Paradise Is Anywhere You Are - J2 - R
Title: Paradise Is Anywhere You Are
Author: jeyhawk
Pairings/Characters: Jared/Jensen, Michael Rosenbaum.
Rating: R
Wordcount: 3,721 (because I so don't get the drabble concept).
Category: Romance, Angst, AU
Summary: Five years in the future Jared turns out to not be the only one with issues.
Disclaimer: I don't know them, own them or make any money from them. This is just a bunch of inventive lies.
Warnings: Dark themes (rape, abuse, self harm)! All in the past but they inpact the present. ANGST!
Betas: ames1010! I love you baby, don't ever change.
Dedication: To deej1957 and multiversum_4 that asked for Comfort In Your Skin, five years in the future.
Notes: This is a timestamp fic for Settling Into Now and Comfort In Your Skin set five years after the events of the main story arch in the emo!jared verse. It doesn't exactly spoil you for the end of Comfort (that is not yet finished) unless you were dead set it would end unhappily. :0P
Life without Jensen is empty and pointless, an endless stretch of days without meaning. Jared keeps wondering what he did wrong, what he could have done differently, but he can’t figure it out. All he ever did was love Jensen to the best of his ability, and he can’t see how that could be wrong.
Every day he goes through the motions, eats and showers and dresses and goes to work. He laughs sometimes, smiles in all the right places, and he reads all those books that have been on his ‘to read’ list for the last few years. He knows people are waiting for him to break down, to slit his wrists wide open or down a bottle of pills, but it won’t happen.
It hurts, of course, a bone deep weary ache that doesn’t go away and doesn’t get better, but he manages. He goes through the motions, and one day stretches into a week, a week into a month and before he knows it, it’s been five months since they broke up. It’s almost funny that he misses Jensen just as much five months later as he did the day after they broke up, but in all honesty, it really isn’t.
He’s tired of people waiting for him to break, tired of the furtive glances and the thinly veiled questions. He hangs out with Mike and Tom every now and then, but it takes almost as much out of them as it does out of him. They’ve got the most uncomfortable position, caught between Jared and Jensen and all that went wrong between them.
He can’t quite keep himself from asking about Jensen, how he’s doing, where he is, if he found someone new, and he knows that it hurts them. They don’t want answer his questions, don’t want to be the ones to finally push him over the edge and he wants to tell them it won’t happen, but they won’t believe him, no one does.
He loves Jensen, oh God he does, but Jensen isn’t everything. He misses him like a limb, but his life still goes on. He laughs at stupid jokes, takes pride in his work, and eats the same thing for dinner three weeks in a row. He’s still alive, but they all act as if someone died.
His therapist, a lovely lady named Mona, pushes and prods, trying to get him to admit he’s too attached to Jensen - that he built his life up around him, but it’s not true. They don’t give him any credit, but there is still a Jared even when there is no Jared and Jensen. Everything in his life is not about what once happened to him and his life does not begin and end with Jensen.
Every day he picks up the phone to call Jensen and every day he puts it down again. Jensen was the one to break them up, and even though he wants to understand, wants to know what happened, it has to be on Jensen terms, but as the months pass he starts to believe it won’t ever happen, that Jensen moved on.
Around month four he makes a conscious effort to move on. He goes out on a couple of dates with a guy that lives down the street, Ricky. Ricky is a nice guy and they have a great time, and when they kiss it’s okay. He doesn’t freak out and it doesn’t put him back there, but he still puts an end to it because he’s still in love with Jensen.
He doesn’t know why his inability to stop loving Jensen makes him a freak. Why it’s something that people frown about and try to talk him out of. Doesn’t he have the right to love just as anyone else? Does the fact that he was once kidnapped, raped and tortured mean that he can’t love someone for real?
Mona calls it an obsession, repeating over and over until Jared snaps and wipes all the fancy pencils and framed pictures from her desk. He yells at her, calls her a bigot, an idiot and a mass of dirty words he didn’t even know he knew until security shows up and calms him down.
He apologizes, buys new frames for her pictures and a potted plant for her window. She asks what made him so upset and he just shakes his head. He knows there’s nothing wrong with him, he knows he’s capable of loving and he’s tired of everything in his life being about that time.
He thinks about moving, packing up his barren apartment, looking for a new job and moving somewhere where no one knows him. Maybe then people would let him mourn the love of his life, maybe then people would leave him be until that distant time in the future when he’s ready to open his heart and love someone new.
Five months and three weeks, and suddenly it’s Halloween. The stores have been filling up with decorations and costumes during the last few weeks, and even though it still makes him uneasy, he can deal with it. He doesn’t freak out over Halloween decorations any longer, he rarely freaks out at all. Sometimes he wakes up in a cold sweat from a dream he can barely remember and spends the rest of the night drinking coffee with all the lights turned on, but those occasions are few and far between.
What freaks him out is not having Jensen around for Halloween. They used to celebrate anti-Halloween, their own little holiday with a multitude of insane decorations they’d found over the years. Going through the still unpacked boxes in his walk in closet, he finds the googley-eyed hen that used to be the centrepiece.
He takes it out and puts it on the table. It hurts, but it still makes him smile, so he leaves it there. Next he finds the cross-eyed gnome that was someone’s idea of a Christmas decoration and puts it on the counter. The Hen of Fortitude and The Gnome of All Times is what they used to call them.
He goes through the boxes looking for the Belligerent Goose and The Bear of Sexual Prowess, but he can’t find them. He supposes Jensen got them and he wonders if he put them up, or if he’s back to celebrating Halloween with booze, costumes and horror movie references.
He does his weekly grocery shopping the day before Halloween, and on a shelf he finds a statue of fat wrinkly dog in a ballet outfit. Without even thinking about it, he puts it in his basket and brings it home. He calls it The Patron Dog of Broken Hearts and puts it on his nightstand next to his picture of Jensen with his parents.
It feels empty to go through the motions of celebrating their own holiday without Jensen, but he thinks it’s something like progress. He still hurts, but looking at the stupid decorations makes him smile and that’s something, isn’t it?
Halloween is just like another day. He goes to work, comes home, has meatloaf for dinner for the fifth day in a row, keeping up a one sided conversation with The Hen of Fortitude about John at work and how much that guy annoys him. He misses having someone to talk about his day with, but the hen is a surprisingly good conversationalist.
The doorbell starts ringing around seven and he retreats to the bedroom, trying to read. Handing out candy to trick or treating kids was Jensen's job; Jared can’t face them. He takes a look at their innocent faces and colorful costumes and then he just wants to take them all in, have them sit down on the floor and call their parents to come and get them.
It’s irrational, he knows, but they’re just kids and anything could happen to them. He wants to teach them about the dangers of the world, about being safe and never talking to strangers and he’s got no right to do that. He’s just another stranger to them, ruining their fun filled holiday.
The insistent ringing stops around eight-thirty and he takes a deep breath of relief. He feels like an ass for not giving the kids candy, but he’s not yet at the point where he thinks he can handle it. Maybe he’s wrong, maybe he would have been able to smile politely and offer them a basket of candy, but it would be unfair to the kids if he was right.
It’s almost ten and he’s about to get ready for bed when the ringing starts again. This time he panics, backing into a corner of the bedroom and sitting down with his hands over his ears. The sound seems to echo in his brain, clawing at his composure. Kids shouldn’t be out this late; it’s way past trick or treat time. They should be home, safely tucked into bed, hyper from all the candy and the fun they had.
He stays where he is when the ringing stops, taking long measured breaths and staring at the Patron Dog of Broken Hearts. He can do this; he’s not going to freak out. The bedroom door swings open and he makes a pitiful little sound, trying to crawl into the corner, until he recognizes Jensen.
He lets his hands drop from his ears and just stares. He hasn’t seen Jensen in almost six months and God it’s such a lovely sight. Jensen's got a beard now and his cheeks are hollower than they used to be, but he’s still beautiful, still lovely, and Jared loves him so much it hurts.
“Hey,” Jensen says, leaning against the doorframe.
“Hey,” Jared repeats dumbly. He can’t quite believe his eyes; maybe he hyperventilated and passed out. He pinches the skin on his wrist, it hurts, so he supposes he’s still awake.
“I miss you,” Jensen says and he’s got no right. He’s the one that threw Jared away like he was chewing gum that lost its taste. He’s the one that broke them up and kicked Jared out.
Jared swallows, looking away. There’s so much he wants to say, so many words backing up on his tongue, but he doesn’t know how to get them past the lump in his throat.
“What did I do wrong?” he finally asks, his voice raw with held back emotion. “I’ve been trying to figure it out all this time and I don’t get it. Didn’t I love you enough? Did you grow bored? Was there someone else? I thought we were happy.” The last words come out a whisper and he stares down on his hands.
He thought seeing Jensen and finally getting to ask all his questions would be better, but it’s not. He doesn’t want the answer. He doesn’t want to hear it’s really over. He doesn’t want Jensen to show up just to alleviate his guilty conscience.
“I’m sorry,” Jensen says and Jared looks up. “I shouldn’t have come.”
It hurts like he’s been stabbed, but Jared is not letting him get away that easy. “You owe me an explanation,” he says.
Jensen scrubs a hand over his face. “I don’t know what to say. I thought… I just wanted…”
“To see that I didn’t kill myself? Is that it? You just wanted to check in on me on the day you know I hate, to see that I was still alive because you don’t want my life on your conscience.” Jared pushes himself up from the floor, staring at Jensen. “I loved you, Jensen. I still do, because I don’t fucking know how to make everyone happy by stopping. Maybe you have some helpful advice, because you seem to have fallen out of love easily enough.”
Jensen recoils as if someone slapped him and Jared feels a grim sort of satisfaction. He wants Jensen to hurt. He wants Jensen to know much he hurt him.
“It’s not like that,” Jensen says, his voice choked and wobbly.
“Then tell me what it’s like, Jensen, because I don’t understand.”
Jensen takes a deep breath. “I had to know it was for real,” he says on the exhale, the words squeezed together like he can’t believe he’s saying them out loud.
“That what was for real?”
Jensen looks away. “You.”
Jared's nostrils flare and he nods, pressing his lips together, apparently knowing hurts more than fumbling around in the dark.
“It all started with a throw away comment and then I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind. I… being with you… it’s the best thing that ever happened to me and… I just couldn’t… I had to know.”
“Know what?”
“That I wasn’t the only one in love.”
“After more than five years together you suddenly decided I didn’t really love you? What the fuck, Jen?”
Jared is so angry he doesn’t know what to do with himself. How dare Jensen doubt his love? How dare he?
“God.” Jensen scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m getting it all wrong.”
Jared doesn’t answer, balling his hands into fists at his sides. He’s never felt so much like pummelling someone in his life.
“I’ve gotten a lot of comments over the years,” Jensen finally says. “Throwaway comments that all plunked on the same fiddle.”
Jared tries to fight his smile, but he can’t help it. Plunked on the same fiddle is Jensen speak for struck the same note, and he always found Jensen's made up sayings adorable.
“Comments about what?” he asks, because Jensen seems lost in thought.
“You and your… attachment to me… I didn’t want to listen, didn’t want to believe, but when you hear something enough times you start to wonder, you know. I was so happy and I couldn’t help but to feel that it would all end horribly.”
“It did,” Jared says, his words dripping with acid. He can’t believe he’s about to hear the same old tired thing from Jensen, of all people. He thought that Jensen at least believed him capable of love.
Jensen flinches. “I started reading up about it, asking around and everything told me the same thing. Your attachment to me was unhealthy. I was hindering your development, that instead of putting yourself back together, you depended on me to be strong.”
“Didn’t you know me better than that?” Jared asks.
“I thought I did. I wanted to believe I did… but… I couldn’t help but to doubt you… to think that maybe they were right. That maybe you didn’t love me at all.”
Jared draws a deep shuddering breath, it feels like he’s breaking apart inside. He thought he’d already reached his maximum capacity of hurt, but this is so much worse.
“So you broke up with me,” he says. “As what? A social experiment? Did you have little spies watching me from afar to tell you how I reacted? Did you all sit around comparing notes? Did you have someone to count my scars to see if there were new ones?”
Jensen shakes his head mutely. “I realized,” he whispers, “that it had nothing to do with you and all to do with me. I focused so much on you and your problems that I never laid my own ghosts to rest.”
“Chris,” Jared says, because in a screwy way it all makes sense.
Jensen nods. “After you left… after I kicked you out… I was a mess. I couldn’t stop crying, I couldn’t eat… I… Jesus… I missed you so much, and I realized that you didn’t build yourself up using me as a crutch, I did that with you.”
Suddenly, all the anger just pours off of Jared and all he wants is to take Jensen in his arms and squeeze the hurt out of him. All these years and he never realized how much of an emotional wreck Jensen really was when they met. He keeps accusing people of not understanding him, when maybe he’s the one that doesn’t understand. He thinks other people are blindsided by his past, but maybe he is, too.
“I think…” Jensen smiles weakly. “My therapist thinks that it all started with my mom. I wanted to be strong for Dad, so I just pushed my own grief under the surface and then I met Chris and I just kinda transferred all of my abandonment issues on him. He wasn’t a bad guy, he just didn’t love me like I loved him.”
Jared nods, wanting so badly to just reach out and touch. Where does all this put them? Does this mean they can never be together because it’s not good for them?
“You know what I was like when I met you, a player, never letting anyone get close and you changed all that, but I never really addressed my issues. I just built myself up around you and I guess it all just came crashing down.”
Jensen stops talking and they just stare at each other across the room. Jared doesn’t know what to say, he wishes he could have been there for Jensen, but that would have been kind of counterproductive. It still hurts that when Jensen actually needed him, needed him to repay all the kindness and patience Jensen had shown him over the years, he wasn’t there.
“Can we at least be friends?” he asks, even though he knows it will never be enough. “I just want to see you sometimes, talk to you. I can’t help loving you, Jen. I honestly think you’re my one. I understand if you can’t be with me… but…” He trails off, his words falling pathetically flat. What is there to say?
“I never begged for anything,” Jensen says suddenly. “Not for forgiveness, not for relief, not for anything, but I’m begging you now… please give me a second chance and I will spend the rest of my life making things up to you. Please.”
Jensen looks so pathetic and heartbroken that Jared is moving before he’s even considered it. He wraps Jensen up in his arms, squeezing him to his chest. He knows he’s giving in too easily and that it will take them time to get over this, but he doesn’t care if it’s smart or a good move for them. He just wants to be with Jensen.
~*~
They spend Christmas in Texas with Jared's parents, and if Jensen gets a bit of a cold shoulder to begin with, it’s nothing he doesn’t deserve. New Years is spent with Jeff on Jensen's grandparents’ ranch, and it’s obvious he blames himself for Jensen's break down. Jared wants to tell him it’s not his fault, that people hide their hurts until they reach the breaking point, but he decides it’s a matter between Jensen and his dad, so he doesn’t meddle.
They go to couple’s therapy two times a week, even though they both have a feeling the therapist thinks they are wasting their money with the way they can’t keep their hands off each other. It still does both of them good to talk things through with a professional present, to break things up when they get sidetracked. Besides, therapy is kind of par for the course in their relationship, so it’s nice to actually have it together instead of in separate offices.
Jared finally sits down with Mona and tells her what made him so angry that one time, and he thinks that she finally understands his point of view. Talking to her makes him realize something, too. He no longer hates himself. He spent so many years being his own worst enemy and now he can’t even put his finger on when that changed. Sure, he still blames himself for not noticing that Jensen was unhappy, but he doesn’t hate himself because of it. He’s finally come to terms with who he is and where he’s been.
They fight sometimes, stupid arguments that stem from insecurity and the break up they haven’t yet put behind them, but they never go to bed angry and they never stop loving each other. Jensen throws a hissy fit after they run into Ricky while grocery shopping, and it takes Jared two hours to get Jensen to talk to him again. He knows it’s not really the fact that he kissed someone else that’s eating at Jensen, it’s the fact that Jensen made it possible for it to happen.
It’s not like Jared didn’t tell Jensen about Ricky because he was trying to hide it. He had simply forgotten all about it until they ran into him like that. He’s secretly amused by the fact that Jensen puts The Patron Dog of Broken Hearts on his nightstand after that, even though it’s not anti-Halloween, and he retaliates by putting The Hen of Fortitude on Jensen's chair and carrying on a conversation with it like Jensen's not in the room.
In February, on a clear, chilly morning, they move into their new apartment on Lower Rose Crescent, a newly renovated four room flat that they own together. Mike wanted to pay for it and call it a getting back together gift, but they wouldn’t let him, preferring to do it the old fashioned way with a loan from a bank. They both know Mike will most likely find a way to solve their loan behind their backs, even if he has to buy the entire bank, but it’s nothing they worry about. The apartment is theirs, their clean plate, their new life.
That first night in their new home, they don’t even go to sleep. They lay curled around each other in bed, watching the sun come up and the sky turn pink with a sense of completion. They made it. They put the past behind them and created a brand new life for the two of them.
As Jared presses a good morning kiss to Jensen's freckled shoulder, his heart swims over with love and he whispers as much into Jensen's skin. He lets the words loose with a sense of trepidation; the last time he did something of the sort, it ended with Jensen kicking him out. This time, though, Jensen just shifts to meet him in a kiss, wordlessly telling him he feels the same way.
The End
Author: jeyhawk
Pairings/Characters: Jared/Jensen, Michael Rosenbaum.
Rating: R
Wordcount: 3,721 (because I so don't get the drabble concept).
Category: Romance, Angst, AU
Summary: Five years in the future Jared turns out to not be the only one with issues.
Disclaimer: I don't know them, own them or make any money from them. This is just a bunch of inventive lies.
Warnings: Dark themes (rape, abuse, self harm)! All in the past but they inpact the present. ANGST!
Betas: ames1010! I love you baby, don't ever change.
Dedication: To deej1957 and multiversum_4 that asked for Comfort In Your Skin, five years in the future.
Notes: This is a timestamp fic for Settling Into Now and Comfort In Your Skin set five years after the events of the main story arch in the emo!jared verse. It doesn't exactly spoil you for the end of Comfort (that is not yet finished) unless you were dead set it would end unhappily. :0P
Life without Jensen is empty and pointless, an endless stretch of days without meaning. Jared keeps wondering what he did wrong, what he could have done differently, but he can’t figure it out. All he ever did was love Jensen to the best of his ability, and he can’t see how that could be wrong.
Every day he goes through the motions, eats and showers and dresses and goes to work. He laughs sometimes, smiles in all the right places, and he reads all those books that have been on his ‘to read’ list for the last few years. He knows people are waiting for him to break down, to slit his wrists wide open or down a bottle of pills, but it won’t happen.
It hurts, of course, a bone deep weary ache that doesn’t go away and doesn’t get better, but he manages. He goes through the motions, and one day stretches into a week, a week into a month and before he knows it, it’s been five months since they broke up. It’s almost funny that he misses Jensen just as much five months later as he did the day after they broke up, but in all honesty, it really isn’t.
He’s tired of people waiting for him to break, tired of the furtive glances and the thinly veiled questions. He hangs out with Mike and Tom every now and then, but it takes almost as much out of them as it does out of him. They’ve got the most uncomfortable position, caught between Jared and Jensen and all that went wrong between them.
He can’t quite keep himself from asking about Jensen, how he’s doing, where he is, if he found someone new, and he knows that it hurts them. They don’t want answer his questions, don’t want to be the ones to finally push him over the edge and he wants to tell them it won’t happen, but they won’t believe him, no one does.
He loves Jensen, oh God he does, but Jensen isn’t everything. He misses him like a limb, but his life still goes on. He laughs at stupid jokes, takes pride in his work, and eats the same thing for dinner three weeks in a row. He’s still alive, but they all act as if someone died.
His therapist, a lovely lady named Mona, pushes and prods, trying to get him to admit he’s too attached to Jensen - that he built his life up around him, but it’s not true. They don’t give him any credit, but there is still a Jared even when there is no Jared and Jensen. Everything in his life is not about what once happened to him and his life does not begin and end with Jensen.
Every day he picks up the phone to call Jensen and every day he puts it down again. Jensen was the one to break them up, and even though he wants to understand, wants to know what happened, it has to be on Jensen terms, but as the months pass he starts to believe it won’t ever happen, that Jensen moved on.
Around month four he makes a conscious effort to move on. He goes out on a couple of dates with a guy that lives down the street, Ricky. Ricky is a nice guy and they have a great time, and when they kiss it’s okay. He doesn’t freak out and it doesn’t put him back there, but he still puts an end to it because he’s still in love with Jensen.
He doesn’t know why his inability to stop loving Jensen makes him a freak. Why it’s something that people frown about and try to talk him out of. Doesn’t he have the right to love just as anyone else? Does the fact that he was once kidnapped, raped and tortured mean that he can’t love someone for real?
Mona calls it an obsession, repeating over and over until Jared snaps and wipes all the fancy pencils and framed pictures from her desk. He yells at her, calls her a bigot, an idiot and a mass of dirty words he didn’t even know he knew until security shows up and calms him down.
He apologizes, buys new frames for her pictures and a potted plant for her window. She asks what made him so upset and he just shakes his head. He knows there’s nothing wrong with him, he knows he’s capable of loving and he’s tired of everything in his life being about that time.
He thinks about moving, packing up his barren apartment, looking for a new job and moving somewhere where no one knows him. Maybe then people would let him mourn the love of his life, maybe then people would leave him be until that distant time in the future when he’s ready to open his heart and love someone new.
Five months and three weeks, and suddenly it’s Halloween. The stores have been filling up with decorations and costumes during the last few weeks, and even though it still makes him uneasy, he can deal with it. He doesn’t freak out over Halloween decorations any longer, he rarely freaks out at all. Sometimes he wakes up in a cold sweat from a dream he can barely remember and spends the rest of the night drinking coffee with all the lights turned on, but those occasions are few and far between.
What freaks him out is not having Jensen around for Halloween. They used to celebrate anti-Halloween, their own little holiday with a multitude of insane decorations they’d found over the years. Going through the still unpacked boxes in his walk in closet, he finds the googley-eyed hen that used to be the centrepiece.
He takes it out and puts it on the table. It hurts, but it still makes him smile, so he leaves it there. Next he finds the cross-eyed gnome that was someone’s idea of a Christmas decoration and puts it on the counter. The Hen of Fortitude and The Gnome of All Times is what they used to call them.
He goes through the boxes looking for the Belligerent Goose and The Bear of Sexual Prowess, but he can’t find them. He supposes Jensen got them and he wonders if he put them up, or if he’s back to celebrating Halloween with booze, costumes and horror movie references.
He does his weekly grocery shopping the day before Halloween, and on a shelf he finds a statue of fat wrinkly dog in a ballet outfit. Without even thinking about it, he puts it in his basket and brings it home. He calls it The Patron Dog of Broken Hearts and puts it on his nightstand next to his picture of Jensen with his parents.
It feels empty to go through the motions of celebrating their own holiday without Jensen, but he thinks it’s something like progress. He still hurts, but looking at the stupid decorations makes him smile and that’s something, isn’t it?
Halloween is just like another day. He goes to work, comes home, has meatloaf for dinner for the fifth day in a row, keeping up a one sided conversation with The Hen of Fortitude about John at work and how much that guy annoys him. He misses having someone to talk about his day with, but the hen is a surprisingly good conversationalist.
The doorbell starts ringing around seven and he retreats to the bedroom, trying to read. Handing out candy to trick or treating kids was Jensen's job; Jared can’t face them. He takes a look at their innocent faces and colorful costumes and then he just wants to take them all in, have them sit down on the floor and call their parents to come and get them.
It’s irrational, he knows, but they’re just kids and anything could happen to them. He wants to teach them about the dangers of the world, about being safe and never talking to strangers and he’s got no right to do that. He’s just another stranger to them, ruining their fun filled holiday.
The insistent ringing stops around eight-thirty and he takes a deep breath of relief. He feels like an ass for not giving the kids candy, but he’s not yet at the point where he thinks he can handle it. Maybe he’s wrong, maybe he would have been able to smile politely and offer them a basket of candy, but it would be unfair to the kids if he was right.
It’s almost ten and he’s about to get ready for bed when the ringing starts again. This time he panics, backing into a corner of the bedroom and sitting down with his hands over his ears. The sound seems to echo in his brain, clawing at his composure. Kids shouldn’t be out this late; it’s way past trick or treat time. They should be home, safely tucked into bed, hyper from all the candy and the fun they had.
He stays where he is when the ringing stops, taking long measured breaths and staring at the Patron Dog of Broken Hearts. He can do this; he’s not going to freak out. The bedroom door swings open and he makes a pitiful little sound, trying to crawl into the corner, until he recognizes Jensen.
He lets his hands drop from his ears and just stares. He hasn’t seen Jensen in almost six months and God it’s such a lovely sight. Jensen's got a beard now and his cheeks are hollower than they used to be, but he’s still beautiful, still lovely, and Jared loves him so much it hurts.
“Hey,” Jensen says, leaning against the doorframe.
“Hey,” Jared repeats dumbly. He can’t quite believe his eyes; maybe he hyperventilated and passed out. He pinches the skin on his wrist, it hurts, so he supposes he’s still awake.
“I miss you,” Jensen says and he’s got no right. He’s the one that threw Jared away like he was chewing gum that lost its taste. He’s the one that broke them up and kicked Jared out.
Jared swallows, looking away. There’s so much he wants to say, so many words backing up on his tongue, but he doesn’t know how to get them past the lump in his throat.
“What did I do wrong?” he finally asks, his voice raw with held back emotion. “I’ve been trying to figure it out all this time and I don’t get it. Didn’t I love you enough? Did you grow bored? Was there someone else? I thought we were happy.” The last words come out a whisper and he stares down on his hands.
He thought seeing Jensen and finally getting to ask all his questions would be better, but it’s not. He doesn’t want the answer. He doesn’t want to hear it’s really over. He doesn’t want Jensen to show up just to alleviate his guilty conscience.
“I’m sorry,” Jensen says and Jared looks up. “I shouldn’t have come.”
It hurts like he’s been stabbed, but Jared is not letting him get away that easy. “You owe me an explanation,” he says.
Jensen scrubs a hand over his face. “I don’t know what to say. I thought… I just wanted…”
“To see that I didn’t kill myself? Is that it? You just wanted to check in on me on the day you know I hate, to see that I was still alive because you don’t want my life on your conscience.” Jared pushes himself up from the floor, staring at Jensen. “I loved you, Jensen. I still do, because I don’t fucking know how to make everyone happy by stopping. Maybe you have some helpful advice, because you seem to have fallen out of love easily enough.”
Jensen recoils as if someone slapped him and Jared feels a grim sort of satisfaction. He wants Jensen to hurt. He wants Jensen to know much he hurt him.
“It’s not like that,” Jensen says, his voice choked and wobbly.
“Then tell me what it’s like, Jensen, because I don’t understand.”
Jensen takes a deep breath. “I had to know it was for real,” he says on the exhale, the words squeezed together like he can’t believe he’s saying them out loud.
“That what was for real?”
Jensen looks away. “You.”
Jared's nostrils flare and he nods, pressing his lips together, apparently knowing hurts more than fumbling around in the dark.
“It all started with a throw away comment and then I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind. I… being with you… it’s the best thing that ever happened to me and… I just couldn’t… I had to know.”
“Know what?”
“That I wasn’t the only one in love.”
“After more than five years together you suddenly decided I didn’t really love you? What the fuck, Jen?”
Jared is so angry he doesn’t know what to do with himself. How dare Jensen doubt his love? How dare he?
“God.” Jensen scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m getting it all wrong.”
Jared doesn’t answer, balling his hands into fists at his sides. He’s never felt so much like pummelling someone in his life.
“I’ve gotten a lot of comments over the years,” Jensen finally says. “Throwaway comments that all plunked on the same fiddle.”
Jared tries to fight his smile, but he can’t help it. Plunked on the same fiddle is Jensen speak for struck the same note, and he always found Jensen's made up sayings adorable.
“Comments about what?” he asks, because Jensen seems lost in thought.
“You and your… attachment to me… I didn’t want to listen, didn’t want to believe, but when you hear something enough times you start to wonder, you know. I was so happy and I couldn’t help but to feel that it would all end horribly.”
“It did,” Jared says, his words dripping with acid. He can’t believe he’s about to hear the same old tired thing from Jensen, of all people. He thought that Jensen at least believed him capable of love.
Jensen flinches. “I started reading up about it, asking around and everything told me the same thing. Your attachment to me was unhealthy. I was hindering your development, that instead of putting yourself back together, you depended on me to be strong.”
“Didn’t you know me better than that?” Jared asks.
“I thought I did. I wanted to believe I did… but… I couldn’t help but to doubt you… to think that maybe they were right. That maybe you didn’t love me at all.”
Jared draws a deep shuddering breath, it feels like he’s breaking apart inside. He thought he’d already reached his maximum capacity of hurt, but this is so much worse.
“So you broke up with me,” he says. “As what? A social experiment? Did you have little spies watching me from afar to tell you how I reacted? Did you all sit around comparing notes? Did you have someone to count my scars to see if there were new ones?”
Jensen shakes his head mutely. “I realized,” he whispers, “that it had nothing to do with you and all to do with me. I focused so much on you and your problems that I never laid my own ghosts to rest.”
“Chris,” Jared says, because in a screwy way it all makes sense.
Jensen nods. “After you left… after I kicked you out… I was a mess. I couldn’t stop crying, I couldn’t eat… I… Jesus… I missed you so much, and I realized that you didn’t build yourself up using me as a crutch, I did that with you.”
Suddenly, all the anger just pours off of Jared and all he wants is to take Jensen in his arms and squeeze the hurt out of him. All these years and he never realized how much of an emotional wreck Jensen really was when they met. He keeps accusing people of not understanding him, when maybe he’s the one that doesn’t understand. He thinks other people are blindsided by his past, but maybe he is, too.
“I think…” Jensen smiles weakly. “My therapist thinks that it all started with my mom. I wanted to be strong for Dad, so I just pushed my own grief under the surface and then I met Chris and I just kinda transferred all of my abandonment issues on him. He wasn’t a bad guy, he just didn’t love me like I loved him.”
Jared nods, wanting so badly to just reach out and touch. Where does all this put them? Does this mean they can never be together because it’s not good for them?
“You know what I was like when I met you, a player, never letting anyone get close and you changed all that, but I never really addressed my issues. I just built myself up around you and I guess it all just came crashing down.”
Jensen stops talking and they just stare at each other across the room. Jared doesn’t know what to say, he wishes he could have been there for Jensen, but that would have been kind of counterproductive. It still hurts that when Jensen actually needed him, needed him to repay all the kindness and patience Jensen had shown him over the years, he wasn’t there.
“Can we at least be friends?” he asks, even though he knows it will never be enough. “I just want to see you sometimes, talk to you. I can’t help loving you, Jen. I honestly think you’re my one. I understand if you can’t be with me… but…” He trails off, his words falling pathetically flat. What is there to say?
“I never begged for anything,” Jensen says suddenly. “Not for forgiveness, not for relief, not for anything, but I’m begging you now… please give me a second chance and I will spend the rest of my life making things up to you. Please.”
Jensen looks so pathetic and heartbroken that Jared is moving before he’s even considered it. He wraps Jensen up in his arms, squeezing him to his chest. He knows he’s giving in too easily and that it will take them time to get over this, but he doesn’t care if it’s smart or a good move for them. He just wants to be with Jensen.
~*~
They spend Christmas in Texas with Jared's parents, and if Jensen gets a bit of a cold shoulder to begin with, it’s nothing he doesn’t deserve. New Years is spent with Jeff on Jensen's grandparents’ ranch, and it’s obvious he blames himself for Jensen's break down. Jared wants to tell him it’s not his fault, that people hide their hurts until they reach the breaking point, but he decides it’s a matter between Jensen and his dad, so he doesn’t meddle.
They go to couple’s therapy two times a week, even though they both have a feeling the therapist thinks they are wasting their money with the way they can’t keep their hands off each other. It still does both of them good to talk things through with a professional present, to break things up when they get sidetracked. Besides, therapy is kind of par for the course in their relationship, so it’s nice to actually have it together instead of in separate offices.
Jared finally sits down with Mona and tells her what made him so angry that one time, and he thinks that she finally understands his point of view. Talking to her makes him realize something, too. He no longer hates himself. He spent so many years being his own worst enemy and now he can’t even put his finger on when that changed. Sure, he still blames himself for not noticing that Jensen was unhappy, but he doesn’t hate himself because of it. He’s finally come to terms with who he is and where he’s been.
They fight sometimes, stupid arguments that stem from insecurity and the break up they haven’t yet put behind them, but they never go to bed angry and they never stop loving each other. Jensen throws a hissy fit after they run into Ricky while grocery shopping, and it takes Jared two hours to get Jensen to talk to him again. He knows it’s not really the fact that he kissed someone else that’s eating at Jensen, it’s the fact that Jensen made it possible for it to happen.
It’s not like Jared didn’t tell Jensen about Ricky because he was trying to hide it. He had simply forgotten all about it until they ran into him like that. He’s secretly amused by the fact that Jensen puts The Patron Dog of Broken Hearts on his nightstand after that, even though it’s not anti-Halloween, and he retaliates by putting The Hen of Fortitude on Jensen's chair and carrying on a conversation with it like Jensen's not in the room.
In February, on a clear, chilly morning, they move into their new apartment on Lower Rose Crescent, a newly renovated four room flat that they own together. Mike wanted to pay for it and call it a getting back together gift, but they wouldn’t let him, preferring to do it the old fashioned way with a loan from a bank. They both know Mike will most likely find a way to solve their loan behind their backs, even if he has to buy the entire bank, but it’s nothing they worry about. The apartment is theirs, their clean plate, their new life.
That first night in their new home, they don’t even go to sleep. They lay curled around each other in bed, watching the sun come up and the sky turn pink with a sense of completion. They made it. They put the past behind them and created a brand new life for the two of them.
As Jared presses a good morning kiss to Jensen's freckled shoulder, his heart swims over with love and he whispers as much into Jensen's skin. He lets the words loose with a sense of trepidation; the last time he did something of the sort, it ended with Jensen kicking him out. This time, though, Jensen just shifts to meet him in a kiss, wordlessly telling him he feels the same way.
The End