For all parts, click on the 'fic:jpj' tag. For rating, pairings and notes, see part 1.
December 26
Bench: zip
Squat: zilch
No. of beers: eggnog. lots of eggnog.
The day after Christmas Jared was up early to play touch football with some friends from high school. It was a weird tradition, but they’d been doing it since the Christmas after they graduated. Jared enjoyed seeing all his friends, even though it’d been raining lightly throughout the game. Several of his friends had kids now, which totally blew Jared’s mind. He ignored the pang that thinking about having kids someday gave him, and threw himself more heartily into the brunch that they'd had afterward. He headed back to his parents, thinking idly about a warm shower and an afternoon of watching bad TV.
Jared was about to take a sip of his mom’s famous spiked eggnog (it was one of the few recipes she never screwed up, actually) when his mom came into the kitchen and positively screeched. “Jared, why are you still in your grubbies? The Ackles’s holiday party is in a hour. You’re going to make us late; go change.”
Jared wrinkled his nose. Even after his mellow Christmas, he still wasn’t in the mood to run into Jensen and deal with his bipolar shenanigans. “I think I’ll skip it, mama, I’m not feeling that great.”
“So you’re drinking?,” his mother commented, eyeing the glass in his hand. Jared shrugged and took a swallow. “I thought that you and that Jensen boy might have hit it off. Not to mention that you two should have all kinds of things in common now that he’s gay.”
Jared almost spit out his eggnog, and swallowed it quickly before he choked. “*What*?”
“Did I not tell you? Yeah, I heard from Shirley who heard it from Joanne, she’s a hairdresser, remember, in that shop down by the highway, where the old Piggly-Wiggly used to be….”
“Mom, focus, *Jensen*,” Jared said shortly.
“OK, honey, I was getting there. Anyway, as I was saying, Joanne does Donna Ackles’s hair, and apparently Jensen’s come out, to everyone at the office and everything. I guess his family already knew, but he was keeping it quiet otherwise because he wasn’t sure what the people at work would think. Apparently an ex of his from their school days or something had been threatening to expose him, and he decided to go ahead and tell everyone so the guy couldn’t blackmail him any more.”
Oh fuck, Jared thought. When I’m wrong, I am *spectacularly* wrong. Wonder if Carver would help me plan something truly evil to do to Misha. Wait, *focus*. Worry about that later. I gotta go apologize to Jensen.
Jared dropped the glass of eggnog onto the counter with a clatter, and whirled to run to his childhood bedroom. “I’ll be ready in 5 minutes, don’t leave without me,” he called back to his mother.
OK, it was a little longer than 5 minutes, but he had to shower off the post-football funk, and find the pants that made his ass look absolutely luscious (or at least that’s what Beth had said, and the dates he’d gotten while wearing them bore the sentiment out). His parents were sitting in the family room when he came out of his bedroom, his dad watching a football game and his mom sitting beside him, idly doing a Sudoku puzzle.
“OK, let’s go,” he said hurriedly, and his mom eyed him, probably wondering about his sudden enthusiasm. “C’mon, dad,” he said, and his dad lumbered slowly to his feet, grumbling about pointless parties all the way. When they got to the garage, his dad spent forever adjusting mirrors and knobs in his parents’ old station wagon, and Jared had finally had enough. “Scoot over, I’ll drive,” he said, and shoved the seat back, pulling the door shut and peeling out of the doorway, ignoring his parents’ complaints.