Out of the Shadows - PART TWO
Jared’s head hurts. He hears voices, the beeping of medical monitors, the distance echo of a loudspeaker making an indecipherable announcement.
His entire body aches. A needle is pumping something into his veins through a needle stuck into the inside of his elbow. He can smell blood and antiseptic. Cleaning fluid.
Someone holds his hand.
“Jared?” The voice is familiar, right next to him, the voice of someone beloved and trusted.
Jensen.
Jared moans, probably has been moaning for a while. His throat hurts, and he wonders why he’s so thirsty.
“Water,” he croaks, struggling to open his eyes but the light in the room is too bright.
“Yeah, yeah, here you are,” Jensen says.
Jared feels a straw pushing gently on his lower lip. He sucks on it instinctively, gets a sip of ice water into his mouth before Jensen pulls it back.
“Not too much,” Jensen says. His voice is warm and deep, soothing. “You just got out of surgery.”
Jared’s in a hospital. He’s been injured. He’s lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines and an intravenous cocktail of fluids. His leg is wrapped in a cast. His chest is also wrapped and when he tries to take a deep breath it hurts worse. His leg is the only part of his body that doesn’t hurt, since it’s completely numb from whatever local anesthetic he’s been injected with.
Jensen sits at his bedside, holding his hand. He’s beautiful.
“What happened?” Jared croaks.
“You got hit by a car, crossing the street,” Jensen says. “On your way to dinner with me.”
“Dinner?”
Jared struggles to remember, but his brain won’t supply the memory he needs. He knows Jensen, but he can’t remember how they met. He loves Jensen, but he doesn’t have a single specific memory of him.
Jensen’s smiling at him, that’s all that matters. His whole face lights up when he smiles. It’s almost hard to look at him, he’s so beautiful. Looking at Jensen is better than the best painkillers. Jared feels better just looking at him.
“How are you feeling?” Jensen asks. He’s still got Jared’s hand clasped in both of his, now that he’s put the covered plastic water pitcher on the bedside table.
“Better now,” Jared admits easily. He really does feel better, just looking at Jensen. He’s healing.
Jensen blushes, getting his meaning. He looks down at their hands.
“My eyelids hurt,” Jared says. “How bad do I look?”
Jensen lifts his eyes again. “You’re pretty banged up,” he says. “Bruises everywhere. A couple of cracked ribs. Your head took a hard knock. But you’ll live. You’re gonna be okay.”
Jared tries to nod but his neck’s in some kind of brace. He can’t move much.
“How long?” he asks.
Jensen squeezes his hand. “Maybe a couple of days before they’ll discharge you, but it’ll be at least six weeks before your leg heals enough so that you can get that cast off. Do you - Is there anybody I can call for you? Do you have family close by? Someplace to stay?”
Jared blinks. He can’t remember. He thinks he had a mother, once. She was soft and smelled nice.
“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I don’t think I’ve been here very long.”
Jensen nods. “That explains why your driver’s license gives a San Antonio address,” he says. “Do you remember anything else?”
“You,” Jared says. “I remember you, Jensen.”
Jensen smiles again and nods encouragingly.
“We’ll have a neurologist look at you,” he says. “You hit your head pretty hard. Concussion and amnesia are common with head injuries.”
Jared frowns. “I don’t even know who I am, except for my name.”
“Yeah, about that,” Jensen says. “While you were unconscious, I asked around at the local hospice agencies, but nobody’s heard of you. Nobody else here at the hospital remembers seeing you either. I guess I’m the only person who knew you, before the accident.”
Jared blinks. “Can I stay with you? When they let me go home?”
Jensen smiles broadly and lets out a sigh of relief.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” he says. “I feel like I should look after you, at least until you’re back on your feet again. After all, you were on your way to meet me for dinner when you got hit. I feel responsible.”
“I feel like I’ve known you forever,” Jared says.
Jensen blushes and ducks his head again.
“Funny you should say that,” he says, rubbing his thumb over the back of Jared’s hand. “I feel exactly the same way.”
Within the week, Jared gets discharged from the hospital, prescription painkillers and antibiotics in hand. Jensen drives him home to his apartment, sets him up on his couch with food, water, and the TV remote, and leaves his crutches within easy reach. He loans Jared some clean clothes, since the clothes that he was wearing on the day of the accident were ruined in the accident and cut off him in the Emergency Room.
“We’ll buy you some new clothes in your size next weekend,” Jensen assures Jared as he pulls on Jensen’s too-tight t-shirt.
When Jensen leans close to adjust the pillows behind Jared’s back, Jared kisses him.
It’s the most natural thing in the world, holding Jensen’s face, slipping his fingers behind his neck, feeling the short hairs there with the tips of his fingers. Jensen melts into the kiss, parts his lips so Jared can deepen the kiss. When Jared finally lets him go, Jensen’s eyes stay closed for a moment and his tongue flicks out to taste his swollen bottom lip.
Jensen’s beauty makes Jared’s heart stop, although thankfully not literally. He can’t stop staring.
When Jensen finally opens his eyes, he stares back, stunned. Then he blinks, grins in a spontaneous, adorable way that makes him seem shy, and ducks his head.
“I was hoping for that since the day we first met,” he confesses softly.
“I don’t remember that day, but I know I’ve been wanting to do that for as long as I can remember,” Jared admits.
Jensen gazes at him for a moment, then leans in and kisses him, carefully but thoroughly. Jared wants more, wants to pull Jensen into his lap and hold him there, injuries be damned, but Jensen’s too much of a professional. He won’t add to Jared’s pain or discomfort. After a couple of moments, Jensen extricates himself, stares into Jared’s eyes, then leans close and tips his forehead to Jared’s.
“We should go slow, while you’re healing,” he murmurs.
Jared sighs. “Want you,” he breathes.
Jensen grins. “Me, too. But let's get you better first.”
It’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, letting Jensen get up so he can go and get ready for work. Jared’s certain of that, even if he doesn’t remember anything specific. He suspects his life has been normal and uneventful before he met Jensen. Jensen has turned his world inside out.
Jared doesn’t need memories to convince him of that.
After that day, Jared finds his new life with Jensen falling into a pleasant routine. Jensen works regular twelve-hour shifts at the hospital, but he’s able to pull back on his hours while he helps Jared recuperate. He brings Jared books, finds videos for him to watch. He gives Jared his laptop to use, to keep a recovery journal.
“You need to stimulate your brain,” he tells Jared. “Jog your memory. With amnesia patients, it’s the oldest memories that are the easiest to retrieve. You were born in 1982, according to your driver’s license, so you should research news and events from the 80s and 90s, see if anything reminds you of something.”
Jensen brings home exercises from the neurology department at the hospital, gets Jared to practice associative memory techniques.
“When you’re better, we’ll drive down to San Antonio, drive around to see if anything looks familiar. In the meantime, google yourself. Look at high school and college yearbooks. Check out the address on your license on Google Maps. You used to be somebody, Jared, and together, we’ll figure out who you were.”
But the truth is, Jared doesn’t feel any urgent curiosity about himself. For the foreseeable future, he’s content to hang out in Jensen’s apartment, letting Jensen take care of him. He dutifully completes the memory exercises, does the research, reads and watches TV to learn about the world around him. In doing so, he learns that he does have preferences. He seems to enjoy old movies, particularly black-and-white Hollywood films made in the 1940s. He loves jazz music from that era as well, finds himself singing along when an old jazz standard comes on.
Once in a while, he wakes up from a dream about a little white house and a kind woman who he thinks must be his mother. But the house isn’t the one at the address on his license, according to Google Maps. He wakes up hearing a song in his head, but it’s not one he can replicate, so he assumes his mother was singing it to him in his dream.
Jensen worries and fusses over him, trying to help jog his memories with stories and pictures from his own life, growing up in Texas. Jared learns that the Ackles family did a lot of camping and fishing, rode horseback, and even owned a couple of horses for a while when Jensen was a child. Jensen loves classic rock, country, and folk music. He plays guitar and sings for Jared, and Jared loves to listen to him, especially when he sings songs that he wrote himself. Growing up gay in Texas wasn’t easy, Jared learns, and Jensen often retreated into his music as a way to avoid socializing. He was a talented athlete but gave up sports after a particularly traumatic episode in the boys’ locker room at school.
Jared listens sympathetically, then shakes his head when Jensen suggests that Jared might have similar stories to tell if he could remember them.
“If I was mistreated or bullied as a kid, and what kid wasn’t, it hasn’t left an impression,” Jared says. “When I think about my childhood, it’s just my mom and the little white house, and a song she sang to me. I get the feeling I had a pleasant, uninteresting, non-traumatic childhood, but I can’t recall anything specific.”
Jensen shakes his head. They’re sitting across the coffee table from each other, eating takeout from Jensen’s favorite Thai restaurant. Earlier in the day, Jensen had taken Jared to the local Walmart, and now he’s wearing the shorts and hoodie that were all they could find that could fit over his cast. Jared’s uninjured, bare leg hangs off the side of the couch, propping him up so he can bend over the table when he eats. He feels naked and ridiculous, his cast weighing him down like the big, awkward extra appendage that it is.
“You must have been in the hospital for a reason,” Jensen muses. “When I first met you, you seemed to belong there. I never doubted that you were some kind of medical worker.”
Jared shrugs. He’d already spent time looking through Jensen’s medical textbooks, looking for anything familiar, but he hadn’t read anything that jostled any specific memories. He’s got some medical terminology under his belt, for sure.
“Maybe I worked in a hospital or clinic in San Antonio before I came here,” he suggests.
Jensen nods. “Add visits to hospitals and clinics to our list of places to visit when we get down there,” he says with conviction.
Jensen seems determined to help Jared figure out who he really is, and Jared goes along with it, mostly to humor him. For some reason he can’t imagine, he really doesn’t care who he used to be. He’s where he wants to be, now, with Jensen. Whatever he did before, the main thing about it is that it led him here.
But after six weeks spent mostly on Jensen’s couch, he’s relieved when it’s finally time to get his cast off.
“That leg will be weak as a kitten for a week or two,” Jensen warns. “You’re gonna need a helluva lot of physical therapy to get it back where you want it.”
But all Jared can think about is finally getting to do what he’s wanted to do with Jensen since he first woke up in the hospital.
It’s not like they haven’t been making out pretty regularly over the past six weeks. They have. They’ve even been naked together, jerking off with Jensen on top, which led to other things. Jared topping from the bottom, for one, which they’ve now tried several times because they both love it so much.
Jared can’t wait to get Jensen all naked and sweaty and under him for the first time, and neither can Jensen. Despite Jensen’s protests that they need to take it slow, Jared throws him down on the bed the minute they get home. Jared’s been keeping fit with weight training and push-ups all through the six weeks of his convalescence, and now that he’s got two legs to stand on, it doesn’t take long to manhandle Jensen into the position they’ve both been wanting badly.
Watching Jensen come apart under him, his full lips parted and damp, his green eyes filled with emotion as Jared fills him up, hitting his sweet spot every time as Jensen moans and writhes, Jared’s just sure there’s nothing better. He’s sure he’s waited all his life to have this with Jensen.
Maybe several lives.
Once the idea surfaces in his brain, it won’t go away.
“What if I came here looking for you?” he speculates out loud as they’re lying side by side on Jensen’s big bed, sated and relaxed, sweat and come drying on their naked skin.
“What do you mean?” Jensen blinks, and somehow Jared knows he’s hit a nerve. Jensen’s thought something similar if not specifically the idea that Jared was looking for him.
“Well, it feels like we’ve always known each other, right?” Jared goes on as Jensen nods. “So maybe we have. Maybe we met in another lifetime and we got separated somehow. But down deep we always knew the other one was out there, somewhere. So I was living my boring, humdrum life down in San Antonio, and one day I knew I had to come north to find you. Maybe I had a dream or something.”
To his credit, Jensen doesn’t laugh at him. He even manages to look thoughtful for a moment. Then he grins, easy and natural, sliding his hand into Jared’s, lacing their fingers together.
“You’re insane,” he says fondly. “You know that, right?”
“It’s probably been said,” Jared agrees. “I just don’t remember.”
“We’re gonna fix that,” Jensen assures him with the confidence of someone who’s been fixing people all his adult life. “Next week, we’re gonna jog those memories. Maybe run into somebody who remembers you from your boring, humdrum life down south.”
Jared nods, going along with Jensen’s plan because it seems to matter so much to him, and because he suspects it should matter to him, as well.
It doesn’t, though. All he cares about now is that he’s where he belongs.
With Jensen.
The following week, physical therapy started, and with exercises in hand, they head south.
It’s a twelve-hour drive to Dallas, where Jensen wants them to stop overnight to visit his family.
“They’re gonna love you,” Jensen assures Jared, who feels some trepidation at the thought of meeting the folks. “You’re just the kind of ‘guy’s guy’ my dad approves of for me.”
“He doesn’t know you’re gay?” Jared frowns.
“Oh, he knows,” Jensen assures him. “He just thinks that big, tough guys make better companions for me than smaller, more effeminate types.” Jensen shakes his head. “It’s just his way of handling the fact that his son didn’t turn out the way he wanted. It’s easier for him to imagine me as straight if my partners don’t seem flagrantly gay.”
“Hey, I can do the whole limp wrist thing if you want,” Jared assures him, demonstrating with a couple of comic gestures that make Jensen laugh.
“Don’t do that in front of him. Please!” Jensen says.
“What about your mom?” Jared asks. “Is she okay with it?”
Jensen smiles. “Mom’s a trooper,” he says. “She’s always accepted me exactly as I am. Besides, they’ve got another son who meets all the tough straight guy criteria they could ever ask for.”
“Younger?” Jared asks.
Jensen shakes his head. “He’s older than me. Protective. I’ll always be grateful to him for standing up for me in middle school when I was getting bullied like you wouldn’t believe. Anyway. That’s all in the past, thank god.”
Jared’s jaw clenches. “I should’ve been there,” he says. “I would’ve shown those bullies where to put it.”
“And got yourself beat up in the process,” Jensen says with a chuckle. “Seriously. When I was thirteen, you were just a little squirt of a nine-year-old kid. You couldn’t have stopped those assholes if you wanted to.”
“Wish I could go back in time from right now and stop them from hurting you,” Jared growls.
Jensen puts his free hand on Jared’s knee and squeezes.
“I know you would if you could,” Jensen says. “I love that about you.”
The visit with Jensen’s family goes fine. His parents are kind and welcoming, compassionate about Jared’s injuries and amnesia, and approving of his place in Jensen’s life.
“Jensen used to bring home stray kittens, baby birds, anything small and helpless,” Jensen’s mother confides to Jared as he helps her in the kitchen after dinner. “You’re far from small and helpless, but I can see why he’s taken such an interest in you. He’s always been that way.”
Jared’s not sure whether to be offended at being compared with a helpless baby animal, but he decides to let it go. If Jensen’s mother needs to make sense of his place in Jensen’s life by connecting their relationship to something Jensen used to do as a child, far be it for Jared to argue with her.
“Jensen’s always been the kid who helped others,” Donna Ackles continues. “It’s a no-brainer that he’d end up in the medical profession.”
Jared nods. This, he can agree with wholeheartedly.
“Jensen’s naturally empathic,” he says. “He helps a lot of people. They’re lucky to have him at Sioux Falls General.”
Donna sighs, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.
“I just wish he were closer,” she says. “We rarely get to see him, he lives so far away. Only at Christmas, sometimes Thanksgiving. Maybe you can talk him into moving back to Texas, especially since you were born and raised here. It would mean so much to have you both closer.”
Jared chuckles. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The four-hour drive to San Antonio the next morning gives Jared and Jensen time to talk about Jensen’s parents, their hopes and dreams for him, and how well or not well he fulfilled their expectations.
“I gotta say, they seem pretty cool, overall,” Jared comments. “They wish you could live closer, and your mother seems to think I’m just the latest in your history of animal rescues, but that’s all normal, I guess.”
Jensen huffs out a breath. “Sorry about that,” he says. “I stopped bringing home stray baby animals twenty years ago, but for her, it’s like yesterday.”
“It’s okay,” Jared insists. “It’s sweet. And I loved seeing all those pictures of you as a kid. You sure were adorable.”
Jensen shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Mom is just grateful to have somebody to share those photo albums with. God knows why she keeps them.”
“She’s your mother, Jensen. Of course she keeps them!”
Jensen shakes his head again. “Anyway. Anything look familiar yet?”
Jared stares out the window at the passing landscape, which is flat and brown at this time of year, occasionally green thanks to recent rainfall. The sky looms above and all around from horizon to horizon in every direction, puffy white clouds serving as the only break in an overwhelming blue canvas.
“It sure is flat,” Jared comments.
“Very true, Captain Obvious,” Jensen agrees. “Very true. Does that feel familiar to you?”
Jared stares at the landscape for another moment, then shakes his head. “Not particularly.”
They stop in Austin for lunch, then drive the last hour and a half to San Antonio.
When they get to the apartment building given on Jared’s driver’s license, the apartment has been rented to somebody else. They walk up and down the block, making eye contact with neighbors, but no one seems to recognize him.
At Jensen’s suggestion, they hit medical facilities next. They stop at hospitals, clinics, even doctor’s offices. Nobody recognizes Jared. Nobody’s ever seen him before.
Jensen gets excited when he finds a doctor whose last name is the same as Jared’s, but when they visit her office on the campus of the UT Health Sciences Center, nobody recognizes Jared there, either.
“And you’d think they’d remember a tall, good-looking guy,” Jared jokes. “Taller than most, anyway.”
“Let’s check out the colleges next,” Jensen suggests.
They spend an hour walking around the campus of UT San Antonio, striking out as they have everywhere else until Jared calls it quits.
“Let’s just drive around some residential neighborhoods,” Jensen suggests, almost pleading. “I feel like we just haven’t hit the right area yet. Something must be familiar to you. Somebody somewhere in this town must have seen you before.”
It’s getting late when they find the house. It’s at the end of a street out of town, where all the houses are a hundred years old with big, ragged lawns and chain-link fences. It’s run-down, its white paint peeling and cracked, but it’s definitely the house.
“There used to be a big tree with a tire swing,” Jared says, pointing at the remains of a stump on the front lawn.
Jensen takes the lead up the cracked, weed-choked path to the front door.
The woman who answers the door is advanced in years, in her mid-seventies, Jared guesses. She has sunken blue eyes behind thick glasses, age-spots on the backs of her hands and face. She doesn’t seem familiar at all.
“Hello, I’m Jensen Ackles and this is my friend, Jared Padalecki,” Jensen introduces them. “I’m sorry to bother you, but my friend had an accident a couple of months ago and has amnesia, but he thinks he remembers growing up in this house.”
The woman looks at Jared, then back at Jensen.
“I don’t know how that’s possible, young man,” she says. “I’ve lived here all my life.”
Jensen’s clearly at a loss for words. “Oh. Well, thank you for your time.”
He turns, disappointment clear in his green eyes, and starts to shepherd Jared back down the walk with a hand on the small of his back.
“Wait!”
The woman’s voice stops them short. They turn, waiting patiently for her to continue.
“There are some pictures of the family who used to live here before us,” she says. “Maybe they’re relatives of yours.”
She retreats into the house, leaving the door open. Jared shakes his head.
“If she’s lived here for seventy-some years, there’s no way,” Jared says. “Unless I’m remembering driving by the house, maybe somebody pointing it out to me? But in my dream, it definitely feels like I lived here. I can remember playing in the backyard.”
The woman returns with a small handful of old photographs, all black and white, some with scalloped edges like they’ve spent time in an old scrapbook.
“We found these in the attic when I was a kid,” she tells them. “They must’ve belonged to the family who lived here before us.”
Jared recognizes the woman from his dream right away. Even faded and in black and white, she’s unmistakable. The little boy with her might be Jared as a child, only that’s impossible. From the woman’s hairstyle and the clothes they’re wearing, the photographs were obviously taken sometime in the 1930s. Over eighty years ago.
In one of the photographs, the woman and the little boy are standing in front of the house, almost in the exact place where Jared and Jensen are now standing.
Jared turns it over, finds writing on the back: “Jean & Jared.”
“I see the resemblance,” Jensen comments. “The boy looks like you probably looked as a kid, what do you think?”
“This must be my great-grandmother with my grandfather,” Jared says. That doesn’t sound right, but it’s the only possible explanation.
He looks up at the woman, hovering awkwardly in her doorway.
“I’m so glad you held onto these,” he says. “They really help to fill in the blanks.”
“Glad to be helpful,” the woman answers. “You keep them. They’re your family.”
“So Jared’s a family name,” Jensen comments as they return to the car.
Jared shrugs. “I guess so.”
Now that they have the woman’s name, they head to the public library, use the genealogy databases to look up the 1930s Census information on the Padalecki family.
Jean, George, and little Jared lived in the house in 1930, but not in 1940. With little effort, Jared finds death certificates and gravestones for all three.
“The whole family died in 1939,” Jared breathes. “Cause of death: ‘injuries sustained in an automobile accident.’”
“Wait.” Jensen frowns. “So if they died, you can’t be descended from them.”
Jared shrugs. “I guess George had a brother,” he guesses, confirming this easily by searching George Padalecki in the Census database. The rest of the records for births and deaths are easily found, including the couple who must have been Jared’s parents.
“Weird,” he says as he finds the death certificate for Sharon and Gerald Padalecki. “They died in a car accident, too, back in 2001.”
“Most common cause of accidental death,” Jensen says. “Do you have siblings?”
“Not that I can see from the Census records,” Jared says. “It’s just all so weird. I couldn’t even find these records when I was searching back in Sioux Falls. It’s like they just magically appeared.”
Jensen chuckles. “Well, you obviously have a birth certificate, or you wouldn’t have a driver’s license,” he observes.
“Right, but I couldn’t find it before,” Jared says. “Not that it matters, but at least I would’ve had the names of my parents before this.”
“At least you have them now,” Jensen notes. He puts a hand on Jared’s forearm. “I’m sorry for your loss, Jay.”
Jared shakes his head. “I still have no memory of them,” he admits. “I can’t exactly grieve for people I don’t even remember.”
“We could probably figure out where they’re buried, if you want,” Jensen suggests. “We could visit their graves, pay last respects, that sort of thing.”
Jared shakes his head. “No, no, that’s okay. I think I already knew they were gone. Finding out it happened so long ago isn’t really a surprise.”
“And none of this jogs any memories,” Jensen confirms as Jared shakes his head again.
“It really doesn’t matter, Jensen, you have to believe me. The important thing to me is that I found you.” Jared huffs out a laugh. “I just wish I knew how I figured out to head north to find you in the first place. That feels pretty random.”
“Or just coincidence,” Jensen shrugs. “Serendipity. Maybe you were at the hospital that day looking for a job. Maybe you picked Sioux Falls completely by chance.”
“Maybe,” Jared agrees skeptically. He feels there’s something he’s missing. Besides his memories, of course.
They spend a few more minutes searching databases for any other clues, but nothing surfaces. Jared’s parents were normal, average people whose lives never made the news, as far as Jared can tell. The only photographs he unearths are from high school yearbooks, in which both of his parents appear as perfectly normal high school seniors, nothing remarkable or noteworthy about them.
“They were both only children, apparently,” Jared comments. “I must’ve been a lonely kid, without siblings or cousins or even aunts and uncles.”
“I’ve got all those,” Jensen assures him. “Happy to share.”
Jared shakes his head. “It all adds up to a really lonely, forgettable life,” he says. “No wonder I can’t remember any of it.”
“All right, all right.” Jensen gets to his feet. “I think somebody needs to eat. Your blood sugar’s low. Let’s get you some food.”
Later that night, at the motel, Jensen shows Jared exactly how unforgettable he is, at least to Jensen.
“Do you regret coming down here?” Jensen asks as they lie together afterward.
Jared’s the big spoon, of course. He nuzzles the back of Jensen’s head as he considers his question.
“Not really,” he admits finally. “I mean, at least we know for sure now. My life sucked before I met you.”
Jensen twists around so he can look up into Jared’s face.
“Not sucked,” he insists seriously. “Boring, maybe. Better now, for sure.”
Jared leans down to kiss him. “Definitely better.”
They make out leisurely for a few moments until Jensen pulls back, one hand cupping Jared’s cheek.
“I just can’t believe nobody down here remembers you,” he breathes. “Tall, gorgeous dude like you. Pretty fucking unforgettable, if you ask me.”
Jared huffs out a laugh, cheeks and chest heating up with embarrassment.
“To you, maybe,” he mutters. “Anybody else sees awkward, overgrown, forgettable.”
Jensen shakes his head sharply. “If anybody thought those things about you, I would fight them.”
Jared grins, leaning down to kiss Jensen’s full lips. “I know you would. My hero.”
They stop at Jensen’s folks’ house again on the way back. When she hears their story, Jensen’s mother gives Jared a long, sympathetic hug.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she says before letting him go. “I was hoping for you to find your people down there.”
Jared shakes his head. “It’s okay. I found your son.”
“And us,” she reminds him. “I hope you’ll always feel welcome here. Anytime.”
Jensen’s father gives Jared a manly handshake, but there are tears in his eyes.
“So what are your plans?” he asks, clearing his throat.
“Back to Sioux Falls,” Jensen says. “I’m going to try to find Jared a job at the hospital. Shouldn’t be too hard. He might have to start out doing something that doesn’t require a degree, since we couldn’t find any evidence that he has one.”
Jared shrugs. “That’s okay by me,” he assures Jensen. “As long as we’re together, everything else will work out.”
He’s so confident of that one sure thing, he forgets Jensen’s parents might not agree. But when he glances at them, their expressions are politely interested, not in the least creeped out, and he lets out a little sigh of relief.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out, son,” Jensen’s father says, and Jensen’s mother nods.
“Well, that went better than expected,” Jensen says when they’re back in the car, heading north. “They really like you.”
“The feeling is mutual,” Jared assures him. “You come from good people, Jensen. Like you.”
To break up the long drive back to Sioux Falls, they stop for the night at a motel just outside Oklahoma City. They’re both too tired to do anything but shower and sleep, but when Jared wakes up the following morning, he’s sure he’s been dreaming. Memories of his mother linger on the edges of his consciousness. He remembers swinging on the tire swing in the front yard of the little white house. He remembers sitting in the back seat of his parents' old car, riding to church one morning in his best clothes. The collar of his shirt scratches the back of his neck. His father wears a hat normally, but his bald head isn’t covered today. The hat must be sitting on the front seat between his parents. His mother’s hair is done in an old-fashioned style that she creates by wearing curlers to bed the night before.
“George, slow down,” his mother says. Then she screams. Jared hears the screech of tires, feels himself fly out of his seat and into the windshield. The impact hurts, breaks the glass. Then he’s outside the car, on the ground. The air is full of smoke. People are running and yelling. Jared blinks, looking up into the face of a man he doesn’t recognize.
“The little boy’s still alive!” The man shouts to somebody behind him. “Somebody call an ambulance!”
The man puts his hand on Jared’s shoulder. “It’s gonna be alright, son. Just hang in there.”
But Jared’s falling asleep. His brain is fuzzy and his head hurts. He’s losing consciousness, the world around him growing darker, colder. Sound gets sucked into a hole, sudden silence and utter stillness taking its place.
Jared jerks awake, breathing hard.
Jensen stirs beside him. “Jay? Everything okay?”
Jared takes a deep breath, grateful to be able to pull air into his lungs.
He’s not dead. It was just a dream.
“Jay?” Jensen sits up, touches his shoulder, blinking in the early morning sunlight. “You okay, buddy?”
“Weird dream,” Jared says, huffing out a breath as he swipes a hand over his face, rubs his stubble.
“Memories?” Jensen suggests.
“Maybe? But most likely just my over-active imagination,” Jared says. “I was dreaming I was the little boy who died in 1939 in that car accident with his parents. The one who lived in the white house.”
The more awake he is, the less like a memory the dream feels.
He shakes his head with a little chuckle. “I think I just got a little overstimulated yesterday,” he says. “My brain decided to make me star in a little family drama.”
“Understandable,” Jensen says, rubbing Jared’s back. “It must have been a shock, finding out about your parents like that. And that house with the pictures? The little boy who looks so much like you? And the way they all died, just the way your parents did. Man, the whole thing kinda feels like the set-up to a really bad horror movie. I’m sure it would give me nightmares if it was me.”
Jared nods, shaking his head again.
“It’s just so weird, you know? The way my brain wants to go back to the story of that family?”
Jensen nods. “The brain is amazing,” he says. “You might have visited that house when you were a little boy, or at least drove past it. Maybe your mom or dad told you the story of that other family, and now your brain overlaps the two tragedies, helping you deal with what happened to your folks. Maybe that other story is helping you deal with your survival guilt.”
Jared gazes at Jensen, who looks perfect, of course, despite his hair sticking up and his scruff looking unusually scruffy. Sexy as hell, though. He cups Jensen’s cheek, running his thumb over Jensen’s cheekbone.
“How did I ever survive, before I met you?”
“Just lucky, I guess.” Jensen grins.
“I just can’t get over the feeling that life was pretty meaningless, before,” Jared muses. “It feels like I wasn’t really living.”
He leans in and kisses Jensen, slow and sweet, which leads to morning sex that’s also slow and sweet. As Jared pushes into Jensen’s body, he feels that overwhelming sense of being home again, of being right where he’s meant to be.
Even if he never remembers a day of his old life, Jared knows he’s right where he belongs.
When they’re back on the road again, Jared asks the question that’s been bothering him for the past two days, since they learned as much about Jared’s past as they could without Jared’s memories.
“So, you’re okay if I never remember anything about who I was, before?”
Jensen glances over, frowning slightly.
“What makes you ask that?” he says.
Jared shifts in his seat. “I mean, if I never recover my memories, you’ll never really know who I am,” he says.
“I know enough,” Jensen insists. “I know you’re a kind, sensitive man with a loving heart. I know you care about me.”
Jared nods. “Well, yeah, but you don’t really know me. You don’t know what I’ve done. I might have been a serial killer or a child molester.”
“You weren’t,” Jensen says with utter conviction. “I’ve known you for more than two months now. You’re a good man, not a bad one. But I knew that the first time I saw you. You were.”
He pauses, and Jared narrows his eyes. “I was what?”
Jensen shakes his head. “I don’t know. There was something about you. Like you weren’t totally real. I remember thinking...”
He pauses, then lets out a chuckle, like it’s an embarrassing memory.
“What?” Jared prompts. “What do you remember thinking?”
“It’s stupid, really,” Jensen says, glancing over at Jared before he goes on. “I remember thinking that you weren’t fully human. There was just something about you, some quality that was almost supernatural.”
He chuckles, shaking his head, then bites his bottom lip, glancing over at Jared to catch Jared’s reaction.
“Stupid,” he repeats.
Jared shakes his head. “No more stupid than me believing I’ve known you in another life,” he insists. “But seriously. You’d be okay if I never recover my memories?”
Jensen shrugs. “You might,” he says. “You still might remember who you were. Everything I know about traumatic brain injury tells me that you still might recover at least some of your memories, even just little by little, it all might come back to you.”
“But you wouldn’t think less of me if I never did?” Jared clarifies. “I wouldn’t be a disappointment to you if I’m like this forever?”
“Jared, how could you think that?” Jensen shoots an indignant glance at him. “How could you think I’m the kind of person who could just what? Drop you because you can’t remember who you are?”
Jared shakes his head vigorously, more sure than he’s ever been of anything that Jensen is not that kind of person.
“You’ve just invested so much time and energy in helping me recover,” Jared says. “Taking time off work, driving me down to San Antonio, helping me do research. And I appreciate the effort and expense, don’t get me wrong. But I have this sneaking suspicion that I might not get better. I might never recover all my memories. And I don’t want to let you down. I don’t want to be a burden, or make you feel like you have to take care of me forever.”
Jensen puts his hand up to halt Jared’s spiel.
“That’s why we’re going to get you a job,” he reminds Jared. “You’ll be independent in no time, so you can make your own decisions and not feel like you have to depend on me.”
Then he adds, “Not that I mind, as you should know by now.”
He takes a deep breath, and Jared holds his as he waits for whatever bomb Jensen’s about to drop.
“I don’t know if it’s too soon to say this,” Jensen begins, “but I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you, and I get the funny feeling you feel the same way.”
“I do,” Jared agrees eagerly. “I really do.”
Jensen grins, wide and easy. “So we’ll figure it out,” he says. “Together.”
“Together,” Jared agrees.
He slides his hand over Jensen’s on the steering wheel, and Jensen turns his hand over so they can tangle their fingers together.
They gaze out at the road ahead.
fin
His entire body aches. A needle is pumping something into his veins through a needle stuck into the inside of his elbow. He can smell blood and antiseptic. Cleaning fluid.
Someone holds his hand.
“Jared?” The voice is familiar, right next to him, the voice of someone beloved and trusted.
Jensen.
Jared moans, probably has been moaning for a while. His throat hurts, and he wonders why he’s so thirsty.
“Water,” he croaks, struggling to open his eyes but the light in the room is too bright.
“Yeah, yeah, here you are,” Jensen says.
Jared feels a straw pushing gently on his lower lip. He sucks on it instinctively, gets a sip of ice water into his mouth before Jensen pulls it back.
“Not too much,” Jensen says. His voice is warm and deep, soothing. “You just got out of surgery.”
Jared’s in a hospital. He’s been injured. He’s lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines and an intravenous cocktail of fluids. His leg is wrapped in a cast. His chest is also wrapped and when he tries to take a deep breath it hurts worse. His leg is the only part of his body that doesn’t hurt, since it’s completely numb from whatever local anesthetic he’s been injected with.
Jensen sits at his bedside, holding his hand. He’s beautiful.
“What happened?” Jared croaks.
“You got hit by a car, crossing the street,” Jensen says. “On your way to dinner with me.”
“Dinner?”
Jared struggles to remember, but his brain won’t supply the memory he needs. He knows Jensen, but he can’t remember how they met. He loves Jensen, but he doesn’t have a single specific memory of him.
Jensen’s smiling at him, that’s all that matters. His whole face lights up when he smiles. It’s almost hard to look at him, he’s so beautiful. Looking at Jensen is better than the best painkillers. Jared feels better just looking at him.
“How are you feeling?” Jensen asks. He’s still got Jared’s hand clasped in both of his, now that he’s put the covered plastic water pitcher on the bedside table.
“Better now,” Jared admits easily. He really does feel better, just looking at Jensen. He’s healing.
Jensen blushes, getting his meaning. He looks down at their hands.
“My eyelids hurt,” Jared says. “How bad do I look?”
Jensen lifts his eyes again. “You’re pretty banged up,” he says. “Bruises everywhere. A couple of cracked ribs. Your head took a hard knock. But you’ll live. You’re gonna be okay.”
Jared tries to nod but his neck’s in some kind of brace. He can’t move much.
“How long?” he asks.
Jensen squeezes his hand. “Maybe a couple of days before they’ll discharge you, but it’ll be at least six weeks before your leg heals enough so that you can get that cast off. Do you - Is there anybody I can call for you? Do you have family close by? Someplace to stay?”
Jared blinks. He can’t remember. He thinks he had a mother, once. She was soft and smelled nice.
“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I don’t think I’ve been here very long.”
Jensen nods. “That explains why your driver’s license gives a San Antonio address,” he says. “Do you remember anything else?”
“You,” Jared says. “I remember you, Jensen.”
Jensen smiles again and nods encouragingly.
“We’ll have a neurologist look at you,” he says. “You hit your head pretty hard. Concussion and amnesia are common with head injuries.”
Jared frowns. “I don’t even know who I am, except for my name.”
“Yeah, about that,” Jensen says. “While you were unconscious, I asked around at the local hospice agencies, but nobody’s heard of you. Nobody else here at the hospital remembers seeing you either. I guess I’m the only person who knew you, before the accident.”
Jared blinks. “Can I stay with you? When they let me go home?”
Jensen smiles broadly and lets out a sigh of relief.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” he says. “I feel like I should look after you, at least until you’re back on your feet again. After all, you were on your way to meet me for dinner when you got hit. I feel responsible.”
“I feel like I’ve known you forever,” Jared says.
Jensen blushes and ducks his head again.
“Funny you should say that,” he says, rubbing his thumb over the back of Jared’s hand. “I feel exactly the same way.”
Within the week, Jared gets discharged from the hospital, prescription painkillers and antibiotics in hand. Jensen drives him home to his apartment, sets him up on his couch with food, water, and the TV remote, and leaves his crutches within easy reach. He loans Jared some clean clothes, since the clothes that he was wearing on the day of the accident were ruined in the accident and cut off him in the Emergency Room.
“We’ll buy you some new clothes in your size next weekend,” Jensen assures Jared as he pulls on Jensen’s too-tight t-shirt.
When Jensen leans close to adjust the pillows behind Jared’s back, Jared kisses him.
It’s the most natural thing in the world, holding Jensen’s face, slipping his fingers behind his neck, feeling the short hairs there with the tips of his fingers. Jensen melts into the kiss, parts his lips so Jared can deepen the kiss. When Jared finally lets him go, Jensen’s eyes stay closed for a moment and his tongue flicks out to taste his swollen bottom lip.
Jensen’s beauty makes Jared’s heart stop, although thankfully not literally. He can’t stop staring.
When Jensen finally opens his eyes, he stares back, stunned. Then he blinks, grins in a spontaneous, adorable way that makes him seem shy, and ducks his head.
“I was hoping for that since the day we first met,” he confesses softly.
“I don’t remember that day, but I know I’ve been wanting to do that for as long as I can remember,” Jared admits.
Jensen gazes at him for a moment, then leans in and kisses him, carefully but thoroughly. Jared wants more, wants to pull Jensen into his lap and hold him there, injuries be damned, but Jensen’s too much of a professional. He won’t add to Jared’s pain or discomfort. After a couple of moments, Jensen extricates himself, stares into Jared’s eyes, then leans close and tips his forehead to Jared’s.
“We should go slow, while you’re healing,” he murmurs.
Jared sighs. “Want you,” he breathes.
Jensen grins. “Me, too. But let's get you better first.”
It’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, letting Jensen get up so he can go and get ready for work. Jared’s certain of that, even if he doesn’t remember anything specific. He suspects his life has been normal and uneventful before he met Jensen. Jensen has turned his world inside out.
Jared doesn’t need memories to convince him of that.
After that day, Jared finds his new life with Jensen falling into a pleasant routine. Jensen works regular twelve-hour shifts at the hospital, but he’s able to pull back on his hours while he helps Jared recuperate. He brings Jared books, finds videos for him to watch. He gives Jared his laptop to use, to keep a recovery journal.
“You need to stimulate your brain,” he tells Jared. “Jog your memory. With amnesia patients, it’s the oldest memories that are the easiest to retrieve. You were born in 1982, according to your driver’s license, so you should research news and events from the 80s and 90s, see if anything reminds you of something.”
Jensen brings home exercises from the neurology department at the hospital, gets Jared to practice associative memory techniques.
“When you’re better, we’ll drive down to San Antonio, drive around to see if anything looks familiar. In the meantime, google yourself. Look at high school and college yearbooks. Check out the address on your license on Google Maps. You used to be somebody, Jared, and together, we’ll figure out who you were.”
But the truth is, Jared doesn’t feel any urgent curiosity about himself. For the foreseeable future, he’s content to hang out in Jensen’s apartment, letting Jensen take care of him. He dutifully completes the memory exercises, does the research, reads and watches TV to learn about the world around him. In doing so, he learns that he does have preferences. He seems to enjoy old movies, particularly black-and-white Hollywood films made in the 1940s. He loves jazz music from that era as well, finds himself singing along when an old jazz standard comes on.
Once in a while, he wakes up from a dream about a little white house and a kind woman who he thinks must be his mother. But the house isn’t the one at the address on his license, according to Google Maps. He wakes up hearing a song in his head, but it’s not one he can replicate, so he assumes his mother was singing it to him in his dream.
Jensen worries and fusses over him, trying to help jog his memories with stories and pictures from his own life, growing up in Texas. Jared learns that the Ackles family did a lot of camping and fishing, rode horseback, and even owned a couple of horses for a while when Jensen was a child. Jensen loves classic rock, country, and folk music. He plays guitar and sings for Jared, and Jared loves to listen to him, especially when he sings songs that he wrote himself. Growing up gay in Texas wasn’t easy, Jared learns, and Jensen often retreated into his music as a way to avoid socializing. He was a talented athlete but gave up sports after a particularly traumatic episode in the boys’ locker room at school.
Jared listens sympathetically, then shakes his head when Jensen suggests that Jared might have similar stories to tell if he could remember them.
“If I was mistreated or bullied as a kid, and what kid wasn’t, it hasn’t left an impression,” Jared says. “When I think about my childhood, it’s just my mom and the little white house, and a song she sang to me. I get the feeling I had a pleasant, uninteresting, non-traumatic childhood, but I can’t recall anything specific.”
Jensen shakes his head. They’re sitting across the coffee table from each other, eating takeout from Jensen’s favorite Thai restaurant. Earlier in the day, Jensen had taken Jared to the local Walmart, and now he’s wearing the shorts and hoodie that were all they could find that could fit over his cast. Jared’s uninjured, bare leg hangs off the side of the couch, propping him up so he can bend over the table when he eats. He feels naked and ridiculous, his cast weighing him down like the big, awkward extra appendage that it is.
“You must have been in the hospital for a reason,” Jensen muses. “When I first met you, you seemed to belong there. I never doubted that you were some kind of medical worker.”
Jared shrugs. He’d already spent time looking through Jensen’s medical textbooks, looking for anything familiar, but he hadn’t read anything that jostled any specific memories. He’s got some medical terminology under his belt, for sure.
“Maybe I worked in a hospital or clinic in San Antonio before I came here,” he suggests.
Jensen nods. “Add visits to hospitals and clinics to our list of places to visit when we get down there,” he says with conviction.
Jensen seems determined to help Jared figure out who he really is, and Jared goes along with it, mostly to humor him. For some reason he can’t imagine, he really doesn’t care who he used to be. He’s where he wants to be, now, with Jensen. Whatever he did before, the main thing about it is that it led him here.
But after six weeks spent mostly on Jensen’s couch, he’s relieved when it’s finally time to get his cast off.
“That leg will be weak as a kitten for a week or two,” Jensen warns. “You’re gonna need a helluva lot of physical therapy to get it back where you want it.”
But all Jared can think about is finally getting to do what he’s wanted to do with Jensen since he first woke up in the hospital.
It’s not like they haven’t been making out pretty regularly over the past six weeks. They have. They’ve even been naked together, jerking off with Jensen on top, which led to other things. Jared topping from the bottom, for one, which they’ve now tried several times because they both love it so much.
Jared can’t wait to get Jensen all naked and sweaty and under him for the first time, and neither can Jensen. Despite Jensen’s protests that they need to take it slow, Jared throws him down on the bed the minute they get home. Jared’s been keeping fit with weight training and push-ups all through the six weeks of his convalescence, and now that he’s got two legs to stand on, it doesn’t take long to manhandle Jensen into the position they’ve both been wanting badly.
Watching Jensen come apart under him, his full lips parted and damp, his green eyes filled with emotion as Jared fills him up, hitting his sweet spot every time as Jensen moans and writhes, Jared’s just sure there’s nothing better. He’s sure he’s waited all his life to have this with Jensen.
Maybe several lives.
Once the idea surfaces in his brain, it won’t go away.
“What if I came here looking for you?” he speculates out loud as they’re lying side by side on Jensen’s big bed, sated and relaxed, sweat and come drying on their naked skin.
“What do you mean?” Jensen blinks, and somehow Jared knows he’s hit a nerve. Jensen’s thought something similar if not specifically the idea that Jared was looking for him.
“Well, it feels like we’ve always known each other, right?” Jared goes on as Jensen nods. “So maybe we have. Maybe we met in another lifetime and we got separated somehow. But down deep we always knew the other one was out there, somewhere. So I was living my boring, humdrum life down in San Antonio, and one day I knew I had to come north to find you. Maybe I had a dream or something.”
To his credit, Jensen doesn’t laugh at him. He even manages to look thoughtful for a moment. Then he grins, easy and natural, sliding his hand into Jared’s, lacing their fingers together.
“You’re insane,” he says fondly. “You know that, right?”
“It’s probably been said,” Jared agrees. “I just don’t remember.”
“We’re gonna fix that,” Jensen assures him with the confidence of someone who’s been fixing people all his adult life. “Next week, we’re gonna jog those memories. Maybe run into somebody who remembers you from your boring, humdrum life down south.”
Jared nods, going along with Jensen’s plan because it seems to matter so much to him, and because he suspects it should matter to him, as well.
It doesn’t, though. All he cares about now is that he’s where he belongs.
With Jensen.
The following week, physical therapy started, and with exercises in hand, they head south.
It’s a twelve-hour drive to Dallas, where Jensen wants them to stop overnight to visit his family.
“They’re gonna love you,” Jensen assures Jared, who feels some trepidation at the thought of meeting the folks. “You’re just the kind of ‘guy’s guy’ my dad approves of for me.”
“He doesn’t know you’re gay?” Jared frowns.
“Oh, he knows,” Jensen assures him. “He just thinks that big, tough guys make better companions for me than smaller, more effeminate types.” Jensen shakes his head. “It’s just his way of handling the fact that his son didn’t turn out the way he wanted. It’s easier for him to imagine me as straight if my partners don’t seem flagrantly gay.”
“Hey, I can do the whole limp wrist thing if you want,” Jared assures him, demonstrating with a couple of comic gestures that make Jensen laugh.
“Don’t do that in front of him. Please!” Jensen says.
“What about your mom?” Jared asks. “Is she okay with it?”
Jensen smiles. “Mom’s a trooper,” he says. “She’s always accepted me exactly as I am. Besides, they’ve got another son who meets all the tough straight guy criteria they could ever ask for.”
“Younger?” Jared asks.
Jensen shakes his head. “He’s older than me. Protective. I’ll always be grateful to him for standing up for me in middle school when I was getting bullied like you wouldn’t believe. Anyway. That’s all in the past, thank god.”
Jared’s jaw clenches. “I should’ve been there,” he says. “I would’ve shown those bullies where to put it.”
“And got yourself beat up in the process,” Jensen says with a chuckle. “Seriously. When I was thirteen, you were just a little squirt of a nine-year-old kid. You couldn’t have stopped those assholes if you wanted to.”
“Wish I could go back in time from right now and stop them from hurting you,” Jared growls.
Jensen puts his free hand on Jared’s knee and squeezes.
“I know you would if you could,” Jensen says. “I love that about you.”
The visit with Jensen’s family goes fine. His parents are kind and welcoming, compassionate about Jared’s injuries and amnesia, and approving of his place in Jensen’s life.
“Jensen used to bring home stray kittens, baby birds, anything small and helpless,” Jensen’s mother confides to Jared as he helps her in the kitchen after dinner. “You’re far from small and helpless, but I can see why he’s taken such an interest in you. He’s always been that way.”
Jared’s not sure whether to be offended at being compared with a helpless baby animal, but he decides to let it go. If Jensen’s mother needs to make sense of his place in Jensen’s life by connecting their relationship to something Jensen used to do as a child, far be it for Jared to argue with her.
“Jensen’s always been the kid who helped others,” Donna Ackles continues. “It’s a no-brainer that he’d end up in the medical profession.”
Jared nods. This, he can agree with wholeheartedly.
“Jensen’s naturally empathic,” he says. “He helps a lot of people. They’re lucky to have him at Sioux Falls General.”
Donna sighs, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.
“I just wish he were closer,” she says. “We rarely get to see him, he lives so far away. Only at Christmas, sometimes Thanksgiving. Maybe you can talk him into moving back to Texas, especially since you were born and raised here. It would mean so much to have you both closer.”
Jared chuckles. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The four-hour drive to San Antonio the next morning gives Jared and Jensen time to talk about Jensen’s parents, their hopes and dreams for him, and how well or not well he fulfilled their expectations.
“I gotta say, they seem pretty cool, overall,” Jared comments. “They wish you could live closer, and your mother seems to think I’m just the latest in your history of animal rescues, but that’s all normal, I guess.”
Jensen huffs out a breath. “Sorry about that,” he says. “I stopped bringing home stray baby animals twenty years ago, but for her, it’s like yesterday.”
“It’s okay,” Jared insists. “It’s sweet. And I loved seeing all those pictures of you as a kid. You sure were adorable.”
Jensen shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Mom is just grateful to have somebody to share those photo albums with. God knows why she keeps them.”
“She’s your mother, Jensen. Of course she keeps them!”
Jensen shakes his head again. “Anyway. Anything look familiar yet?”
Jared stares out the window at the passing landscape, which is flat and brown at this time of year, occasionally green thanks to recent rainfall. The sky looms above and all around from horizon to horizon in every direction, puffy white clouds serving as the only break in an overwhelming blue canvas.
“It sure is flat,” Jared comments.
“Very true, Captain Obvious,” Jensen agrees. “Very true. Does that feel familiar to you?”
Jared stares at the landscape for another moment, then shakes his head. “Not particularly.”
They stop in Austin for lunch, then drive the last hour and a half to San Antonio.
When they get to the apartment building given on Jared’s driver’s license, the apartment has been rented to somebody else. They walk up and down the block, making eye contact with neighbors, but no one seems to recognize him.
At Jensen’s suggestion, they hit medical facilities next. They stop at hospitals, clinics, even doctor’s offices. Nobody recognizes Jared. Nobody’s ever seen him before.
Jensen gets excited when he finds a doctor whose last name is the same as Jared’s, but when they visit her office on the campus of the UT Health Sciences Center, nobody recognizes Jared there, either.
“And you’d think they’d remember a tall, good-looking guy,” Jared jokes. “Taller than most, anyway.”
“Let’s check out the colleges next,” Jensen suggests.
They spend an hour walking around the campus of UT San Antonio, striking out as they have everywhere else until Jared calls it quits.
“Let’s just drive around some residential neighborhoods,” Jensen suggests, almost pleading. “I feel like we just haven’t hit the right area yet. Something must be familiar to you. Somebody somewhere in this town must have seen you before.”
It’s getting late when they find the house. It’s at the end of a street out of town, where all the houses are a hundred years old with big, ragged lawns and chain-link fences. It’s run-down, its white paint peeling and cracked, but it’s definitely the house.
“There used to be a big tree with a tire swing,” Jared says, pointing at the remains of a stump on the front lawn.
Jensen takes the lead up the cracked, weed-choked path to the front door.
The woman who answers the door is advanced in years, in her mid-seventies, Jared guesses. She has sunken blue eyes behind thick glasses, age-spots on the backs of her hands and face. She doesn’t seem familiar at all.
“Hello, I’m Jensen Ackles and this is my friend, Jared Padalecki,” Jensen introduces them. “I’m sorry to bother you, but my friend had an accident a couple of months ago and has amnesia, but he thinks he remembers growing up in this house.”
The woman looks at Jared, then back at Jensen.
“I don’t know how that’s possible, young man,” she says. “I’ve lived here all my life.”
Jensen’s clearly at a loss for words. “Oh. Well, thank you for your time.”
He turns, disappointment clear in his green eyes, and starts to shepherd Jared back down the walk with a hand on the small of his back.
“Wait!”
The woman’s voice stops them short. They turn, waiting patiently for her to continue.
“There are some pictures of the family who used to live here before us,” she says. “Maybe they’re relatives of yours.”
She retreats into the house, leaving the door open. Jared shakes his head.
“If she’s lived here for seventy-some years, there’s no way,” Jared says. “Unless I’m remembering driving by the house, maybe somebody pointing it out to me? But in my dream, it definitely feels like I lived here. I can remember playing in the backyard.”
The woman returns with a small handful of old photographs, all black and white, some with scalloped edges like they’ve spent time in an old scrapbook.
“We found these in the attic when I was a kid,” she tells them. “They must’ve belonged to the family who lived here before us.”
Jared recognizes the woman from his dream right away. Even faded and in black and white, she’s unmistakable. The little boy with her might be Jared as a child, only that’s impossible. From the woman’s hairstyle and the clothes they’re wearing, the photographs were obviously taken sometime in the 1930s. Over eighty years ago.
In one of the photographs, the woman and the little boy are standing in front of the house, almost in the exact place where Jared and Jensen are now standing.
Jared turns it over, finds writing on the back: “Jean & Jared.”
“I see the resemblance,” Jensen comments. “The boy looks like you probably looked as a kid, what do you think?”
“This must be my great-grandmother with my grandfather,” Jared says. That doesn’t sound right, but it’s the only possible explanation.
He looks up at the woman, hovering awkwardly in her doorway.
“I’m so glad you held onto these,” he says. “They really help to fill in the blanks.”
“Glad to be helpful,” the woman answers. “You keep them. They’re your family.”
“So Jared’s a family name,” Jensen comments as they return to the car.
Jared shrugs. “I guess so.”
Now that they have the woman’s name, they head to the public library, use the genealogy databases to look up the 1930s Census information on the Padalecki family.
Jean, George, and little Jared lived in the house in 1930, but not in 1940. With little effort, Jared finds death certificates and gravestones for all three.
“The whole family died in 1939,” Jared breathes. “Cause of death: ‘injuries sustained in an automobile accident.’”
“Wait.” Jensen frowns. “So if they died, you can’t be descended from them.”
Jared shrugs. “I guess George had a brother,” he guesses, confirming this easily by searching George Padalecki in the Census database. The rest of the records for births and deaths are easily found, including the couple who must have been Jared’s parents.
“Weird,” he says as he finds the death certificate for Sharon and Gerald Padalecki. “They died in a car accident, too, back in 2001.”
“Most common cause of accidental death,” Jensen says. “Do you have siblings?”
“Not that I can see from the Census records,” Jared says. “It’s just all so weird. I couldn’t even find these records when I was searching back in Sioux Falls. It’s like they just magically appeared.”
Jensen chuckles. “Well, you obviously have a birth certificate, or you wouldn’t have a driver’s license,” he observes.
“Right, but I couldn’t find it before,” Jared says. “Not that it matters, but at least I would’ve had the names of my parents before this.”
“At least you have them now,” Jensen notes. He puts a hand on Jared’s forearm. “I’m sorry for your loss, Jay.”
Jared shakes his head. “I still have no memory of them,” he admits. “I can’t exactly grieve for people I don’t even remember.”
“We could probably figure out where they’re buried, if you want,” Jensen suggests. “We could visit their graves, pay last respects, that sort of thing.”
Jared shakes his head. “No, no, that’s okay. I think I already knew they were gone. Finding out it happened so long ago isn’t really a surprise.”
“And none of this jogs any memories,” Jensen confirms as Jared shakes his head again.
“It really doesn’t matter, Jensen, you have to believe me. The important thing to me is that I found you.” Jared huffs out a laugh. “I just wish I knew how I figured out to head north to find you in the first place. That feels pretty random.”
“Or just coincidence,” Jensen shrugs. “Serendipity. Maybe you were at the hospital that day looking for a job. Maybe you picked Sioux Falls completely by chance.”
“Maybe,” Jared agrees skeptically. He feels there’s something he’s missing. Besides his memories, of course.
They spend a few more minutes searching databases for any other clues, but nothing surfaces. Jared’s parents were normal, average people whose lives never made the news, as far as Jared can tell. The only photographs he unearths are from high school yearbooks, in which both of his parents appear as perfectly normal high school seniors, nothing remarkable or noteworthy about them.
“They were both only children, apparently,” Jared comments. “I must’ve been a lonely kid, without siblings or cousins or even aunts and uncles.”
“I’ve got all those,” Jensen assures him. “Happy to share.”
Jared shakes his head. “It all adds up to a really lonely, forgettable life,” he says. “No wonder I can’t remember any of it.”
“All right, all right.” Jensen gets to his feet. “I think somebody needs to eat. Your blood sugar’s low. Let’s get you some food.”
Later that night, at the motel, Jensen shows Jared exactly how unforgettable he is, at least to Jensen.
“Do you regret coming down here?” Jensen asks as they lie together afterward.
Jared’s the big spoon, of course. He nuzzles the back of Jensen’s head as he considers his question.
“Not really,” he admits finally. “I mean, at least we know for sure now. My life sucked before I met you.”
Jensen twists around so he can look up into Jared’s face.
“Not sucked,” he insists seriously. “Boring, maybe. Better now, for sure.”
Jared leans down to kiss him. “Definitely better.”
They make out leisurely for a few moments until Jensen pulls back, one hand cupping Jared’s cheek.
“I just can’t believe nobody down here remembers you,” he breathes. “Tall, gorgeous dude like you. Pretty fucking unforgettable, if you ask me.”
Jared huffs out a laugh, cheeks and chest heating up with embarrassment.
“To you, maybe,” he mutters. “Anybody else sees awkward, overgrown, forgettable.”
Jensen shakes his head sharply. “If anybody thought those things about you, I would fight them.”
Jared grins, leaning down to kiss Jensen’s full lips. “I know you would. My hero.”
They stop at Jensen’s folks’ house again on the way back. When she hears their story, Jensen’s mother gives Jared a long, sympathetic hug.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she says before letting him go. “I was hoping for you to find your people down there.”
Jared shakes his head. “It’s okay. I found your son.”
“And us,” she reminds him. “I hope you’ll always feel welcome here. Anytime.”
Jensen’s father gives Jared a manly handshake, but there are tears in his eyes.
“So what are your plans?” he asks, clearing his throat.
“Back to Sioux Falls,” Jensen says. “I’m going to try to find Jared a job at the hospital. Shouldn’t be too hard. He might have to start out doing something that doesn’t require a degree, since we couldn’t find any evidence that he has one.”
Jared shrugs. “That’s okay by me,” he assures Jensen. “As long as we’re together, everything else will work out.”
He’s so confident of that one sure thing, he forgets Jensen’s parents might not agree. But when he glances at them, their expressions are politely interested, not in the least creeped out, and he lets out a little sigh of relief.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out, son,” Jensen’s father says, and Jensen’s mother nods.
“Well, that went better than expected,” Jensen says when they’re back in the car, heading north. “They really like you.”
“The feeling is mutual,” Jared assures him. “You come from good people, Jensen. Like you.”
To break up the long drive back to Sioux Falls, they stop for the night at a motel just outside Oklahoma City. They’re both too tired to do anything but shower and sleep, but when Jared wakes up the following morning, he’s sure he’s been dreaming. Memories of his mother linger on the edges of his consciousness. He remembers swinging on the tire swing in the front yard of the little white house. He remembers sitting in the back seat of his parents' old car, riding to church one morning in his best clothes. The collar of his shirt scratches the back of his neck. His father wears a hat normally, but his bald head isn’t covered today. The hat must be sitting on the front seat between his parents. His mother’s hair is done in an old-fashioned style that she creates by wearing curlers to bed the night before.
“George, slow down,” his mother says. Then she screams. Jared hears the screech of tires, feels himself fly out of his seat and into the windshield. The impact hurts, breaks the glass. Then he’s outside the car, on the ground. The air is full of smoke. People are running and yelling. Jared blinks, looking up into the face of a man he doesn’t recognize.
“The little boy’s still alive!” The man shouts to somebody behind him. “Somebody call an ambulance!”
The man puts his hand on Jared’s shoulder. “It’s gonna be alright, son. Just hang in there.”
But Jared’s falling asleep. His brain is fuzzy and his head hurts. He’s losing consciousness, the world around him growing darker, colder. Sound gets sucked into a hole, sudden silence and utter stillness taking its place.
Jared jerks awake, breathing hard.
Jensen stirs beside him. “Jay? Everything okay?”
Jared takes a deep breath, grateful to be able to pull air into his lungs.
He’s not dead. It was just a dream.
“Jay?” Jensen sits up, touches his shoulder, blinking in the early morning sunlight. “You okay, buddy?”
“Weird dream,” Jared says, huffing out a breath as he swipes a hand over his face, rubs his stubble.
“Memories?” Jensen suggests.
“Maybe? But most likely just my over-active imagination,” Jared says. “I was dreaming I was the little boy who died in 1939 in that car accident with his parents. The one who lived in the white house.”
The more awake he is, the less like a memory the dream feels.
He shakes his head with a little chuckle. “I think I just got a little overstimulated yesterday,” he says. “My brain decided to make me star in a little family drama.”
“Understandable,” Jensen says, rubbing Jared’s back. “It must have been a shock, finding out about your parents like that. And that house with the pictures? The little boy who looks so much like you? And the way they all died, just the way your parents did. Man, the whole thing kinda feels like the set-up to a really bad horror movie. I’m sure it would give me nightmares if it was me.”
Jared nods, shaking his head again.
“It’s just so weird, you know? The way my brain wants to go back to the story of that family?”
Jensen nods. “The brain is amazing,” he says. “You might have visited that house when you were a little boy, or at least drove past it. Maybe your mom or dad told you the story of that other family, and now your brain overlaps the two tragedies, helping you deal with what happened to your folks. Maybe that other story is helping you deal with your survival guilt.”
Jared gazes at Jensen, who looks perfect, of course, despite his hair sticking up and his scruff looking unusually scruffy. Sexy as hell, though. He cups Jensen’s cheek, running his thumb over Jensen’s cheekbone.
“How did I ever survive, before I met you?”
“Just lucky, I guess.” Jensen grins.
“I just can’t get over the feeling that life was pretty meaningless, before,” Jared muses. “It feels like I wasn’t really living.”
He leans in and kisses Jensen, slow and sweet, which leads to morning sex that’s also slow and sweet. As Jared pushes into Jensen’s body, he feels that overwhelming sense of being home again, of being right where he’s meant to be.
Even if he never remembers a day of his old life, Jared knows he’s right where he belongs.
When they’re back on the road again, Jared asks the question that’s been bothering him for the past two days, since they learned as much about Jared’s past as they could without Jared’s memories.
“So, you’re okay if I never remember anything about who I was, before?”
Jensen glances over, frowning slightly.
“What makes you ask that?” he says.
Jared shifts in his seat. “I mean, if I never recover my memories, you’ll never really know who I am,” he says.
“I know enough,” Jensen insists. “I know you’re a kind, sensitive man with a loving heart. I know you care about me.”
Jared nods. “Well, yeah, but you don’t really know me. You don’t know what I’ve done. I might have been a serial killer or a child molester.”
“You weren’t,” Jensen says with utter conviction. “I’ve known you for more than two months now. You’re a good man, not a bad one. But I knew that the first time I saw you. You were.”
He pauses, and Jared narrows his eyes. “I was what?”
Jensen shakes his head. “I don’t know. There was something about you. Like you weren’t totally real. I remember thinking...”
He pauses, then lets out a chuckle, like it’s an embarrassing memory.
“What?” Jared prompts. “What do you remember thinking?”
“It’s stupid, really,” Jensen says, glancing over at Jared before he goes on. “I remember thinking that you weren’t fully human. There was just something about you, some quality that was almost supernatural.”
He chuckles, shaking his head, then bites his bottom lip, glancing over at Jared to catch Jared’s reaction.
“Stupid,” he repeats.
Jared shakes his head. “No more stupid than me believing I’ve known you in another life,” he insists. “But seriously. You’d be okay if I never recover my memories?”
Jensen shrugs. “You might,” he says. “You still might remember who you were. Everything I know about traumatic brain injury tells me that you still might recover at least some of your memories, even just little by little, it all might come back to you.”
“But you wouldn’t think less of me if I never did?” Jared clarifies. “I wouldn’t be a disappointment to you if I’m like this forever?”
“Jared, how could you think that?” Jensen shoots an indignant glance at him. “How could you think I’m the kind of person who could just what? Drop you because you can’t remember who you are?”
Jared shakes his head vigorously, more sure than he’s ever been of anything that Jensen is not that kind of person.
“You’ve just invested so much time and energy in helping me recover,” Jared says. “Taking time off work, driving me down to San Antonio, helping me do research. And I appreciate the effort and expense, don’t get me wrong. But I have this sneaking suspicion that I might not get better. I might never recover all my memories. And I don’t want to let you down. I don’t want to be a burden, or make you feel like you have to take care of me forever.”
Jensen puts his hand up to halt Jared’s spiel.
“That’s why we’re going to get you a job,” he reminds Jared. “You’ll be independent in no time, so you can make your own decisions and not feel like you have to depend on me.”
Then he adds, “Not that I mind, as you should know by now.”
He takes a deep breath, and Jared holds his as he waits for whatever bomb Jensen’s about to drop.
“I don’t know if it’s too soon to say this,” Jensen begins, “but I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you, and I get the funny feeling you feel the same way.”
“I do,” Jared agrees eagerly. “I really do.”
Jensen grins, wide and easy. “So we’ll figure it out,” he says. “Together.”
“Together,” Jared agrees.
He slides his hand over Jensen’s on the steering wheel, and Jensen turns his hand over so they can tangle their fingers together.
They gaze out at the road ahead.
fin