CHAMPAGNE
I asked you if a man could be forgiven
And though I failed at love, was this a crime?
You said, don’t worry, don’t worry, darling
There are many ways a man can serve his time
~ Iodine, Leonard Cohen
Jensen doesn’t drink champagne anymore.
He had never really liked the taste much before anyway. It was always too fizzy, too frothy; too bland. He used to sip it politely from a flute at fancy parties or special occasions, but never finish the glass.
The first time Jensen had spoken to him off script was over one of those glasses, filled with too fizzy, too bland champagne.
He wonders now if it was the effect of the stuff that had his eyes lingering over his soon-to-be co-star’s lines and gestures far longer than they probably should. He suspects it had something to do with it. Champagne always made him blind ass drunk.
Jared used to say it made him ‘tipsy stupid’. Jensen always argued ‘blind ass drunk’ was a more accurately manly description, but Jared just used to laugh and re-fill their glasses.
::
::
The first time Jensen had drank it whole heartedly had been with him. One a.m., after the last day of filming the Season One finale. Twelve months after Eric and Phil had popped that first bottle in the production studios after giddily announcing they’d found their 'Winchester boys'.
“Should I find it disconcerting that you don’t have any milk in your fridge, but you do have a crate of beer and eight bottles of crystal?”
His booming laugh had made Jensen glance back from where he was running his finger along the chilled bottles lined up in the refrigerator door.
“It’s the only way to celebrate, ain’t it?!”
Jared’s eyes always got darker when he was drunk on expensive champagne. This time, they were bright hazel, and his head was titled playfully.
“I never pegged you for a crystal man, Jared Padalecki.”
“And I never pegged you as someone who would peg a man by his fridge content alone, Jensen Ackles.”
They drank six of the eight bottles that night, on the living room floor of Jared’s studio rented apartment, playing X Box badly and talking about the Season Two that could never happen. Jensen remembered the fizz had looked the same, but it had tasted different.
By 3am, Jared’s eyes had been mahogany. They had blinked twice, quickly, before he leaned in to press his lips against Jensen’s.
::
::
The last time Jensen drank it had been a Tuesday. It had been raining non-stop for almost four days; the argument had been simmering on a slow burn for five. After Jared left, the untouched glasses had sat by the still blinking answering machine for almost three. Jensen drank the bottle down in the first hour, and ended up tipsy stupid.
It was the same bottle they’d bought on a whim the day they signed the lease; a huge two floor loft in West Hollywood which from Jared’s grin, you wouldn’t ever think was probably one third of the size of his old house in Vancouver.
After a whole day of lugging dining room tables, and mattresses and couches and dogs across state lines and midday LA traffic and up fourteen flights of stairs, their hair had been damp and their shirts had been stuck to their skin in the late July heat.
They may have been sitting pretty on two comfortable bank accounts and an abundance of partially eager friends who resided in LA and who could always be bribed by free beer but they were grown-ups now; or so Jared kept telling him, and grown men moved their own shit.
Jared’s fingers kept slipping through the rip in the side of Jensen’s ratty old shirt to unconsciously stroke at his side as he led them though the unfamiliar streets to the grocery store to fill their new, threadbare fridge.
“Champagne? Jay, we’ve just bought a loft and as of three weeks ago, we’re officially unemployed. We’re charging cheddar to my credit card, and you’re filling our cupboards with liquor?
It wasn’t name brand and it was pretty shitty and it really wasn’t as expensive as the chicken wings they threw in later, but he remembers Jared’s giddy grin, as he laid the bottle down in their cart and kissed Jensen right there in the cereal aisle that afternoon; in the store, two blocks down from their new apartment.
“Did you hear that?” He had smiled against Jensen’s lips, “You said ‘our’ cupboards.”
They had stored it away for an occasion, the first one in their new house that was worthy of their cheap, shitty prize.
And it had come, in a blaze of glory, not one year later.
::
::
The last time they’d drank it together had been at Jensen's sister’s wedding. Two weeks before D day, ten months after they had lugged a 200 pound couch from Canada to LA and kissed lazily in the chilled isle of a local grocery store.
“You heard back from the Production Company yet, Jensen?”
It had been idle conversation then. Not hurled as insults, not fired as guilt. Jensen had barely paid it attention, as the band started up, and Jared had bounded over and slipped the flute out of his hand and led him away from the conversation towards the broken in dance floor.
They had been dancing with borrowed time that night, even as they had snuck away and stumbled back to their place: up fourteen flights of stairs, fused together and laughing into each other’s mouths as Jared cracked his elbow on one of the hallway fire extinguishers. They just hadn’t seen it.
Too tipsy, neither quite 'blind ass drunk'.
::
::
Jensen was sitting in a coffee house the first time he thought about not drinking champagne.
He watched him over a barely warm latte, and drummed his pencil against the table top as Jared ordered over the counter. A woollen hat was pulled low over his ears. It was new, but the jacket looked familiar, and Jensen’s fingers itched to trace the warm fleece of the inside pockets.
Jared caught sight of him as he turned to leave, takeout cup in hand.
“I know I never was that impressive with basic direction, but I must be seriously overestimating my skills if I’ve crossed a state line without knowing it.”
Jensen smiled and gestured to the papers in front of him with the pencil that wouldn’t seem to sit still, “I’m back for Mac’s birthday this weekend.”
Jared nodded down at the stacks of notes and scripts that Jensen was using as coasters and slid into the seat opposite with no further preamble.
“You busy directing types have to schedule such coffee breaks now, I assume?”
Jensen smiled over a sip of now less than barely warm coffee, and dropped the pencil to one side of stack of stack B, “And big shot movie stars have no such problems, I see?”
Jared had laughed then and held up the crinkled script that he had clutched in the hand that wasn’t supporting his coffee; three sugars, too much cream.
The coffee house had been their favourite place on the street. One block down from the loft; clear view of the park entrance. Jensen used to claim the overly plush couch by the French windows, and Jared used to flirt with Marie, the eighteen year old barista, until she put extra whipped cream on their order.
The couch had since been replaced with more sturdy looking lounge chairs, and Marie had most likely long since graduated college.
Jared smiled anyway, and slid his cup onto Jensen’s table to sit behind the discarded pencil.
“So have you concurred New York yet, Ackles?”
They had talked for an hour; about everything, about nothing at all. Jensen didn’t ask if he remembered Marie, or the way they used to sit here for hours and hours on Sundays and watch the whole world pass by outside and surmise on the lives of the people who lingered too long in their eye line. Jensen didn’t mention the pretty little blond that US Weekly promised was waiting for Jared back home: the one up in the Hills; that was probably first floor accessible and didn’t have a fire escape that leaked when it rained.
They had just assured each other that they were good, that they were fine, that they would maybe, possibly, surely meet up sometime or another. And then Jared had left.
After he’d gone, Jensen sat back against his seat and watched a couple idle by the park fence outside, to watch the kids play in the playground that was there now.
They were probably trying for one, Jensen surmised, with a smile.
After all had been said and done, no one had died. No one had cheated. It was just another case of bad timing, different paths: an inevitable decision by two people who just had different opportunities at just the wrong time. They had dealt, and they had moved on; just like Jensen always knew they inevitably would. He hadn’t lied. It was fine. He was fine.
He just doesn’t drink champagne anymore.