fic: She's A Handsome Woman (Part Two)
Part Two
Jensen's first day on set is the following Monday. He receives his sides by courier on the Sunday and spends the evening reading through them with Misha, which is kind of a riot. Sure, it's a soap opera, but does there really have to be a guy waking up from a coma, an illicit affair and a runaway stepson, all in one episode? Well, apparently.
On Monday, Jensen's alarm goes off at 3:45. He gets up, shaves his face, legs, and knuckles, performs the dreaded tuck maneuver, slips into a jelly bra and dons a much more flattering skirt-and-sweater combo. Then he applies makeup. He told the studio that Jennifer had to do her own makeup, due to an allergy to several common cosmetics.
His official first scene isn't the intro scene he auditioned with. It actually takes place in a hospital set on the ninth floor, which is also where his dressing room is. Well, it's not exactly his. He shares it with Keely James, who plays Olivia Jackson-Larue on the show. The girl is thin as a post, 21 at most, and looks at Jensen with a sort of reserved awe in her big blue eyes, like Jennifer Albee has been brought in especially to mentor her. She also tends to hang around in her bra between scenes, which is a little distracting.
The hospital set is already buzzing with activity when Jensen gets called to it. There are women in white nurse uniforms with stiff, unrealistic hats perched on their pristine hairdos, and guys with their cracks showing taping wires to the floor. One woman wears a flight attendant uniform, jacket worn open for this scene to reveal a thin, sheer blouse beneath. Jensen is wearing a charcoal pantsuit with narrow-cut shoulders, after a conversation this morning with wardrobe in which his upper body was compared to that of an East German Olympic swim team member. Honestly, he's just glad no one's pulled his wig off yet, he couldn't care less if they're criticizing his body.
There's a guy in the hospital bed, getting hooked up to a dozen wires and tubes while he fidgets with his thin polka-dotted gown. A big white blood-stained bandage wrapped around his head engulfs his hair and ears, making his giant dimpled grin look oddly disproportionate to the size of his face.
“Hey, it's the new girl! How's it going on your first day?”
Jensen can't help but smile back. He fidgets with his hair. He'd feel more comfortable shaking the guy's hand, but there are prop people busy gluing a fake IV to one of the guy's massive hands and attaching one of those finger-clippy heart rate monitors to the other.
“No disasters so far,” Jensen says, making the guy grin even wider.
“Don't say that without knocking on wood around here. Something's always going wrong. Right, Joe?”
Joe, somewhere beyond and to the right of Jensen's head, grunts noncommittally, and the guy laughs.
“He's pissed because he got blamed for losing scene 6 of an episode last week. They still haven't found it.”
“I hope it wasn't an important scene,” Jensen says.
“Oh, it was,” the guy says, rolling his eyes. “Margot Malone had an emotional breakdown mid-flight. Really killer stuff. They decided the episode wouldn't work without it, so we had to do it live.”
“Holy shit, they still do that in this day and age?”
His choice of expletives seems to generate a bit of amusement. Maybe Jennifer shouldn't swear.
“I don't know if 'they' do, but we still do it. Course, personally, I think it's because this show is trapped in the eighties. Hell, look at the costumes.”
Jensen looks around. Aside from the uniformed cast, the suits and sweaters do seem to have a sort of Cosby Show vibe.
“I'm Jared Padalecki, by the way,” the guy says, gingerly extending a hand now that he's been fully prepped for the scene. “Also known as Captain Brent Bedford, youngest pilot in the state. Or, well, on the show at least.”
“Jennifer Albee,” Jensen says. “Head of Security.”
Jared's warm hand sort of engulfs his, which is weird. There's not that big of a size difference, is there?
“You look like a Jen to me. Can I call you that?”
Jensen's not sure what Jared means by that, and what's worse, it sort of feels like this guy is flirting with him. He's not a complete innocent; he's had guys attempt to pick him up before, but this is different - less goal-oriented, more playful.
“Uh. Sure,” he finally agrees.
“You sure?” Jared teases. “Seems like you had to give that a lot of thought.”
“I'm sure,” Jensen says. “Call me whatever you want. I'm easy.”
“OK, then,” Jared says, and maybe even winks at Jensen as places are called for rehearsal.
INT. HOSPITAL ROOM, DAY.
CAPTAIN BRENT BEDFORD lies in a hospital bed, still groggy after awakening from a coma spanning several days. MARGOT MALONE sits at his bedside, looking exhausted. Her uniform is rumpled.
BRENT BEDFORDHow long was I out?
MARGOT MALONEThree weeks, Brent. Three horrible weeks. God, I don't think I can go through this again. I know I can't.
BRENTIt was an accident, Margot. A terrible accident. At least, I think it was an accident. I can't really remember. Was there a storm?
MARGOT (bursts into tears)It was Chuck, Brent! I know it was! I can't prove it, but he was in the control tower that night. I think he was feeding you false data. You crashed into an oil refinery, Brent. It's a wonder you weren't incinerated on contact.
BRENTHe couldn't have. Margot, Chuck doesn't know a thing about us.
MARGOTHe does! I don't know how he found out, but he knows. He looks at me differently now. I'm scared to go to bed with him at night.
BRENTDid he hurt you?
MARGOTNot yet. But I'm afraid. For me... and the baby.
BRENT's eyes widen. Cue dramatic music. He is about to ask her who the father is when SAMANTHA LOWENGARDE enters.
SAMANTHA LOWENGARDECaptain Bedford? Is this a bad time?
BRENT (still in shock)Margot?
MARGOT (to SAMANTHA)Are you the investigator?
SAMANTHAYou could say that. I've just been brought in as Head of Security at Springfield International Airport. Part of my job is to investigate any suspicious activity among our passengers or crew.
BRENTWhat's this regarding?
SAMANTHAYour crash. We have reason to believe it wasn't an accident.
BRENTWhat?
MARGOTI told you!
SAMANTHAI have a team investigating the matter, but I wanted to interview you personally. Do you remember anything suspicious about the night of the crash?
BRENTUh. You mean before I hit the side of a building? No, everything was pretty normal until that happened.
SAMANTHAYou're sure? No strange noises over the radio? Frequency issues? Disturbances? Suspicious voices?
BRENT looks at her like she's nuts.
BRENTYou're not implying my plane was haunted, are you?
SAMANTHASabotage, Captain Bedford. I'm implying sabotage.
MARGOT bursts into tears again.
SAMANTHAI know you've just been through a lot. I should come back when you're feeling better. Maybe we can talk a bit more about what happened before the crash.
BRENT (distracted by MARGOT's emotional display)Sure, all right.
FADE OUT.
After they wrap their last scene for the day, Dabney insists on walking around the show's production offices with a hand on the small of Jensen's back, introducing Jennifer to all the crew members she hasn't had a chance to meet yet, and to various network bigwigs who happen to be on the floor. There seem to be a lot of those, and Jensen wonders if Dabney hasn't deliberately steered him into a board meeting.
It ends up taking the better part of an hour, always with Dabney's hand spreading uncomfortable warmth just above Jensen's butt. When he gets back up to the ninth floor to grab his stuff before heading home, he's expecting it to be vacant. But Jared's there, sprawled on a chair in the hallway that houses the cast dressing rooms. He's freshly showered, and his hair, long and messy, nothing like what Jensen would have imagined on a handsome young pilot, flops wetly into his eyes.
“Good first day?” he says when he sees Jennifer.
Not Jensen. It's important to remember that Jennifer is the person he's seeing. She shrugs, but manages an exhausted smile.
“Everyone's been really nice.”
“It gets easier,” Jared says, picking up on what Jennifer hasn't spoken out loud. “Once you get used to the pace, and the fucked up sleep schedule.”
“What about Dabney?” Jennifer says. “Does he get any easier?”
Jared's eyebrows arch in surprise.
“Dabney's Dabney. That's just who he is, you know? He can't really help it. He means well.”
“I guess.”
“Besides,” Jared says with a smirk. “You haven't even met Morgan yet.”
“Morgan?”
“The guy who plays Victor Seville. Dude's like a hundred years old and still thinks he's Casanova. Guy's relentless. You gotta watch out for him, Jen.”
The warning seems overly sinister, but Jennifer takes it under advisement.
“Will do,” she says. “Are you waiting for someone?”
Jared looks almost embarrassed.
“Sort of. I-”
“There you are, Jay. All set?”
Dabney, of all people, comes around the corner with a cheesy grin plastered under his moustache.
“Yeah, just a sec,” Jared says, turning back to Jennifer. “It does get better. I'll see you tomorrow?”
“See you tomorrow,” she echoes, feeling like she's missing something.
“G'night.”
It's barely four-thirty, but the greeting still seems appropriate considering the level of exhaustion Jensen's feeling. It's almost physical, holding up these personas every minute of the day.
Jared heads off with Dabney, and before they're out of sight, Dabney's arm snakes out to wrap itself tight around Jared's waist, pulling him far too close for mere friendship or acquaintanceship. So that's how it is, then. His whole first impression of Jared as a nice, normal guy is more or less shattered. Sure, he can be into guys - not a big deal, Jensen's in theatre, for God's sake. But does it have to be Dabney, who spent the last hour practically groping Jennifer in public? Ugh.
Not that it's any of his business, but Jensen doesn't like that. Not at all.
Time passes, and it does get easier, in as much as playing the part of a woman playing a part on a nationally syndicated soap opera while continuing to teach night school twice a week can ever be considered easy.
The show's plotline advances at a snail's pace - Jensen never realized just how little actually happens on these shows. Sure, there's plenty of drama, but it drags on for months. You could probably go into your own three-week coma and catch up upon waking without much trouble.
Jensen gets to know the cast and crew pretty well. He finds out what Jared meant about Morgan on his second day, while filming the scene from his audition. The guy, a grizzled, scotch-smelling bear of a man in an oversized captain's hat, is at least seventy years old, so Jensen is forgiving at first when he can't seem to remember his lines. But then Morgan goes off-book around the part where Samantha threatens him, and starts advancing on Jennifer with an almost predatory look in his eyes.
“Did anyone ever tell you how sexy you look when you're angry?” he says, and Jensen gets one potent whiff of whiskey breath before the guy leans in and tries to maul Jennifer with his mouth.
Jensen scrambles away so fast his wig almost flies off. Later, he discusses the incident with Keely, who fills him in on Morgan's track record of attempting to smooch every single female cast member on the show.
“Think of it as initiation,” Keely says, with an alarming lack of outrage.
One Wednesday, after class, Danneel asks if he wants to hang out sometime, because she's having some serious doubts about coming out to New York to pursue acting. She is looking pretty skinny, and he remembers his theory about her not being able to afford food unless she got a job. She hasn't booked a single job since the Turbulent Skies audition - actually, he's not even sure she's gone out for anything since then.
They make plans to have dinner over the weekend. He shows up at her place about forty-five minutes early, having been rather violently sexiled by Misha. Danneel answers the door in pajamas.
“It's five thirty,” Jensen says by way of a greeting.
“Your face is five thirty,” Danneel growls back. She lets him in, and before he can even take in the layout of her apartment she's glaring at him. “Shut up.”
“I wasn't gonna say anything,” he says, trying to wipe all reaction from his face as he looks around. It's mostly just one room, with a fridge, oven and short length of counter in one corner and a mattress on the floor in the other. The room is actually so short that the mattress's proximity to the oven worries Jensen a bit. The entirety of Danneel's wardrobe is either hanging from a pair of protruding pipes in the low ceiling, or grouped on the floor near the bed, in messy piles divided by type of clothing. There is no closet, and no room for anything like a chest of drawers.
There is a bathroom, though, although it makes Jensen slightly queasy to imagine how small it must be. Danneel grabs a towel and tells him to make himself at home while she showers.
He looks around. It doesn't take long. Due to space constraints, Danneel doesn't own much of anything. There's a single shelf of books and a modest pile of DVDs, which seems strange considering he doesn't see a TV anywhere.
He goes through her cupboards - that takes about thirty seconds, and then he's pretty much out of ideas. He takes the few steps back to the sleeping side of the room. Danneel's bed is mostly a pile of unruly white sheets, with something pink peeking out from underneath. He probably shouldn't touch anything, he knows. But the girl in him pulls out the sheer pink camisole before the guy in him can stop the impulse. He looks it over with an appraising eye, takes in the lace and satin trim, the gently curving underwire, the flare at the bottom. He's not really picturing Danneel in it. Actually, he finds that he's more interested in how he would look in the thing, and whether or not it would fit him properly.
It might. After a few awkward shopping trips (once with Misha, an experience he never wants to repeat) he's pretty sure of his bra size.
The water's only been running in the bathroom for about a minute, so he figures he's got time. When he spots the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, the decision is made. He yanks off his t-shirt and pulls the cami on over his head. The straps feel soft and almost weightless on his shoulders. It's a bit snug around the chest, but he manages - Danneel must have gotten an intentionally bigger size to sleep in.
Of course, the cami looks weird with his jeans on, so he unbuckles them and pulls them down below his knees. The flared front actually opens into a slit, which starts just above the waistband of his boxer briefs and sort of weirdly frames the shape of his dick. It's an interesting look.
Without boobs, the cami's bra cups pucker, shrinking in on themselves. He's just pinching the tips of them and pulling them out to get an idea of what it might look like if he were able to fill it out properly, when the bathroom door opens with a slight cloud of steam, and Danneel comes walking out, wrapped in a towel and looking preoccupied.
She stops short.
“What are you doing?”
Jensen stops grabbing his nonexistent boobs and instead folds his hands together in front of his crotch.
“Uh. I was. Uh.”
“I sleep in that,” she says, looking confused. Her arms are out at her sides, and her towel is starting to come apart, showing creamy white skin.
“Oh,” Jensen says stupidly.
At this point, it hits him. He's got two options: let Danneel think he's a cross-dressing pervert who befriends girls and then steals their underwear, or tell her the truth. Given that the truth happens to involve him stealing a job out from under her, he doesn't think that's such a hot idea, either.
Of course, there might be a third option...
“I mean, I kinda figured you did,” he says, head bowed. “I saw it and I just... God, you're so hot, Danny.”
She purses her lips, staring at him.
“I know we're just friends, but I just, uh. Wanted to get closer to you, somehow. You're so fucking sexy. I'm sorry, this is inappropriate. I should go.”
He starts to pull the cami off, but she stops him with a hand on his shoulder, suddenly standing so close that her hair is dripping on him.
“Don't,” she says.
She balances on the tips of her toes to kiss him, leans her whole body into his with the kind of abandon only an actress could muster, and whimpers.
“Jen, you have no idea... I've wanted this so long.”
This wasn't so much part of option number three, which Jensen figured would end with awkward rejection and then denial as they moved on with their newly-rickety friendship. Not with Danneel's hands in his underwear, and certainly not with her wet, naked body pressed against his. All he has to do is step out of his jeans and pull her down on top of him. It's kind of a no-brainer.
Of course, when she cuddles up to him afterwards and says, “Did you see that fat cow who got my role on the airport soap?” and he chokes on his own spit and nearly dies, he'd give anything to take back the last hour and go the creepy pervert route.
He starts spending a lot of time with Jared. Or rather, Jennifer does. They get more and more scenes together as the plane crash investigation plotline progresses by inches. And despite the fact that Jared goes home with smarmy Dabney every other day, and that Jensen even walked in on them making out in Dabney's office once, Jared himself is not a bad guy. He's actually pretty cool. Jensen learns something new and surprising about him every day.
For one thing, Jared could have gone to MIT on a full engineering scholarship, if he'd wanted. Turns out he was one of those kids who built bridges out of toothpicks in high school, even got his picture in the paper for it. It's not information he boasts about, or even willingly volunteers, but the past eventually comes up in conversation and Jennifer gets it out of him.
For another thing, Jared's a dad. A single dad, actually.
Yeah, it takes Jensen about three whole days to digest that one.
The thing is, he doesn't really know a lot of dads. Actually, beyond his own dad and his brother, he's pretty sure he doesn't know any dads at all. When people in his and Misha's circle of friends hook up and start breeding, they also tend to drop out of the social scene and move to New Jersey, never to be heard from again.
Also, he'd kind of figured kids weren't in Jared's future, considering his apparent sexual orientation. It hadn't really occurred to Jensen that there might be kids in Jared's past. Or that “sex + dudes = gay” might be oversimplifying things somewhat. He hasn't asked how the dad thing happened, though. He figures it might be a sensitive subject.
Jared's daughter, Charlotte, is eighteen months old, and the picture of her that he keeps in his wallet might actually be the cutest thing Jensen's ever seen. In it, she's wearing a cowboy hat that cinches under her chin and sitting astride a big black cat. The cat looks homicidal, but she looks like she's having the time of her life. She's got Jared's nose.
They're between shots one day when Jared comes over and leans on Samantha's desk.
“So, Jen, do you have any plans for tonight?”
Jennifer raises an eyebrow, peers up at him through thickened lashes.
“Why do you ask?”
“I was wondering if you wanted to come over.”
Jensen's not just surprised, he's sort of strangely delighted. Or maybe that's Jennifer. Is it possible she's developed a crush that Jensen doesn't know about?
“Yeah, I guess I could do that,” she says.
“Because I -”
“Okay, everyone,” Dabney yells from somewhere close by. “We're going again with the new angles and we're going to get this done in less than fifteen minutes, because I'm fuckin' starving, alright?”
Jared rolls his eyes as he steps back to his mark, and Jensen feels pretty good about that.
It's a pretty action-packed day. Jensen's lunch gets cut short for network promos, which is a little disconcerting, considering this is only supposed to be a two-month job. But maybe shooting a couple of commercials makes sense, considering the character is apparently gaining popularity - at least, that's what the ratings and polling people keep saying in their reports.
Anyway, Jensen barely has a second to breathe before he's climbing into a cab with Jared and heading in the general direction of Brooklyn. They talk in the cab, Jensen's sure they do, but by the time he's standing on the sidewalk outside Jared's narrow brownstone, he can't remember a single thing they discussed on the way over. It's a little worrisome, because he's still playing a part, after all. He spends precious class time making sure his students understand how important to be conscious of every decision you make as an actor, and then he goes and completely spaces out for half an hour. What the hell?
Jared holds the door open for him. It's only a little awkward when he remembers guys tend to do that kind of things for girls, some of them (mostly the nice ones) kind of automatically.
“The really cool thing about this work schedule is that I practically keep the same hours as my daughter,” Jared's saying, kicking off his shoes, but not bothering with his coat just yet.
There's a quick rumble like a chair scraping on tile, and then an incredibly tiny woman with a frizzy grey bun walks in, carrying a squirming, squealing toddler decked out almost entirely in hot pink. The older woman plops the kid into Jared's arms, where she immediately quiets down and clings on like a baby lemur, drool spreading a dark spot on his shirt collar.
“Thanks, Vanessa,” he says. “This is Jennifer, from work.”
“Hi,” Jensen says, somehow timing his greeting so her head is buried in the front closet. “Nice to meet you.”
“Hi, sorry, I have to run,” she says, rushing out with her coat under her arm.
Jared shuts the door after her.
“I'm usually home earlier on Wednesdays,” he says, apologetic. “Vanessa has her book group tonight.”
“She seemed nice,” Jensen says, distracted. He's staring at the random pairs of shoes lined up by the door, trying to figure out if he should take his own shoes off. It might be rude not to, considering it's Jared's house and he took off his shoes when he came in, but the heels sort of hide how huge his feet are, and anyway, he hasn't quite mastered taking them off or putting them on in anything resembling a ladylike manner.
“Jen, meet Charlie,” Jared says, turning to his left so that Jensen can see the girl's face. She's sucking her thumb, staring at him intently.
“Charlie, this is my friend Jen. She's gonna stay with you for a while, okay?”
This is news to Jensen. It's kind of a good thing Jared's facing away from him while he adjusts to this information. Of course, Jensen only has a couple of seconds to freak out, because then he's got a heavy, warm armful of baby to contend with as Jared hands Charlie over.
“Thanks again, Jen. Really, I don't know what I would have done. Vanessa would probably have killed me. They're reading some vampire thing and she's obsessed with it. She won't shut up about book club night lately, and my other babysitter cancelled last-minute.”
Jared doesn't stop talking as he leads Jensen into the kitchen, flipping the child-proof lock on the fridge and pulling the door open like he's putting the contents on display.
“Help yourself to whatever I've got,” he says. “Charlie won't have eaten, either, but she's easy, just set her up with some spaghetti or something.”
He stops short, then suddenly spins to face Jensen. “Oh! Phone numbers. Here!”
Jensen stands there, weighed down by a surprisingly heavy and awkward-to-carry kid, and watches as Jared frantically scribbles a handful of phone numbers on the notepad affixed to the fridge.
“Am I forgetting anything?” he asks Jensen, like he's honestly expecting an answer.
“Where are you going, again?” Jensen manages.
“Dinner with Dabney and some producer guy he knows. Shouldn't be too late.”
As if on cue, the doorbell rings, and rings, and rings again.
“That's him,” Jared says with a slight wince. “He doesn't like to come in.”
Jensen follows him back out to the hall, hoisting Charlie up on higher on his hip as she starts to slip. Somehow the motion manages to pull his bra crooked, but he squirms frantically and gets it fixed before Jared, busy pulling his sneakers back on, has a chance to notice.
“All right, baby. You gonna be good for Jen?”
The little girl nods, tightening her grip on Jensen's shoulder. It suddenly hits Jensen that she hasn't spoken a single word yet. He's pretty sure kids are supposed to be able to talk by eighteen months. Mostly sure. He thinks.
“Kiss,” Jared says, and leans in to peck his daughter on the top of her blond head. “I'll be back before ten,” he tells Jensen.
Then he's gone, and Jensen's alone. With a kid.
Misha's already doubled over with laughter before Jensen even gets the door open.
“Shut the fuck up,” Jensen growls, not bothering with the fake voice.
“Does Mrs. Doubtfire know you're infringing her copyright?”
Misha practically bounces inside, hardly bothered by the loud, miserable wailing coming from the living room.
“How the writing going?” Jensen says. He's not asking, really, he's prodding Misha the way Misha prodded him. It works, too; Misha flips him off, then sticks the old Lamb Chop puppet on his hand uses it to point sternly at Jensen.
“You owe me so big for this, Julie Andrews.”
“I will owe you my life. Just please get her to stop crying.”
The living room is a disaster area, strewn with toys and cushions and stray batteries and chunks of crayons and somehow, toilet paper. In the middle of it is Charlie, sitting straight up in her playpen and sobbing uncontrollably. Jensen goes over and picks her up, at which point she starts using his dress as a tissue.
“Charlie, do you want to meet my friend?” he says, slipping back into his Jennifer voice, almost automatically.
Somehow the kid manages to cling onto him harder while also beating against his chest with her little fists.
“I want my Daddyyyy!”
Fresh tears, and a high-pitched whine that could deafen a German Shepherd. Jensen clenches his jaw and glares at Misha over Charlie's head. He's been dealing with this for hours, hell, he even changed her diaper. Nothing helps. His brain is mush. Eventually it was either call for reinforcements or eat everything in the medicine cabinet and hope for a quick and painless death.
“This is my friend Misha,” Jensen says, ignoring her new outburst and turning her so that she can presumably see Misha's goofy face. “Misha, Misha. Isn't that fun to say?”
“Daddy!” Charlie screams, right in Jensen's ear.
“Uh-oh! Someone's daddy's not home!” At this point, Misha's Lamp Chop voice sounds like the Hallelujah chorus. “That can be very sca-a-a-a-a-ry.”
The puppet somehow pulls off a crooked, worried face. Jensen's impressed. This whole thing is sort of working already - she's stopped screaming, at least, and her grip is loosening a bit on Jensen's neck.
“My name's Lamb Chop. What's yours?”
She tells him, just barely, muttering into Jensen's shoulder.
“My daddy's gone, too, but he'll be ba-a-a-a-ck. Hey, do you think you can you keep me company until then?”
As much as it pains him to admit it, Misha's Lamb Chop impression is pretty much flawless. Charlie nods, enthralled, and reaches one of her little hands towards the puppet. She's barely even noticed Misha's there behind it.
“Thanks, dude,” Jensen whispers over her head.
Misha just shrugs. A minute later he's lifting her out of Jensen's arms and settling her next to him on the couch, where they embark on a long, impenetrable conversation about the colour yellow. Jensen uses the break to clean up the place and figure out something to eat for the kid.
By the time Jared comes home, she's asleep, all tucked in and fed and even mostly clean. She fell asleep holding the Lamb Chop puppet, but Misha eased it out of her arms half an hour ago when he left, despite the dirty look Jensen gave him.
He's checking out Jared's bookshelves (there's a surprising lack of fiction) when he hears the door crack open. Without even really thinking about it, he does a quick mirror check, fluffing his wig a little and checking his teeth for inadvertent lipstick smears (he has this tendency to suck his lips into his mouth when he's anxious).
Jared walks in and flops onto the couch, his feet bouncing into the air from the momentum and landing on the coffee table, two quick, dull thuds. He heaves a giant sight, and then seems to remember that Jensen's in the room, and pulls himself upright a bit.
“Everything okay?” Jensen asks.
Jared shrugs.
“I'm not really good at dating, I guess.”
Is that what they're doing? Jensen wasn't sure there was anything official about it. He's also pretty sure that if anyone's bad at dating in that relationship, it's the guy whose desktop wallpaper features a different blonde joke everyday. Not Jared.
“Anyway, how was my girl? Did she miss me?”
“A bit,” Jensen says. “She settled down, though. We had a nice time.”
A little white lie never hurt anyone, Jensen figures. Jared just better never trick him into babysitting again.
“Good,” Jared says. He closes his eyes, leans his head back against the couch. “I need a drink. You want some wine or something?”
After the second glass of wine, it all comes out: Jared's sexually confused past, his rocky relationship with Charlie's mom, who barely ever sees her daughter. The Dabney thing, how it started just as Jared was thinking about coming out, how it's kept him awkwardly half-closeted, in a sort of everyone-knows-but-no-one's-saying-anything limbo for almost a year now.
Dabney's married. To a woman. Jensen had no idea. He's never noticed a ring on him or anything. Not that he's especially been looking for one. But what it means is that this thing with Jared is an affair. One that's supposed to be a secret, at least in theory: he gathers that much from the way Jared squirms uncomfortably every time he mentions interacting with Dabney's wife.
“He's the first guy I've ever been with,” Jared confesses. “I'm... I guess you could call me a late bloomer.”
Jensen doesn't say anything. He's not used to this, someone opening up to him, admitting things to him in a quiet voice like they're telling it to themselves for the first time. The closest he's ever come to being a sounding board is taking care of his buddies when they get falling-down drunk.
“I never really got what the big deal was, you know? Why everyone got so obsessed with girls and sex when we hit high school. I was way more into video games and chess.”
Jensen bites his lip, resists the urge to call the guy a geek. Jennifer, though - Jennifer's listening.
“I guess in a way I knew all along that I liked guys. But by the time I admitted it to myself, I'd been with Charlie's mom for a couple of years. It was kind of a long, horribly awkward and painful transition. So yeah, Dabney's... the first.”
Maybe he sees something in the way Jensen's looking at him, because he continues, defensive.
“He's not always the way he is on set, you know. When we're alone, he can be kinda sweet.”
“Right,” Jensen says. It comes out high-pitched and false.
“He can!” Jared says. “Well, maybe not sweet. But weirdly funny, at least. And he's sexy.”
His tone makes it clear that Jennifer, as a living, breathing, heterosexual female, should agree. And yeah, Jensen supposes Dabney could be considered attractive by some. He's certainly got the rugged thing down. Maybe looks a little like Robert Redford, if Robert Redford had darker hair and, you know, acted like a giant douchebag all the time.
“I'll give you that much,” Jensen says. “But really? I mean, that's enough for you?”
Jared shrugs. “I'm not looking for some all-encompassing love affair right now, you know? I'm pretty busy with Charlie and work. Dabney's... convenient.”
He says it with a little smirk, like he thinks he's getting the better end of the deal, which Jensen is pretty sure isn't the case.
“I should go,” Jensen says. He drains his glass of wine, eyes drawn to the lipstick smear on the rim when he sets it back down on the coffee table. “Work tomorrow.”
Jared groans. “Don't remind me.”
He helps Jennifer find her purse, calls her a cab and walks her out, which is nice. Outside, while waiting for the cab, Jared thanks her again, with a meaningful look like he means it for more than just the babysitting. Jensen wonders what Jared and Dabney talk about. Wonders how long it's been since Jared had an actual conversation, one that didn't involve his kid as the other party, or revolve entirely around work.
He's going over the scenes for Monday when Danneel calls to ask him to dinner. She just got home from the farmer's market and she's dying to use some of the stuff she bought. Jensen's stomach rumbles so loud she can hear it through the phone, and she laughs.
“Sure,” he says, turning a page and trying to will his eyes to unblur. “Eight o'clock good?”
“Perfect,” she says.
They hang up, and he goes back to the script pages while Misha wanders into the kitchen and stares into the fridge for a while. When he hasn't moved after nearly two minutes, the cooling mechanism kicks on, startling them both.
“Writing?” Jensen says.
“The goddamn necktie scene,” Misha says. He shoves the fridge door closed and presses his forehead to the smooth surface. “I should trash it. Can't make it work”
“You need the necktie scene,” Jensen says. “That's where all of Michael's daddy issues are based.”
“I know,” Misha says, resigned.
“So you can't cut it.”
“I meant trash the whole play. Do we really need another depressing three-act? It's just a giant cliché, anyway - misspent youth, daddy issues, sex... God, I should really give up sex one of these days. Imagine how much more I'd get done.”
Jensen lays his papers on the table, points at Misha like he can pin him in place with the tip of his finger.
“You're not trashing the play. Michael's my part, all right? I have dibs.”
Misha squirms, eyes flitting to the empty doorway.
“But if you end up stuck in a contract or something...”
“Won't happen. Dude, I took this job so I could afford to do your play, not so I could get stuck squeezing myself into pantyhose and torture heels every day for the rest of my life. This is temporary. ”
Misha looks at him for a long while, then sighs, resigned.
“Back to the necktie scene, then,” he says, wandering back in the direction of his typewriter.
There are a few minutes of silence, and then the keys start their familiar clacking, and the sound relaxes Jensen. He goes back to reading the script, makes it through another handful of pages before he sees it. Scene 17, right near the bottom of the page: BRENT and SAMANTHA share a passionate kiss.
Well.
This is going to be interesting.
The phone rings around two, and Jensen picks it up, not thinking, and nearly chokes when he hears Jared's voice.
“Hi, is Jennifer there?”
Jensen coughs, ridiculously loud in the phone. “Uh. Um. Yes. I'll go get her.”
He cups a hand over the phone, walks the full circumference of the small kitchen table, finds he doesn't yet know what to say, goes around it again and then brings the phone to his ear, greets Jared in his Jennifer voice. Slips right into it, easy.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Jen. You look at Monday's script yet?”
Jennifer chuckles. “Oh. That. Yeah, I did.”
It's Jared's turn to stammer a little. “I, uh. I was wondering if you maybe wanted to go over some lines this afternoon, maybe get comfortable with the scenes ahead of time?”
“That sounds like it's probably a good idea,” Jensen says. This could get awkward. Jared actually has no idea how awkward this could get, so it might be nice to get in a little practice time before they're locking lips in front of a camera and 75 crew members.
Jensen's getting better at the whole girl routine. He's got the whole thing down, from shower to shoes in under forty-five minutes, which is saying something considering the amount of shaving and plucking and carefully concealing and shading and adjusting he does on a daily (sometimes twice daily) basis.
He's had to sacrifice a lot of sleep to this hare-brained charade.
Halfway through the dreaded hiking-on of pantyhose (Jensen thinks he's probably being paranoid, but he insists on wearing skirts and dresses because he's sure that, like Clark Kent's glasses, his lack of pants is the one flimsy thing keeping everyone from discovering he's really a man) Misha's typing noises stop and Jensen can tell he's being watched.
“What.”
“You have to make out with that guy, don't you?” Jensen turns and finds Misha sitting at his desk, head resting back on interlaced fingers, amusement making his eyes twinkle. “Well?”
“Quit looking at me like that,” Jensen says, smoothing the stifling nylons onto his thighs. “This is the worst thirty seconds of my day. You're not making it better.”
“You going over there to 'rehearse'?” Misha says, finger quotes and all. “Or are you gonna watch that kid again so Captain Cockslut can spend quality time with his sugar daddy?”
Jensen smoothes down his skirt and gets his shoes on. He stuffs the script in his purse and shoves Misha in the shoulder on his way out, so hard his chair overbalances, nearly dumping him backwards onto the floor.
“Asswipe. That gorgeous play doesn't deserve you.”
“Actually, I'm pretty sure I don't deserve it,” Misha says, glaring at the page currently halfway sticking out of his typewriter. He rips it out, but doesn't quite have the heart to crumple it without first reading it over again. “Or the grief it causes me. Fucking necktie scene.” He's still hunched over the page when Jensen leaves.
“Miss Lowengarde, have you ever had an urge to do something you knew was wrong?”
“I strongly advise against following that urge, Captain.”
It's actually really good to read these scenes at Jared's, with Charlie playing quietly in her playpen and the Doodlebops lighting up the TV with bright colours. Here, Jensen has plenty of leeway to roll his eyes at the ridiculous dialogue, which is quite liberating. Also, Jared somehow makes the dialogue seem less like stilted romance novel filler and a little more like things actual people say. Smarmy, ridiculous people, maybe. But still, that's talent.
“Miss Lowengarde... may I call you Samantha?”
Jared steps closer, uncomfortably close, and although it's what's called for in the script, Jensen feels this sudden, slightly panicked need to put a bit more space between them. He shifts, trying to be subtle, and bumps his calf on Jared's coffee table. Trapped.
“Please... uh, yes, please do.”
Great, and now he's screwing up lines. Nothing says nonchalant like stammering through a three-word sentence.
“And this is where I...” Jared says, and kind of half leans in for the kiss, the way a choreographer might demonstrate the essence of a required movement without performing it full out.
“Yeah,” Jensen says.
“Okay,” Jared says. He brushes a stray strand of straight brown hair out of Jennifer's face.
Jensen's stomach forms a tight knot, and he's not sure exactly why. There are so many potential ways this could go wrong, and he's not sure which fear is more valid. Fear of Jared's close scrutiny, of Jared figuring this out? Fear of what might happen afterwards, how betrayed the guy would feel? Fear of kissing Jared in front of a bunch of people tomorrow? Fear of kissing Jared now without the defense that an entire production team can provide? Fear of enjoying it?
Jared's lips are on his before he can make the leap to the next anxious thought. It's not really a sentimental kiss, not incredibly deep or passionate or messy or anything. It's nice, but it's definitely a TV kiss, all show, lips pressed attractively together, mouths opening into each other, moving together slightly, warm and wet, tongues uninvolved at first. But then it grows a bit frantic, even passionate, Jared's breath is loud and fast, hot against Jensen's ear. He's touching Jensen's jaw gingerly, just his fingertips warming the skin there, thumb pressing softly into Jensen's neck.
When Jared steps back, Jensen realizes he's clutching at the hem of Jared's shirt. He lets it go and it unravels, wrinkled and maybe even a bit damp with Jensen's palm sweat. Jensen can't tell whether or not he should be embarrassed. Whether or not Jared's even noticed. Jared's just... looking at him. Squinting a little, like he's trying to figure something out.
Shit.
There's a gleeful squeal from the other end of the room, followed by an infectious round of little baby giggles. When they turn, Charlie's standing at the edge of her playpen, grinning at them and stretching her little arms out, all the way to the tips of her fingers. Jared gives Jensen an uncomfortable little smile and wipes his hands on his jeans. He looks grateful for the distraction as he walks over and scoops her up into his arms.
“Was that funny?” he says, over and over, and Charlie just giggles more and more, leaning back in Jared's arms until she's practically dangling upside down. He swings her around a little, and she screams, then, these little high-pitched yelps of pure joy.
Jensen takes the opportunity to move away from the coffee table, where he's standing in a sort of stupor. He sits on the couch instead, crosses his legs daintily and watches Jared play with his daughter. Eventually, even Jared, with his boundless energy, gets tired of being a human jungle gym, and crashes on the couch beside him, settling the kid on his lap with a little pink stuffed monkey.
“Hey, um,” he says, tentative. He's still rubbing his fingers on his knee, a little. “Don't take this the wrong way, or anything, but...”
“Hm?” Jensen says, throat too tight to get any actual vowels out. Crap, Jared knows.
“Do you always wear so much makeup? I mean, it's not like we're at work right now, and...” Jared rubs his fingers together, makes a face like they're uncomfortably greasy.
“Oh!” Jensen says, almost slipping out of his Jennifer voice, he's so relieved. “Yeah, it's, um. Just a habit. I used to have pretty bad skin.”
An awkward conversation about his acne wins out over Jared discovering he has a penis, sure, but it's still awkward as hell.
“It can't help to keep it covered in gunk all the time,” Jared says. “That's how you get bad skin in the first place.”
“Well,” Jensen says. “Thanks for the advice, but...”
“Anyway, I bet you don't really need it. You're pretty enough without it.”
Jensen feels the heat rise in his cheeks, maybe even a little sweat making his hairline itch under the wig. He can't really look at Jared right now, so he watches Charlie intently as she attempts to knot her monkey's floppy arms and legs together.
“How do you know?” he mumbles. “You've never seen me without it.”
“It's makeup,” Jared says, sounding amused. “Not a big rubber Ronald Reagan mask. I am pretty sure I can figure out what you look like underneath.”
“Oh,” Jensen says, feeling kind of dumb. “Well, maybe I'll try that sometime.”
He looks at Jared then, and he's startled at how close the guy is. His arm is stretched out across the back of the couch, wrist landing right behind Jensen's neck, and he's looking at Jensen like... well, it's crazy to assume this, because Jared doesn't even like girls, and he's completely convinced Jensen is one, but Jared's looking at him right now like he wants to get close and kiss him again. Like he would be, if his adorable daughter wasn't sitting on his lap right now, making jungle noises and paying close attention to what her dad is saying and doing.
“You want to skip to the cockpit scene?” Jensen says, hoping to break the tension, somehow.
“Yeah, let's do that,” Jared says. He shifts Charlie over, bracing her with one arm while he leans forward to grab his script off the coffee table. Then he settles her back on his lap, her little bare feet turned inwards. He flips through the pages, holding them awkwardly high so they don't get in Charlie's way. “Starting from 'You know damn well we don't give in to terrorist demands'?”
Jensen finds the right page and cues Jared with the next line. He's a little jumpy about earlier, and his fears for tomorrow haven't diminished at all, but it's still nice to feed badly written lines to Jared, watch his face light up with mirth as he lobs them right back.
They end up ordering a pizza, because after getting pulled into a discussion of what, exactly, constitutes bad TV, Jensen cites the original Beverly Hills, 90210 as an example and Jared immediately declares Jennifer an infidel and refuses to speak to her until she sees the light.
Jared explains that he owns the first six seasons of the show, but stopped there because it just isn't 90210 without Dylan McKay.
“So, basically, what you're telling me is that you're really, really gay,” Jennifer says with a little smirk.
Jared just grins and sticks the first disc in his DVD player.
Five hours later, Jensen's belly hurts, and he's pretty sure it's only a little bit because he's full of pizza. He laughed so much he actually thought he might choke and die the time Brandon Walsh threw a hissy fit because he got all C's on his report card. It's really hard to remember to change the way he laughs, because that's something he has much less control over than his speech. It's even harder around Jared, for some reason. Jensen tends to forget he's in disguise when he's in Jared's apartment. In fact, he sometimes feels so distanced from Jennifer when he's around Jared that he starts to think of her as an entirely separate person.
It's nine-thirty, the kid's been in bed asleep for a while, and Jared's trying to convince Jennifer to stick around for Melrose Place highlights (predictably, Jared's got a thing for Andrew Shue), when Jensen suddenly remembers making plans with Danneel for eight o'clock.
He leaps to his feet so fast it actually startles Jared, and makes up some excuse about needing to get some laundry done before eleven, because the laundry room in Jennifer's building closes at eleven, and she's almost out of clean shirts, and anyway Sunday nights are the best laundry nights because there's never anyone down there. It's a little crazy, and overly elaborate, because his building doesn't even have a laundry room. He and Misha go down the street and pump quarters into grimy machines.
Anyway, Jared buys it, which is the important thing, and Jensen soon finds himself in a cab heading home. He told the cabbie Danneel's address at first, before he realized that showing up at her door two whole hours late and wearing a cute linen skirt and flowy white blouse might be a mistake.
It's almost ten thirty when he finally makes it to Danneel's. She lets him in, but barely, so angry her hands are shaking.
“Where the hell were you?”
“I can explain!”
She practically shoves him down into a chair in front of what probably used to be dinner, before it got cold and congealed into some sort of brown mass of jelly.
“I hope you do a better job of it than your idiot roommate,” she says. “You know what he said when I called him? That you were out babysitting some guy's kid.”
“I was...” Jensen starts, but then he sees exactly how hard she'll probably hit him if he confirms the half-truth Misha told her. “Uh. There was an accident! A really bad accident. Some guy on a bike got hit by a delivery van, and I saw it, and I had to stick around as a witness and it took forever. I'm so sorry, Danny.”
She stares at him, expression steady and stern, for almost a full minute. Then she drops down into the chair across from him.
“Oh, my God. Was the guy okay?”
“Uh, yeah,” Jensen says, taken aback by the fact that she's actually buying it. “Well, they said he broke a couple of ribs, and his face got pretty cut up, but he was talking and everything, so he'll probably be okay.”
If Jensen feels guilty at all about lying to Danneel, he feels it substantially less after she insists on feeding him her strange, congealed stew. Unfortunately, it's overwhelming nausea that takes guilt's place, and Jensen spends most of that night, hunched over the toilet revisiting both the stew and the half an entire pizza he ate at Jared's. There's something poetic about that, he thinks. Or there would be, if it didn't also involve puke.
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