Fic: Leading questions (CW RPF, J2, PG)
This is my j2_everafter fic because it is still totally March 1st in most of North America!
Title: Leading Questions
Disney Prompt: The Princess Diaries
Rating: PG for language
Word Count: ~6400
Warnings: none
Summary: Jared's life is going from bad to worse. Not only is he the heir to a small European country, but his grandmother's trying to kill him with so-called prince lessons, and he's accidentally told the head cheerleader he's gay. It doesn't seem like there's any way out, but with a best friend like Jensen, Jared finds that even he can have a happy ending.
Jared is kind of terrified of his grandmother. Jensen gave him some long psychological explanation for why that is with a lot of words Jared couldn’t even look up because he doesn’t know how to spell them, but Jared’s pretty sure that it’s actually just because Grandmère is terrifying. Every time she comes to town, Jared’s mom starts nervously dropping things and spending as much time as possible running between the gallery and the studio, places Grandmère will never set foot because she’s really not interested in art produced after about 1600. Jared can’t really begrudge his mom this, but it sure leaves him with a lot more Grandmère time than he really wants. Usually.
This time, he hears his grandmother will be in town for the two months before his sixteenth birthday, and he’s genuinely kind of freaked out when Mom doesn’t immediately start making plans and taking on extra hours. She’s got this stoic expression on her face as she waits for Grandmère’s driver to pull up outside, and she keeps patting Jared’s shoulder and saying, “You’ll be okay, honey.”
It does not make Grandmère less terrifying, not in the slightest. Jared’s wearing his school clothes, so he at least looks relatively respectable when Mom invites her in, but her face still falls when she sees him. Jared fidgets and tries not to touch his hair. He can’t quite figure out how he’s always a disappointment to his grandmother when he’s basically a pretty nice guy, even if he is kind of clumsy and awkward. He smiles hopefully, but it doesn’t seem to help.
Grandmère sighs. She drops her purse onto the couch in the sitting room, displacing Jared’s beloved dog, who seriously needs his beauty rest. “Jared, do you understand why I’m here?” she asks coolly, with not so much as a hello.
“Because it’s my birthday soon and you want to throw me a party?”
Grandmère gives him a vicious half-smile. “In a way, that is very close.”
***
Jared calls Jensen and asks him to come over. He can’t think what else to do once Grandmère is gone. His mom hadn’t prepared him, and he can’t just, like, do homework as though everything is normal. Maybe he’s being a little overdramatic, but he’s not sure anything will ever be normal again.
Jensen on his scooter takes about twenty minutes to get there, and he runs through the door and up the stairs to Jared’s loft bedroom like there is a real emergency going on, which Jared really appreciates. “I almost had to punch a bike messenger on my way here. What’s up?”
“Apparently I’m a prince,” Jared says miserably.
“Did you suffer some kind of head injury? Prince of what?”
“The tiny European country my dad came from. My crazy grandmother is the dowager queen, and I’m the heir to the throne, since my dad’s, you know.” It’s been two years, but he still doesn’t like saying “dead.” “I like how basically no one bothered to tell me any of this until now.”
Jensen’s still just staring at him. “A prince?”
“I’m not going to turn into a frog or anything. Stop looking at me like that.”
“No, I just… I wouldn’t have thought you and the monarchy would be a match. I mean, let’s face it, I’ve taught you everything you know about politics.”
“I can sit in my castle and drink tea and raise corgis. It’s just a figurehead thing, no real power. Technically my grandmother has standing in parliament, but there are a zillion laws to keep her from, like, doing anything terrible to the country. But Jensen, I’m a prince.”
Jensen takes a step closer, frowning. “Will you have to go there? Will you have to move?”
That’s a way more practical concern than Jared’s spinning mind has had time for yet. But now that he tries to think about it, about leaving his room that is finally just the way he likes, leaving school, leaving Jensen, it’s almost too much to bear. He throws himself out of his desk chair and starts pacing in a square, two strides to each side because he’s got long legs and his room isn’t that big. “I don’t know. Maybe I would.”
“Please stop,” Jensen says. “It’s making me dizzy just watching you.”
Jared thunks himself down on the bed beside Jensen. “My entire life is making me dizzy right now.”
Jensen hugs him, tight and hard, which is weird because Jensen isn’t a natural hugger like Jared is. He must get that Jared’s really upset. “I would miss you a lot if you went away.”
They’ve been friends since second grade, when they got pulled out for speech classes together three mornings a week - Jensen for his lisp and Jared for a stutter that has mostly gone away as long as he doesn’t have to get up in front of people and say stuff, which is probably exactly the sort of horrible thing princes have to do all the time. He can feel his throat practically closing up in panic, and he buries his face in Jensen’s shoulder. “I’ll be okay,” he says, but it comes out stifled and weird, word by word.
“Can you just tell your grandmother to go fuck herself?”
Jared shakes his head. “It’s a whole country, not just her. They all know I’m supposed to become king one day. It’s only me who didn’t.”
Jensen pulls back, shaking himself free of the hug. “Doesn’t that seem like the sort of thing someone should let you know about?”
“Grandmère thought it would be safer if no one in Genovia knew exactly where I was, and I think she mostly wanted to be the one to tell me, so my mom and dad didn’t have the chance to coach me for the horrifying surprise.”
“So, why now? Is sixteen the age of majority over there or something?”
“I don’t think so. But I guess there’s like, some challenge to Grandmère’s power, and she needs to prove I exist and could actually rule.”
Jensen nods along as though that makes sense, even though the whole thing still seems stupid and crazy to Jared.
“I have to take prince lessons.”
“What the hell are prince lessons?”
“I don’t know if it would be better or worse if I knew.”
Jensen’s brain is already working on something else though. “You know what you should do? You should come on my cable access show and give your first interview as Prince Jared. We could do an exposé on the monarchy. It could be a whole thing.”
Jared sighs. “Can I go through the other stages of grief before I get to the one where I accept the inevitable and start spilling my guts on local cable?”
Jensen blinks. “Of course. I’m pretty impressed you remembered the stages of grief at all.”
“I always try to listen when you talk.” Jared folds his arms. “Can we, I don’t know, go somewhere? I can’t handle just sitting and thinking right now.”
“Absolutely. Come on, I’ll buy you a free-range burger at that place you like.”
“You mean that place you like.”
“Look, I can’t help it that you don’t mind eating corporate beef pumped full of hormones and sold by a multi-national corporation with consistently shitty employment practices. But can you at least let me pretend you have a soul?”
“The burgers do taste better. As long as you’re paying. I’m totally broke since I took Louie to that fancy groomer last month.”
“That dog lives better than I do. I’m afraid for the future of Genovian economic policy.”
“Shut up. I haven’t even had any prince lessons yet. And you have to admit he looked pretty awesome with that little bow on his head.”
Once Jared does have his first prince lesson, he wishes he hadn’t. It turns out “lesson” in this case was code for, “I don’t like anything at all about your appearance, young man, what is it with young people these days, CAN SOMEONE GET ME A DRINK.” Grandmère took him to tea at her ritzy hotel, where they frowned at the mustard spot on the collar of his shirt, and there she proceeded to explain the necessity of proper physical presentation when one is a ruler. She found his haircut unbecoming, his eyebrows unkempt, his fingernails poorly cut, and his shoes unshined. Jared drank his tea and was careful not to slurp, and he didn’t knock anything off the table even once, but that didn’t stop Grandmère’s tirade.
“And now we go to the spa,” she exclaimed, throwing down her napkin when she had finished her last cucumber sandwich and her last martini (she didn’t actually like tea very much). A flurry of restaurant staff hurried up to give her the bill and get her coat and tell her what a pleasure it always was to have her. The only good part was that at least it was obvious all these people were as scared of Grandmère as he was.
Jared didn’t have high hopes for the spa either, and the perfumed waiting room made him sneeze, but it actually started out nicely enough. They had him soak his hands and feet in warm water and then cleaned and buffed his nails. He wasn’t sure who exactly was going to see his princely toenails, but it felt pretty nice, and maybe he was lulled into a false sense of security.
Next they went at his eyebrows with hot wax. He tried to protest, knowing Grandmère’s perpetually surprised expression was partly due to this exact thing. But the ladies who had been so nice when they were working on his fingers and toes had strong hands, and they held him down in the chair. “It’s okay, honey. Just hold still and this will be over soon.”
It was, but it also hurt, and Jared yelped in an undignified way when they pulled the first of the wax free. He hadn’t seen anything wrong with his eyebrows in the first place. They rubbed something cool into the skin they had just tortured afterward, and while Jared appreciated that, he still couldn’t imagine going through this either regularly or voluntarily. “Be glad you’re too young to have chest hair,” one of the ladies said ominously, and Jared winced in spite of himself.
The etiquette lessons that followed the spa were less physically painful, but even more humiliating. He tries to explain to Jensen what was so horrible about them, but Jensen clearly couldn’t imagine torture that involved repeatedly shaking hands with a surly old woman and her driver, practicing exactly the right princely grip.
“She bought me one of those hand exerciser things that look like torture devices. I’m supposed to strengthen my grip.”
“Listen to all the masturbation jokes I’m not making,” Jensen says.
“Yeah, that’s the sign of a true friend.”
“I’m pretty sure the sign of a true friend is going on his cable access show even though you hate public speaking.”
Jared laughs to keep from groaning. “You’re right, you know. That’s a pretty huge favor to ask of anybody.”
Jensen’s voice goes soft suddenly, not at all like normal. “I know. I really do.”
Jared can’t see his face, and he changes the topic uncomfortably. He doesn’t think of Jensen as the kind of person with a soft side. He’s all bluster and bravado and half-believed psychobabble from his therapist parents. They’ve been best friends forever, but it’s not like Jensen shares a lot. And if not with Jared, that means not with anyone.
School becomes harder and harder over the next few days. Shana’s aunt is staying at the same hotel as Jared’s grandmother, and even though the news isn’t out yet, everyone knows something’s afoot. There are rumors, suppositions, and not all of them are totally wrong. And Jared, who usually doesn’t have anyone to sit with at lunch, except Jensen and anyone who hasn’t done their history homework before fifth period, is suddenly weirdly popular. Mandy, head cheerleader and Jared’s most embarrassing middle school crush, is only one of his new “friends”. She wedges her way in between him and Jensen at their usual cafeteria table, and every word out of her sweet, carefully glossed lips is both a probable lie and a flustering invitation. She says she’s always been curious about him but shy to make the first move, and though Jared can’t imagine anything of the kind, he’s flattered because he can’t not be. She tells him she’s having a party this weekend - small, intimate, not the kind of thing just anyone can show up to - and she’d be really excited if he could come.
“Could I bring someone?” Jared asks, because Jensen is staring daggers at the back of Mandy’s head, and he doesn’t want to make it worse.
“Like a date?” Mandy asks, taken aback, which does not make Jared feel like her offer is really sincere. She’s trying to get him by himself to grill him for information, and that’s not really his idea of a party.
“Yeah,” says Jared. “How about if I was to bring a date?”
“I… I don’t know. Who would you bring? It might not be appropriate and I don’t want you or your date to feel uncomfortable.”
“Jensen,” says Jared, and Jensen’s face lights up like for some reason he wasn’t expecting that, and Jared wishes Jensen wouldn’t doubt him quite so often. “I’d like to bring Jensen with me. We’re pretty good company together.”
Mandy looks even more flustered, glancing over her shoulder at Jensen as though he’d arrived suddenly and unexpectedly. She blinks back at Jared and shakes her head. “I had no idea you two were…” She trails off. “I think I see Gemma over there, I’d better get going. Nice talking to you, Jared. It’s been… enlightening.”
When she’s gone, Jensen quirks an eyebrow at him. “I know you get flustered around pretty girls, but you don’t usually go so far as telling the head cheerleader you’re gay.”
“Yeah, I didn’t really mean to do that,” Jared admits. “I just got flustered, and it wasn’t, you know, I was just thinking I wouldn’t want to go to Mandy’s party without you.”
“That’s when you say, ‘can I bring a friend? I promise he’s housebroken.’ You didn’t have to say I was your date.” He’s smiling though, like he doesn’t really mind, so Jared can’t feel that bad.
“I’m sorry. It was stupid.” He hesitates. “So you don’t mind that Mandy thinks you’re gay now?”
Jensen’s mouth tips thoughtfully downward. “If not now, when?” he says mysteriously, and gets up to dump the other half of his sandwich. When he walks out of the cafeteria, the hunch of his shoulders tells Jared not to follow.
By eighth period biology, Jensen seems to be back to normal, but everyone else is even weirder than they have been for the past couple of days. There’s a tense silence to one side of the lab as Jared walks in, a gap where people had just been talking about him, so obvious he just keeps his head down as he walks to his seat.
Jensen nods at him from the next table over, and Jared gives him a hopeful little smile. He doesn’t want whatever weirdness there was at lunch to linger. But it’s hard to talk in bio. With the wide aisles between the tables and the hawklike concentration of Dr. Nessbaum, it’s usually easier to wait until the next period to say anything that needs to be said. So Jared confines himself to meaningful looks until the two of them can check in at the end of the day.
They fall into stride in the hallway after the bell has gone. “I’m sorry,” Jared says preemptively.
“Again? What for?”
“I don’t know. Whatever?” It sounds stupid, and if there’s one thing he knows about Jensen it’s that he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. “For telling Mandy we were gay.”
Jensen shrugs. “There’s nothing wrong with being gay.”
They went to the gay pride parade together last year, and it didn’t even seem like a big deal, Jared and Jensen and a few other kids meeting up in the Castro and walking around the city covered in glitter. It’s San Francisco, and that’s the kind of thing you do, Jared figures. But Jensen seems like he’s taking this more personally. “Of course there isn’t,” Jared agrees.
“Do you want to come down to the studio with me today? I’m interviewing Chad about his comic book. It’s going to be a lot of good laughs at someone else’s expense.”
“I have to meet my grandmother.”
“Again?”
“Every afternoon for the rest of my life, I think. But maybe after? We could go to the movies or something?”
“They’re still doing that Marx Brothers retrospective at the theater by me,” Jensen says, brightening. “I think Duck Soup could be pretty good for you right now.”
“I’m not sure Grandmère’s ideas about running a country are much better than that.”
“Hey, when you’re king, it’ll be a whole new era.”
When you’re king. The words rattle ominously in Jared’s head, and his stomach drops to somewhere around his knees. “Oh, god, please never say that again.”
He expects Jensen to say, “But it’s true,” in that tone-blind way of his, but for once Jensen seems to understand. He touches Jared’s shoulder and says, “I’m sorry.”
***
Jared doesn’t think his week can get much more stressful, but then Grandmère decides to hold a press conference. She doesn’t tell Jared it’s a press conference, just rushes him into a brand new suit the moment he arrives at the hotel for his prince lesson and tells him they’re going to the hotel business suite. He figures she’s probably set up some department store mannequins to play foreign dignitaries he has to meet or something.
She straightens his lapels in the elevator and pats at his hair, and her bodyguard-slash-personal-assistant walks really close behind him when they get out, but Jared doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get it until the conference room doors open and there’s a great swell of noise as at least fifty reporters and photographers get a look at the prince of Genovia for the first time. It’s probably smart that she didn’t tell him. He would have run. But now that all these people are looking at him, he doesn’t feel like he can. So he follows numbly as Grandmère leads him to the podium at the front of the room.
She is very cordial and doesn’t yell or snap at all, and Jared folds his hands in front of him and offers up a twitchy smile for the cameras as she explains about the strength of Genovia now and forever, the great resources the country has to offer Europe and the world. She says something about the fresh perspective Jared will offer to Genovia’s people, and Jared’s mouth nearly falls open in shock; as far as he knows, a “fresh perspective” is the stuff of Grandmère’s nightmares.
He keeps expecting that she’ll ask him to say something, and Jared braces for it. But all she makes him do is say “hello” into the microphone before waving her hands to stop the rush of questions. “My grandson will not be making public statements at this time,” she clarifies, and her accent makes it sound so official. “But we will welcome your questions in the future. You must understand how confusing the situation is for a young boy.”
There are some sympathetic murmurs from the crowd, but also more flashbulbs going off in Jared’s face. He can see the headline now, “Prince of Genovia Confused”. At least it would be accuracy in reporting.
Grandmère is vicious and terrible for two more days of prince lessons, walking Jared through all the weird little rituals of the Genovian royal household and affairs of state, and threatening him with public speaking when he complains. She comes by the house and tries to throw out all of Jared’s clothes, but his mom rescues them before they can actually leave the property. “Maybe you could just wear the things she likes until she leaves,” Mom bargains, and Jared agrees because Grandmère might have his mother beheaded for the crime of defying her, although since Genovia outlawed capital punishment in the eighth century it seems unlikely.
Now that everyone knows Jared’s secret identity - Jared’s real secret identity, not the one where he’s gay - school seems even more crowded and awkward, and it’s exhausting being on all the time, having his sandwiches scrutinized by people he barely knows in the cafeteria. Jensen says he should take the opportunity to encourage people to support CSAs and buy organic, but Jared is mostly too tired to try.
Friday night is Mandy’s party. Her dad lives in Marin County in an expensive-looking house overlooking the water, and Jensen begs a ride from his older brother, whose hiccupping old Volvo seems like it might not even make it across the bridge. Jared’s surprised Mandy even still wanted him there, but Thursday morning there was an invitation in his locker, heavy cream cardstock printed in fuschia and addressed to “Prince Jared and guest”. He talks Jensen out of a lot of dark eyeliner and t-shirts with offensive slogans on them.
“Maybe she’s sincere. Maybe she really does want to get to know me.”
“Your continued desire for empty popularity is baffling, and it’s blinding you.” But he changes into a green oxford that looks really nice with his eyes, and a pair of jeans lightly frayed at one knee.
“Maybe you can talk to her about shade-grown coffee or something,” Jared suggests. “Just because she’s a cheerleader doesn’t mean she can’t like a good cause.”
“No, that’s what the fact that she’s Mandy means.”
***
Jared wishes Jensen hadn’t turned out to be so completely right.
It starts out all right, all the coolest kids in school - athletes, heirs to hotel fortunes, and one girl everyone swore did car commercials in Japan - gathered on Mandy’s dad’s rooftop deck, dancing and dipping in the hot tub and drinking disgustingly sweet punch. Jared makes some pretty good small talk, and Jensen isn’t openly rude to anyone, but Mandy keeps walking by to check on them, and she spends a lot more time on her phone in the corner than she does mingling with her guests. Around 9 o’clock, he starts wondering where you could stash a bucket of pig’s blood outdoors like this.
But he doesn’t expect Mandy to come running upstairs to grab his arm, her eyes shining with excitement. “There’s somebody you just have to meet,” she says gleefully. “Bring Jensen.”
In the house’s large living room is a middle-aged man in a rumpled sport coat and jeans, who eyes Jared speculatively. “This him?”
“Sure is,” says Mandy. “Mr. Harris of the San Francisco Inquirer, may I present Prince Jared, heir to the throne of Genovia. And his boyfriend, Jensen.”
“Nice to meet you, your highness,” says Mr. Harris, not even unkindly. “Pretty brave thing you’re doing here, coming out like this in your position.”
Jared stares at him, speechless. He doesn’t know when Mandy decided to make his life miserable in quite this way, and worse, he has no idea what to say to get out of telling a reporter he’s gay.
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” Jensen says diplomatically, although Jared can tell he’s an inch away from screaming, this awful little tremor in his voice.
“Oh, no, no,” says Harris. “No misunderstanding. We understand this has to be done tastefully. Your friend Miss Moore has filled me in on his highness’s stipulations. I’ve already had a chat with a number of your classmates, and now if I could just get a quote or two from you, you kids can go back to your fun.”
Jared wonders what the hell Mandy had said his stipulations were. He feels like he’s on the worst amusement park ride ever, hurtling along with no way to get off. “It’s a rumor,” he could say, but why would Harris believe him when Mandy has obviously set all this up so carefully?
“No comment,” he says, and drags Jensen by the wrist towards the door.
***
Grandmère is livid. She’s so angry that all the botox in the world can’t hide it, her jowls quivering, her lips pressed whitely together behind layers of red lipstick. “Why would you do this?” she asks, circling him in the wingback chair in the lounge of her hotel suite. “Why would you humiliate your family in this way?”
“It was a mistake. This girl at school set the whole thing up. None of it’s true.”
“Then why is there a picture of you holding that boy’s hand on the front page of the Style and Culture section?” she roars.
Jared has to admit that he probably could have stopped gripping Jensen’s wrist once they got outside, but he hadn’t been exactly thinking clearly.
“We will hold another press conference,” she says. “Your coronation is in a month. There is still time to correct this misunderstanding. A speech will be prepared for you, in which you explain that a mistake has been made. And you will not see or speak to that Jensen boy anymore.”
The thought of not talking to Jensen is even scarier than the thought of giving a press conference. “But Jensen didn’t do anything wrong! He’s my best friend, you can’t just…”
“Jared, I am a queen. I can do as I please for the sake of my country.”
Jared gets to his feet. “You can make me say whatever you want. But you can’t tell me who my friends are.” He walks straight out of the suite and then straight into the elevator without stopping. If he stops, he thinks he may pass out.
Of course he goes straight to Jensen’s from the hotel. He’s too upset to go home and face his mom, and nothing Grandmère says is going to make Jensen less than his best friend.
He explains to Jensen that it’s really just a matter of telling the truth. That they’re not gay, that they’re not together, that Genovia is not in danger of its bloodline dying out. After that the paparazzi will give up on following Jensen and everything will go to back to normal-ish.
“Well, most of that’s true,” Jensen agrees, picking at the seam of his empty coffee cup.
“Just because I can’t get a date right now,” says Jared, “doesn’t mean I’ll never have a kid.”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Jensen replies. He pauses for a long time, and Jared waits, watching him choose words. “I’m gay, Jared. For real, actually gay. So you can say whatever you have to, but that part’s completely true.”
Jared’s heart may actually stop. Jensen looks so upset about it, like he’s been holding this thing back for a long time. And he didn’t need to. Jared couldn’t possibly like him any less over something like that. “I’m sorry,” he says to fill the space.
“Apologizing all the time like that can indicate low self-esteem and an unhealthy need for external validation,” Jensen replies.
Jared thinks about Jensen’s parents, psychotherapists whose different professional schools of thought frequently set them at each other’s throats. “Do your parents know?”
Jensen shakes his head. “I don’t want to have a big discussion with them about it, and you know everything’s a big discussion with them.”
“So now that I accidentally outed you to the entire world…”
“Mandy did that. You didn’t ask her to. And if I tell my parents it’s just a rumor, they’ll believe it.”
“But it’s not just a rumor. Not about you.”
Jensen shakes his head. “I fight a lot of battles. I ask people to sign petitions, and educate themselves about political prisoners, and not shop at Walmart. I don’t want to fight about me too.”
They’ve been friends for ten years, and Jared’s not sure that Jensen’s ever been that honest with him before. He hugs him because saying “I’m sorry” again seems stupid. Jensen hugs back. If there are any guys with telephoto lenses on the rooftops around Jared’s house, they can have their shot.
Jensen shrugs him off after a little while and twitches a smile. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I asked you to help me drum up publicity for my show. And I’m guessing plenty of people will tune in for this one now, even if they just want to see if I’m dreamy enough to be dating a prince.”
“You totally are,” Jared says loyally. “And there’s no one I’d rather give an exclusive interview to.” His grandmother may kill him, but hopefully, if they film over the weekend, Jared will have until Wednesday night when the show airs to convince Grandmère that a) it’s cool that Jensen’s still his best friend, and b) it’s awesome that Jared is going to talk on air for the first time on a show whose other biggest story to date was about renegade squirrels in the school air ducts.
***
“Do you do stuff with guys?” Jared asks. He’s lying with his head hanging off the side of his bed, his feet propped on the window. Jensen’s spinning listlessly back in forth in Jared’s desk chair. They’ve been plotting stories to fill in the 15 minutes of Jensen’s show after Jared inevitably runs out of things to say about themselves, but they’re pretty stumped. They realized trying to arrange a panel on US energy policy on twelve hours’ notice would just get them a couple of members of the debate team and that guy who with the parasol who stands around in Golden Gate Park yelling about skin cancer. Jared’s mind is wandering.
“No,” Jensen replies, not looking up.
“Why not?”
Jensen sighs. “There aren’t a lot of people worthy of my time. Let alone, you know, guys dreamy enough for me. It’s a small category. I could draw you a diagram.”
“Is that really the reason?”
“Jared, what does this have to do with my show? I thought you wanted to help.”
Jared sits up, and his skull protests the ensuing head rush. “I do want to help, I just don’t know what to say. We haven’t come up with a single usable idea in the last 45 minutes. What if what your audience needs to hear is that Being Gay is Okay? That seems like a pretty good cause to me.” Jensen starts to protest, but Jared keeps going. “And it doesn’t even have to be about you if you’re not comfortable with that. We could do man on the street interviews and use the best ones; we’re bound to run into some gay people that way. Just, my grandmother wants me to make a big deal out of denying I am, like it would be bad if I were, and it wouldn’t.”
“Your country needs you to marry an appropriate girl and have an appropriate heir.”
“Even my dad didn’t do that. So I don’t see why I have to either.”
“Are you trying to talk yourself into being gay right now? Because I can’t say I recommend it.”
“No, I’m just… why couldn’t Mandy have minded her own business in the first place? Then no one would have to do any of this, and you could teach me how the euro works enough that I could talk about it on your show, and I wouldn’t have to mention gayness at all.” He sinks his face into his hands. “And don’t tell me it’s my own stupid fault because I know it is, and I’m so sorry for dragging you into this mess.”
Jensen touches his shoulder, tentative, patting at him like he doesn’t quite know what he’s doing. “You still apologize too much.”
Jared looks up from his cupped palms, and he can’t quite believe the sincere little frown on Jensen’s face, or how green his eyes look this close up. He feels like apologizing again, reflexively, but he also feels a little giddy, like Jensen’s kindness has opened something up in him.
“You don’t have to come on the show at all if it’s too hard,” Jensen says. “If you just need to, I don’t know, lay low and regroup, I get it. It’s not like you won’t still be a prince in six months if you want to reschedule.”
“No, I need to do it now, I can’t just sit by. I’ve done too much of that already. I have to stand up now and really say what I believe in. My grandmother told me I shouldn’t even talk to you anymore because she thought…”
“She thought you were with me.”
“I don’t think she understands what being gay even is. I don’t think she believes in it as a real thing that real people are. And she should, you know. She should care about real people, like you. If this is the only time she’s ever going to watch your show - and it is - we have to make sure she sees how wrong she is, and how much she’s missing.” There’s a rising tide of emotion in Jared’s chest. He thinks some things are fitting together for him about Jensen in ways he never expected, like knowing Jensen’s gay shifts the tumblers in a lock and makes a whole slew of new possibilities appear.
“Jared, it’s a cable access show, not a spiritual experience,” Jensen reminds him gently.
“But it’s the only cable access show my grandmother is ever going to watch.”
“I just don’t want it to be about me.”
“It doesn’t have to be about you,” Jared says. “I mean, does it? Couldn’t it just be about other people? Couldn’t it be like factory farming? Or whales?”
Jensen looks at him like he’s stupid. “Do I look like a chicken to you? Or a whale?”
“I need my grandmother to realize that being gay isn’t a terrible blight on humanity. Help me, Jensen, you’re my only hope.”
“Your Leia Organa needs work.” Jensen starts to pack up the papers and notebooks they’ve dug out while brainstorming. “I don’t think I can help you.” Jared opens his mouth to say sorry all over again, but Jensen puts a hand over his mouth. “Don’t apologize. Just find a different date the next time a cheerleader asks you to a party.”
“But you’re the only date I want.” Jared replies plaintively.
Jensen cocks an ironic eyebrow at him, like it’ll make Jared see the absurdity of what he’s said. “See you tomorrow,” Jensen calls over his shoulder, and Jared listens to his Docs clunking down the stairs. Jensen is the only person he wants to take places, the only person who doesn’t make him feel stupid and awkward once he gets there. What else could he want in a date?
The more he thinks about it, the more it all starts to fit. Jared could be exactly what he told Mandy, if Jensen wanted him, if Jensen didn’t need to call the whole thing a rumor and a joke to keep the focus off of him.
Jared calls him late, but Jensen got his own phone line for his birthday, so it’s not like the call is bothering anyone. “Do you want to go out with me?” Jared asks.
“Where?” Jensen asks, not getting it, which is fair because Jared didn’t get it for a long time.
“No, I mean, out with me. On a date. Not like to Mandy’s stupid party but for real.” Jensen is silent, although Jared can hear the stereo in the background, so he knows Jensen’s still there.
“Why?”
“I like you. I don’t think I realized how much.”
“As a political statement or…”
“Just as me. Not even Prince Jared. Just Jared.”
“We won’t film it,” Jensen tells him.
“Definitely not,” Jared agrees.
“I may tell my parents it is a political statement. Can you deal with that?”
“I can deal with anything as long as you’re with me.”
There’s another silence at the other end of the phone.
“Too sappy?” Jared asks.
“We’ll work on that.”
***
The show opens with a bunch of people who aren’t royalty. Jensen talks to the guys at the comic store, and the manager at his favorite burger place, and Jared’s mom’s best friend and her partner. Quick little interviews, normal people. Just normal gay people. And then Jensen interviews Jared about being a prince. “You can’t choose the way you’re born,” Jared says, looking straight into the camera. He doesn’t say he’s gay. He doesn’t have to.
Grandmère doesn’t talk to him for three days after the show airs. She doesn’t even yell. And by the time she decides that he needs prince lessons more than he needs snubbing, Jared’s had the best first date imaginable and the European press seems to think he’s adorably avant-garde. It might just all be okay. Except for how his coronation is still in a month, and getting up in front of a crowd is still completely terrifying.
***
There are probably only a hundred people at the coronation, even including the handful of press in the back of the room, but it might as well be a million for how nervous Jared is. His palms are sweating inside his white gloves, and he keeps glancing at the door, waiting for Jensen. When he finally appears, Jared is so relieved he feels light-headed. Grandmère sighs into her highball glass. “You could have done worse,” she says grudgingly. “He does clean up well.”
Jared gets up in front of the crowd and says something about bravery, and something about opportunity, and he says he’ll accept his title and the crown of Genovia when the time comes. The words seem pretty clear when he watches the news later, but at the time they just seemed like a jumble in his head.
After dinner, there’s dancing, the string quartet striking up a lively waltz, and Jared is gladder that Jensen’s there by the second because he still has absolutely no idea how to lead.
-fin-
Title: Leading Questions
Disney Prompt: The Princess Diaries
Rating: PG for language
Word Count: ~6400
Warnings: none
Summary: Jared's life is going from bad to worse. Not only is he the heir to a small European country, but his grandmother's trying to kill him with so-called prince lessons, and he's accidentally told the head cheerleader he's gay. It doesn't seem like there's any way out, but with a best friend like Jensen, Jared finds that even he can have a happy ending.
Jared is kind of terrified of his grandmother. Jensen gave him some long psychological explanation for why that is with a lot of words Jared couldn’t even look up because he doesn’t know how to spell them, but Jared’s pretty sure that it’s actually just because Grandmère is terrifying. Every time she comes to town, Jared’s mom starts nervously dropping things and spending as much time as possible running between the gallery and the studio, places Grandmère will never set foot because she’s really not interested in art produced after about 1600. Jared can’t really begrudge his mom this, but it sure leaves him with a lot more Grandmère time than he really wants. Usually.
This time, he hears his grandmother will be in town for the two months before his sixteenth birthday, and he’s genuinely kind of freaked out when Mom doesn’t immediately start making plans and taking on extra hours. She’s got this stoic expression on her face as she waits for Grandmère’s driver to pull up outside, and she keeps patting Jared’s shoulder and saying, “You’ll be okay, honey.”
It does not make Grandmère less terrifying, not in the slightest. Jared’s wearing his school clothes, so he at least looks relatively respectable when Mom invites her in, but her face still falls when she sees him. Jared fidgets and tries not to touch his hair. He can’t quite figure out how he’s always a disappointment to his grandmother when he’s basically a pretty nice guy, even if he is kind of clumsy and awkward. He smiles hopefully, but it doesn’t seem to help.
Grandmère sighs. She drops her purse onto the couch in the sitting room, displacing Jared’s beloved dog, who seriously needs his beauty rest. “Jared, do you understand why I’m here?” she asks coolly, with not so much as a hello.
“Because it’s my birthday soon and you want to throw me a party?”
Grandmère gives him a vicious half-smile. “In a way, that is very close.”
***
Jared calls Jensen and asks him to come over. He can’t think what else to do once Grandmère is gone. His mom hadn’t prepared him, and he can’t just, like, do homework as though everything is normal. Maybe he’s being a little overdramatic, but he’s not sure anything will ever be normal again.
Jensen on his scooter takes about twenty minutes to get there, and he runs through the door and up the stairs to Jared’s loft bedroom like there is a real emergency going on, which Jared really appreciates. “I almost had to punch a bike messenger on my way here. What’s up?”
“Apparently I’m a prince,” Jared says miserably.
“Did you suffer some kind of head injury? Prince of what?”
“The tiny European country my dad came from. My crazy grandmother is the dowager queen, and I’m the heir to the throne, since my dad’s, you know.” It’s been two years, but he still doesn’t like saying “dead.” “I like how basically no one bothered to tell me any of this until now.”
Jensen’s still just staring at him. “A prince?”
“I’m not going to turn into a frog or anything. Stop looking at me like that.”
“No, I just… I wouldn’t have thought you and the monarchy would be a match. I mean, let’s face it, I’ve taught you everything you know about politics.”
“I can sit in my castle and drink tea and raise corgis. It’s just a figurehead thing, no real power. Technically my grandmother has standing in parliament, but there are a zillion laws to keep her from, like, doing anything terrible to the country. But Jensen, I’m a prince.”
Jensen takes a step closer, frowning. “Will you have to go there? Will you have to move?”
That’s a way more practical concern than Jared’s spinning mind has had time for yet. But now that he tries to think about it, about leaving his room that is finally just the way he likes, leaving school, leaving Jensen, it’s almost too much to bear. He throws himself out of his desk chair and starts pacing in a square, two strides to each side because he’s got long legs and his room isn’t that big. “I don’t know. Maybe I would.”
“Please stop,” Jensen says. “It’s making me dizzy just watching you.”
Jared thunks himself down on the bed beside Jensen. “My entire life is making me dizzy right now.”
Jensen hugs him, tight and hard, which is weird because Jensen isn’t a natural hugger like Jared is. He must get that Jared’s really upset. “I would miss you a lot if you went away.”
They’ve been friends since second grade, when they got pulled out for speech classes together three mornings a week - Jensen for his lisp and Jared for a stutter that has mostly gone away as long as he doesn’t have to get up in front of people and say stuff, which is probably exactly the sort of horrible thing princes have to do all the time. He can feel his throat practically closing up in panic, and he buries his face in Jensen’s shoulder. “I’ll be okay,” he says, but it comes out stifled and weird, word by word.
“Can you just tell your grandmother to go fuck herself?”
Jared shakes his head. “It’s a whole country, not just her. They all know I’m supposed to become king one day. It’s only me who didn’t.”
Jensen pulls back, shaking himself free of the hug. “Doesn’t that seem like the sort of thing someone should let you know about?”
“Grandmère thought it would be safer if no one in Genovia knew exactly where I was, and I think she mostly wanted to be the one to tell me, so my mom and dad didn’t have the chance to coach me for the horrifying surprise.”
“So, why now? Is sixteen the age of majority over there or something?”
“I don’t think so. But I guess there’s like, some challenge to Grandmère’s power, and she needs to prove I exist and could actually rule.”
Jensen nods along as though that makes sense, even though the whole thing still seems stupid and crazy to Jared.
“I have to take prince lessons.”
“What the hell are prince lessons?”
“I don’t know if it would be better or worse if I knew.”
Jensen’s brain is already working on something else though. “You know what you should do? You should come on my cable access show and give your first interview as Prince Jared. We could do an exposé on the monarchy. It could be a whole thing.”
Jared sighs. “Can I go through the other stages of grief before I get to the one where I accept the inevitable and start spilling my guts on local cable?”
Jensen blinks. “Of course. I’m pretty impressed you remembered the stages of grief at all.”
“I always try to listen when you talk.” Jared folds his arms. “Can we, I don’t know, go somewhere? I can’t handle just sitting and thinking right now.”
“Absolutely. Come on, I’ll buy you a free-range burger at that place you like.”
“You mean that place you like.”
“Look, I can’t help it that you don’t mind eating corporate beef pumped full of hormones and sold by a multi-national corporation with consistently shitty employment practices. But can you at least let me pretend you have a soul?”
“The burgers do taste better. As long as you’re paying. I’m totally broke since I took Louie to that fancy groomer last month.”
“That dog lives better than I do. I’m afraid for the future of Genovian economic policy.”
“Shut up. I haven’t even had any prince lessons yet. And you have to admit he looked pretty awesome with that little bow on his head.”
Once Jared does have his first prince lesson, he wishes he hadn’t. It turns out “lesson” in this case was code for, “I don’t like anything at all about your appearance, young man, what is it with young people these days, CAN SOMEONE GET ME A DRINK.” Grandmère took him to tea at her ritzy hotel, where they frowned at the mustard spot on the collar of his shirt, and there she proceeded to explain the necessity of proper physical presentation when one is a ruler. She found his haircut unbecoming, his eyebrows unkempt, his fingernails poorly cut, and his shoes unshined. Jared drank his tea and was careful not to slurp, and he didn’t knock anything off the table even once, but that didn’t stop Grandmère’s tirade.
“And now we go to the spa,” she exclaimed, throwing down her napkin when she had finished her last cucumber sandwich and her last martini (she didn’t actually like tea very much). A flurry of restaurant staff hurried up to give her the bill and get her coat and tell her what a pleasure it always was to have her. The only good part was that at least it was obvious all these people were as scared of Grandmère as he was.
Jared didn’t have high hopes for the spa either, and the perfumed waiting room made him sneeze, but it actually started out nicely enough. They had him soak his hands and feet in warm water and then cleaned and buffed his nails. He wasn’t sure who exactly was going to see his princely toenails, but it felt pretty nice, and maybe he was lulled into a false sense of security.
Next they went at his eyebrows with hot wax. He tried to protest, knowing Grandmère’s perpetually surprised expression was partly due to this exact thing. But the ladies who had been so nice when they were working on his fingers and toes had strong hands, and they held him down in the chair. “It’s okay, honey. Just hold still and this will be over soon.”
It was, but it also hurt, and Jared yelped in an undignified way when they pulled the first of the wax free. He hadn’t seen anything wrong with his eyebrows in the first place. They rubbed something cool into the skin they had just tortured afterward, and while Jared appreciated that, he still couldn’t imagine going through this either regularly or voluntarily. “Be glad you’re too young to have chest hair,” one of the ladies said ominously, and Jared winced in spite of himself.
The etiquette lessons that followed the spa were less physically painful, but even more humiliating. He tries to explain to Jensen what was so horrible about them, but Jensen clearly couldn’t imagine torture that involved repeatedly shaking hands with a surly old woman and her driver, practicing exactly the right princely grip.
“She bought me one of those hand exerciser things that look like torture devices. I’m supposed to strengthen my grip.”
“Listen to all the masturbation jokes I’m not making,” Jensen says.
“Yeah, that’s the sign of a true friend.”
“I’m pretty sure the sign of a true friend is going on his cable access show even though you hate public speaking.”
Jared laughs to keep from groaning. “You’re right, you know. That’s a pretty huge favor to ask of anybody.”
Jensen’s voice goes soft suddenly, not at all like normal. “I know. I really do.”
Jared can’t see his face, and he changes the topic uncomfortably. He doesn’t think of Jensen as the kind of person with a soft side. He’s all bluster and bravado and half-believed psychobabble from his therapist parents. They’ve been best friends forever, but it’s not like Jensen shares a lot. And if not with Jared, that means not with anyone.
School becomes harder and harder over the next few days. Shana’s aunt is staying at the same hotel as Jared’s grandmother, and even though the news isn’t out yet, everyone knows something’s afoot. There are rumors, suppositions, and not all of them are totally wrong. And Jared, who usually doesn’t have anyone to sit with at lunch, except Jensen and anyone who hasn’t done their history homework before fifth period, is suddenly weirdly popular. Mandy, head cheerleader and Jared’s most embarrassing middle school crush, is only one of his new “friends”. She wedges her way in between him and Jensen at their usual cafeteria table, and every word out of her sweet, carefully glossed lips is both a probable lie and a flustering invitation. She says she’s always been curious about him but shy to make the first move, and though Jared can’t imagine anything of the kind, he’s flattered because he can’t not be. She tells him she’s having a party this weekend - small, intimate, not the kind of thing just anyone can show up to - and she’d be really excited if he could come.
“Could I bring someone?” Jared asks, because Jensen is staring daggers at the back of Mandy’s head, and he doesn’t want to make it worse.
“Like a date?” Mandy asks, taken aback, which does not make Jared feel like her offer is really sincere. She’s trying to get him by himself to grill him for information, and that’s not really his idea of a party.
“Yeah,” says Jared. “How about if I was to bring a date?”
“I… I don’t know. Who would you bring? It might not be appropriate and I don’t want you or your date to feel uncomfortable.”
“Jensen,” says Jared, and Jensen’s face lights up like for some reason he wasn’t expecting that, and Jared wishes Jensen wouldn’t doubt him quite so often. “I’d like to bring Jensen with me. We’re pretty good company together.”
Mandy looks even more flustered, glancing over her shoulder at Jensen as though he’d arrived suddenly and unexpectedly. She blinks back at Jared and shakes her head. “I had no idea you two were…” She trails off. “I think I see Gemma over there, I’d better get going. Nice talking to you, Jared. It’s been… enlightening.”
When she’s gone, Jensen quirks an eyebrow at him. “I know you get flustered around pretty girls, but you don’t usually go so far as telling the head cheerleader you’re gay.”
“Yeah, I didn’t really mean to do that,” Jared admits. “I just got flustered, and it wasn’t, you know, I was just thinking I wouldn’t want to go to Mandy’s party without you.”
“That’s when you say, ‘can I bring a friend? I promise he’s housebroken.’ You didn’t have to say I was your date.” He’s smiling though, like he doesn’t really mind, so Jared can’t feel that bad.
“I’m sorry. It was stupid.” He hesitates. “So you don’t mind that Mandy thinks you’re gay now?”
Jensen’s mouth tips thoughtfully downward. “If not now, when?” he says mysteriously, and gets up to dump the other half of his sandwich. When he walks out of the cafeteria, the hunch of his shoulders tells Jared not to follow.
By eighth period biology, Jensen seems to be back to normal, but everyone else is even weirder than they have been for the past couple of days. There’s a tense silence to one side of the lab as Jared walks in, a gap where people had just been talking about him, so obvious he just keeps his head down as he walks to his seat.
Jensen nods at him from the next table over, and Jared gives him a hopeful little smile. He doesn’t want whatever weirdness there was at lunch to linger. But it’s hard to talk in bio. With the wide aisles between the tables and the hawklike concentration of Dr. Nessbaum, it’s usually easier to wait until the next period to say anything that needs to be said. So Jared confines himself to meaningful looks until the two of them can check in at the end of the day.
They fall into stride in the hallway after the bell has gone. “I’m sorry,” Jared says preemptively.
“Again? What for?”
“I don’t know. Whatever?” It sounds stupid, and if there’s one thing he knows about Jensen it’s that he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. “For telling Mandy we were gay.”
Jensen shrugs. “There’s nothing wrong with being gay.”
They went to the gay pride parade together last year, and it didn’t even seem like a big deal, Jared and Jensen and a few other kids meeting up in the Castro and walking around the city covered in glitter. It’s San Francisco, and that’s the kind of thing you do, Jared figures. But Jensen seems like he’s taking this more personally. “Of course there isn’t,” Jared agrees.
“Do you want to come down to the studio with me today? I’m interviewing Chad about his comic book. It’s going to be a lot of good laughs at someone else’s expense.”
“I have to meet my grandmother.”
“Again?”
“Every afternoon for the rest of my life, I think. But maybe after? We could go to the movies or something?”
“They’re still doing that Marx Brothers retrospective at the theater by me,” Jensen says, brightening. “I think Duck Soup could be pretty good for you right now.”
“I’m not sure Grandmère’s ideas about running a country are much better than that.”
“Hey, when you’re king, it’ll be a whole new era.”
When you’re king. The words rattle ominously in Jared’s head, and his stomach drops to somewhere around his knees. “Oh, god, please never say that again.”
He expects Jensen to say, “But it’s true,” in that tone-blind way of his, but for once Jensen seems to understand. He touches Jared’s shoulder and says, “I’m sorry.”
***
Jared doesn’t think his week can get much more stressful, but then Grandmère decides to hold a press conference. She doesn’t tell Jared it’s a press conference, just rushes him into a brand new suit the moment he arrives at the hotel for his prince lesson and tells him they’re going to the hotel business suite. He figures she’s probably set up some department store mannequins to play foreign dignitaries he has to meet or something.
She straightens his lapels in the elevator and pats at his hair, and her bodyguard-slash-personal-assistant walks really close behind him when they get out, but Jared doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get it until the conference room doors open and there’s a great swell of noise as at least fifty reporters and photographers get a look at the prince of Genovia for the first time. It’s probably smart that she didn’t tell him. He would have run. But now that all these people are looking at him, he doesn’t feel like he can. So he follows numbly as Grandmère leads him to the podium at the front of the room.
She is very cordial and doesn’t yell or snap at all, and Jared folds his hands in front of him and offers up a twitchy smile for the cameras as she explains about the strength of Genovia now and forever, the great resources the country has to offer Europe and the world. She says something about the fresh perspective Jared will offer to Genovia’s people, and Jared’s mouth nearly falls open in shock; as far as he knows, a “fresh perspective” is the stuff of Grandmère’s nightmares.
He keeps expecting that she’ll ask him to say something, and Jared braces for it. But all she makes him do is say “hello” into the microphone before waving her hands to stop the rush of questions. “My grandson will not be making public statements at this time,” she clarifies, and her accent makes it sound so official. “But we will welcome your questions in the future. You must understand how confusing the situation is for a young boy.”
There are some sympathetic murmurs from the crowd, but also more flashbulbs going off in Jared’s face. He can see the headline now, “Prince of Genovia Confused”. At least it would be accuracy in reporting.
Grandmère is vicious and terrible for two more days of prince lessons, walking Jared through all the weird little rituals of the Genovian royal household and affairs of state, and threatening him with public speaking when he complains. She comes by the house and tries to throw out all of Jared’s clothes, but his mom rescues them before they can actually leave the property. “Maybe you could just wear the things she likes until she leaves,” Mom bargains, and Jared agrees because Grandmère might have his mother beheaded for the crime of defying her, although since Genovia outlawed capital punishment in the eighth century it seems unlikely.
Now that everyone knows Jared’s secret identity - Jared’s real secret identity, not the one where he’s gay - school seems even more crowded and awkward, and it’s exhausting being on all the time, having his sandwiches scrutinized by people he barely knows in the cafeteria. Jensen says he should take the opportunity to encourage people to support CSAs and buy organic, but Jared is mostly too tired to try.
Friday night is Mandy’s party. Her dad lives in Marin County in an expensive-looking house overlooking the water, and Jensen begs a ride from his older brother, whose hiccupping old Volvo seems like it might not even make it across the bridge. Jared’s surprised Mandy even still wanted him there, but Thursday morning there was an invitation in his locker, heavy cream cardstock printed in fuschia and addressed to “Prince Jared and guest”. He talks Jensen out of a lot of dark eyeliner and t-shirts with offensive slogans on them.
“Maybe she’s sincere. Maybe she really does want to get to know me.”
“Your continued desire for empty popularity is baffling, and it’s blinding you.” But he changes into a green oxford that looks really nice with his eyes, and a pair of jeans lightly frayed at one knee.
“Maybe you can talk to her about shade-grown coffee or something,” Jared suggests. “Just because she’s a cheerleader doesn’t mean she can’t like a good cause.”
“No, that’s what the fact that she’s Mandy means.”
***
Jared wishes Jensen hadn’t turned out to be so completely right.
It starts out all right, all the coolest kids in school - athletes, heirs to hotel fortunes, and one girl everyone swore did car commercials in Japan - gathered on Mandy’s dad’s rooftop deck, dancing and dipping in the hot tub and drinking disgustingly sweet punch. Jared makes some pretty good small talk, and Jensen isn’t openly rude to anyone, but Mandy keeps walking by to check on them, and she spends a lot more time on her phone in the corner than she does mingling with her guests. Around 9 o’clock, he starts wondering where you could stash a bucket of pig’s blood outdoors like this.
But he doesn’t expect Mandy to come running upstairs to grab his arm, her eyes shining with excitement. “There’s somebody you just have to meet,” she says gleefully. “Bring Jensen.”
In the house’s large living room is a middle-aged man in a rumpled sport coat and jeans, who eyes Jared speculatively. “This him?”
“Sure is,” says Mandy. “Mr. Harris of the San Francisco Inquirer, may I present Prince Jared, heir to the throne of Genovia. And his boyfriend, Jensen.”
“Nice to meet you, your highness,” says Mr. Harris, not even unkindly. “Pretty brave thing you’re doing here, coming out like this in your position.”
Jared stares at him, speechless. He doesn’t know when Mandy decided to make his life miserable in quite this way, and worse, he has no idea what to say to get out of telling a reporter he’s gay.
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” Jensen says diplomatically, although Jared can tell he’s an inch away from screaming, this awful little tremor in his voice.
“Oh, no, no,” says Harris. “No misunderstanding. We understand this has to be done tastefully. Your friend Miss Moore has filled me in on his highness’s stipulations. I’ve already had a chat with a number of your classmates, and now if I could just get a quote or two from you, you kids can go back to your fun.”
Jared wonders what the hell Mandy had said his stipulations were. He feels like he’s on the worst amusement park ride ever, hurtling along with no way to get off. “It’s a rumor,” he could say, but why would Harris believe him when Mandy has obviously set all this up so carefully?
“No comment,” he says, and drags Jensen by the wrist towards the door.
***
Grandmère is livid. She’s so angry that all the botox in the world can’t hide it, her jowls quivering, her lips pressed whitely together behind layers of red lipstick. “Why would you do this?” she asks, circling him in the wingback chair in the lounge of her hotel suite. “Why would you humiliate your family in this way?”
“It was a mistake. This girl at school set the whole thing up. None of it’s true.”
“Then why is there a picture of you holding that boy’s hand on the front page of the Style and Culture section?” she roars.
Jared has to admit that he probably could have stopped gripping Jensen’s wrist once they got outside, but he hadn’t been exactly thinking clearly.
“We will hold another press conference,” she says. “Your coronation is in a month. There is still time to correct this misunderstanding. A speech will be prepared for you, in which you explain that a mistake has been made. And you will not see or speak to that Jensen boy anymore.”
The thought of not talking to Jensen is even scarier than the thought of giving a press conference. “But Jensen didn’t do anything wrong! He’s my best friend, you can’t just…”
“Jared, I am a queen. I can do as I please for the sake of my country.”
Jared gets to his feet. “You can make me say whatever you want. But you can’t tell me who my friends are.” He walks straight out of the suite and then straight into the elevator without stopping. If he stops, he thinks he may pass out.
Of course he goes straight to Jensen’s from the hotel. He’s too upset to go home and face his mom, and nothing Grandmère says is going to make Jensen less than his best friend.
He explains to Jensen that it’s really just a matter of telling the truth. That they’re not gay, that they’re not together, that Genovia is not in danger of its bloodline dying out. After that the paparazzi will give up on following Jensen and everything will go to back to normal-ish.
“Well, most of that’s true,” Jensen agrees, picking at the seam of his empty coffee cup.
“Just because I can’t get a date right now,” says Jared, “doesn’t mean I’ll never have a kid.”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Jensen replies. He pauses for a long time, and Jared waits, watching him choose words. “I’m gay, Jared. For real, actually gay. So you can say whatever you have to, but that part’s completely true.”
Jared’s heart may actually stop. Jensen looks so upset about it, like he’s been holding this thing back for a long time. And he didn’t need to. Jared couldn’t possibly like him any less over something like that. “I’m sorry,” he says to fill the space.
“Apologizing all the time like that can indicate low self-esteem and an unhealthy need for external validation,” Jensen replies.
Jared thinks about Jensen’s parents, psychotherapists whose different professional schools of thought frequently set them at each other’s throats. “Do your parents know?”
Jensen shakes his head. “I don’t want to have a big discussion with them about it, and you know everything’s a big discussion with them.”
“So now that I accidentally outed you to the entire world…”
“Mandy did that. You didn’t ask her to. And if I tell my parents it’s just a rumor, they’ll believe it.”
“But it’s not just a rumor. Not about you.”
Jensen shakes his head. “I fight a lot of battles. I ask people to sign petitions, and educate themselves about political prisoners, and not shop at Walmart. I don’t want to fight about me too.”
They’ve been friends for ten years, and Jared’s not sure that Jensen’s ever been that honest with him before. He hugs him because saying “I’m sorry” again seems stupid. Jensen hugs back. If there are any guys with telephoto lenses on the rooftops around Jared’s house, they can have their shot.
Jensen shrugs him off after a little while and twitches a smile. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I asked you to help me drum up publicity for my show. And I’m guessing plenty of people will tune in for this one now, even if they just want to see if I’m dreamy enough to be dating a prince.”
“You totally are,” Jared says loyally. “And there’s no one I’d rather give an exclusive interview to.” His grandmother may kill him, but hopefully, if they film over the weekend, Jared will have until Wednesday night when the show airs to convince Grandmère that a) it’s cool that Jensen’s still his best friend, and b) it’s awesome that Jared is going to talk on air for the first time on a show whose other biggest story to date was about renegade squirrels in the school air ducts.
***
“Do you do stuff with guys?” Jared asks. He’s lying with his head hanging off the side of his bed, his feet propped on the window. Jensen’s spinning listlessly back in forth in Jared’s desk chair. They’ve been plotting stories to fill in the 15 minutes of Jensen’s show after Jared inevitably runs out of things to say about themselves, but they’re pretty stumped. They realized trying to arrange a panel on US energy policy on twelve hours’ notice would just get them a couple of members of the debate team and that guy who with the parasol who stands around in Golden Gate Park yelling about skin cancer. Jared’s mind is wandering.
“No,” Jensen replies, not looking up.
“Why not?”
Jensen sighs. “There aren’t a lot of people worthy of my time. Let alone, you know, guys dreamy enough for me. It’s a small category. I could draw you a diagram.”
“Is that really the reason?”
“Jared, what does this have to do with my show? I thought you wanted to help.”
Jared sits up, and his skull protests the ensuing head rush. “I do want to help, I just don’t know what to say. We haven’t come up with a single usable idea in the last 45 minutes. What if what your audience needs to hear is that Being Gay is Okay? That seems like a pretty good cause to me.” Jensen starts to protest, but Jared keeps going. “And it doesn’t even have to be about you if you’re not comfortable with that. We could do man on the street interviews and use the best ones; we’re bound to run into some gay people that way. Just, my grandmother wants me to make a big deal out of denying I am, like it would be bad if I were, and it wouldn’t.”
“Your country needs you to marry an appropriate girl and have an appropriate heir.”
“Even my dad didn’t do that. So I don’t see why I have to either.”
“Are you trying to talk yourself into being gay right now? Because I can’t say I recommend it.”
“No, I’m just… why couldn’t Mandy have minded her own business in the first place? Then no one would have to do any of this, and you could teach me how the euro works enough that I could talk about it on your show, and I wouldn’t have to mention gayness at all.” He sinks his face into his hands. “And don’t tell me it’s my own stupid fault because I know it is, and I’m so sorry for dragging you into this mess.”
Jensen touches his shoulder, tentative, patting at him like he doesn’t quite know what he’s doing. “You still apologize too much.”
Jared looks up from his cupped palms, and he can’t quite believe the sincere little frown on Jensen’s face, or how green his eyes look this close up. He feels like apologizing again, reflexively, but he also feels a little giddy, like Jensen’s kindness has opened something up in him.
“You don’t have to come on the show at all if it’s too hard,” Jensen says. “If you just need to, I don’t know, lay low and regroup, I get it. It’s not like you won’t still be a prince in six months if you want to reschedule.”
“No, I need to do it now, I can’t just sit by. I’ve done too much of that already. I have to stand up now and really say what I believe in. My grandmother told me I shouldn’t even talk to you anymore because she thought…”
“She thought you were with me.”
“I don’t think she understands what being gay even is. I don’t think she believes in it as a real thing that real people are. And she should, you know. She should care about real people, like you. If this is the only time she’s ever going to watch your show - and it is - we have to make sure she sees how wrong she is, and how much she’s missing.” There’s a rising tide of emotion in Jared’s chest. He thinks some things are fitting together for him about Jensen in ways he never expected, like knowing Jensen’s gay shifts the tumblers in a lock and makes a whole slew of new possibilities appear.
“Jared, it’s a cable access show, not a spiritual experience,” Jensen reminds him gently.
“But it’s the only cable access show my grandmother is ever going to watch.”
“I just don’t want it to be about me.”
“It doesn’t have to be about you,” Jared says. “I mean, does it? Couldn’t it just be about other people? Couldn’t it be like factory farming? Or whales?”
Jensen looks at him like he’s stupid. “Do I look like a chicken to you? Or a whale?”
“I need my grandmother to realize that being gay isn’t a terrible blight on humanity. Help me, Jensen, you’re my only hope.”
“Your Leia Organa needs work.” Jensen starts to pack up the papers and notebooks they’ve dug out while brainstorming. “I don’t think I can help you.” Jared opens his mouth to say sorry all over again, but Jensen puts a hand over his mouth. “Don’t apologize. Just find a different date the next time a cheerleader asks you to a party.”
“But you’re the only date I want.” Jared replies plaintively.
Jensen cocks an ironic eyebrow at him, like it’ll make Jared see the absurdity of what he’s said. “See you tomorrow,” Jensen calls over his shoulder, and Jared listens to his Docs clunking down the stairs. Jensen is the only person he wants to take places, the only person who doesn’t make him feel stupid and awkward once he gets there. What else could he want in a date?
The more he thinks about it, the more it all starts to fit. Jared could be exactly what he told Mandy, if Jensen wanted him, if Jensen didn’t need to call the whole thing a rumor and a joke to keep the focus off of him.
Jared calls him late, but Jensen got his own phone line for his birthday, so it’s not like the call is bothering anyone. “Do you want to go out with me?” Jared asks.
“Where?” Jensen asks, not getting it, which is fair because Jared didn’t get it for a long time.
“No, I mean, out with me. On a date. Not like to Mandy’s stupid party but for real.” Jensen is silent, although Jared can hear the stereo in the background, so he knows Jensen’s still there.
“Why?”
“I like you. I don’t think I realized how much.”
“As a political statement or…”
“Just as me. Not even Prince Jared. Just Jared.”
“We won’t film it,” Jensen tells him.
“Definitely not,” Jared agrees.
“I may tell my parents it is a political statement. Can you deal with that?”
“I can deal with anything as long as you’re with me.”
There’s another silence at the other end of the phone.
“Too sappy?” Jared asks.
“We’ll work on that.”
***
The show opens with a bunch of people who aren’t royalty. Jensen talks to the guys at the comic store, and the manager at his favorite burger place, and Jared’s mom’s best friend and her partner. Quick little interviews, normal people. Just normal gay people. And then Jensen interviews Jared about being a prince. “You can’t choose the way you’re born,” Jared says, looking straight into the camera. He doesn’t say he’s gay. He doesn’t have to.
Grandmère doesn’t talk to him for three days after the show airs. She doesn’t even yell. And by the time she decides that he needs prince lessons more than he needs snubbing, Jared’s had the best first date imaginable and the European press seems to think he’s adorably avant-garde. It might just all be okay. Except for how his coronation is still in a month, and getting up in front of a crowd is still completely terrifying.
***
There are probably only a hundred people at the coronation, even including the handful of press in the back of the room, but it might as well be a million for how nervous Jared is. His palms are sweating inside his white gloves, and he keeps glancing at the door, waiting for Jensen. When he finally appears, Jared is so relieved he feels light-headed. Grandmère sighs into her highball glass. “You could have done worse,” she says grudgingly. “He does clean up well.”
Jared gets up in front of the crowd and says something about bravery, and something about opportunity, and he says he’ll accept his title and the crown of Genovia when the time comes. The words seem pretty clear when he watches the news later, but at the time they just seemed like a jumble in his head.
After dinner, there’s dancing, the string quartet striking up a lively waltz, and Jared is gladder that Jensen’s there by the second because he still has absolutely no idea how to lead.
-fin-