RBB - OUR LIFE IF A PLAYLIST (JUST WAITING TO BE BURNED) - PART 3
Title: Our life is a playlist (just waiting to be burned)
Artist: emonyjade
Genre/Pairing: RPS. Jensen/Jared
Link to master art: http://community.livejournal.com/loveandgasoline/2205.html#cutid1
Summary: Jensen and Jared have a plan. Marry their friends to keep their relationship a secret. Jared's scared of God and Chris just won't let it go, but everything will be okay if everyone just keeps smiling.
Author Notes: Written for spn_reversebang. Based on emonyjade's 2016 prompt which she expanded into three videos. This fic can be read and understood as a stand alone, but a second part may be written at a later date based on these final vids.
Thanks to rozabellalove for all her kind help and suggestions and a huge thanks to my beta asher_k for being all kinds of awesome. Seriously, I couldn't have done it without her. And finally, thank you to my wonderful artist, emonyjade for giving me such a great prompt and being generally brilliant!
Half of my heart is a shot gun wedding,
To a bride with a paper ring
And half of my heart is the part of a man
Who’s never truly loved anything...
Jensen takes Danneel home for Christmas break. It isn’t the first time she’s been to Dallas, but it’s the first time he’s brought anyone home for the holidays.
It goes pretty smoothly. His parents have always adored her, even though his nephews are still somewhat undecided.
“She’s cool, Uncle Jen.” Logan nods and looks up from his Nintendo to shoot him a hopeful grin. “Is Jared coming? He said he’d teach me the Death Drain on Guitar Hero! Right, Linc?”
Okay, maybe it’s the second time he’s brought someone home.
Lincoln nods hopefully and Jensen ends up wrapping up five extra computer games to cushion the fact that they’re probably going have to play them with a girl that weekend.
:::
They return to Supernatural in the New Year and things start to spiral out of control.
Jensen isn’t sure anyone knows this, but Jared? He’s a pretty enthusiastic guy. He likes a lot of things, and marriage? Well, he might be the size of a yeti and have arms that could crush a man’s clavicle with just one flex, but Jared Padalecki was raised on hardcore Disney. He knows the songs, he owns the box sets, and he completely believes the theme park is the happiest place on earth. He was Prince Charming to his little sister’s Cinderella at two consecutive Padalecki Halloween Parties, for Christ’s Sake.
And Jensen? Well…Jensen prefers classic rock, in all honesty. He thinks Disney World is nothing but a cesspit of pink eye virus, and sure, he enjoys an occasional viewing of Nemo with his nephews, because that shit? Funny. But on the whole, no, Jensen doesn’t get a warm, tingling feeling in his chest the way Jared does at the very mention of sleeping damsels and midnight balls and singing woodland creatures.
But of course, Jared just believing in Disney isn’t nearly enough. No, Jared has to push his Disney love on every half-willing PA and sound guy within arm’s reach, and really, after watching a group of 300-pound, tattooed grips perform an impromptu a cappella version of ‘Kiss the Girl,’ Jensen has to resign himself to the fact that there aren’t many people in the world who can resist Jared’s infectious exuberance about such things.
This is, perhaps, the only explanation for how Jensen has found himself surrounded by hundreds of crew members and unfamiliar extras four hours into his first day.
“Thanks, guys!” Jared is grinning so wide Jensen thinks he’s swallowed a clothes hanger. He nudges at Jensen, who’s standing stoically beside him, staring wide-eyed at the five foot sponge cake with their names iced on it.
“We’re just so happy for you guys!” Shannon’s saying, already slicing rectangles out of the cake and passing it out to grabby hands. “I mean, both of you getting engaged at practically the same time! What are the odds of that? It just calls for cake and parties, doesn’t it?” She grins giddily.
Jensen likes Shannon. She’s quirky and funny and she can drink Chris under the table. In fact, the only time anyone becomes acutely aware that Shannon is actually a girl is when she’s presented with a baby or an engagement ring.
Jared grins back and bounces on his toes as he’s handed an over-sized portion of sponge cake and frosting. “To weddings and babies, bitches.” He hollers, and then meets one of the key grips in an exuberant high five.
Jensen suppresses the urge to roll his eyes and takes his cake back to his trailer.
:::
Jensen has mastered the art of table setting and one-handed flower arranging while keeping a continuous stream of steaming coffee firmly in the other at all times. He’s not yet close to mastering the art of public speaking.
“All you have to do is smile for two hours and then say some crap about marriage being the ultimate act of commitment.”
Jensen turns a sour eye to where Chris is trying to fit ninety people in pin formation onto twenty tables made for four.
“It’s a fucking wedding vow, not a Shakespearean sonnet,” Jensen barks back, watching his friend stab a pin haphazardly into the seating chart.
“Same thing.”
Jensen rolls his eyes and goes back to staring at the stretch of taunting white paper. Across from him, Chris doesn’t seem to be having much more creative success.
“This is fucking impossible.” He throws the box of pins aside in surrender. “You need more tables or fewer people.”
Jensen grins momentarily around the pencil he’s chewing on as Danneel shoots them the stink eye from across the room where she and her mother are trying to drape cream taffeta across the windows of the reception hall.
So far, Danneel has been pretty cool. If it was up to her, they probably would have eloped to Vegas and been married by Elvis in The Little White Chapel and then gone out for waffles.
But it isn’t up to them. And there are procedures to be followed, apparently. Each one seeming to grate more and more on Danni’s nerves. Judging by the death glare Jensen's receiving, cream taffeta seems to be on the list.
She seemed more excited about the waffles, in all honesty.
“Shouldn’t you be an expert at this shit?” Jensen mumbles, trying to hold his grin until Danni turns away to convey some false sense that everything is right on schedule. He holds little sympathy for her, really. Speeches trump taffeta. Everytime. “You’re a country western singer, you breathe lovesick tragedy - weddings should be your bread and butter, dude.”
Chris doesn’t even attempt the façade. “If you’re so damn set on tragedy, why are you writing your vows?” He smirks, thick eyebrows twitching "Hell, why are you even getting married in the first place?"
“Uh, because I’m a committed kind of guy?” Jensen deadpans, doodling a smiling ladybug on the corner of his blank paper “And because it’s what happens when two agents with the same mindset conspire with a network company.”
He leaves out the part where writing his own vows may be just enough to dampen the whole ‘lying in the face of God’ situation. That maybe, if he tries hard enough, he can twist his own words into something resembling the truth.
“Speaking of conspiring…”
Jensen’s pencil pauses midair as he looks up to where Chris is looking at him brazenly over a mountain of upturned pins and paper. “Are we actually supposed to be pretending this is a good idea? You know, like, ignorantly supportive and shit?”
Jensen tries to act naïve but just can’t fake another emotion until he’s inhaled another cup of coffee. “Yes”
Chris flicks at a pin that goes whizzing past Jensen’s left arm and bounces off the wall behind them. “So it’s probably not my place to tell you that this is all kinds of fucked up.”
Jensen goes back to shading antennas. “No”
Chris shrugs and slumps back in his chair “I just think it’s a little reckless is all.”
Jensen quirks an eyebrow, unimpressed “This is coming from you? Hell, it must be.”
Chris doesn’t look deterred “It’s just…it seems like settling.”
Jensen’s pencil pauses, but he doesn’t look up, doesn’t dare.
“I mean, Danni’s a great girl, hot as hell, man, and you’ve had a good run with her, but…it just seems like you’re settling for something. For the rest of your life. And yeah, I get it, Jen, I do, but…”
Chris’ voice softens, quietens, and Jensen feels him lean in his chair towards him. “I don’t want you to turn around in ten years’ time and find yourself backed into a corner, still waiting to be happy.”
Jensen resists the urge to tell him that some people wait for that forever. That sometimes in life, you have to settle, and then tell yourself that maybe it’s what you wanted all along.
Jensen doesn’t say that though. But only because it would have been completely pointless. Chris would never understand. He would never agree in a million years.
“See,” Jensen croaks, finding a crooked, unsteady grin and shooting it off towards where Chris is looking at him with steady, imploring blue eyes, “Shakespearean tragedy. I knew you had it in you.”
He pretends not to see Chris’s eyes dim a little as he slouches back. The whole conversation was far too country western to start with.
:::
The night before Jared’s wedding, Danneel calls him from the east coast. He can hear banging and catcalls in the background when he picks up, so he knows she’s between takes.
“Hey. What’re you doing?”
Jensen looks around at their empty living room, at the rerun playing on TV and the takeout boxes on the coffee table.
“Nothing. What’s up?”
She laughs softly and he can hear the teasing turn to her voice through the static of the reception. “Can’t a girl just call her fiancé to check in?”
Jensen smirks, even though she can’t see, and lifts the beer in his hand up to his lips “You don’t check in, Danni.”
Jensen thinks it’s different for them because they’re friends. They were friends long before they ever fell into bed, before any of this was ever a big deal. Jensen likes to think that they’ll be able to stay friends after the entire debacle goes to shit, but he’s never been that naïve.
Danni's laughter turns genuine and she softens her voice. “Okay, yeah. I forgot who I was talking to for a second there.” Static fills the silence and then, “How’re you doing?”
Jensen closes his eyes, tips his head back against the top of the sofa, and tries to will the pitying gentleness out of the voice in his ear. “I’m fine.”
“Liar.”
Jensen forgets that she has a tendency to knows him better than he knows himself.
Friends can be like that sometimes.
:::
“Jensen, honey, baby…” A box of white roses are pushed into his hand without further preamble and Sherri smiles, wide and sweet “Can you please go and take these to those apes my son is calling groomsmen? We’re set to start in twenty minutes and no one’s been buttonholed yet.”
Jensen isn’t entirely certain what buttonholing entails, but he feels obliged to cart the box out of the room regardless. Mainly because he’s three seconds away from attacking the next person to throw a shrieking shit fit over hair pins and heated rollers.
So far, he’s managed to keep under the radar. Genevieve was smuggled out into a dressing room in military frog-march formation at far-too-early o’clock, and the groomsmen had been segregated to the rooms off the reception area. Jensen had made sure to be the first dressed and managed to feign helpfulness for neigh on two hours now, driving relatives, pointing at table settings, carting button holes.
He isn’t sure how much longer his lingering can go unquestioned.
Chris is lent up against one of the cocktail waitresses when he brushes through the kitchens en route to the reception hall.
“There you are,” he says when Jensen passes him “Christ, where’ve you been?”
“Busy. Here, button hole yourself” Jensen thrusts a rose and a safety pin at him in passing and watches him look at them blankly.
“Sounds dirty,” he leers, grinning wolfishly down at the giggling blond. “Maybe you should do the Honors, beautiful.”
Jensen rolls his eyes and lifts the box to avoid a collision with a fast-moving hors d’oeuvre cart. “Whatever works. Where are they?”
“Meeting room 2, dude,” he hears Chris say, although it’s mostly muffled by the exposed skin of Blondie’s neck.
He knocks tentatively on the door, slightly apprehensive now that he’s ear-to-wood and can’t detect any shrieks or laughs or cursing. He hears a muffled reply that he takes to mean ‘sure, come on in’ and shoulders his way through the door, roses and pins still tucked under his arm.
He stutters to a pause when the door clicks shut behind him. The room is empty save for Jared, who’s standing at the window with his back to the door. He doesn’t bother to turn around when he speaks.
“I thought you bailed,” he says, his voice throaty and hoarse like when he caught strep throat last winter and insisted he could work it off because a little sore throat shouldn’t be enough to stop filming.
Jensen clears his throat and shakes the box in his hands. “Nah, man. Uh, your Mom sent me with these button things.”
Jared had ended up running a fever and spending three days vomiting bile. When Jensen had suggested that they go to the emergency room, his eyes had gone as wide as saucers and Jensen had felt like an asshole, his momma’s voice ringing loud in his head: ‘You gotta be cruel to be kind, Jensen.’
Jensen had sat with him all night and watched Happy Days reruns on the fuzzy old portable above his hospital bed.
“She gave me the buttonholes yesterday,” he says, and Jensen pauses, turns and sets the box down on one of the side tables near the door.
“She must’ve forgotten.”
She hadn’t. Jared had never perfected the art of subtlety, but that has nothing to do with his Momma. Sharon Padalecki is a friggin’ ninja when she wants to be.
“She also gave a twenty minute warning, so…”
“Do you remember that weekend we went to Aspen?”
Jensen pauses when Jared cuts him off unapologetically. His back is still turned, the dark suit jacket stretched across his shoulders, his hands tucked deep into his pockets. His eyes are still directed out the window at the trees and white blankets of snow.
“We stayed in that lodge and Harley caught the flu. I tried to teach you how to ski.” He lets out a slow, humourless chuckle and tilts his head slightly to the side so Jensen can see part of his profile “Dude, you were weak.”
“Yeah,” Jensen murmurs, dropping his gaze to his dress shoes and the hideous floral rugs beneath them.
Jensen remembers it all too well. He remembers that Jared had laughed at the thousands of layers Jensen insisted on wearing everywhere. How the dogs had gone ape shit over the white billows coating the backyard and refused to stop rolling in them until Harley had started to snuff and splutter. How the lodge had boasted two spacious double rooms, each with their own log fires, but Jensen could only tell you the colour of one set of sheets.
He remembers how Jared’s eyes had danced every time he’d picked Jensen up off the ground and steadied him again “At least you fall like a trooper, dude.”
Jensen remembers, sure he does, but remembering isn’t going to change jack shit now.
“Twenty minutes,” he says again, almost a whisper, and turns towards the door.
“It’s not wrong.” Jared’s voice stops Jensen with one hand on the handle. He turns back to find Jared facing him, hands free of his pockets, a determined, unwavering look on his face “It’s not.”
He sounds so young then that Jensen wants to scream. Wants to lock the door and slip Jared right out the back, away from all of the mess - all the way back to Aspen, where he’d laughed and skied and been perfectly happy.
Jensen says nothing and has the door open before he can fully decide which wrong Jared’s trying to right. Because really, where the hell would they start.
In the hallway, he leans back against the wall to steady himself, to regroup. He closes his eyes and breathes deep, remembering all the things he’s supposed to.
Baffle them with bullshit, son.
It’s amazing, really, what people pick up without even realising it at all. The things you learn, the things you’re taught that can shape the rest of your life without you even knowing it.
My dad told me it’s okay to sleep with someone you love.
Jensen has a hundred little voices; whispers in his ear pulled from the dregs of his mind, the shadows of his childhood.
Sure thing, honey. You go wave your magic wand.
Jensen had been lucky, he supposes. He’d been surrounded by people his whole life. Wise people, smart people, people he could look up to. People he could learn from. And he had. He still did.
You don’t teach your grandma to suck eggs, Jensen dear.
He’d learnt to act, to lie, to do his best. But no one ever taught him how to break someone’s heart. That had always seemed to come perfectly naturaly to him.
At least you fall like a trouper, dude
He pushes off the wall, straightens his suit - brushes off all the imaginary lint and regrets clinging to the expensive fabric.
You’ve got to be cruel to be kind, Jensen, his Momma had told him once. He always used to think that was bullshit.
He doesn’t look back at the closed door as he backtracks down the hall.
Time to turn on the smoke machine.
COMING SOON - The B Side
Artist: emonyjade
Genre/Pairing: RPS. Jensen/Jared
Link to master art: http://community.livejournal.com/loveandgasoline/2205.html#cutid1
Summary: Jensen and Jared have a plan. Marry their friends to keep their relationship a secret. Jared's scared of God and Chris just won't let it go, but everything will be okay if everyone just keeps smiling.
Author Notes: Written for spn_reversebang. Based on emonyjade's 2016 prompt which she expanded into three videos. This fic can be read and understood as a stand alone, but a second part may be written at a later date based on these final vids.
Thanks to rozabellalove for all her kind help and suggestions and a huge thanks to my beta asher_k for being all kinds of awesome. Seriously, I couldn't have done it without her. And finally, thank you to my wonderful artist, emonyjade for giving me such a great prompt and being generally brilliant!
Half of my heart is a shot gun wedding,
To a bride with a paper ring
And half of my heart is the part of a man
Who’s never truly loved anything...
Jensen takes Danneel home for Christmas break. It isn’t the first time she’s been to Dallas, but it’s the first time he’s brought anyone home for the holidays.
It goes pretty smoothly. His parents have always adored her, even though his nephews are still somewhat undecided.
“She’s cool, Uncle Jen.” Logan nods and looks up from his Nintendo to shoot him a hopeful grin. “Is Jared coming? He said he’d teach me the Death Drain on Guitar Hero! Right, Linc?”
Okay, maybe it’s the second time he’s brought someone home.
Lincoln nods hopefully and Jensen ends up wrapping up five extra computer games to cushion the fact that they’re probably going have to play them with a girl that weekend.
:::
They return to Supernatural in the New Year and things start to spiral out of control.
Jensen isn’t sure anyone knows this, but Jared? He’s a pretty enthusiastic guy. He likes a lot of things, and marriage? Well, he might be the size of a yeti and have arms that could crush a man’s clavicle with just one flex, but Jared Padalecki was raised on hardcore Disney. He knows the songs, he owns the box sets, and he completely believes the theme park is the happiest place on earth. He was Prince Charming to his little sister’s Cinderella at two consecutive Padalecki Halloween Parties, for Christ’s Sake.
And Jensen? Well…Jensen prefers classic rock, in all honesty. He thinks Disney World is nothing but a cesspit of pink eye virus, and sure, he enjoys an occasional viewing of Nemo with his nephews, because that shit? Funny. But on the whole, no, Jensen doesn’t get a warm, tingling feeling in his chest the way Jared does at the very mention of sleeping damsels and midnight balls and singing woodland creatures.
But of course, Jared just believing in Disney isn’t nearly enough. No, Jared has to push his Disney love on every half-willing PA and sound guy within arm’s reach, and really, after watching a group of 300-pound, tattooed grips perform an impromptu a cappella version of ‘Kiss the Girl,’ Jensen has to resign himself to the fact that there aren’t many people in the world who can resist Jared’s infectious exuberance about such things.
This is, perhaps, the only explanation for how Jensen has found himself surrounded by hundreds of crew members and unfamiliar extras four hours into his first day.
“Thanks, guys!” Jared is grinning so wide Jensen thinks he’s swallowed a clothes hanger. He nudges at Jensen, who’s standing stoically beside him, staring wide-eyed at the five foot sponge cake with their names iced on it.
“We’re just so happy for you guys!” Shannon’s saying, already slicing rectangles out of the cake and passing it out to grabby hands. “I mean, both of you getting engaged at practically the same time! What are the odds of that? It just calls for cake and parties, doesn’t it?” She grins giddily.
Jensen likes Shannon. She’s quirky and funny and she can drink Chris under the table. In fact, the only time anyone becomes acutely aware that Shannon is actually a girl is when she’s presented with a baby or an engagement ring.
Jared grins back and bounces on his toes as he’s handed an over-sized portion of sponge cake and frosting. “To weddings and babies, bitches.” He hollers, and then meets one of the key grips in an exuberant high five.
Jensen suppresses the urge to roll his eyes and takes his cake back to his trailer.
:::
Jensen has mastered the art of table setting and one-handed flower arranging while keeping a continuous stream of steaming coffee firmly in the other at all times. He’s not yet close to mastering the art of public speaking.
“All you have to do is smile for two hours and then say some crap about marriage being the ultimate act of commitment.”
Jensen turns a sour eye to where Chris is trying to fit ninety people in pin formation onto twenty tables made for four.
“It’s a fucking wedding vow, not a Shakespearean sonnet,” Jensen barks back, watching his friend stab a pin haphazardly into the seating chart.
“Same thing.”
Jensen rolls his eyes and goes back to staring at the stretch of taunting white paper. Across from him, Chris doesn’t seem to be having much more creative success.
“This is fucking impossible.” He throws the box of pins aside in surrender. “You need more tables or fewer people.”
Jensen grins momentarily around the pencil he’s chewing on as Danneel shoots them the stink eye from across the room where she and her mother are trying to drape cream taffeta across the windows of the reception hall.
So far, Danneel has been pretty cool. If it was up to her, they probably would have eloped to Vegas and been married by Elvis in The Little White Chapel and then gone out for waffles.
But it isn’t up to them. And there are procedures to be followed, apparently. Each one seeming to grate more and more on Danni’s nerves. Judging by the death glare Jensen's receiving, cream taffeta seems to be on the list.
She seemed more excited about the waffles, in all honesty.
“Shouldn’t you be an expert at this shit?” Jensen mumbles, trying to hold his grin until Danni turns away to convey some false sense that everything is right on schedule. He holds little sympathy for her, really. Speeches trump taffeta. Everytime. “You’re a country western singer, you breathe lovesick tragedy - weddings should be your bread and butter, dude.”
Chris doesn’t even attempt the façade. “If you’re so damn set on tragedy, why are you writing your vows?” He smirks, thick eyebrows twitching "Hell, why are you even getting married in the first place?"
“Uh, because I’m a committed kind of guy?” Jensen deadpans, doodling a smiling ladybug on the corner of his blank paper “And because it’s what happens when two agents with the same mindset conspire with a network company.”
He leaves out the part where writing his own vows may be just enough to dampen the whole ‘lying in the face of God’ situation. That maybe, if he tries hard enough, he can twist his own words into something resembling the truth.
“Speaking of conspiring…”
Jensen’s pencil pauses midair as he looks up to where Chris is looking at him brazenly over a mountain of upturned pins and paper. “Are we actually supposed to be pretending this is a good idea? You know, like, ignorantly supportive and shit?”
Jensen tries to act naïve but just can’t fake another emotion until he’s inhaled another cup of coffee. “Yes”
Chris flicks at a pin that goes whizzing past Jensen’s left arm and bounces off the wall behind them. “So it’s probably not my place to tell you that this is all kinds of fucked up.”
Jensen goes back to shading antennas. “No”
Chris shrugs and slumps back in his chair “I just think it’s a little reckless is all.”
Jensen quirks an eyebrow, unimpressed “This is coming from you? Hell, it must be.”
Chris doesn’t look deterred “It’s just…it seems like settling.”
Jensen’s pencil pauses, but he doesn’t look up, doesn’t dare.
“I mean, Danni’s a great girl, hot as hell, man, and you’ve had a good run with her, but…it just seems like you’re settling for something. For the rest of your life. And yeah, I get it, Jen, I do, but…”
Chris’ voice softens, quietens, and Jensen feels him lean in his chair towards him. “I don’t want you to turn around in ten years’ time and find yourself backed into a corner, still waiting to be happy.”
Jensen resists the urge to tell him that some people wait for that forever. That sometimes in life, you have to settle, and then tell yourself that maybe it’s what you wanted all along.
Jensen doesn’t say that though. But only because it would have been completely pointless. Chris would never understand. He would never agree in a million years.
“See,” Jensen croaks, finding a crooked, unsteady grin and shooting it off towards where Chris is looking at him with steady, imploring blue eyes, “Shakespearean tragedy. I knew you had it in you.”
He pretends not to see Chris’s eyes dim a little as he slouches back. The whole conversation was far too country western to start with.
:::
The night before Jared’s wedding, Danneel calls him from the east coast. He can hear banging and catcalls in the background when he picks up, so he knows she’s between takes.
“Hey. What’re you doing?”
Jensen looks around at their empty living room, at the rerun playing on TV and the takeout boxes on the coffee table.
“Nothing. What’s up?”
She laughs softly and he can hear the teasing turn to her voice through the static of the reception. “Can’t a girl just call her fiancé to check in?”
Jensen smirks, even though she can’t see, and lifts the beer in his hand up to his lips “You don’t check in, Danni.”
Jensen thinks it’s different for them because they’re friends. They were friends long before they ever fell into bed, before any of this was ever a big deal. Jensen likes to think that they’ll be able to stay friends after the entire debacle goes to shit, but he’s never been that naïve.
Danni's laughter turns genuine and she softens her voice. “Okay, yeah. I forgot who I was talking to for a second there.” Static fills the silence and then, “How’re you doing?”
Jensen closes his eyes, tips his head back against the top of the sofa, and tries to will the pitying gentleness out of the voice in his ear. “I’m fine.”
“Liar.”
Jensen forgets that she has a tendency to knows him better than he knows himself.
Friends can be like that sometimes.
:::
“Jensen, honey, baby…” A box of white roses are pushed into his hand without further preamble and Sherri smiles, wide and sweet “Can you please go and take these to those apes my son is calling groomsmen? We’re set to start in twenty minutes and no one’s been buttonholed yet.”
Jensen isn’t entirely certain what buttonholing entails, but he feels obliged to cart the box out of the room regardless. Mainly because he’s three seconds away from attacking the next person to throw a shrieking shit fit over hair pins and heated rollers.
So far, he’s managed to keep under the radar. Genevieve was smuggled out into a dressing room in military frog-march formation at far-too-early o’clock, and the groomsmen had been segregated to the rooms off the reception area. Jensen had made sure to be the first dressed and managed to feign helpfulness for neigh on two hours now, driving relatives, pointing at table settings, carting button holes.
He isn’t sure how much longer his lingering can go unquestioned.
Chris is lent up against one of the cocktail waitresses when he brushes through the kitchens en route to the reception hall.
“There you are,” he says when Jensen passes him “Christ, where’ve you been?”
“Busy. Here, button hole yourself” Jensen thrusts a rose and a safety pin at him in passing and watches him look at them blankly.
“Sounds dirty,” he leers, grinning wolfishly down at the giggling blond. “Maybe you should do the Honors, beautiful.”
Jensen rolls his eyes and lifts the box to avoid a collision with a fast-moving hors d’oeuvre cart. “Whatever works. Where are they?”
“Meeting room 2, dude,” he hears Chris say, although it’s mostly muffled by the exposed skin of Blondie’s neck.
He knocks tentatively on the door, slightly apprehensive now that he’s ear-to-wood and can’t detect any shrieks or laughs or cursing. He hears a muffled reply that he takes to mean ‘sure, come on in’ and shoulders his way through the door, roses and pins still tucked under his arm.
He stutters to a pause when the door clicks shut behind him. The room is empty save for Jared, who’s standing at the window with his back to the door. He doesn’t bother to turn around when he speaks.
“I thought you bailed,” he says, his voice throaty and hoarse like when he caught strep throat last winter and insisted he could work it off because a little sore throat shouldn’t be enough to stop filming.
Jensen clears his throat and shakes the box in his hands. “Nah, man. Uh, your Mom sent me with these button things.”
Jared had ended up running a fever and spending three days vomiting bile. When Jensen had suggested that they go to the emergency room, his eyes had gone as wide as saucers and Jensen had felt like an asshole, his momma’s voice ringing loud in his head: ‘You gotta be cruel to be kind, Jensen.’
Jensen had sat with him all night and watched Happy Days reruns on the fuzzy old portable above his hospital bed.
“She gave me the buttonholes yesterday,” he says, and Jensen pauses, turns and sets the box down on one of the side tables near the door.
“She must’ve forgotten.”
She hadn’t. Jared had never perfected the art of subtlety, but that has nothing to do with his Momma. Sharon Padalecki is a friggin’ ninja when she wants to be.
“She also gave a twenty minute warning, so…”
“Do you remember that weekend we went to Aspen?”
Jensen pauses when Jared cuts him off unapologetically. His back is still turned, the dark suit jacket stretched across his shoulders, his hands tucked deep into his pockets. His eyes are still directed out the window at the trees and white blankets of snow.
“We stayed in that lodge and Harley caught the flu. I tried to teach you how to ski.” He lets out a slow, humourless chuckle and tilts his head slightly to the side so Jensen can see part of his profile “Dude, you were weak.”
“Yeah,” Jensen murmurs, dropping his gaze to his dress shoes and the hideous floral rugs beneath them.
Jensen remembers it all too well. He remembers that Jared had laughed at the thousands of layers Jensen insisted on wearing everywhere. How the dogs had gone ape shit over the white billows coating the backyard and refused to stop rolling in them until Harley had started to snuff and splutter. How the lodge had boasted two spacious double rooms, each with their own log fires, but Jensen could only tell you the colour of one set of sheets.
He remembers how Jared’s eyes had danced every time he’d picked Jensen up off the ground and steadied him again “At least you fall like a trooper, dude.”
Jensen remembers, sure he does, but remembering isn’t going to change jack shit now.
“Twenty minutes,” he says again, almost a whisper, and turns towards the door.
“It’s not wrong.” Jared’s voice stops Jensen with one hand on the handle. He turns back to find Jared facing him, hands free of his pockets, a determined, unwavering look on his face “It’s not.”
He sounds so young then that Jensen wants to scream. Wants to lock the door and slip Jared right out the back, away from all of the mess - all the way back to Aspen, where he’d laughed and skied and been perfectly happy.
Jensen says nothing and has the door open before he can fully decide which wrong Jared’s trying to right. Because really, where the hell would they start.
In the hallway, he leans back against the wall to steady himself, to regroup. He closes his eyes and breathes deep, remembering all the things he’s supposed to.
Baffle them with bullshit, son.
It’s amazing, really, what people pick up without even realising it at all. The things you learn, the things you’re taught that can shape the rest of your life without you even knowing it.
My dad told me it’s okay to sleep with someone you love.
Jensen has a hundred little voices; whispers in his ear pulled from the dregs of his mind, the shadows of his childhood.
Sure thing, honey. You go wave your magic wand.
Jensen had been lucky, he supposes. He’d been surrounded by people his whole life. Wise people, smart people, people he could look up to. People he could learn from. And he had. He still did.
You don’t teach your grandma to suck eggs, Jensen dear.
He’d learnt to act, to lie, to do his best. But no one ever taught him how to break someone’s heart. That had always seemed to come perfectly naturaly to him.
At least you fall like a trouper, dude
He pushes off the wall, straightens his suit - brushes off all the imaginary lint and regrets clinging to the expensive fabric.
You’ve got to be cruel to be kind, Jensen, his Momma had told him once. He always used to think that was bullshit.
He doesn’t look back at the closed door as he backtracks down the hall.
Time to turn on the smoke machine.
COMING SOON - The B Side