborted a roll of her eyes at the nickname, but she said yeah as he climbed the stairs and held out her arms to be carried. Jensen swept her up and prayed very hard that this wouldn’t be seen as inappropriate touching or some other shit. If he didn’t hug her, who would?
Muscles lumbered heavily behind him, just in time to see the absolute disaster of their bathroom.
Jensen tried very hard to swallow his groan. He’d been up until two in the morning getting the house in order, and guess what? It’d taken ten minutes for an eight-year-old to make it look like the bathroom hadn’t been cleaned in six months. She’d been looking for the bandaids, that was fairly obvious, but in the process she’d squished out half their toothpaste, knocked over the Listerine, and somehow found his so very rarely used and insanely well hidden (well, he’d thought so) bottle of KY, and dropped it in the sink, label on prominent display.
“Whoa,” he blurted, knocking their heads together as he held her one-armed to grab the lubricant and chuck it in the trash with a too-loud laugh, “I don’t know where you find these things, kiddo.”
“It was right next to your porn,” she supplied helpfully, and Muscles sucked in a breath. Jensen tried very hard to spontaneously be anywhere else.
“I’m really-“ he stammered when that didn’t work, “I don’t-I mean, I hide it! Hid it-I didn’t even remember-”
“Does your brother often inform you of his homosexual proclivities as well as deprive you of footwear and leave you unsupervised?”
“Hey, your knuckles say ‘Clif,’” Mackenzie pointed out a tad on the blatant side, but Jensen gave her knee a weak squeeze as he set her down on the toilet to let her know he appreciated it.
It went pretty downhill from there.
~*~
“Oof,” Mackenzie announced as they crash landed on the couch, Clif’s obnoxiously loud black Mercedes roaring down their driveway. She dropped her feet on the coffee table next to Jensen’s, and he could just make out the edge of one Paddington Bear Band-Aid from where he was never moving again.
Jensen grunted, maybe an agreement. Could people survive being thrown in a meat grinder? Felt like it.
At least Mackenzie had been spared the worst of it, off playing in her room while Clif gave him the verbal equivalent of a gangbang. Er. Or something not quite so… Jesus Christ, he needed to take bleach to the inside of his brain-apparently not saying anything that could be construed as adult content wasn’t enough, he had to stop thinking it, too.
No sex life that could in any way make an impact on her life, had been the general gist of it, but Jensen had resigned himself to celibacy pretty damn quick after his parents’ accident. He didn’t even really miss sex-or at least the complications that came with the getting of sex-and with an eight-year-old to look after, that was definitely a convenient feeling to nurture.
He was honestly expecting more sh-stuff about him being qu-a fa-gay, oh fuck it. Fuck this, he was trying so goddamn hard. Surely his parents hadn’t been this stressed, right? They did have the advantage of there being two of them, but single parents looked after multiple children all over the world on a daily basis; why was he failing so spectacularly?
Jensen’s plan to slip into a coma and die would’ve worked a lot better if there hadn’t been wiggling toes pressing into his ankle. He nudged her away once, twice, then gave up and mumbled, “So. That went well.”
“Uh-huh,” she drawled, suspiciously cheerful. Jensen snapped an eye open to look at her. “You know what that means!”
“Oh no,” he said instantly, trying to make his body run away and barely managing to turn sideways. “Mac, Mac, no. When I said it went well, I mean-it went really, really bad, kiddo.”
She scowled and half-heartedly thrashed her feet at him, adding some physical bruising to the mental. “You said! And I did my best-you promised, Jensen Ross Ackles!”
“Hey!” It came out a lot harsher than he meant it to at hearing his full name thrown at him, and her eyes instantly went huge and borderline tearful. “Okay, no, Mac. You do not get to use those eyes on me. Come on,” he prompted when her hands and her gaze dropped to her lap, dejected, and he tried to make his voice sound teasing, “no way was that your best, right?”
Wrong. Thing. To say. Mac burst into tears, hugging her legs up to her chest and burying her face in the skin bared by her cut-offs. For all that they’d been through, Mackenzie wasn’t a big crier-revenge yes, bawling no-and that meant she really had tried.
If that was her trying…shit. He really didn’t want to see what she’d do if she didn’t.
Jensen felt the last of his strength drain away with his sigh as he gathered her close to his side, looping an arm around her fragile shoulders and letting his cheek rest on the top of her head.
“You really want a puppy?” he asked, last ditch effort to make it sound weird.
She hiccupped, then shifted to look him in the eye. “Don’t josh with me, Jensen Ross,” she ordered in a perfect imitation of their mom, and he had to rough her manic hair so she wouldn’t see his face.
“Ugh. Fine.” He groaned, dragging a hand over his eyelids as she lit up, “But only-and I’m dead serious about this-only if you pay for pizza.”
“Okay.” She held out her hand for his wallet, pulled out a twenty when he forked it over, then gave both back. Easy as breathing.
“Okay, now, go get the phone.”
Mac shoved her foot in his face. “I’m gimpy!”
“God,” he groaned, letting her shove him off the couch, “I have to do everything around here.” He crawled laboriously into the kitchen just to make Mac giggle and leap onto his back.
“We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” she asked when they’d sprawled out on the kitchen floor, waiting for the phone on Jensen’s chest to ring for directions to their house.
Jensen tried to tell himself he wasn’t surprised by her anymore, and failed. “Nah, kiddo,” he lied, before he could realize it was sort of the truth. “It’s just me that’s in trouble.”
~*~
He was kind of hoping he’d be able to put off the dog thing for…oh…forever. Definitely until later than 7 A.M. on his one morning off.
“They don’t. Even. Open,” he grit out, grabbing her around the waist to fling her on the bed and smother her cackle of laughter with a pillow.
“You’re a lazy butt, Jensen Ackles,” she informed him, drawing his name into ten syllables and burrito-ing up in his covers until he didn’t have any. He (mostly) mock-growled and yanked them back, spinning her…off the bed.
“You okay?” he grunted when she stayed silent, figuring it was the brotherly thing to do.
“No,” she moaned piteously, flailing a hand over the edge of the mattress. “I’mma need a seeing eye-dog, okay? I did research,” she added, popping upright suddenly to tug at his hand. “These dogs, they like, they see for blind people and make sure they don’t walk into stuff and some of them even know sign language so it’s like, it’s like speaking dog, Jensen. So I want one of them.”
“They aren’t gonna have seeing eye-dogs at the pound,” he told her as she crawled back on the bed and tucked her head over her knees to stare at him until he got up-they had a routine. “And pound puppies are best.”
“Yeah,” she admitted slowly, “but I still want one that talks.”
“We’ll see what they have,” Jensen mumbled into his pillow, thinking maybe if they don’t have talking dogs… “After I get up.”
There were some faint clicking sounds Jensen should have paid more attention to, and then Jimmy Buffet was bitching in his ear that he don’t know where he’s a-gonna go when the volcano blows, and Jensen nearly cracked open his skull on the bedside table he fell out of bed so fast.
“How do you listen to this crap?” Jensen demanded, slapping his hands over his ears while he tried hard not to remember riding in the car with his dad, so little he had to look up at the steering wheel while his father tapped out the steel drum rhythm with his thumbs.
Mac giggled and launched herself at him, completely oblivious. “It’s not crap! It’s Jimmy Boo-fay!”
Jensen made a show of grunting as he slung her over one shoulder. “Weirdo. Why can’t you like High School Musical like all the other teenyboppers?”
“Put me down! Put me down! Stupid freak, you’ll drop me on my head!”
“You aren’t using it, are you?”
Mac screamed half-heartedly but thumped pretty damn mercilessly on his back as they teetered down the stairs.
Breakfast was a struggle, mostly because Mackenzie wouldn’t sit down long enough to eat anything, and Jensen was both morally and financially opposed to throwing out food. Finally, after an ultimatum or two, she gulped down the last of her cereal, even kept her pouting fairly quiet when he made her wear her hiking boots instead of going barefoot. The instant her laces were tied, though, she was out the door and down the stairs, dragging Jensen by a fistful of his grungy green t-shirt.
“We’re still early!”
“What if someone gets to our dog before us?” she shouted like he was even dumber than previously expected. “Move your big feet!”
Which pretty much meant he had to slow to a snail’s pace. It was like a rule. The instant she gave up and let go, he started running, and between the two of them it turned into an all-out race to the pound behind the police station on Ilio Street.
It was pretty run down, but Jensen had gone to school with the guy behind the counter-Tom, beautiful but dumb as a tub of boardwax-so he straightened up a little when they stumbled to a stop in the lobby. They’d dated for about a week in high school, not that Jensen was entirely convinced Tom remembered. Didn’t make him any less fun to look at.
“We want a dog,” Mac announced before Jensen could get the air to speak.
Tom looked a little surprised but said, “You’ve come to the right place, I guess.”
Maybe the previous metaphor was giving boardwax a raw deal. “Hey, Welling.”
“Hey…you. So you wanna…?” he nodded towards the room labeled ‘Dogs’ and Jensen tried hard not to widen his eyes too much.
“Yeah, thanks. That’d be great.” Seeing as Mac was already tugging him that way.
Jensen hated kennels. This was the part he’d been dreading most when he agreed to a pet, because the hardest part was going to be walking out of here with just one dog.
Or…not. Because…there really weren’t any.
Mac looked around at the empty cages, and then leveled her gaze at Jensen like this was his fault.
“Maybe they’re just back further,” he said, because honestly, there was never an empty shelter in Hawaii. With all the strays he saw running around, no way was there not one single dog in need of a home. And they were getting a dog from a pound, even if he had to borrow a car and brave the Hana Highway.
Just as he was about to give up and ask Tom if they were in the right room, Mac perked up, pulled free of his grasp and bounded down to the far end of the cage line-up, dropping into a crouch in front of something…something that had fur, but was not in a cage.
“Mac,” he warned, forcing his steps to stay cautious as he hurried over, “wait, Mac, we don’t-“
The thing crept out of its hiding place towards Mackenzie’s beckoning and baby talk. And it wasn’t…that bad. Actually, it was really kind of cute, in a bizarre, disproportionate way. Definitely a dog, and not like, some sort of mutant bear, which had been his first guess. Its head was bigger than the rest of its stocky body suggested it should be, covered in lightly tanned fur and darker bristles down its back, probably with some German Shepherd in there. Darker triangle ears flopped on either side of a pair of startlingly blue-grey-green-brown eyes made even more noticeable by the brown markings along its eyelids, and twin spots on either side of its muzzle made it look like the dog had dimples when it smiled at them-insomuch as dogs could actually smile.
“Um…” Jensen stalled, for no reason he could actually put his finger on. “Mac, I don’t-“
“You’re so pretty,” she crooned, her hands looking impossibly small as she reached to pet its head. The dog looked startled, flinched away, and Jensen had Mac in his arms faster than either of them could blink. “What did you do that for?” she demanded, jabbing her elbows at him as the dog let out a low whine. “Look, you scared it!”
“I didn’t-Mac, he’s not in a cage, we don’t-“
“You don’t know it’s a boy!”
He dipped them half upside-down to check, Mac’s ponytail swinging in his face and the dog looking more than a little perplexed. “Now we do.”
The dog wagged his tail.
She was squirming in earnest now, so he put her down before he lost an eye but kept a good grip on her shoulder. “Let me just-check with Tom, alright? He might not be for sale.”
“You’re such a grownup,” she griped, but let him pull her as far as the lobby, if only because the dog was following them just out of reach of her grabby fingers.
“Whoa,” Tom said when he saw the animal, “Where’d he come from?”
Jensen shot a long slow look at the room they’d just left. “What do you mean?”
“Oh hey,” Tom chuckled, waving a hand in front of his face, “Never mind, man. ‘M kinda baked this morning, yeah?”
“What were you baking?” Mackenzie piped up, and Jensen was going to kill him.
“Uhh…brownies,” Tom nodded vaguely. “Yeah. Hey, so you want him?”
“Yes!”
“Mac,” Jensen said, folding down to her level-and consequently, the dog’s. Those big strange eyes met his over her shoulder, curious and baleful and something else, and he was really projecting, but Mac was mirroring most of those emotions herself. He let out a soft groan. “Seriously? This is what you want.”
“Yeah,” she said, like What planet are you from? as she looped an arm around the dog’s neck. He didn’t flinch this time, even leaned into her a little, and those were both really good signs. “He’s good. I can tell.”
The dog made a soft ‘roo’-ing sound, and Jensen was so fucked.
“You cannot skip class anymore,” he ordered, jabbing her hard enough that she’d feel it but not more than that, “Okay? For no reason, whatsoever. If you’ve got your Kupua thing on Fridays, wait for me and I’ll go with you after school, okay? And I’ll stay far enough that they can’t see me, alright? Deal?”
“Deal,” she agreed, giving his hand a good shake.
“And,” he added, holding her grip, “we both have to do better for the CPS, okay? That’s nonnegotiable.”
“Dude.” Her eyes rolled, but he held on until she said, “Yeah, okay, okay! Can we get him now? Please?”
“Yeah, that’s $68 dollars,” Tom mumbled when Jensen straightened up, and Jensen winced even though he’d been prepared for a lot worse. “And uh, get him spayed at some point, yeah?”
Jensen blinked. “You mean neutered?”
Tom shrugged, palms out. The dog whined.
He sighed and signed his name on the check, then again on the adoption forms, and heard himself ask, “Does he have a name?” before he remembered who he was talking to.
“Duh!” Mac huffed as the dog sat almost on top of Jensen’s feet and panted quietly up at him. “Kawelo!”
“Seriously?” Jensen asked, “What is with you and these Kupua things?”
“Don’t listen to him,” Mac told the dog-Kawelo-as she smooshed his face (Jensen kept an eye on them both in case the canine wasn’t digging it, but he didn’t seem to mind). “Kawelo was the most awesomest Kupua ever.”
Tom gave them a free collar and leash as soon as the papers were signed, and a big bag of dog food Jensen was sure looking forward to lugging home by himself. Mac got to hold onto Kawelo, which honestly went a lot better than Jensen was expecting-the big dog paced easily along between them while Mackenzie rattled off everything she wanted to show him in their house, where they could play fetch and how Jensen would take him running every morning (Jensen squawked indignantly and told the dog no way in hell was he getting up earlier than he already did, humoring Mac in the idea that the dog both actually understood them and gave a damn), and Kawelo seemed happy enough to get out of the kennel that he didn’t mind. Or whatever. Jensen was still wrapping his head around the fact that he had willingly signed on for another mouth to feed.
Speaking of which… Jensen stopped them next to a fruit cart parked at the end of a driveway on the way home, one working on the honor system. “Can you hold onto these and Kawelo?” he asked, and Mac barely stopped monologue-ing long enough to hold out her arms for the bunch of bananas, two mangoes, and a pineapple while Jensen slipped a five into the till. He wound up carrying the pineapple in his teeth before too long when Mac started wincing at the prickles on her bare skin, and Kawelo almost tripped over his own feet he was so busy staring. Dumb dog.
~*~
“Afirmative,” the for-all-intents-and-purposes-man sighed as he adjusted the focus to better view the trio headed to the beach, “He has achieved contact.”
“I love it when you say ‘affirmative,’” his companion hummed as he wriggled close enough to hook a leg around the other man’s hips under the ruse of spying through the same binoculars, “It’s much more positive.”
“Michael,” the first sighed, “I wish you would stop underestimating him. Perhaps he has a devious plan.”
“Misha,” the second mimicked, “he’s your crack baby. When have you ever had a plan that worked?”
“What is a crack baby?” Misha asked, frowning, but Mike only rolled his eyes then rolled away, offering Misha a hand up. “For a native you are not particularly helpful in explaining colloquialisms.”
“Dude,” Mike said, “do you want me to sit here explaining colloquialisms or would you like to keep an eye on your boy?”
The scientist blinked. “I believe I would prefer the second option. Though as to whether-”
“Alrighty then. And hey, I thought we talked about you dressing yourself. As in, you weren’t going to do it anymore.”
“You were gone quite early this morning.” Misha frowned down at himself. “Is there something inappropriate with the clothing I have on?”
Michael blinked, as if it was suddenly hard for him to speak. “Silver lycra is not…in this season.”
“In?”
"Yes…In.”
Misha nodded, hesitantly. “I will trust your judgment as you have lived among the humans for many years.”
“That’s great-really Misha, good initiative-but you don’t have to strip right now.”
~*~
They spent the rest of the day at the beach once Jensen dumped the dog food at home, packed them a lunch, and grabbed his board and sun block. Kawelo took a liking to Jensen even quicker than he did to Mackenzie, never going farther than five feet from him, even (especially) when Mackenzie threw sticks for him to catch.
"He might not be a stick dog," Jensen tried explaining at one point when she was getting frustrated. "He could just be a ball dog.”
“Then we will buy him a ball,” she decreed, and Jensen shot the dog a look.
"You know sticks are free," he pointed out. Kawelo even looked a little sheepish, which was kind of too adorable to stand. “You’ll put anything else in your mouth,” Jensen muttered, looking out at the sea. The dog wagged his tail and continued chewing on the end of their beach towel.
Jensen picked up his board and hollered for Mac to stay sharp as he slid out across the water, and part of him wasn’t actually surprised to see the dog paddling after him with a grace that he certainly didn’t possess flopping about on shore. He rolled his eyes and stayed in the shallows, not about to lead a dumb mutt out into the rolling waves of the surf.
“Go get Mac, boy, go get her,” he prompted, and no one was more surprised when the dog actually obeyed, albeit with what looked like a roll of its eyes. Kawelo bounded up on shore and over to Mac and her sand castle, waiting until he was within half a foot to shake off and drench her. She squealed and then shrieked when Kawelo took off with her plastic shovel.
Jensen snorted, letting a foot dangle in the water to keep from drifting out to sea while his sister and her dog tussled in the sand. The longer Kawelo was out of that kennel the more comfortable he seemed, exuberance growing until Jensen called him into the water again just to wear him out.
“Good boy,” Jensen praised only a little sarcastically when Kawelo met him. “Glad to see you know who’s boss.”
“I’m boss!” Mackenzie shouted over the waves, but Kawelo looked like he was smirking at them both, so Jensen flicked water at his face and started racing him to shore. (The dog won twice over, but he had four legs; what the hell did anyone expect?)
Jensen hosed them all off behind the Tiki bar he worked weekend nights at, Mac shrieking at the cold water and Kawelo snapping big mouthfuls of it out of the air. He made sure to fill a tub up for him before he tied him up, deliberately ignoring the crushed look on the dog’s face he was half-sure he was imagining anyway.
“But I want to stay out here with Kawelo,” Mac whined, and the dog gave an answering whimper.
“I don’t want you out here alone. And yeah, yeah, Kawelo would be there and how can I leave him alone blah, okay? I get it. I’m unreasonable. Come on.” Jensen nudged her along despite her protests, shooting the dog a glare over his shoulder. Maybe less of a glare than he meant to, because Kawelo looked so damn dejected it made his insides hurt.
“Late, Ackles.”
“We got a new puppy!” Mac crowed before Jensen could open his mouth to apologize, bounding up to Ben in a way that said Jensen was going to have to keep an eye on her tonight if he didn’t want her sneaking out back.
Ben, a massive Hawaiian with an affinity for Jack Daniels and TV dramas, leveled Jensen with a look.
“He’s tied up-not gonna be a problem,” Jensen promised as he ‘scrubbed in’ (a Grey’s Anatomy terminology which had stuck) and washed the rest of the salt off his skin.
"Better not be. This ain’t your boarding house.” But he handed Mac her virgin lava flow-half strawberry daiquiri mix and half piña colada-and she settled in her corner behind the bar with her doodle-riddled homework, so Jensen took a breath and dove in.
It was pretty standard for a Saturday-or at least a Saturday off-tourist season, which meant more locals than malihinis slapping money on the syrup-sticky counter. Jensen poured and shook until his wrists ached, flirted when he had to, made small talk to the morose. Two guys lingered at the bar longer than most and Jensen tried to give them space-they were sitting a little too close to be buddies-but they were also a little too close to Mac’s corner for his comfort, even though there was no way they could-
“Hey, isn’t that your kid sister?” the one with a shaved head asked, tipping his glass toward the front door and turning away before Jensen could even answer.
Shit. Fuck.
Some guy was crouched down in front of Mac outside the bar, offering her a pink plumeria flower.
Jensen elbowed no less than ten people on his way to get to her, glass breaking in his wake as people stumbled and dropped their drinks. He could not give less of a shit, fury burning hot in the back of his throat by the time he caught the flimsy screen door and shoved it open, slam of wood making the man’s head snap up in a panic.
“Yeah, buddy, be scared,” Jensen snarled, striding for them.
The guy-probably younger than Jensen even, with huge soulful eyes and floppy brown hair (trustworthy face, Jensen’s brain spat)-stumbled back and almost fell before he got his bare feet under him, tearing off into the darkness. Of course, the instant Jensen started after him he caught a flash of buzzcut in the parking lot.
Black suit. Knuckles said ‘Clif.’ Jensen ground to a halt with the sheer effort it took not to scream, "You have the worst fucking timing," on top of fighting the fierce need to rearrange the floppy-haired guy’s features into something a lot less appealing to little girls.
“Mac,” he snapped instead, through his locked jaw, “what the hell?” He flinched and shook his head and Clif was heading their way, shit. “Heck. What the heck? What the heck, Mac?” The freak hadn’t even been wearing a shirt, for Christ’s sake, and his shorts looked suspiciously like the ones Ben had hanging up on his clothesline behind the bar. And the sick fuck was offering his sister flowers.
He didn’t notice until now that she was pissed off and tearful, trying to reach the flower dropped on the pavement despite the grip he had on her arm-not too tight, but he loosened his hand a little anyway.
“He was just being nice!” she yelled, punching at his hip and thigh, “He was helping me find Kawelo!”
Jensen felt like he’d swallowed a hundred poisonous toads by the time Clif reached them. He barely managed to get Mac behind himself, her body suddenly stiff with nervous vibrating tension as she realized who their audience was.
Clif shoved a hand towards the bar. “Is this really the environment you want your sister in?” he growled like a kick to the gut. Even deeper than that as Jensen realized Clif was just as angry, had probably seen Mac talking with a stranger a few seconds before Jensen had.
“It’s just for the weekend,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. “My regular babysitter is out of town.”
“You should have found a replacement.”
“It was last minute-and anyway, it’s a total tourist bar, she was perfectly safe-“
“Obviously not.”
“-inside,” Jensen finished, words tumbling past numb lips. “I told her to stay inside.” He made himself breathe. “Look. I know we keep showing you the wrong foot, but we’re working on it, we are. We’re getting better.” He swallowed hard. “You keep…catching us at bad times.”
“Coincidence I can accept,” Clif bit out, too-white teeth clenched together, “but not at the expense of a child’s safety or wellbeing. This is two strikes against you, Ackles. It would be in your very best interest to make sure there isn’t a third.”
Clif asked Mac a couple questions to make sure she was alright, and even through the depressingly dark shades (that the man was still wearing at night, no less) Jensen could tell a disparaging look when he was getting one. Then Clif was gone, and Jensen numbly led Mac around to the back so he wouldn’t have to drag her through an alcohol saturated crowd. Kawelo sat up when he heard them coming, tail wagging guiltily because hoo boy was he not wearing his collar.
“What’s were you saying about the dog?” he asked, words coming out thick in his throat, and then Mac ripped free and ran to him, throwing her arms around his furry neck. He dimly noticed Ben’s shorts hanging lopsided on their line before he picked Mac up and carried her inside, ignoring her (honestly fairly half-hearted) protests as he put her back in her spot.
“You move again,” he warned, and let the sentence drag out. She nodded, jaw firm, cheeks still damp and the flower crushed in her hand. Jensen went back out and got Kawelo tethered again, going up another notch on his collar so he wouldn’t be able to slip free again.
Still. Jensen wasn’t entirely surprised that Kawelo managed to wiggle out of his leash within half an hour to sneak into the bar on his belly, ears pressed flat against his head as he dropped it in Mac’s lap. He didn’t really have the energy to care at this point, as long as Ben didn’t find out.
Baldy and his companion had moved from his immediate vicinity, though the scruffy one in the unfortunately colored Hawaiian shirt seemed to have an aversion to blinking when he stared Jensen’s way. Another admirer, just what Jensen needed. Baldy kept snapping his fingers in front of his boyfriend’s face with increasing annoyance, then grabbed his wrist and hauled him out of the place.
Great, Ackles, way to repay the guy.
Jensen scanned the crowd for someone else to focus his attention on and came up with an entire pack of Norwegians wearing the same Hilo Hattie pattern doing shots. So at least he something to keep his brain minimally occupied for the rest of his shift.
~*~
“Are you mad at me?” Mac asked on their walk back, moonlight spilling across the pavement in front of them. Jensen had Kawelo’s leash in his hand but no dog attached to it, the canine following along at Mac’s side without incentive. He still looked a little guilty, but it could’ve been Jensen projecting again.
"No," Jensen said after a moment, "Disappointed.”
“Oh.” He knew without looking that she was staring at her shoes, hands shoved as far in her pockets as they’d go. “That’s worse.”
“Yeah, it is.” Her silence turned stony, stubborn, hiking boots shoved against the cracked pavement but her footsteps steadily getting softer the longer they walked. He let her stew all the way home, until they were inside the house, up the stairs, ready for bed, and Jensen was tucking her underneath her tropical fish blanket. “You know better, Mac," he said then, blunt.
She huffed and flung her hands behind her head, staring miserably up at the ceiling. "Yeah,” she muttered after a long grudging moment of Jensen refusing to move. “But he didn’t look-“
"Creepy comes in all sizes. If anyone ever tries to get you away from me, you kick and scream and holler and then run away.” He made sure to keep the expression on his face steady. Small crying girl looking for her dog-what would Jensen have done in floppy-haired-guy’s place? He bit back…something. So maybe he was a little overprotective. Sue him. He had a right to be.
“Can I have a bedtime story?” Mac’s voice came out legitimately timid. Jensen caught himself searching for Kawelo and found him hovering in the doorway, looking uneasy. Or pleading, or cautious, or who the hell knew anyway because he was a dog. Mac noticed him a split second after Jensen and called him over with eye-watering high notes before wrapping her arms around his furry neck to rest her chin on his head. Which left Jensen under the direct influence of two pairs of puppy eyes. They even whined in sync.
“God, I’m such a pushover,” Jensen groaned, flopping back on the bed across Mac’s knobby knees. The dog made another noise, this time almost like agreement, and Mac giggled at his glare. “So, what? You want the Kawelo story?”
“Yes, please.” She even sounded remorseful as she arranged pillows under his head and freed her legs to curl up at his side. Kawelo’s heavy head dropped on Jensen’s mostly-bare knee and he found he…really liked the warmth. Surprisingly.
“Trying to butter me up,” he grumbled at them both and closed his eyes. Took a long, deep breath. Dragged his dad’s words from the back of his head to the tip of his tongue and then out.
“Once upon a time there was a Kupua. And Kupuas are,” they chorused before Jensen continued, “ancient Hawaiian trickster gods. Pranksters. They sneak into your room at night and mess up your things,” he teased with a predictable and totally avoidable tickle attack, which Mac dodged.
“They do not,” she said with more conviction than he expected, but he shook it off.
“They might. They definitely cause things like heavy traffic and tourist season, and spilled drinks and misunderstandings and missing shoes.” He fell into it easier now than he had for the longest time after his parents’…accident. Some of it was pure Hawaiian mythology, some of it was his dad, some of it was Jensen. His dad used to call it ‘the folk process.’ “Their mischievous ways-” Another poke at Mackenzie. “-are because their ancestors were part animal-sometimes a bird or a dog or a rat-and when a Kupua baby is born an animal soul sneaks inside to make it faster, smarter, stronger. And Kawelo,” they said together, “was the best of them.”
~*~
Kawelo-the dog, Kawelo-followed Jensen all the way downstairs to the kitchen, something smug around his muzzle and those weird eyes never leaving Jensen as he fished out a beer and collapsed on the couch. Maybe it was one of those canine things. Jensen was staring right back, and maybe (he was pretty sure he’d read this somewhere) the dog saw eye-contact as a challenge of authority.
“Too fucking bad, fido,” he said softly over the barely audible late night TV, tipping his bottle to where Kawelo had plopped himself down in a corner of the room to stare at Jensen some more. “I am the top dog, alpha male, and I-and I totally forgot to feed you at all.”
Kawelo’s tail wagged cheerfully as Jensen dragged himself upright with a heartfelt groan, rubbing a hand over his face as he stumbled back into the kitchen and fished out one of their tackier plastic bowls, muttering, “I am an awesome caretaker is what I am. Fuck.”
The dog’s ears pricked forward when Jensen set the bowl down in front of him, but he seemed far more interested in watching Jensen move than the promise of food-yet another creepy, weird thing about him. Jensen forced himself to watch the grainy pictures on TV and drink his beer, even when Kawelo finished chewing and started creeping forward on his belly the same way he had at the Tiki bar.
Jensen flicked a glance over when Kawelo reached the coffee table. The dog stopped instantly, like one of those rabbits on the discovery channel that don’t realize there’s no snow for them to be camouflaged against. “You are such the weirdest dog,” he muttered. Kawelo’s mouth opened in something like a grin.
Something funny happened on the TV and when Jensen next looked for Kawelo he had his big furry head propped up on the couch cushion nearest Jensen’s legs, blinking up at him in a picture of purest innocence.
“Dude,” Jensen grunted, frowning at him around his beer bottle, “Creepy.”
Kawelo’s long tongue slid out and lapped the fingers of Jensen’s free hand just once, and Jensen jumped a little at the wet rasp before he moved his hands out of reach. The dog smirked at him. And didn’t move.
“Okay, fine!” Jensen snapped, shoving over on the sofa to make room for his-no, Mac’s-massive ass dog, who leapt up so fast and so delighted that Jensen had the fleeting thought of what kind of family had ditched this creature at the shelter, and did they maybe have the right idea there. Kawelo ignored his grumblings-well, yeah, he didn’t exactly speak English now, did he?-and settled down (more or less) with his head in Jensen’s lap no matter how many times Jensen tried to direct him elsewhere.
A commercial for Cherished Possessions-which as far as Jensen could tell was a knock-off of Antiques Roadshow-came on, demanding his full attention with their declarations of never ending love for 16th century dog figurines. Maybe if he stared hard enough this wouldn’t actually be happening. He wouldn’t be bonding with this animal he had no real assurance he’d be able to keep.
“…find the one you can truly cherish,” the spokeswoman crooned, pressing a ceramic beagle to her unrealistically ample bosom, “money isn’t an object. There’s a connection, a bond, that transcends-“
Kawelo whined, nosing at him. “Dude,” Jensen growled, “there’s no way you have to go out yet. Settle.” The dog huffed something like a sigh but obeyed, settling its head back on Jensen’s knee.
About halfway through the next commercial break Jensen froze when he caught himself stroking Kawelo’s head, less struck with how soft his fur was than the fact that he hadn’t actually pet Kawelo before.
The dog blinked up at him when his hand stilled, then licked his wrist, tail flopping contentedly back and forth in the TV light.
.
PART TWO