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J2 Fic: Avalanche, Part One
Title: Avalanche, Part One
Genre: J2
Pairings: Jared/Jensen
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Sex! Angst! Meddlesome womenfolk! Inarticulate manpain! Eccentric punctuation! And oh yes, aaaaaangst!!
Spoilers: None
Word Count: 20,100 for complete story (in two parts)
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is strictly for entertainment purposes. No implication of reality or truthfulness is intended or should be presumed. They are not them.
Credit: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
baylorsr for lightning-fast readthrough.
Summary: What would you leave behind to save your own life?
Avalanche, Part One
He was up before dawn as always on work days and he went downstairs with the dogs jostling each other and racing him to the bottom. He let them out into the backyard and then shut the kitchen door. It was only August but already it was cool before the sun came up and a misty touch of autumn air had begun to creep into these early mornings. He turned on the light and poured water into the coffeemaker and switched it on and then went across to the other side of the house and opened the door of what was supposed to be a den or office but had more or less become Jensen's room since the end of last season.
He said, "Jen, get up," and got no response so he said it again. There was a muffled grumble and he peered into the room's darkness and started laughing. "Dude," he said. "That mattress is like, eating you."
He switched on the light and Jensen groaned and rolled over on the mostly deflated air mattress and threw his arm over his head and Jared stood there laughing.
"This is a sorry sight, man."
"I think I sprung a leak," Jensen muttered.
"Ya think? You got like...air in the head and the foot and then you in the middle. Your ass is on the frigging floor."
"Would you turn off the light? Asshole?"
"Come on, Jen, get up." He rattled the lightswitch up and down. "Get up get up get up. Get up!"
Jensen rolled over with his eyes shut and threw his pillow at him and then flopped back over. "Jerk."
Jared laughed and left the light on and walked out. He went into the kitchen and let the dogs back in and poured out some chow for them and then fixed himself a cup of coffee and he was standing at the sink drinking it when Jensen shuffled in cleaning his glasses on the bottom of his shirt. He put them on and poured out some coffee and hauled himself onto a stool at the kitchen island.
"My back is fuckin killing me."
"Uh, maybe you need, I dunno, a bed?"
"Nope. No I don't."
"I'm gonna ask Clif to go down to Ikea today and get you a bed. Or maybe they can dig up something from the props department and send it over."
"Forget about it. This is temporary, I promised."
"Jen, you've been here since March."
"Not really."
"Okay, your stuff's been here since March and you've been here since June, so..."
"I'll call Melissa and tell her to start looking. I just keep forgetting to do it."
"You don't have to do that, just get a bed. You're living like a hobo in there. Even guys at the homeless shelter have a cot to sleep on."
"Jared," he said. He looked up at him from his coffee cup, still puffy-eyed and sheet-marked. "I told you I wouldn't crash your place for more than a couple of months. This is a sign. It's time to go."
"Your flat mattress is giving you a sign."
"Yes. My flat mattress. My flattress."
"Jen..." Jared said. The dogs had finished eating and they went over to Jensen and nudged his leg and he idly scratched their chins and then they came over to Jared and stared at him and Sadie stuck around for a head rub and Harley wandered off to lick his bowl. "You don't have to go."
"I appreciate the hospitality, dude, I really do, but seriously..."
"I don't want you to go."
"What?"
Jared shrugged. "I don't want you to go. I mean, what am I gonna do here in this big stupid house by myself? I should've never bought the fucking thing. I thought me and Sandy were gonna be living here but that's history."
"So sell it. It's just bad ex-girlfriend karma by now anyway."
"I don't want to sell it."
"You just said it was stupid."
"I didn't mean stupid, I meant...stupid. Stupid if it's just me."
Jensen laughed and gestured at the dogs. "It's never just you, Jay."
"You know what I mean. Just you know...it's been kinda fun. Having you around."
Jensen nodded and grinned. "Jared Padalecki. You got a crush on me, man."
"Shit, I've had a crush on you for years. You're prettier than half the girls I know. Hell, you're prettier than all the girls I know."
"Ain't it the truth," Jensen said. "Can't say I blame you. Package like this, who could resist?"
"Not me, bro. I am weak and backslidin."
Jensen laughed and drank his coffee and he swirled it around and stared into the cup.
"You're seriously okay if I stay?"
"I want you to stay."
"You're not just saying that."
"I'm not just saying that. I want you to stay. Stay. Please, Jensen, stay. Please. Pretty please."
"All right man, but don't beg, it's so undignified."
"You're getting a bed, though. I'm not gonna look that every morning. What would your mom think if she knew I was letting you sleep on the floor?"
Jensen got up and put his cup in the sink. "She'd think I deserved it for not getting off my ass and finding an apartment when I said I would." He yawned and stood there and looked out the window. The sky was just turning gray. "Looks like it's gonna rain. Again." He ran a hand through his hair and then walked out and went upstairs to take a shower.
* * *
A queen-sized bedframe and boxspring and mattress were delivered the next day and were set up in Jensen's room when they got home from the set. Jared went upstairs and got him sheets and blankets.
"I guess it's official. We're roommates," Jensen said. He flopped facedown on the bare mattress. "Go get me a beer, roomie. I'm wiped out."
Jared laughed and threw the bed linens on his back.
"Make your bed, roomie," he said and went out to the living room.
* * *
Sandy had helped him find this house. She had loved the kitchen with its big center island and oak-framed windows over the sink that looked out onto the backyard where the dogs would chase each other between the pine trunks. She had loved the fireplace in the living room and the den that was now Jensen's room because she said even a big house needed small spaces to cozy up in. He had bought it because she loved it and after their short engagement dissolved he had spent the whole summer hiatus dreading the idea of coming back to Vancouver and the emptiness of her house without her in it.
By September Jared could sometimes hardly believe that Sandy had ever lived with him or that he'd meant to marry her. It seemed as if Jensen had always been there. Sandy had loved this house but there was no trace of her in it. Not even something as trivial as a bottle of nail polish left behind in the medicine cabinet. He could barely picture her in any of the rooms. There was only himself and the dogs and Jensen.
When he'd get up in the pre-dawn dark he'd make coffee for both of them and pour Jensen a cup and bring it in to him. It was a habit he'd gotten into. There was a table next to the bed now, and a lamp on it, and Jensen's guitar case in the corner and his luggage and his clothes hung up on a rack they'd gotten from the studio because the room had no closet. Even with these few things the room had begun to smell like Jensen. Even more to feel like him. Jensen had a warmth that was particular to him and Jared had never felt anything like it from anyone else and now it was in this room and in this whole house and Jared liked it.
He liked waking him up in the morning. He liked making him coffee. Liked coming home with him after work and having a beer with him and watching football with him on the weekends and blowing him up in Fallout's apocalyptic wasteland or mowing him down on the mean streets of Liberty City. He liked it when Jensen would get out his guitar and just sit there and fool around with it. The sound of Jensen singing in his untrained but mellow and even voice.
He'd bring down his own guitar sometimes but Jensen was much better at it and so Jared usually just stopped and listened and watched him. The first time he'd ever met Jensen he'd wondered how the hell he was going to share the screen with someone that good looking and they had sure made an effort that first season to scruff him up and make him look older and harder and less pretty but it never worked. It always came through. The son of a bitch wasn't just pretty, he was beautiful. He'd known Jensen for three years now and he'd thought he was beautiful when he'd met him and he thought so now. Even more now.
Jared liked having him around. Liked going to bed every night knowing he was sleeping right downstairs. That more than anything. His warmth in that whole house. It filled him up. It lulled him to sleep. It kept him awake, sometimes.
* * *
It was funny as hell to read some of the stories their crazy fans wrote on the internet about them, especially after they moved in together. Now and then their friends would forward a few that were so awful but there were some out there that Jared found on his own that really weren't that bad. That were actually pretty good. That he'd sit there and read with his chin propped on his hand and his eyes fixed on the screen and an hour or two would zip by without him noticing and when he finally looked away he'd have spots in his eyes and he'd laugh and think people had some wild imagination. He loved to joke about it in public to rag their fans, or at least the ones who thought they weren't just living together but living together, and he'd laugh about it and Jensen would laugh about it and they would agree that people were just crazy.
Sometimes along with the stories he'd find pictures of himself and Jensen and he'd remember the event or the moment when the picture was taken but he didn't remember that he'd been looking at Jensen that way or how Jensen had looked at him. Sometimes he'd think that people's imaginations weren't that wild.
* * *
He was trying to do something on the guitar that Jensen had made look so easy and he couldn't figure it out and Jensen sat there on the couch and laughed at him.
"Don't quit your day job, man."
"Shut up, show me again."
"I showed it to you three times."
"This time I'll get it."
Jensen sighed. "Here," he said. He laid his own guitar down on the couch and got up and came over to where Jared was sitting and stood behind his chair and leaned over him and put his hands over Jared's and positioned his fingers on the strings. "Just like this. You got it?"
Jensen's hands were warm and he was so close that Jared could feel the hum of his voice against his ear.
"Yeah," he said. "I got it."
* * *
Late September, dark as night in the early mornings now. Coffee on and he poured a cup and brought it to Jensen's room at the other side of the house and when Jared opened the door Jensen was still sound asleep like he was most mornings. He stood there for a minute and listened to him breathe.
He had turned on the hallway light and the door was ajar so he could see Jensen lying there half on his side with his face buried between the pillows. He set the cup down on the table and he leaned over and put his hand on Jensen's back and the room was cool but Jensen was bed-warm and the thought that it would be nice to be under the covers with him came and went so quickly that it was hardly there at all.
"Jen," he said.
"Mmm."
"Time to get up."
"Yeah."
He clapped Jensen on the back.
"Up and at em prettyboy," he said and then he turned and left.
* * *
He dreamt about Jensen and in the dream he was kissing him. In a room with no furniture except a bed and nothing on the bed except white sheets and themselves and they were kissing and without saying a word they began to take off each other's clothes. He was pulling Jensen's t-shirt over his head when he woke up in the dark with an erection and the image of Jensen in that white room still filling his sight like a photoflash. He put his hand down his sweatpants and then pulled it out and sat up and swung his legs off the bed and turned on the light. Across the room Sadie raised her head and looked up at him from her bed.
"Not time to get up, girl. Go back to sleep." She dropped her chin and closed her eyes and sighed.
When his erection had subsided he thought for moment that it would be funny to tell Jensen he'd had a dirty dream about him but he already knew that for all they joked about having crushes on each other he wasn't going to do that. He wanted something to drink and he got up and closed the door behind him so the dogs wouldn't come out and when he got to the top of the landing he saw a light on downstairs. He went down the stairs quietly and from the hall he could see Jensen sitting at the kitchen island reading pages.
Jared stood in the dark and watched him. The light from the pendant lamp was on the crown of his head and Jared could see the crease of concentration between his eyes. He could be so still, so reserved. Something almost austere about him at times. Jared thought it was part of what made him good at his work, what made him able to slip so suddenly into character and become someone wholly different from himself.
He must have stood there for five minutes and he was about to turn and go back upstairs when Jensen suddenly looked up and both of them did a jolting double-take. Jared heard the legs of stool jump on the kitchen's tile floor.
"Jeez, you scared the crap outta me," Jensen said.
"Fuck, I didn't expect to find you down here."
"Well at least I'm not lurking around in the dark."
"You're getting jumpy. Too much demons and ghosties and shit."
Jensen flapped the script. "After four years of this anyone would be seeing things. You creeping up on me doesn't help."
Jared got the milk out of the refrigerator and poured himself a glass and asked Jensen what he was doing up.
"Couldn't sleep."
"Yeah," Jared said. "Me neither."
"Good. You can run through this shit with me."
"I left my script at the studio."
"So? Just use mine."
"Um...yeah, okay."
He pulled out a stool and sat down next to Jensen and they went through half the episode. They were so close to each other that their shoulders and knees touched. After a while Jensen stopped and took off his glasses and threw them on the counter and rubbed his eyes.
"I swear, I think they're stoned when they write some of this stuff." He stared out into the dark house beyond the kitchen's circle of light. "It's really been four years, hasn't it? Only four."
"Not even four. Three and change."
"Feels like more, doesn't it?"
Jared shrugged. "I don't know. Ask me that after a sixteen-hour day and I'll say yes."
"You think this is it?"
"What? Our last season?"
"Yeah."
"No. I really don't. I'm sure we're gonna go to five. Probably six."
"Jeez. Six." He sat there and scrubbed his hand across his face. "Six."
He shook his head and Jared smiled. "Come on, it hasn't been that bad. We've had a pretty good time."
"Yeah," Jensen said. He smiled. "Yeah, we have." He turned to look at Jared. "I tell you man, it wouldn't have been half as good without you."
Jared grinned. "We make a good team. Yin and yang."
"What exactly does that mean?"
"I've..." Jared shrugged. "I've actually never known what that means. Something with a circle and a couple of dots."
"That's deep, Jay. Very deep."
"It's my spiritual side coming out."
Jensen laughed and shook his head. Then he said, "You think about what you're gonna do when this is over? Assuming it ever is over."
"I dunno, I guess..." He couldn't find anything to say. He knew that Jensen was asking what he was going to do for work but the question had made him realize for the first time that there was a place waiting in his future that would not have Jensen in it. A time when Jensen would be someone he saw onscreen or got an email or text from now and then and it was unbelievable that he had never thought of this before but he hadn't. "I guess I'll just...get another job. Hopefully."
Jensen nodded and then he said, "What's going on with you and Genevieve?"
"Genevieve?"
"I see you there being all cute with each other."
"I don't know, I mean...she's hot. She's definitely hot." Jared felt his face inexplicably flushing. "And she's pretty smart, she did Broadway and stuff."
"So there's something there?"
"I don't know. We've got this big awkward scene coming up..."
"Ah yes, the soon-to-be-legendary demon-shtupping. In which Sera Gamble again succeeds in getting your shirt off."
"Thank God we're on network or she'd be getting off a lot more than that," he said and grinned and then he shook his head. "Genevieve? I don't know. We're just friends right now."
"Okay," Jensen said and he looked away and then looked back at him with a smile. "Just lookin out for m'boy."
They sat there and looked at each other for a moment and then Jensen slid off the stool. His knee brushed down the length of Jared's shin.
"I'm gonna try and get a couple hours of sleep. See you in the morning."
"Yeah," Jared said. "See you."
Jensen walked out and Jared heard the door of his room click shut. Then it was quiet. Jensen had left his glasses on the counter and after a while Jared picked them up. He folded them closed and turned them over in his hands and put them back down. Then he knit his fingers together and propped his elbows on the counter and rested his forehead on his folded hands and just sat there.
* * *
It was October and pouring outside and Jensen was on the couch with his guitar and something was droning on the television and neither of them had to work the next day so they'd already gone through one sixpack and were starting in on the other.
"What are we watching?" Jared said.
Jensen shook his head. "I have absolutely no idea."
Jared leaned his head back. "Christ, I love knowing I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow."
"Aww, does that mean no complimentary coffee service? Cuz it's a real nice perk of livin here, Jay."
"Spoiled rotten."
"You better believe it."
"How long have you been living here?"
Jensen shrugged. "Like...three months."
"It's working out really good, don't you think?"
Jensen riffed through some chords and smiled. "Yeah, it's not so bad." He cocked an eyebrow at Jared. "You can still throw me out anytime you want, you know. It's your house."
"I'm not gonna throw you out."
"You know...you wanna have Genevieve over, you can. I'll clear out."
Jared waved a hand at him. "There are no immediate Genevieve plans in my future."
"Okay well, just so you know...don't keep her outta here on my account."
"Well yeah, you know, you too. You can have Danneel over if you want."
"Yeah, she'll love that. Me and my roommate and his two smelly mutts. Very romantic."
"Hey, my mutts don't smell."
"Dude...please. I love em, but..."
"Okay, they smell a little. I'm just used to it."
Jensen smiled. After a moment he said. "I'm gettin pretty used to it too." There was that soft Texas purr in his voice that mostly surfaced when he was too drunk or too tired to bury it. "Gettin pretty used to a lotta things, Jay," he said quietly.
Jared didn't say anything. Jensen picked at the strings, a sweet sound. They didn't look at each other.
Then Jared said, "Like what?"
Jensen didn't answer and he sat there with that same smile on his face and his fingers idly playing over the strings. After a while he said, "Like you bringin me coffee in the mornin. Wakin me up. Comin home an sittin here with you like this." He stopped strumming and looked at Jared. "That sorta thing."
"Yeah," Jared said. "I know."
"Sometimes, when you come in in the mornin? I'm not always asleep. Sometimes, I wish you'd stay."
"Stay?" Jared said.
Jensen looked down at the guitar. "Yeah. Stay."
He could hear the rain lashing the house and the chatter of the television but the room still seemed breathlessly quiet.
"Jen..."
"If I told you I'd been with a couple a men in my life, would that surprise you?"
He didn't say anything. Jensen sat still with his eyes cast down on the guitar. The television light played over his face. Finally Jared said, "A little. I guess."
"Would it make you sick?"
He couldn't find the breath to answer and then Jensen looked up at him with his eyebrows drawn together and he realized Jensen thought he was going to laugh or say yes or something even worse and he quickly shook his head and said, "No." And then he said, "Did you like it?"
Jensen smiled. "It was a long time ago. I was really young, it was when I first got to L.A.. I didn't hate it. It was...different. They sure know what to do with the equipment, I'll tell you that."
Jared swallowed hard.
"Do they?"
"Yeah."
"I've never...done anything with a guy. I've never even kissed a guy...not really, not..."
"Would you like to?"
He sat there and stared at Jensen and the television muttered in the background and the rain tattooed the window as if it had been any other night but nothing was the same and never would be. He knew what he wanted to say and yet was amazed when he actually said it.
"I'd like to kiss you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"I think..." He hitched in a breath. "I think I've wanted to kiss you for a long time."
Neither of them moved. Then Jensen picked up the guitar and put it on the floor with the arm against the couch. He stood up and stepped over it and came to where Jared was sitting and leaned over and put his hand on his face and kissed him. Soft, chaste, closed-mouthed. He pulled back.
"How was that?"
"It was good."
"Do you wanna do it again?"
"Yes."
They kissed again and this time with parted lips and Jared's heart was hammering and he couldn't get enough air and he drew back.
"Wait. Wait, wait, wait."
Jensen started to move away and then Jared grabbed his shirt and pulled him in so suddenly that when Jared kissed him Jensen let out a little startled moan and that was the end of any resistance or question that Jared might have put up. He didn't want to wait for anything and he dragged Jensen onto him and they were all over each other, hands and mouths and the weight of Jensen in his lap making his head spin.
"Oh my God," Jared said breathlessly. "Oh my God." He was getting hard in his jeans. "Are we doing this? Are we gonna do this?"
"If you want to," Jensen said. He was flushed and his mouth was all wet and his eyes were wide and dark and he was so beautiful that Jared had to reach up and touch his face and his hand was shaking when he traced Jensen's mouth and the bridge of his nose and his eyelids and when he cupped Jensen's cheek in his hand Jensen leaned into his palm with his eyes closed like a cat being stroked.
"Let's do this. I want to do this."
Jensen opened his eyes and looked down at him.
"I want to do this," he repeated. "Show me what to do."
"I don't think you'll need instructions, Jay."
"Okay," Jared said. He pulled himself up on Jensen's shirt and kissed him. "Okay."
They untangled themselves and stood up and went to Jensen's room and shut the door behind them and Jared saw Sadie and Harley standing in the hall looking puzzled and then he was alone with Jensen and they leaned against the door and kissed in the dark and began to undress each other. When they were naked they lay down on the bed and he was on top of Jensen and kissing him and touching him and they were both hard and then Jensen rolled him over onto his back and sat up and straddled him. There was a streetlamp on that side of the house and its light fell through the wet window and he saw Jensen naked and palely lit in that water-rippled glow and he reached up and ran his hands over him, his chest and arms and waist and hips.
"Don't we need something?" Jared said. He hardly knew what he was saying.
Jensen dipped down and took his cock in his mouth.
"Oh God," Jared said.
Jensen ran his mouth up and down twice and then sat back up. "That oughta do it," he said. And then he raised himself up and sank himself down and Jared slid up into him. He was tight and Jared pulled himself back and down into the mattress.
"Doesn't that hurt?"
Jensen shook his head. "It hurt the first time," he said. "Now it's all right." He pushed himself down. "It's all right." When he had Jared in him up to the hilt he sat astride him with his hands on Jared's chest and both of them sucking air.
"Okay?" Jensen said.
"Yes," Jared answered. "Jesus Christ, yes."
Jensen started to move. Jared put his hands on Jensen's hips and got into rhythm with him.
"Am I doing this right?"
"Mm-hm," Jensen said. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back and rode him and Jared dug his fingers into his hips and thrust up into him. He let his eyes roam over him and saw Jensen's hand on his own cock and he pushed his hand away and closed his fist around him and Jensen groaned.
"That's good?"
"Yes. Shhh. Just go."
They didn't say anything after that. There was no sound in the room except the clocking of the bedframe and the far-off mumble of the television left on in some distant room where they'd still been other people and where this didn't happen. They came in near silence with little more than gasps and he let go in hot urgent spurts and then felt Jensen's come spill over his hand.
Jensen slowed down until he was still and then he raised himself up slowly and Jared felt his own hot come run out of him. Jensen rolled over and fell down on the bed next to him and they both lay there shaking and caught their breath. Outside it was still raining.
* * *
When he woke in the morning he thought he'd dreamt it but he was naked in the bed and he could feel the warmth of Jensen's body next to him and he opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. He had never slept in this room and at first he didn't know where he was. He turned his head and looked at Jensen asleep on his stomach with his face turned away.
We were drunk, he thought. We were drunk and it was a rough week and we were tired and it was a one-time thing and it'll never happen again. I'll tell him that. He'll probably tell me that. We're good. It'll be fine.
Yet even as he was lying there just looking at Jensen's bare back and arms he knew that he was now neither tired nor drunk and it was a whole new day and he didn't want anything about last night to be a one-time thing. He was thinking about that and wondering what he was going to do about it when Jensen stirred and turned his head and looked at him. Then he propped himself up on his elbows and folded his hands together and gazed down at Jared without saying a word.
"We were drunk," Jared said. "We were drunk and it was a rough week and we were..."
Jensen leaned over and kissed him. And that was that.
* * *
He was lucky that their characters were supposed to have a wedge between them because it gave them fewer close scenes together. Less touching. He didn't know how either of them would have pulled off some of the physical things they'd had to do in other seasons, embracing and feeling each other for injuries and being tied up together and God knows what. Jensen had so much control over himself when he was working that he probably would have soldiered through something like that but Jared knew that for him both his dick and the jig would have been up.
Such was the state of things that October that Jared had to discover whole new ranges of his own dramatic abilities. It amazed him that he could act so normal around Jensen with all the things he knew now. He knew every inch of Jensen's body with his own. Knew how he felt and tasted and how his face would blush when he had sex and the exact path that sweat would take when it ran down his chest or his back. Knew what it was like to suck a man's dick and fuck him and be fucked as well. Knew how to bend Jensen over the bed and get him off in five minutes and how to take his time and fuck him with slow, deep thrusts, massaging his dick way up inside and dragging a sustained and helpless moan out of Jensen that made Jared hard if he just thought about it. Knew where to kiss him to make him close his eyes and smile. How to touch him to make him let go of that near austerity in which he often kept himself. Where he would be every night and every morning and every day off, some of them spent almost every hour in bed. It was so much to know and let on none of it. Jared was especially nervous around women because they uncannily always seemed to know when two people had hooked up. Once Genevieve made some comment about how great it was that he and Jensen were still so close after all these years and he spent the day in a vertigo of panic and forced himself not to look at Jensen or be anywhere near him when they weren't shooting together. He waited for someone to guess. Someone to say something. No one did. But sometimes when they weren't shooting he and Jensen would catch each other's eye and not be able to look away and even at those moments with Jensen filling his thoughts Jared wondered who else was watching.
* * *
A Sunday just after Halloween. They were upstairs in Jared's room and at the window the soft gold of an autumn afternoon and the few red leaves still on the maple seemed almost to glow against the blue sky as they shook and spun in the wind.
"This is the only time of year I really like being up here," Jensen said drowsily and Jared was lying with his cheek against Jensen's back and felt his words as much as he heard them. "Not much of an autumn in Dallas and L.A., forget it."
"Mmm," Jared said. There was a light scatter of freckles between Jensen's shoulderblades and he traced them with his fingertips and Jensen took a deep breath and sighed.
"What're you doing for Thanksgiving?"
"I don't know. We just have the four days off so probably just going home. Stuff my face. Fly back."
"We could stay here," Jensen said and Jared stilled his hand and lay there.
"Here?"
"Yeah, I mean..." He shifted and Jared rolled onto his side and propped himself up on his elbow and Jensen turned over and looked up at him. "We've just got the four days and everyone else'll be gone." He stroked Jared's arm. "It would be nice. No running around airports. We'll deep-fry a turkey. Burn the place down."
It would be nice, he thought and then there was a sudden silence in his head. Deep but not peaceful. Silence of a mountain smothered by an avalanche or the ruins of a city destroyed by flood. He'd never seen it coming but he should have because they didn't fuck, they didn't screw, they didn't fool around. They made love. When had that changed? It had never changed. They had always made love, even that first drunk night because they were in love.
He lay there and thought about Thanksgiving. They'd been used to seeing each other over the holidays for years at their families' homes but this would be only the two of them in the quiet and fogbound November city where almost everyone they worked with would be gone and he saw himself and Jensen watching football and making dinner and making love, four days of it and then Christmas and New Year's and so many days after that, a lifetime of time and love and each other and he heard avalanche and flood and the terrible silence of disaster.
"I promised my mom I'd be home," Jared said. "She's still worried about me after the whole Sandy fiasco."
"You tell her you're all right?"
"Yeah, of course."
I'm all right. I'm all right because I'm in love with my co-star, happens all the time, of course it does, but this one happens to have a dick and oh God, I love him.
He rolled over and sat up and then stood up.
"I'm gonna take a shower."
"You wanna order Chinese for dinner?"
"Sure," Jared said and when he was at the door Jensen said his name and he turned around and looked at him propped up on his elbows stark naked with the sheets tangled at his feet in the bed where Jared had once slept with the girl he had planned to marry.
"You okay?"
"Yeah," Jared said and let out a little laugh. "Sure, why?"
Jensen shook his head.
"No...nothing."
He smiled and went down the hall and into the bathroom and climbed into the shower and turned the water on full blast and stood under it with his eyes closed and his hands flat on the wall.
* * *
The next time Genevieve flirted with him he turned up the charm to maximum wattage and her eyes lit up and soon she was pinging his phone with playful texts and making jokes on the set about demonic Kama Sutras and how she thought what the show really needed was a demon wedding. When the episode with their sex scene aired on the thirteenth she coyly suggested they should watch it together and he went to her apartment and watched it with her and they had sex afterwards as he'd known they would. When he saw Jensen at work the next day Jensen didn't say anything and he spent the next three nights at Genevieve's apartment until Jensen joked that if Jared didn't relieve him of dog-duty he was going to drop both mutts off at the pound and that night Jared rode back with Jensen to his own house.
The dogs tackled him and barked and stared at him with their tongues hanging out and he roughhoused with them on the living room floor and Jensen stood in the doorway with his arms folded and watched them. After a while Jared pushed the dogs off him and sat up on the floor wiping their slobber off his face.
"They missed you," Jensen said.
"Yeah, I can see that."
"So I guess it's going good with Genevieve."
"Um..." He made a great show of brushing dog hair off his shirt. "Yeah, you know."
"Look, Jared," Jensen said and paused until Jared turned and looked at him. "I don't want this to be weird. I get it, okay? She's totally hot. I'm cool with it, it's no big deal. I don't want you to feel like..." He made a gesture that took in the room. "Like you can't come home to your own house."
"No, don't worry about it, man. She was just...you know, we were kind of getting into each other and then we watched that episode and...it's a hell of a lot hotter to watch than it was to shoot."
Jensen grinned. "Yeah, it always is. It helps not to be able to see twelve crew guys standing around with their beer guts hanging out."
"Yeah, definitely," Jared said with a laugh. "So...we're good?"
"Yeah," Jensen said. "I'll sleep down here tonight. Don't worry about it."
Jared sat there and looked at Jensen leaning against the wall and understood what he was offering. But he hadn't been alone with him in almost four days and every day he had missed him in a cold and aching way that Genevieve's hot body and eagerness in bed had done little to dispel. He hadn't missed Sandy in the same way at all, he had felt hurt and lonely and more than a little humiliated by the laughable brevity of his engagement but this. He had no words for this. It was as if some frost crept into and around him when he wasn't with Jensen and he hadn't felt it even begin to thaw until he had walked back into this house that was so full of Jensen's warmth.
"I don't want you to sleep down here," Jared said. "Unless I'm with you."
They stared at each other. After a while Jensen turned to go and Jared stood up and followed him.
* * *
He kept seeing Genevieve and he used the dogs as an excuse not to be at her place and when he was home he slept with Jensen and they didn't talk about her. Two days before Thanksgiving they were in bed and almost asleep and Jensen abruptly said, "How long do you think you can keep this up?"
Jared wasn't sure if he'd actually heard Jensen or if he was already asleep and dreaming.
"What?" he muttered.
"She's not gonna be happy seeing you three times a week forever, Jay. You can't keep holding her off."
He was wide awake now and felt a sudden and surprising sliver of irritation. "I'm not holding her off. We're just taking it slow."
"What happens when she wants to speed things up?"
"Who says she will?"
"Uhh...the law of averages?"
"It's not your problem, Jen. It's not a problem at all."
"I'm saying, it's gonna be a problem pretty soon."
He felt now not only irritation but a strange sort of resentment and he said, "Are you breaking up with Danneel?" He had meant for it to come out light and humorously but it didn't.
Jensen didn't answer for a moment and then he said, "I'm not jumping from her bed to ours every other night."
Ours? Jared thought. Ours? When the fuck did that happen?
"You could if you wanted to. I don't tell you what to do."
"I'm not telling you what to do."
Jared propped himself up. He could only see the glimmer of Jensen's eyes in the dark. "What are you telling me?"
"Nothing, Jay," Jensen said. He shook his head. "I don't know. Forget about it."
Jared made himself smile and hoped that Jensen could hear it in his voice. "Everything's fine, Jen." He leaned over and kissed him. "Don't worry." He lay down and pulled up the covers and said it again, "Everything's fine."
Jensen said, "Okay," and he rolled over with his back to Jared. They made love in the morning, Jensen warm and pliant and barely awake and Jared kissing his shoulder and neck and when they were done Jared lay down over Jensen's back and caught his breath and a whisper of the conversation from the night before came to him but he dismissed it. They showered together and they didn't talk about Genevieve or anything else and that afternoon which was Thanksgiving eve Jensen left for Dallas. Jared spent his last night in Vancouver with Genevieve and was on the first flight to San Antonio on Thanksgiving morning.
* * *
Jensen called him that afternoon to wish him a happy Thanksgiving and then Jared's sister was pulling the phone away because she said she hadn't talked to Jensen in ages and they were on the phone for twenty minutes talking about God knows what and the phone got passed around to Jared's mother and father and brother too. Then Jared had to talk to Jensen's whole family and he remembered how they'd all been there with him when he'd broken up with Sandy, less than six months ago but it all seemed so much longer.
Later Genevieve called him and they talked for half an hour and then she said, "Let me say hi to your mom."
"My mom?"
"Yeah, let me say hi to her. It would be kind of weird if I didn't, don't you think? I am your girlfriend."
"Um...okay," he said and passed the phone to his mother and he sat there and listened to his mother exchange holiday greetings with his girlfriend. His girlfriend.
* * *
After dinner he carried dishes into the kitchen from the dining room and his mother was at the counter piping whipped cream onto a sweet potato pie and he stuck his finger into it and licked it off and she shooed him away.
"Seven feet and twelve years old."
"And all yours," he said and put an arm around her shoulder and kissed her on the cheek.
"Good lord, no more beer for you."
"It was the chardonnay, went right to my head."
"Long trip."
"Ha ha," he said. He looked around the kitchen. "You need help with anything?"
"Um...why don't you put the coffee on? Everyone else out there is in a turkey coma."
"Yeah, sure. Coffee's in the same place?"
"Same place it's been for ten years."
He poured water into the coffeemaker and spooned grounds into the basket. He suddenly and fiercely thought of Jensen and all their mornings together since that summer and for a moment he could just stand there with the scoop in one hand and the coffecan in the other.
His mother said, "Jensen sounds happy," and Jared startled as if she'd peered into his thoughts and seen Jensen there. He finished filling the basket and swung it shut and switched on the machine.
"Yeah, he is. Show's going great, ratings are up. Life's good."
"Is he still seeing that gorgeous redhead?"
He snapped the lid onto the coffeecan and put it back in the cupboard.
"Danneel? Yeah, he's still seeing her."
"She is really something. How long have they been together?"
Jared shrugged. "I dunno, couple of years."
"No, it's got to be longer than that?"
"I don't really know."
"Of course you do, you're his best friend."
"Yeah but I...don't chart his love life, Mom. Besides, what difference does it make?"
She bent over the pie and shrugged. "They're just such a terrific couple, I don't know what they're waiting for. I'll tell you one thing...a girl like Danneel won't be sitting around forever waiting for Jensen to make up his mind. I think your friend could use a little nudge."
"What?" Jared laughed. "From me?"
"From someone."
"Jeez, Mom, are you reading Jane Austen again?"
"No, it's just..." She turned her wrist and licked whipped cream off her little finger. "I love Jensen. I'd hate to see him let happiness slip through his fingers."
"What, Mom? Like I did?"
"Well, I didn't say that but since you brought it up...whatever happened between you and Sandy is your business. Some things aren't meant to be. I did like her though, you know that, we all liked her. I thought you two would be really happy together."
He ran a hand through his hair. "I know you did, Mom. But it's like you said, some things aren't meant to be."
"Is this Genevieve just the rebound girl or is there some potential there?"
"Um, well...I just met her in June."
"She seems very nice. Very smart. And God knows she's good looking enough."
"Well, yeah sure..."
"I think you should invite her here for Christmas."
"Here? For Christmas?"
"Why not? You've had Jensen over here how many times?"
"Sure, but Jensen's..."
"Just your friend."
"Ah, he's my best friend, as you just said."
She turned and tossed the pastry bag in the sink and then turned back to him.
"Jared, it's great that you and Jensen are so close. I love him, I really do, but don't you think you need more than a best friend?"
"Okay...you just lost me."
"You're living with your co-star. Your male co-star."
He wondered what color he was turning. White or red. From the living room a sudden cheer went up over the football game and then laughter and another loud whoop of joy.
"Mom? Do you think I'm gay?"
"No, but you two spend more than enough time together. You've already told me what people say about both of you on the internet."
"Yeah, but that's just fan crap, they're crazy. They've been talking about us like that since the show started."
"There was something in a magazine too, wasn't there? One of those blind items?"
"Yeah, but that was..." That had been months ago, before anything had even happened between him and Jensen and the item had been so blind that it could have been about any two actors on any series in Vancouver. He had completely forgotten about it and now he remembered it and how he and Jensen and the whole crew had laughed about it. "That wasn't about us. It probably wasn't about anyone. They just make that shit up."
"Well they make up enough shit and people start to believe it. And no matter how open-minded everyone claims to be, there just aren't that many great leading roles out there for gay actors."
"But we're not gay."
"Then why give anyone reason to say you are?"
Jared shook his head. "Whoa. Wow. Did we just time travel to 1950 or something?"
"No, it's still 2008 and in a perfect world none of this would matter but this isn't a perfect world." She took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. "Jared, I just want you to be happy. I don't want you to lose everything you've worked for over some trashy gossip, okay?"
"I think you're totally overreacting, Mom. I mean...you're not even overreacting, you're just reacting to nothing."
"Will you invite Genevieve for Christmas?"
He looked at his mother and he thought about Genevieve, with her dark eyes and dazzling smile and he knew his mother would love her. Not the way she loved Jensen, who was just his friend. The way she'd love a girl who would look great next to her son and make him happy and marry him. Start a family with him.
"If I'm still seeing her then."
"All right. That's all I wanted to hear." She smiled and cocked her head. "Are you mad?"
"No, I'm just...I'm kind of weirded out, Mom."
"You'll get over it," she said and smiled. She picked up the pie and balanced it on one hand and rubbed his shoulder as she passed him and went out into the dining room. Behind him the coffeemaker gurgled and hissed and finished its job with a wheezing gasp.
* * *
He checked his cell before going to bed and saw that he had one call from Jensen and one from Genevieve. He listened to Genevieve's message and called her back. They talked for more than an hour and he invited her to spend Christmas at his parents' house and she said she'd love to but only if he'd come skiing in Sun Valley over New Year's and he told her that sounded great.
On the mountain the snow was shifting, in the city the waters were rising, but there was always a way out if you had enough warning. If you had to leave everything behind to save your own life, you would. People did it, all the time.
* * *
There were only three weeks of shooting in December before they broke for Christmas. The weather was bad and everyone just wanted to wrap things up and get out of town for the holiday so the set was cranky and miserable and even on the nights he spent at home he and Jensen were sometimes so tired they just fell into bed and passed out. For most of the last week he didn't sleep at home at all. He saw Jensen at work every day but they were never alone together.
Two days before the break Jensen texted him.
Miss you.
He sat there in his trailer and looked at his cell. Then he texted him back.
Miss you too. Before he hit send, he added, A lot.
Home tonite?
He closed his eyes and held the phone in his hand. When he opened his eyes he just typed a Y and hit send.
They made love that night in the slow, deep way that Jensen loved and Jared made it last until Jensen was writhing underneath him with his eyes clenched shut and his lips parted and gasping for air. He didn't withdraw when he came and when he finally did he did it slowly so that Jensen moaned and then he turned onto his back and brought Jensen with him and Jensen lay with his head against Jared's shoulder.
"Are you seeing Genevieve for Christmas?"
Jared didn't answer for a moment. Then, "Yes. My mom wanted me to invite her."
Jensen nodded. "I'll be at Danneel's the whole week. Stop off at home for a few days before coming back up."
They were quiet for a while.
"What are we doing, Jay?"
"I don't know," he said. It was the first honest thing he'd said to Jensen in a long time. "I don't know."
Their last day of shooting was December 19th and the next day Jared packed up the dogs and drove down to the States with Genevieve sitting beside him.
* * *
In January he returned to Vancouver to finish the season. When he got to the house no one was there and he brought his luggage upstairs and left it in the corner of his room. He went downstairs and into Jensen's room and he looked at the bed and then he sat down on the corner of it and stayed there for a while. When he got up he saw that he had left a dent in the bed's comforter and he straightened it until it looked the way it had before and then he left and closed the door behind him.
He waited for Jensen in the kitchen. It was a mild day and the dogs were outside in the yard. They started barking when Jensen's car pulled into the driveway and Jared opened the backdoor and told them to pipe down and Jensen parked in the garage and came in through the side door.
"Hey," he said. "What time did you get here?"
"Around two o'clock."
"Yeah, I would've been in earlier but fog backed things up."
"Yeah, I know."
Jensen went outside to greet the dogs and roughhoused with them for a while. He came back out of breath and flushed and Jared got him a beer out of the refrigerator and gave it to him and they stood there and drank and talked about Christmas and their families and then Jared took a deep breath and said, "I think I'm going to ask Genevieve to move in."
"Oh," Jensen said. He blinked and switched his beer to his other hand. "Okay. Wow..."
"I mean I know we've only known each other a few months but it's going really great and you know..." He laughed. "I don't want to screw this up like the last one, you know?"
"Right. Well...is that what she wants?"
"Oh yeah," Jared said. "We already talked about it." He took a swig of beer and leaned his hip against the sink.
"You already talked about it. Oh. Okay. Well...I mean, that's great. That's great for you, both of you."
"I know I'm kind of springing it on you but I can talk to Melissa in the morning and I'm sure she'll be able to find you a place..."
Jensen swallowed some beer and shook his head. "No, don't worry about it, I'll talk to her. No problem."
"I mean, this is good, right, because now you and Danneel can have some space when she comes up too. I think both of them were kinda tired of the frathouse thing we had going on here," he said and laughed and then he looked at Jensen and stopped laughing and the smile faded from his face.
Jensen was looking out the window but not at the dogs or the yard. Looking to some distant point on the horizon. Then he said, "The frathouse thing."
"Yeah, you know..."
"Is that what we call it?" Jensen looked at him. "Is that what this has been?"
For a moment Jared couldn't answer and Jensen stared at him so unnervingly that he had to look away and then he shrugged and shook his head.
"We both knew that wasn't gonna last, didn't we? I mean it was just...a...a thing we did. And it was...you know crazy and it was fun and it was great but...I mean, it's time to move on. We both know that, right? You know that? Right?"
"Yeah but I guess I thought...we'll be wrapping the season in March, I just figured you know...what's three more months. Not even."
Jared stood there and for a second he thought he would take it all back and tell Jensen that Genevieve would not be moving in and that he could stay, that he had to stay and that what they had wasn't just crazy and fun and great and it wasn't a frathouse thing and he loved him and was terrified by how much he loved him and then he thought about his mother and that other conversation in another kitchen and instead of taking anything back he said, "Why wait until March? It's gotta happen sooner or later."
Jensen nodded and didn't say anything and Jared went on, the words spilling out of his mouth and oh, he hoped it didn't sound like a speech he'd practiced in his head all the way back up to Vancouver which it was.
"Jensen, you are an amazing actor. I mean, I get the job done but you...you do things, I don't even know how you're doing them. You've got...when this show's over, the sky's the limit for you, man. You could go all the way. I'm gonna see you collect an Oscar one day, Jen, I know I am. But not if this gets out. If this gets out, that's all anyone's ever gonna talk about. That's all we're ever gonna be, that's all you're ever gonna be. Everyone acts like they're all open-minded and shit but you know it's not like that. You want to throw everything away for this? Because I don't, okay? I don't. And I know you don't. I've got Genevieve, and she's crazy about me and you've got Danneel..."
"Danneel?"
"Yeah, Danneel. She's gorgeous and you've been together forever and...she'd marry you tomorrow man, I know she would. She wants to marry you and she wants to have kids and you...I know you want that too, right? Don't you? You should think about it."
"Are you thinking about it?"
"Probably," he said and then, "Yes. We're getting engaged as soon as the season's over."
"Oh," Jensen said. "Wow. Okay. First she's just moving in and now you're engaged, I guess the wedding'll be in about what, two weeks?"
Jared took a deep breath. The refrigerator kicked on with a low hum.
"Jen, I know you. I know how focused you are. You're not gonna risk everything over..." He looked away because he couldn't look at Jensen just then. "Over a couple of months of fooling around."
Jensen was so quiet that Jared finally had to look at him again.
"I've known you for almost four years, Jay."
"Jen..."
"No," he said. He held up his hand and smiled and he didn't look angry or sad and Jared knew but pretended not to know that Jensen was in character now, had slipped into this role as easily as he slipped into Dean's and he wouldn't hear what Jensen was really thinking and would probably never hear it and in that moment he felt an awful and shameful relief that there would be no confrontation and no shouting and certainly no tears, there would only be this. Himself, making good common sense, and Jensen, in character, accepting it.
"You're right. It's gotta be sometime, now's as good as any. It's not like we could keep this thing going forever. I've said the same thing."
Jared grinned. "Yeah. Yeah, that's it, that's exactly it."
"Okay well..." He looked around. "I guess I won't unpack, huh? In fact, I guess I better go...pack."
"You don't have to leave today."
"I think I should, though. Yeah. It's not gonna take Melissa long to find something, I can stay at the Hilton until then."
"Jensen, you really don't have to."
"Come on man, you know how chicks are. Genevieve probably has a ton of shit she wants to move in here. The shoes alone...she'll probably need a whole extra room. "
"You sure?"
"Yeah," he said and smiled. "Yeah, I'm sure."
He put his beer down on the counter and turned to go and Jared said, "Hey, Jen? Thanks."
Jensen smiled at him over his shoulder.
"Don't worry about it."
* * *
He heard Jensen on the phone ten minutes later. He was in his room with the door closed for more than an hour and then Jared heard him laughing and knew he was talking to Danneel. When he came out he handed the phone to Jared with a big smile and said, "Danneel wants to talk to you."
Jared took the phone and heard Danneel's little-girl voice in his ear, "Oh my God, congratulations!"
Jared laughed. "Don't say anything, it's supposed to be a secret."
"No, I won't say anything. But I'm so happy for the two of you!" Then she started crying.
"Jeez, Danneel," he laughed, "Don't cry, I haven't even asked her yet."
"I know but...I don't know, I'm just so happy, Jay." She broke down into a volley of hitching sobs. "I'm so happy," she repeated. "I'm really happy."
* * *
In the last episode before the season finale Sam and Dean had to beat each other up and Jensen hit him so hard that they stopped shooting for fifteen minutes to wait for Jared's nosebleed to dry up. Real blood was sloppy and unpredictable and looked bad on film. Jensen had been stage-fighting for years and had the choreography down pat and had never flubbed like that. He apologized to Jared and the whole crew and said he didn't know what had happened. His hand was swelling up and they had to restage the scene so that it wouldn't show and the next day he found out that Eric made Jensen go to the hospital to have it x-rayed and make sure nothing was broken. Nothing was broken.
* * *
Go on to Part Two...
Genre: J2
Pairings: Jared/Jensen
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Sex! Angst! Meddlesome womenfolk! Inarticulate manpain! Eccentric punctuation! And oh yes, aaaaaangst!!
Spoilers: None
Word Count: 20,100 for complete story (in two parts)
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is strictly for entertainment purposes. No implication of reality or truthfulness is intended or should be presumed. They are not them.
Credit: Thanks to
baylorsr for lightning-fast readthrough.Summary: What would you leave behind to save your own life?
Avalanche, Part One
He was up before dawn as always on work days and he went downstairs with the dogs jostling each other and racing him to the bottom. He let them out into the backyard and then shut the kitchen door. It was only August but already it was cool before the sun came up and a misty touch of autumn air had begun to creep into these early mornings. He turned on the light and poured water into the coffeemaker and switched it on and then went across to the other side of the house and opened the door of what was supposed to be a den or office but had more or less become Jensen's room since the end of last season.
He said, "Jen, get up," and got no response so he said it again. There was a muffled grumble and he peered into the room's darkness and started laughing. "Dude," he said. "That mattress is like, eating you."
He switched on the light and Jensen groaned and rolled over on the mostly deflated air mattress and threw his arm over his head and Jared stood there laughing.
"This is a sorry sight, man."
"I think I sprung a leak," Jensen muttered.
"Ya think? You got like...air in the head and the foot and then you in the middle. Your ass is on the frigging floor."
"Would you turn off the light? Asshole?"
"Come on, Jen, get up." He rattled the lightswitch up and down. "Get up get up get up. Get up!"
Jensen rolled over with his eyes shut and threw his pillow at him and then flopped back over. "Jerk."
Jared laughed and left the light on and walked out. He went into the kitchen and let the dogs back in and poured out some chow for them and then fixed himself a cup of coffee and he was standing at the sink drinking it when Jensen shuffled in cleaning his glasses on the bottom of his shirt. He put them on and poured out some coffee and hauled himself onto a stool at the kitchen island.
"My back is fuckin killing me."
"Uh, maybe you need, I dunno, a bed?"
"Nope. No I don't."
"I'm gonna ask Clif to go down to Ikea today and get you a bed. Or maybe they can dig up something from the props department and send it over."
"Forget about it. This is temporary, I promised."
"Jen, you've been here since March."
"Not really."
"Okay, your stuff's been here since March and you've been here since June, so..."
"I'll call Melissa and tell her to start looking. I just keep forgetting to do it."
"You don't have to do that, just get a bed. You're living like a hobo in there. Even guys at the homeless shelter have a cot to sleep on."
"Jared," he said. He looked up at him from his coffee cup, still puffy-eyed and sheet-marked. "I told you I wouldn't crash your place for more than a couple of months. This is a sign. It's time to go."
"Your flat mattress is giving you a sign."
"Yes. My flat mattress. My flattress."
"Jen..." Jared said. The dogs had finished eating and they went over to Jensen and nudged his leg and he idly scratched their chins and then they came over to Jared and stared at him and Sadie stuck around for a head rub and Harley wandered off to lick his bowl. "You don't have to go."
"I appreciate the hospitality, dude, I really do, but seriously..."
"I don't want you to go."
"What?"
Jared shrugged. "I don't want you to go. I mean, what am I gonna do here in this big stupid house by myself? I should've never bought the fucking thing. I thought me and Sandy were gonna be living here but that's history."
"So sell it. It's just bad ex-girlfriend karma by now anyway."
"I don't want to sell it."
"You just said it was stupid."
"I didn't mean stupid, I meant...stupid. Stupid if it's just me."
Jensen laughed and gestured at the dogs. "It's never just you, Jay."
"You know what I mean. Just you know...it's been kinda fun. Having you around."
Jensen nodded and grinned. "Jared Padalecki. You got a crush on me, man."
"Shit, I've had a crush on you for years. You're prettier than half the girls I know. Hell, you're prettier than all the girls I know."
"Ain't it the truth," Jensen said. "Can't say I blame you. Package like this, who could resist?"
"Not me, bro. I am weak and backslidin."
Jensen laughed and drank his coffee and he swirled it around and stared into the cup.
"You're seriously okay if I stay?"
"I want you to stay."
"You're not just saying that."
"I'm not just saying that. I want you to stay. Stay. Please, Jensen, stay. Please. Pretty please."
"All right man, but don't beg, it's so undignified."
"You're getting a bed, though. I'm not gonna look that every morning. What would your mom think if she knew I was letting you sleep on the floor?"
Jensen got up and put his cup in the sink. "She'd think I deserved it for not getting off my ass and finding an apartment when I said I would." He yawned and stood there and looked out the window. The sky was just turning gray. "Looks like it's gonna rain. Again." He ran a hand through his hair and then walked out and went upstairs to take a shower.
* * *
A queen-sized bedframe and boxspring and mattress were delivered the next day and were set up in Jensen's room when they got home from the set. Jared went upstairs and got him sheets and blankets.
"I guess it's official. We're roommates," Jensen said. He flopped facedown on the bare mattress. "Go get me a beer, roomie. I'm wiped out."
Jared laughed and threw the bed linens on his back.
"Make your bed, roomie," he said and went out to the living room.
* * *
Sandy had helped him find this house. She had loved the kitchen with its big center island and oak-framed windows over the sink that looked out onto the backyard where the dogs would chase each other between the pine trunks. She had loved the fireplace in the living room and the den that was now Jensen's room because she said even a big house needed small spaces to cozy up in. He had bought it because she loved it and after their short engagement dissolved he had spent the whole summer hiatus dreading the idea of coming back to Vancouver and the emptiness of her house without her in it.
By September Jared could sometimes hardly believe that Sandy had ever lived with him or that he'd meant to marry her. It seemed as if Jensen had always been there. Sandy had loved this house but there was no trace of her in it. Not even something as trivial as a bottle of nail polish left behind in the medicine cabinet. He could barely picture her in any of the rooms. There was only himself and the dogs and Jensen.
When he'd get up in the pre-dawn dark he'd make coffee for both of them and pour Jensen a cup and bring it in to him. It was a habit he'd gotten into. There was a table next to the bed now, and a lamp on it, and Jensen's guitar case in the corner and his luggage and his clothes hung up on a rack they'd gotten from the studio because the room had no closet. Even with these few things the room had begun to smell like Jensen. Even more to feel like him. Jensen had a warmth that was particular to him and Jared had never felt anything like it from anyone else and now it was in this room and in this whole house and Jared liked it.
He liked waking him up in the morning. He liked making him coffee. Liked coming home with him after work and having a beer with him and watching football with him on the weekends and blowing him up in Fallout's apocalyptic wasteland or mowing him down on the mean streets of Liberty City. He liked it when Jensen would get out his guitar and just sit there and fool around with it. The sound of Jensen singing in his untrained but mellow and even voice.
He'd bring down his own guitar sometimes but Jensen was much better at it and so Jared usually just stopped and listened and watched him. The first time he'd ever met Jensen he'd wondered how the hell he was going to share the screen with someone that good looking and they had sure made an effort that first season to scruff him up and make him look older and harder and less pretty but it never worked. It always came through. The son of a bitch wasn't just pretty, he was beautiful. He'd known Jensen for three years now and he'd thought he was beautiful when he'd met him and he thought so now. Even more now.
Jared liked having him around. Liked going to bed every night knowing he was sleeping right downstairs. That more than anything. His warmth in that whole house. It filled him up. It lulled him to sleep. It kept him awake, sometimes.
* * *
It was funny as hell to read some of the stories their crazy fans wrote on the internet about them, especially after they moved in together. Now and then their friends would forward a few that were so awful but there were some out there that Jared found on his own that really weren't that bad. That were actually pretty good. That he'd sit there and read with his chin propped on his hand and his eyes fixed on the screen and an hour or two would zip by without him noticing and when he finally looked away he'd have spots in his eyes and he'd laugh and think people had some wild imagination. He loved to joke about it in public to rag their fans, or at least the ones who thought they weren't just living together but living together, and he'd laugh about it and Jensen would laugh about it and they would agree that people were just crazy.
Sometimes along with the stories he'd find pictures of himself and Jensen and he'd remember the event or the moment when the picture was taken but he didn't remember that he'd been looking at Jensen that way or how Jensen had looked at him. Sometimes he'd think that people's imaginations weren't that wild.
* * *
He was trying to do something on the guitar that Jensen had made look so easy and he couldn't figure it out and Jensen sat there on the couch and laughed at him.
"Don't quit your day job, man."
"Shut up, show me again."
"I showed it to you three times."
"This time I'll get it."
Jensen sighed. "Here," he said. He laid his own guitar down on the couch and got up and came over to where Jared was sitting and stood behind his chair and leaned over him and put his hands over Jared's and positioned his fingers on the strings. "Just like this. You got it?"
Jensen's hands were warm and he was so close that Jared could feel the hum of his voice against his ear.
"Yeah," he said. "I got it."
* * *
Late September, dark as night in the early mornings now. Coffee on and he poured a cup and brought it to Jensen's room at the other side of the house and when Jared opened the door Jensen was still sound asleep like he was most mornings. He stood there for a minute and listened to him breathe.
He had turned on the hallway light and the door was ajar so he could see Jensen lying there half on his side with his face buried between the pillows. He set the cup down on the table and he leaned over and put his hand on Jensen's back and the room was cool but Jensen was bed-warm and the thought that it would be nice to be under the covers with him came and went so quickly that it was hardly there at all.
"Jen," he said.
"Mmm."
"Time to get up."
"Yeah."
He clapped Jensen on the back.
"Up and at em prettyboy," he said and then he turned and left.
* * *
He dreamt about Jensen and in the dream he was kissing him. In a room with no furniture except a bed and nothing on the bed except white sheets and themselves and they were kissing and without saying a word they began to take off each other's clothes. He was pulling Jensen's t-shirt over his head when he woke up in the dark with an erection and the image of Jensen in that white room still filling his sight like a photoflash. He put his hand down his sweatpants and then pulled it out and sat up and swung his legs off the bed and turned on the light. Across the room Sadie raised her head and looked up at him from her bed.
"Not time to get up, girl. Go back to sleep." She dropped her chin and closed her eyes and sighed.
When his erection had subsided he thought for moment that it would be funny to tell Jensen he'd had a dirty dream about him but he already knew that for all they joked about having crushes on each other he wasn't going to do that. He wanted something to drink and he got up and closed the door behind him so the dogs wouldn't come out and when he got to the top of the landing he saw a light on downstairs. He went down the stairs quietly and from the hall he could see Jensen sitting at the kitchen island reading pages.
Jared stood in the dark and watched him. The light from the pendant lamp was on the crown of his head and Jared could see the crease of concentration between his eyes. He could be so still, so reserved. Something almost austere about him at times. Jared thought it was part of what made him good at his work, what made him able to slip so suddenly into character and become someone wholly different from himself.
He must have stood there for five minutes and he was about to turn and go back upstairs when Jensen suddenly looked up and both of them did a jolting double-take. Jared heard the legs of stool jump on the kitchen's tile floor.
"Jeez, you scared the crap outta me," Jensen said.
"Fuck, I didn't expect to find you down here."
"Well at least I'm not lurking around in the dark."
"You're getting jumpy. Too much demons and ghosties and shit."
Jensen flapped the script. "After four years of this anyone would be seeing things. You creeping up on me doesn't help."
Jared got the milk out of the refrigerator and poured himself a glass and asked Jensen what he was doing up.
"Couldn't sleep."
"Yeah," Jared said. "Me neither."
"Good. You can run through this shit with me."
"I left my script at the studio."
"So? Just use mine."
"Um...yeah, okay."
He pulled out a stool and sat down next to Jensen and they went through half the episode. They were so close to each other that their shoulders and knees touched. After a while Jensen stopped and took off his glasses and threw them on the counter and rubbed his eyes.
"I swear, I think they're stoned when they write some of this stuff." He stared out into the dark house beyond the kitchen's circle of light. "It's really been four years, hasn't it? Only four."
"Not even four. Three and change."
"Feels like more, doesn't it?"
Jared shrugged. "I don't know. Ask me that after a sixteen-hour day and I'll say yes."
"You think this is it?"
"What? Our last season?"
"Yeah."
"No. I really don't. I'm sure we're gonna go to five. Probably six."
"Jeez. Six." He sat there and scrubbed his hand across his face. "Six."
He shook his head and Jared smiled. "Come on, it hasn't been that bad. We've had a pretty good time."
"Yeah," Jensen said. He smiled. "Yeah, we have." He turned to look at Jared. "I tell you man, it wouldn't have been half as good without you."
Jared grinned. "We make a good team. Yin and yang."
"What exactly does that mean?"
"I've..." Jared shrugged. "I've actually never known what that means. Something with a circle and a couple of dots."
"That's deep, Jay. Very deep."
"It's my spiritual side coming out."
Jensen laughed and shook his head. Then he said, "You think about what you're gonna do when this is over? Assuming it ever is over."
"I dunno, I guess..." He couldn't find anything to say. He knew that Jensen was asking what he was going to do for work but the question had made him realize for the first time that there was a place waiting in his future that would not have Jensen in it. A time when Jensen would be someone he saw onscreen or got an email or text from now and then and it was unbelievable that he had never thought of this before but he hadn't. "I guess I'll just...get another job. Hopefully."
Jensen nodded and then he said, "What's going on with you and Genevieve?"
"Genevieve?"
"I see you there being all cute with each other."
"I don't know, I mean...she's hot. She's definitely hot." Jared felt his face inexplicably flushing. "And she's pretty smart, she did Broadway and stuff."
"So there's something there?"
"I don't know. We've got this big awkward scene coming up..."
"Ah yes, the soon-to-be-legendary demon-shtupping. In which Sera Gamble again succeeds in getting your shirt off."
"Thank God we're on network or she'd be getting off a lot more than that," he said and grinned and then he shook his head. "Genevieve? I don't know. We're just friends right now."
"Okay," Jensen said and he looked away and then looked back at him with a smile. "Just lookin out for m'boy."
They sat there and looked at each other for a moment and then Jensen slid off the stool. His knee brushed down the length of Jared's shin.
"I'm gonna try and get a couple hours of sleep. See you in the morning."
"Yeah," Jared said. "See you."
Jensen walked out and Jared heard the door of his room click shut. Then it was quiet. Jensen had left his glasses on the counter and after a while Jared picked them up. He folded them closed and turned them over in his hands and put them back down. Then he knit his fingers together and propped his elbows on the counter and rested his forehead on his folded hands and just sat there.
* * *
It was October and pouring outside and Jensen was on the couch with his guitar and something was droning on the television and neither of them had to work the next day so they'd already gone through one sixpack and were starting in on the other.
"What are we watching?" Jared said.
Jensen shook his head. "I have absolutely no idea."
Jared leaned his head back. "Christ, I love knowing I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow."
"Aww, does that mean no complimentary coffee service? Cuz it's a real nice perk of livin here, Jay."
"Spoiled rotten."
"You better believe it."
"How long have you been living here?"
Jensen shrugged. "Like...three months."
"It's working out really good, don't you think?"
Jensen riffed through some chords and smiled. "Yeah, it's not so bad." He cocked an eyebrow at Jared. "You can still throw me out anytime you want, you know. It's your house."
"I'm not gonna throw you out."
"You know...you wanna have Genevieve over, you can. I'll clear out."
Jared waved a hand at him. "There are no immediate Genevieve plans in my future."
"Okay well, just so you know...don't keep her outta here on my account."
"Well yeah, you know, you too. You can have Danneel over if you want."
"Yeah, she'll love that. Me and my roommate and his two smelly mutts. Very romantic."
"Hey, my mutts don't smell."
"Dude...please. I love em, but..."
"Okay, they smell a little. I'm just used to it."
Jensen smiled. After a moment he said. "I'm gettin pretty used to it too." There was that soft Texas purr in his voice that mostly surfaced when he was too drunk or too tired to bury it. "Gettin pretty used to a lotta things, Jay," he said quietly.
Jared didn't say anything. Jensen picked at the strings, a sweet sound. They didn't look at each other.
Then Jared said, "Like what?"
Jensen didn't answer and he sat there with that same smile on his face and his fingers idly playing over the strings. After a while he said, "Like you bringin me coffee in the mornin. Wakin me up. Comin home an sittin here with you like this." He stopped strumming and looked at Jared. "That sorta thing."
"Yeah," Jared said. "I know."
"Sometimes, when you come in in the mornin? I'm not always asleep. Sometimes, I wish you'd stay."
"Stay?" Jared said.
Jensen looked down at the guitar. "Yeah. Stay."
He could hear the rain lashing the house and the chatter of the television but the room still seemed breathlessly quiet.
"Jen..."
"If I told you I'd been with a couple a men in my life, would that surprise you?"
He didn't say anything. Jensen sat still with his eyes cast down on the guitar. The television light played over his face. Finally Jared said, "A little. I guess."
"Would it make you sick?"
He couldn't find the breath to answer and then Jensen looked up at him with his eyebrows drawn together and he realized Jensen thought he was going to laugh or say yes or something even worse and he quickly shook his head and said, "No." And then he said, "Did you like it?"
Jensen smiled. "It was a long time ago. I was really young, it was when I first got to L.A.. I didn't hate it. It was...different. They sure know what to do with the equipment, I'll tell you that."
Jared swallowed hard.
"Do they?"
"Yeah."
"I've never...done anything with a guy. I've never even kissed a guy...not really, not..."
"Would you like to?"
He sat there and stared at Jensen and the television muttered in the background and the rain tattooed the window as if it had been any other night but nothing was the same and never would be. He knew what he wanted to say and yet was amazed when he actually said it.
"I'd like to kiss you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"I think..." He hitched in a breath. "I think I've wanted to kiss you for a long time."
Neither of them moved. Then Jensen picked up the guitar and put it on the floor with the arm against the couch. He stood up and stepped over it and came to where Jared was sitting and leaned over and put his hand on his face and kissed him. Soft, chaste, closed-mouthed. He pulled back.
"How was that?"
"It was good."
"Do you wanna do it again?"
"Yes."
They kissed again and this time with parted lips and Jared's heart was hammering and he couldn't get enough air and he drew back.
"Wait. Wait, wait, wait."
Jensen started to move away and then Jared grabbed his shirt and pulled him in so suddenly that when Jared kissed him Jensen let out a little startled moan and that was the end of any resistance or question that Jared might have put up. He didn't want to wait for anything and he dragged Jensen onto him and they were all over each other, hands and mouths and the weight of Jensen in his lap making his head spin.
"Oh my God," Jared said breathlessly. "Oh my God." He was getting hard in his jeans. "Are we doing this? Are we gonna do this?"
"If you want to," Jensen said. He was flushed and his mouth was all wet and his eyes were wide and dark and he was so beautiful that Jared had to reach up and touch his face and his hand was shaking when he traced Jensen's mouth and the bridge of his nose and his eyelids and when he cupped Jensen's cheek in his hand Jensen leaned into his palm with his eyes closed like a cat being stroked.
"Let's do this. I want to do this."
Jensen opened his eyes and looked down at him.
"I want to do this," he repeated. "Show me what to do."
"I don't think you'll need instructions, Jay."
"Okay," Jared said. He pulled himself up on Jensen's shirt and kissed him. "Okay."
They untangled themselves and stood up and went to Jensen's room and shut the door behind them and Jared saw Sadie and Harley standing in the hall looking puzzled and then he was alone with Jensen and they leaned against the door and kissed in the dark and began to undress each other. When they were naked they lay down on the bed and he was on top of Jensen and kissing him and touching him and they were both hard and then Jensen rolled him over onto his back and sat up and straddled him. There was a streetlamp on that side of the house and its light fell through the wet window and he saw Jensen naked and palely lit in that water-rippled glow and he reached up and ran his hands over him, his chest and arms and waist and hips.
"Don't we need something?" Jared said. He hardly knew what he was saying.
Jensen dipped down and took his cock in his mouth.
"Oh God," Jared said.
Jensen ran his mouth up and down twice and then sat back up. "That oughta do it," he said. And then he raised himself up and sank himself down and Jared slid up into him. He was tight and Jared pulled himself back and down into the mattress.
"Doesn't that hurt?"
Jensen shook his head. "It hurt the first time," he said. "Now it's all right." He pushed himself down. "It's all right." When he had Jared in him up to the hilt he sat astride him with his hands on Jared's chest and both of them sucking air.
"Okay?" Jensen said.
"Yes," Jared answered. "Jesus Christ, yes."
Jensen started to move. Jared put his hands on Jensen's hips and got into rhythm with him.
"Am I doing this right?"
"Mm-hm," Jensen said. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back and rode him and Jared dug his fingers into his hips and thrust up into him. He let his eyes roam over him and saw Jensen's hand on his own cock and he pushed his hand away and closed his fist around him and Jensen groaned.
"That's good?"
"Yes. Shhh. Just go."
They didn't say anything after that. There was no sound in the room except the clocking of the bedframe and the far-off mumble of the television left on in some distant room where they'd still been other people and where this didn't happen. They came in near silence with little more than gasps and he let go in hot urgent spurts and then felt Jensen's come spill over his hand.
Jensen slowed down until he was still and then he raised himself up slowly and Jared felt his own hot come run out of him. Jensen rolled over and fell down on the bed next to him and they both lay there shaking and caught their breath. Outside it was still raining.
* * *
When he woke in the morning he thought he'd dreamt it but he was naked in the bed and he could feel the warmth of Jensen's body next to him and he opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. He had never slept in this room and at first he didn't know where he was. He turned his head and looked at Jensen asleep on his stomach with his face turned away.
We were drunk, he thought. We were drunk and it was a rough week and we were tired and it was a one-time thing and it'll never happen again. I'll tell him that. He'll probably tell me that. We're good. It'll be fine.
Yet even as he was lying there just looking at Jensen's bare back and arms he knew that he was now neither tired nor drunk and it was a whole new day and he didn't want anything about last night to be a one-time thing. He was thinking about that and wondering what he was going to do about it when Jensen stirred and turned his head and looked at him. Then he propped himself up on his elbows and folded his hands together and gazed down at Jared without saying a word.
"We were drunk," Jared said. "We were drunk and it was a rough week and we were..."
Jensen leaned over and kissed him. And that was that.
* * *
He was lucky that their characters were supposed to have a wedge between them because it gave them fewer close scenes together. Less touching. He didn't know how either of them would have pulled off some of the physical things they'd had to do in other seasons, embracing and feeling each other for injuries and being tied up together and God knows what. Jensen had so much control over himself when he was working that he probably would have soldiered through something like that but Jared knew that for him both his dick and the jig would have been up.
Such was the state of things that October that Jared had to discover whole new ranges of his own dramatic abilities. It amazed him that he could act so normal around Jensen with all the things he knew now. He knew every inch of Jensen's body with his own. Knew how he felt and tasted and how his face would blush when he had sex and the exact path that sweat would take when it ran down his chest or his back. Knew what it was like to suck a man's dick and fuck him and be fucked as well. Knew how to bend Jensen over the bed and get him off in five minutes and how to take his time and fuck him with slow, deep thrusts, massaging his dick way up inside and dragging a sustained and helpless moan out of Jensen that made Jared hard if he just thought about it. Knew where to kiss him to make him close his eyes and smile. How to touch him to make him let go of that near austerity in which he often kept himself. Where he would be every night and every morning and every day off, some of them spent almost every hour in bed. It was so much to know and let on none of it. Jared was especially nervous around women because they uncannily always seemed to know when two people had hooked up. Once Genevieve made some comment about how great it was that he and Jensen were still so close after all these years and he spent the day in a vertigo of panic and forced himself not to look at Jensen or be anywhere near him when they weren't shooting together. He waited for someone to guess. Someone to say something. No one did. But sometimes when they weren't shooting he and Jensen would catch each other's eye and not be able to look away and even at those moments with Jensen filling his thoughts Jared wondered who else was watching.
* * *
A Sunday just after Halloween. They were upstairs in Jared's room and at the window the soft gold of an autumn afternoon and the few red leaves still on the maple seemed almost to glow against the blue sky as they shook and spun in the wind.
"This is the only time of year I really like being up here," Jensen said drowsily and Jared was lying with his cheek against Jensen's back and felt his words as much as he heard them. "Not much of an autumn in Dallas and L.A., forget it."
"Mmm," Jared said. There was a light scatter of freckles between Jensen's shoulderblades and he traced them with his fingertips and Jensen took a deep breath and sighed.
"What're you doing for Thanksgiving?"
"I don't know. We just have the four days off so probably just going home. Stuff my face. Fly back."
"We could stay here," Jensen said and Jared stilled his hand and lay there.
"Here?"
"Yeah, I mean..." He shifted and Jared rolled onto his side and propped himself up on his elbow and Jensen turned over and looked up at him. "We've just got the four days and everyone else'll be gone." He stroked Jared's arm. "It would be nice. No running around airports. We'll deep-fry a turkey. Burn the place down."
It would be nice, he thought and then there was a sudden silence in his head. Deep but not peaceful. Silence of a mountain smothered by an avalanche or the ruins of a city destroyed by flood. He'd never seen it coming but he should have because they didn't fuck, they didn't screw, they didn't fool around. They made love. When had that changed? It had never changed. They had always made love, even that first drunk night because they were in love.
He lay there and thought about Thanksgiving. They'd been used to seeing each other over the holidays for years at their families' homes but this would be only the two of them in the quiet and fogbound November city where almost everyone they worked with would be gone and he saw himself and Jensen watching football and making dinner and making love, four days of it and then Christmas and New Year's and so many days after that, a lifetime of time and love and each other and he heard avalanche and flood and the terrible silence of disaster.
"I promised my mom I'd be home," Jared said. "She's still worried about me after the whole Sandy fiasco."
"You tell her you're all right?"
"Yeah, of course."
I'm all right. I'm all right because I'm in love with my co-star, happens all the time, of course it does, but this one happens to have a dick and oh God, I love him.
He rolled over and sat up and then stood up.
"I'm gonna take a shower."
"You wanna order Chinese for dinner?"
"Sure," Jared said and when he was at the door Jensen said his name and he turned around and looked at him propped up on his elbows stark naked with the sheets tangled at his feet in the bed where Jared had once slept with the girl he had planned to marry.
"You okay?"
"Yeah," Jared said and let out a little laugh. "Sure, why?"
Jensen shook his head.
"No...nothing."
He smiled and went down the hall and into the bathroom and climbed into the shower and turned the water on full blast and stood under it with his eyes closed and his hands flat on the wall.
* * *
The next time Genevieve flirted with him he turned up the charm to maximum wattage and her eyes lit up and soon she was pinging his phone with playful texts and making jokes on the set about demonic Kama Sutras and how she thought what the show really needed was a demon wedding. When the episode with their sex scene aired on the thirteenth she coyly suggested they should watch it together and he went to her apartment and watched it with her and they had sex afterwards as he'd known they would. When he saw Jensen at work the next day Jensen didn't say anything and he spent the next three nights at Genevieve's apartment until Jensen joked that if Jared didn't relieve him of dog-duty he was going to drop both mutts off at the pound and that night Jared rode back with Jensen to his own house.
The dogs tackled him and barked and stared at him with their tongues hanging out and he roughhoused with them on the living room floor and Jensen stood in the doorway with his arms folded and watched them. After a while Jared pushed the dogs off him and sat up on the floor wiping their slobber off his face.
"They missed you," Jensen said.
"Yeah, I can see that."
"So I guess it's going good with Genevieve."
"Um..." He made a great show of brushing dog hair off his shirt. "Yeah, you know."
"Look, Jared," Jensen said and paused until Jared turned and looked at him. "I don't want this to be weird. I get it, okay? She's totally hot. I'm cool with it, it's no big deal. I don't want you to feel like..." He made a gesture that took in the room. "Like you can't come home to your own house."
"No, don't worry about it, man. She was just...you know, we were kind of getting into each other and then we watched that episode and...it's a hell of a lot hotter to watch than it was to shoot."
Jensen grinned. "Yeah, it always is. It helps not to be able to see twelve crew guys standing around with their beer guts hanging out."
"Yeah, definitely," Jared said with a laugh. "So...we're good?"
"Yeah," Jensen said. "I'll sleep down here tonight. Don't worry about it."
Jared sat there and looked at Jensen leaning against the wall and understood what he was offering. But he hadn't been alone with him in almost four days and every day he had missed him in a cold and aching way that Genevieve's hot body and eagerness in bed had done little to dispel. He hadn't missed Sandy in the same way at all, he had felt hurt and lonely and more than a little humiliated by the laughable brevity of his engagement but this. He had no words for this. It was as if some frost crept into and around him when he wasn't with Jensen and he hadn't felt it even begin to thaw until he had walked back into this house that was so full of Jensen's warmth.
"I don't want you to sleep down here," Jared said. "Unless I'm with you."
They stared at each other. After a while Jensen turned to go and Jared stood up and followed him.
* * *
He kept seeing Genevieve and he used the dogs as an excuse not to be at her place and when he was home he slept with Jensen and they didn't talk about her. Two days before Thanksgiving they were in bed and almost asleep and Jensen abruptly said, "How long do you think you can keep this up?"
Jared wasn't sure if he'd actually heard Jensen or if he was already asleep and dreaming.
"What?" he muttered.
"She's not gonna be happy seeing you three times a week forever, Jay. You can't keep holding her off."
He was wide awake now and felt a sudden and surprising sliver of irritation. "I'm not holding her off. We're just taking it slow."
"What happens when she wants to speed things up?"
"Who says she will?"
"Uhh...the law of averages?"
"It's not your problem, Jen. It's not a problem at all."
"I'm saying, it's gonna be a problem pretty soon."
He felt now not only irritation but a strange sort of resentment and he said, "Are you breaking up with Danneel?" He had meant for it to come out light and humorously but it didn't.
Jensen didn't answer for a moment and then he said, "I'm not jumping from her bed to ours every other night."
Ours? Jared thought. Ours? When the fuck did that happen?
"You could if you wanted to. I don't tell you what to do."
"I'm not telling you what to do."
Jared propped himself up. He could only see the glimmer of Jensen's eyes in the dark. "What are you telling me?"
"Nothing, Jay," Jensen said. He shook his head. "I don't know. Forget about it."
Jared made himself smile and hoped that Jensen could hear it in his voice. "Everything's fine, Jen." He leaned over and kissed him. "Don't worry." He lay down and pulled up the covers and said it again, "Everything's fine."
Jensen said, "Okay," and he rolled over with his back to Jared. They made love in the morning, Jensen warm and pliant and barely awake and Jared kissing his shoulder and neck and when they were done Jared lay down over Jensen's back and caught his breath and a whisper of the conversation from the night before came to him but he dismissed it. They showered together and they didn't talk about Genevieve or anything else and that afternoon which was Thanksgiving eve Jensen left for Dallas. Jared spent his last night in Vancouver with Genevieve and was on the first flight to San Antonio on Thanksgiving morning.
* * *
Jensen called him that afternoon to wish him a happy Thanksgiving and then Jared's sister was pulling the phone away because she said she hadn't talked to Jensen in ages and they were on the phone for twenty minutes talking about God knows what and the phone got passed around to Jared's mother and father and brother too. Then Jared had to talk to Jensen's whole family and he remembered how they'd all been there with him when he'd broken up with Sandy, less than six months ago but it all seemed so much longer.
Later Genevieve called him and they talked for half an hour and then she said, "Let me say hi to your mom."
"My mom?"
"Yeah, let me say hi to her. It would be kind of weird if I didn't, don't you think? I am your girlfriend."
"Um...okay," he said and passed the phone to his mother and he sat there and listened to his mother exchange holiday greetings with his girlfriend. His girlfriend.
* * *
After dinner he carried dishes into the kitchen from the dining room and his mother was at the counter piping whipped cream onto a sweet potato pie and he stuck his finger into it and licked it off and she shooed him away.
"Seven feet and twelve years old."
"And all yours," he said and put an arm around her shoulder and kissed her on the cheek.
"Good lord, no more beer for you."
"It was the chardonnay, went right to my head."
"Long trip."
"Ha ha," he said. He looked around the kitchen. "You need help with anything?"
"Um...why don't you put the coffee on? Everyone else out there is in a turkey coma."
"Yeah, sure. Coffee's in the same place?"
"Same place it's been for ten years."
He poured water into the coffeemaker and spooned grounds into the basket. He suddenly and fiercely thought of Jensen and all their mornings together since that summer and for a moment he could just stand there with the scoop in one hand and the coffecan in the other.
His mother said, "Jensen sounds happy," and Jared startled as if she'd peered into his thoughts and seen Jensen there. He finished filling the basket and swung it shut and switched on the machine.
"Yeah, he is. Show's going great, ratings are up. Life's good."
"Is he still seeing that gorgeous redhead?"
He snapped the lid onto the coffeecan and put it back in the cupboard.
"Danneel? Yeah, he's still seeing her."
"She is really something. How long have they been together?"
Jared shrugged. "I dunno, couple of years."
"No, it's got to be longer than that?"
"I don't really know."
"Of course you do, you're his best friend."
"Yeah but I...don't chart his love life, Mom. Besides, what difference does it make?"
She bent over the pie and shrugged. "They're just such a terrific couple, I don't know what they're waiting for. I'll tell you one thing...a girl like Danneel won't be sitting around forever waiting for Jensen to make up his mind. I think your friend could use a little nudge."
"What?" Jared laughed. "From me?"
"From someone."
"Jeez, Mom, are you reading Jane Austen again?"
"No, it's just..." She turned her wrist and licked whipped cream off her little finger. "I love Jensen. I'd hate to see him let happiness slip through his fingers."
"What, Mom? Like I did?"
"Well, I didn't say that but since you brought it up...whatever happened between you and Sandy is your business. Some things aren't meant to be. I did like her though, you know that, we all liked her. I thought you two would be really happy together."
He ran a hand through his hair. "I know you did, Mom. But it's like you said, some things aren't meant to be."
"Is this Genevieve just the rebound girl or is there some potential there?"
"Um, well...I just met her in June."
"She seems very nice. Very smart. And God knows she's good looking enough."
"Well, yeah sure..."
"I think you should invite her here for Christmas."
"Here? For Christmas?"
"Why not? You've had Jensen over here how many times?"
"Sure, but Jensen's..."
"Just your friend."
"Ah, he's my best friend, as you just said."
She turned and tossed the pastry bag in the sink and then turned back to him.
"Jared, it's great that you and Jensen are so close. I love him, I really do, but don't you think you need more than a best friend?"
"Okay...you just lost me."
"You're living with your co-star. Your male co-star."
He wondered what color he was turning. White or red. From the living room a sudden cheer went up over the football game and then laughter and another loud whoop of joy.
"Mom? Do you think I'm gay?"
"No, but you two spend more than enough time together. You've already told me what people say about both of you on the internet."
"Yeah, but that's just fan crap, they're crazy. They've been talking about us like that since the show started."
"There was something in a magazine too, wasn't there? One of those blind items?"
"Yeah, but that was..." That had been months ago, before anything had even happened between him and Jensen and the item had been so blind that it could have been about any two actors on any series in Vancouver. He had completely forgotten about it and now he remembered it and how he and Jensen and the whole crew had laughed about it. "That wasn't about us. It probably wasn't about anyone. They just make that shit up."
"Well they make up enough shit and people start to believe it. And no matter how open-minded everyone claims to be, there just aren't that many great leading roles out there for gay actors."
"But we're not gay."
"Then why give anyone reason to say you are?"
Jared shook his head. "Whoa. Wow. Did we just time travel to 1950 or something?"
"No, it's still 2008 and in a perfect world none of this would matter but this isn't a perfect world." She took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. "Jared, I just want you to be happy. I don't want you to lose everything you've worked for over some trashy gossip, okay?"
"I think you're totally overreacting, Mom. I mean...you're not even overreacting, you're just reacting to nothing."
"Will you invite Genevieve for Christmas?"
He looked at his mother and he thought about Genevieve, with her dark eyes and dazzling smile and he knew his mother would love her. Not the way she loved Jensen, who was just his friend. The way she'd love a girl who would look great next to her son and make him happy and marry him. Start a family with him.
"If I'm still seeing her then."
"All right. That's all I wanted to hear." She smiled and cocked her head. "Are you mad?"
"No, I'm just...I'm kind of weirded out, Mom."
"You'll get over it," she said and smiled. She picked up the pie and balanced it on one hand and rubbed his shoulder as she passed him and went out into the dining room. Behind him the coffeemaker gurgled and hissed and finished its job with a wheezing gasp.
* * *
He checked his cell before going to bed and saw that he had one call from Jensen and one from Genevieve. He listened to Genevieve's message and called her back. They talked for more than an hour and he invited her to spend Christmas at his parents' house and she said she'd love to but only if he'd come skiing in Sun Valley over New Year's and he told her that sounded great.
On the mountain the snow was shifting, in the city the waters were rising, but there was always a way out if you had enough warning. If you had to leave everything behind to save your own life, you would. People did it, all the time.
* * *
There were only three weeks of shooting in December before they broke for Christmas. The weather was bad and everyone just wanted to wrap things up and get out of town for the holiday so the set was cranky and miserable and even on the nights he spent at home he and Jensen were sometimes so tired they just fell into bed and passed out. For most of the last week he didn't sleep at home at all. He saw Jensen at work every day but they were never alone together.
Two days before the break Jensen texted him.
Miss you.
He sat there in his trailer and looked at his cell. Then he texted him back.
Miss you too. Before he hit send, he added, A lot.
Home tonite?
He closed his eyes and held the phone in his hand. When he opened his eyes he just typed a Y and hit send.
They made love that night in the slow, deep way that Jensen loved and Jared made it last until Jensen was writhing underneath him with his eyes clenched shut and his lips parted and gasping for air. He didn't withdraw when he came and when he finally did he did it slowly so that Jensen moaned and then he turned onto his back and brought Jensen with him and Jensen lay with his head against Jared's shoulder.
"Are you seeing Genevieve for Christmas?"
Jared didn't answer for a moment. Then, "Yes. My mom wanted me to invite her."
Jensen nodded. "I'll be at Danneel's the whole week. Stop off at home for a few days before coming back up."
They were quiet for a while.
"What are we doing, Jay?"
"I don't know," he said. It was the first honest thing he'd said to Jensen in a long time. "I don't know."
Their last day of shooting was December 19th and the next day Jared packed up the dogs and drove down to the States with Genevieve sitting beside him.
* * *
In January he returned to Vancouver to finish the season. When he got to the house no one was there and he brought his luggage upstairs and left it in the corner of his room. He went downstairs and into Jensen's room and he looked at the bed and then he sat down on the corner of it and stayed there for a while. When he got up he saw that he had left a dent in the bed's comforter and he straightened it until it looked the way it had before and then he left and closed the door behind him.
He waited for Jensen in the kitchen. It was a mild day and the dogs were outside in the yard. They started barking when Jensen's car pulled into the driveway and Jared opened the backdoor and told them to pipe down and Jensen parked in the garage and came in through the side door.
"Hey," he said. "What time did you get here?"
"Around two o'clock."
"Yeah, I would've been in earlier but fog backed things up."
"Yeah, I know."
Jensen went outside to greet the dogs and roughhoused with them for a while. He came back out of breath and flushed and Jared got him a beer out of the refrigerator and gave it to him and they stood there and drank and talked about Christmas and their families and then Jared took a deep breath and said, "I think I'm going to ask Genevieve to move in."
"Oh," Jensen said. He blinked and switched his beer to his other hand. "Okay. Wow..."
"I mean I know we've only known each other a few months but it's going really great and you know..." He laughed. "I don't want to screw this up like the last one, you know?"
"Right. Well...is that what she wants?"
"Oh yeah," Jared said. "We already talked about it." He took a swig of beer and leaned his hip against the sink.
"You already talked about it. Oh. Okay. Well...I mean, that's great. That's great for you, both of you."
"I know I'm kind of springing it on you but I can talk to Melissa in the morning and I'm sure she'll be able to find you a place..."
Jensen swallowed some beer and shook his head. "No, don't worry about it, I'll talk to her. No problem."
"I mean, this is good, right, because now you and Danneel can have some space when she comes up too. I think both of them were kinda tired of the frathouse thing we had going on here," he said and laughed and then he looked at Jensen and stopped laughing and the smile faded from his face.
Jensen was looking out the window but not at the dogs or the yard. Looking to some distant point on the horizon. Then he said, "The frathouse thing."
"Yeah, you know..."
"Is that what we call it?" Jensen looked at him. "Is that what this has been?"
For a moment Jared couldn't answer and Jensen stared at him so unnervingly that he had to look away and then he shrugged and shook his head.
"We both knew that wasn't gonna last, didn't we? I mean it was just...a...a thing we did. And it was...you know crazy and it was fun and it was great but...I mean, it's time to move on. We both know that, right? You know that? Right?"
"Yeah but I guess I thought...we'll be wrapping the season in March, I just figured you know...what's three more months. Not even."
Jared stood there and for a second he thought he would take it all back and tell Jensen that Genevieve would not be moving in and that he could stay, that he had to stay and that what they had wasn't just crazy and fun and great and it wasn't a frathouse thing and he loved him and was terrified by how much he loved him and then he thought about his mother and that other conversation in another kitchen and instead of taking anything back he said, "Why wait until March? It's gotta happen sooner or later."
Jensen nodded and didn't say anything and Jared went on, the words spilling out of his mouth and oh, he hoped it didn't sound like a speech he'd practiced in his head all the way back up to Vancouver which it was.
"Jensen, you are an amazing actor. I mean, I get the job done but you...you do things, I don't even know how you're doing them. You've got...when this show's over, the sky's the limit for you, man. You could go all the way. I'm gonna see you collect an Oscar one day, Jen, I know I am. But not if this gets out. If this gets out, that's all anyone's ever gonna talk about. That's all we're ever gonna be, that's all you're ever gonna be. Everyone acts like they're all open-minded and shit but you know it's not like that. You want to throw everything away for this? Because I don't, okay? I don't. And I know you don't. I've got Genevieve, and she's crazy about me and you've got Danneel..."
"Danneel?"
"Yeah, Danneel. She's gorgeous and you've been together forever and...she'd marry you tomorrow man, I know she would. She wants to marry you and she wants to have kids and you...I know you want that too, right? Don't you? You should think about it."
"Are you thinking about it?"
"Probably," he said and then, "Yes. We're getting engaged as soon as the season's over."
"Oh," Jensen said. "Wow. Okay. First she's just moving in and now you're engaged, I guess the wedding'll be in about what, two weeks?"
Jared took a deep breath. The refrigerator kicked on with a low hum.
"Jen, I know you. I know how focused you are. You're not gonna risk everything over..." He looked away because he couldn't look at Jensen just then. "Over a couple of months of fooling around."
Jensen was so quiet that Jared finally had to look at him again.
"I've known you for almost four years, Jay."
"Jen..."
"No," he said. He held up his hand and smiled and he didn't look angry or sad and Jared knew but pretended not to know that Jensen was in character now, had slipped into this role as easily as he slipped into Dean's and he wouldn't hear what Jensen was really thinking and would probably never hear it and in that moment he felt an awful and shameful relief that there would be no confrontation and no shouting and certainly no tears, there would only be this. Himself, making good common sense, and Jensen, in character, accepting it.
"You're right. It's gotta be sometime, now's as good as any. It's not like we could keep this thing going forever. I've said the same thing."
Jared grinned. "Yeah. Yeah, that's it, that's exactly it."
"Okay well..." He looked around. "I guess I won't unpack, huh? In fact, I guess I better go...pack."
"You don't have to leave today."
"I think I should, though. Yeah. It's not gonna take Melissa long to find something, I can stay at the Hilton until then."
"Jensen, you really don't have to."
"Come on man, you know how chicks are. Genevieve probably has a ton of shit she wants to move in here. The shoes alone...she'll probably need a whole extra room. "
"You sure?"
"Yeah," he said and smiled. "Yeah, I'm sure."
He put his beer down on the counter and turned to go and Jared said, "Hey, Jen? Thanks."
Jensen smiled at him over his shoulder.
"Don't worry about it."
* * *
He heard Jensen on the phone ten minutes later. He was in his room with the door closed for more than an hour and then Jared heard him laughing and knew he was talking to Danneel. When he came out he handed the phone to Jared with a big smile and said, "Danneel wants to talk to you."
Jared took the phone and heard Danneel's little-girl voice in his ear, "Oh my God, congratulations!"
Jared laughed. "Don't say anything, it's supposed to be a secret."
"No, I won't say anything. But I'm so happy for the two of you!" Then she started crying.
"Jeez, Danneel," he laughed, "Don't cry, I haven't even asked her yet."
"I know but...I don't know, I'm just so happy, Jay." She broke down into a volley of hitching sobs. "I'm so happy," she repeated. "I'm really happy."
* * *
In the last episode before the season finale Sam and Dean had to beat each other up and Jensen hit him so hard that they stopped shooting for fifteen minutes to wait for Jared's nosebleed to dry up. Real blood was sloppy and unpredictable and looked bad on film. Jensen had been stage-fighting for years and had the choreography down pat and had never flubbed like that. He apologized to Jared and the whole crew and said he didn't know what had happened. His hand was swelling up and they had to restage the scene so that it wouldn't show and the next day he found out that Eric made Jensen go to the hospital to have it x-rayed and make sure nothing was broken. Nothing was broken.
* * *
Go on to Part Two...
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Only, I'm about to leave work for home - Weekend! Yay! - so this is something to look forward to for this evening. Unless my sister wants to watch FNL of course... :)
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Re: nothing was broken
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I'm sorry. I'm reading [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]'s J2 where Jensen has been shot and almost died.
But I will read yours asap - though there's het there? :(
:)
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Nothing was broken.
I was very excited to see a J2 fic from you. Once again your prose, your elegant brevity and economy of phrase is just a pleasure to read. Gah! Now on to part 2!!
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I'm stomping off now, to read the other part.
Again, I hate you.
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But Jensen's face man. Jensen's fuckin face, and him and Jared always making cow eyes at each other and Jensen walking around looking all heartbroken after Jared got engaged to Sandy and the two of them living together and telling disgustingly cutesy-poo stories (these are true!!) about Jensen sleeping on an air mattress and how they would sit around and play guitar together, I mean JESUS CHRIST, what's a girl to do? I can only have so much friggin will power over here.
So what you should do is hate Jensen. And Jared. But especially Jensen. Yes. Let's all hate Jensen.
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in that moment he felt an awful and shameful relief that there would be no confrontation and no shouting and certainly no tears, there would only be this. Himself, making good common sense, and Jensen, in character, accepting it.
Gah. This is so awful. And you, oselle, are so damn good at what you do.
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this: Even more to feel like him. Jensen had a warmth that was particular to him and Jared had never felt anything like it from anyone else and now it was in this room and in this whole house and Jared liked it.
--- Loved the imagary about Jensen having a unique 'warmth'
this: On the mountain the snow was shifting, in the city the waters were rising, but there was always a way out if you had enough warning. If you had to leave everything behind to save your own life, you would. People did it, all the time.
--- Wow. That was just perfect. Once in a while parts of someone's writing just *sings*. Pitch perfect.
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