.0126 - You're All That I Can Trust, Facing the Darkest Days
Jensen/Jared (Jensen/Danneel, Jared/Genevieve)
2, 373 words
Title by Madonna
Summary: Jensen comes back from Rome...
A/N: I never wanted to write a fic about Jared and the reason he cancelled his appearance in Italy and in Australia. It just happened. I am also in no way trying to decrease the seriousness of Jared's 'illness' or the reasons for it. This is just a fiction, complete and utter. I'm not trying to hurt any of you by this, the least Jared. I love him to pieces, and I hope that he's doing alright and that he'll never feel bad again. The same goes for Jensen.
Warning: Open marriage. Hints of depression. Hint of a suicidal attempt.
Un-beta'd, if you spot some errors, please, PM me.
darklondonsky
„Hey.“ Jensen’s voice is hoarse, practically gone as he drags himself up the stairs of Jared’s front porch, a little teeter to his steps; jet lag and tiredness mingling beneath his feet like a stray dog. He walks like he just barely remembers how to do it, like every step requires more energy than he’s got saved.
“You look awful,” Jared tells him as he steps across the threshold, and it’s hardly an exaggeration. Jensen looks like he hasn’t slept in days. Or like he kept waking up from nightmares. His eyes are red-rimmed and dark, and, although undoubtedly green, they appear almost black. His face’s got this winter shade of pale, all misty mornings and sparse sunlight, and everything about his posture screams close to breaking, handle with care.
“I’m good,” Jensen smiles. A grin full of cracks and potholes, and wrinkles at his mouth like smears of a charcoal on painter’s hands.
Jared wonders how many times he said it over the weekend, if he rolled these words on his tongue often enough to make them sound real, believable. Convincing enough to make himself believe them, too.
He walks up to Jared; a worn travel bag thrown over his shoulder, a Hundreds baseball cap put on backwards, and a pink stuffed turtle in his hand. A quiet apology for missed smiles and scraped knees. Fluffy toys instead of goodnight kisses and lullabies sang over the phone. Fatherhood spent on the road, in airplanes and taxicabs, hundreds of miles away.
Jensen looks at the animal in his hand, then around, taking in the abandoned tricycles and balls, forgotten shoes and damaged chew toys. The silence surrounding them. There’s something startlingly vulnerable in his gaze, something that makes him look both incredibly old and truly young. Not like a husband, even less like a father. More like a criminal returning to the crime scene. Guilty, of whatever.
“They went to the park,” Jared tells him. “Should be back soon.”
Jensen nods, but he doesn’t say a word. Just puts his bag on the floor and sets the turtle gently on top of it. It looks just as haggard as Jensen himself. He shoves his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and takes a step forward, two, oddly stiff, unsure. “You missed our date at the de' Fiori,” he remarks, no reproofs in his tone, just a mild disappointment, negligible traces of sadness.
“I know,” Jared consents regretfully. “I’m sorry.”
Campo de' Fiori. A little, secret spot in Rome they call ‘theirs’. Their first date, years ago. In Europe, where everything felt somewhat simpler, less guarded, less complicated. Where everyone felt far, so comfortably remote. The first paragraphs of a story that sounds like Chaplin’s excessive comedies, or a tragedy written by Shakespeare. A novel that shouldn’t work, but surprisingly does. The Padalecki’s & The Ackles’, and inserted chapters full of PadaleckiAckles. Organized, lined chaos and lies, and withheld details that’d only hurt.
Jared missed more than just the date, Italian dinner, great wine and delicious Tiramisu. He passed up the late night after; modern city lights reflecting on ancient edifices and the echo of footsteps on aged cobblestones. And Jensen in the morning, beside him. Asleep and naked, content. The freedom of a hotel room, of a locked door and walls that don’t talk.
“Rain check?”
“Anytime.” It’s so quiet it could be just a thought.
Jensen draws in a deep breath and meets Jared’s eyes, fully for the first time, his gaze filled with unvoiced worries and pleads. He reaches out, but his hand stops there, poised in the air, undecided, frightened. “I--”
Jared grabs him by the hem of his shirt and pulls him in, troubled and impatient, arbitrating it for him.
Jensen’s arms fall on his shoulders, heavy, almost enough to unbalance him, and his fingers close around fistfuls of his T-shirt, convulsive and shaking, gripping the fabric tight enough to tear a hole in the neckline. Jared doesn’t mind; desperate and needy, it feels like them. Jensen’s whole body presses up against his, all hard bones and warm flesh, tensed like a bow ready to snap. A too old skeleton model ready to fall apart if not held firmly enough. Jared squeezes him a little tighter.
Minutes pass, four minutes, five, crammed with unbearable silence and things that neither of them want to say. Jared is no longer sure who’s holding onto whom, who is the supposedly malfunctioning one here.
Tuckered out. A subtle, vague term for complete exhaustion. For the sorrow and unreasonable anger. For the feeling, the conviction that everything was pointless, that nothing in his life made sense. The image of Jensen, completely careworn and thoroughly soaked; new sneakers, his favorite jeans and a t-shirt clinging to his skin just like Jared was. Jensen’s strong arms wrapped around his torso, rocking him back and forth on the shower floor.
Jensen, who was just another lie. Just another face in the shadows. Everything about him, about them made up, because the reality just didn’t fit. Half-truths and masks that had the tendencies to be too heavy to wear at times; a monster’s ball. A whole encyclopedia of wrong and fucked up.
Jensen pulls back and looks up at Jared, his eyes hardened, guarded. Glistening with tears.
“It’s alright,” Jared says. “I’m alright.”
Jensen’s nodding, but he’s not really listening, too caught up in the spider web of his own mind, in his frights and memories.
It was bad back then, only Jensen knows. How every smile tasted of acid and how hard every breath was. How it ached.
Jared hates dragging him down with himself, triggering Jensen’s own traumas, drawing his own ghosts out of the closets. That’s why he wanted him to stay in Rome, in Europe, or head to Australia, days earlier. Why he didn’t want to have Jensen around when he felt at his lowest. Because Jensen is like a magnet, pulling it all onto himself, accumulating it. But Jensen, of course, didn’t listen.
Jared leans in and kisses one lonely tear off a high cheekbone, strokes warm, chapped lips with his own. Jensen returns the kiss, hesitantly, slow. The want is there, always. The need, flowing steadily beneath the surface, the urge to take it further, right now, here, but this is more of an assurance. It’s Still here. Still going.
*
Jared takes a sip of his coffee and glances up at the other mug abandoned on the railing over the brim of his cup. There’s a dark dry path from a few spilled drops on the side of the X-Men logo, and a faint brown circle on the dark wood under it. The cup is still more than half full, but undoubtedly cold, definitely a lot colder than how Jensen likes it.
“I’ll be right back,” Jensen said twenty minutes ago. Right before he stood up and disappeared in the shadows of the house. After minutes of just sitting there, looking over at Jared and looking away, nervous and jittery, his knee bouncing up and down in a maddening rhythm.
Another five minutes later, Jared knocks on the door of the guest bathroom. He wants to knock, anyway, but the door’s not closed properly. The light above the mirror is on, but the silence inside is nearly complete. There’s no sound or movements, just the sense of someone’s presence.
Through the chink in the door Jared can see Jensen standing at the sink, his fingers spread upon the chilling marble counter. His head is bowed, every bump of his vertebras so prominent and visible beneath the thin cotton of his T-shirt. Scared, just pretending. Not doing well at all, not believing.
He doesn’t quite look like on the photos from Rome that Jared saw. He doesn’t look like the guy from there at all. Just like a poor infusion of him, laughter and smiles forgotten on the stage, drowned in one of the fountains, reality and pessimism taking their place.
Jared’s knuckles slide over the door, more of an accident than an actual knock, and he pushes it open, walking in. “Jensen?”
Jensen startles at the sound of his voice, then straightens up, immediately, keeping his head down. He clears his throat, but his voice cracks anyway, breaking at the obvious lie. “I’m good.” It sounds even less believable than before. “I’ll be right there.”
“Yeah.” Jared moves closer to him and Jensen immediately takes a step aside, makes to leave. Jared puts his hands on Jensen’s hips, just lightly, halting him. “Stay.” He can hear the shallow intake of breath, feel the shudder wrecking the body under his touch, the spike of want. “Look at me.” Jensen doesn’t, keeps staring at the floor, like there’s future in there, safety that Jared’s face doesn’t have. He shakes his head. “Jen, look at me. Please.”
The simple, innocent word is what breaks him, eventually. Jensen lifts his head and meets Jared’s eyes through the mirror involuntarily.
He looks even paler than before, his eyes nearly hollow, haunted. But maybe it’s just the blood; his lower lip bitten through, the few fat ruby drops cleaving to its brim. The dry traces on his chin.
Jared closes his eyes, just for seconds, fighting the sickness, the guilt poisoning his insides. He drops his head on Jensen’s shoulder, kisses his warm skin through the fabric of his shirt, his bare neck. "Talk to me.”
Jensen stands there for a moment, looking back at Jared, the same shattered fragility on his face like on Dean’s in the last episode, then pulls away again. He paces the small space of the bathroom for a while, a minute too long, then sits down heavily on the edge of the bathtub. “Te.. tell me that it’s not getting worse,” he says, finally, his eyes and the tone of his voice; shaky and weak, the absolute panic in it, nailing Jared to the spot. “That… that I’m just seeing things. Imagining things… Tell me that it’s never gonna be that bad.”
That bad. That it hurts. That you cry, scream. That you’ll never try to soothe it on your own. That you’ll never try to make it stop. Say that suicide is not even an option…
Jensen sees demons everywhere; bad mood can only get worse, depression’s got only one end. That’s why he was keeping distance at first, why he got involved into the campaign only later. Because he doesn’t believe that Always Keep Fighting can withhold a step into the void, that it can stop a bullet or the slide of a blade. He doesn’t believe it, because inside, he’s doubting it, too.
“No. It’s not.” Jared erases the distance between them in two long strides and crouches down in front of him, his hand just a touch on Jensen’s knee. “Never.”
Jared is doing better. In contrast with Jensen’s fears, he’s doing fantastic. Despite of all the mess, he knows that this family, however big or unconventional is what he wants, what’s essentially keeping him up. And Jensen. Not his, never only his, but available, allowed.
“You promise?”
Jensen isn’t scared, he is terrified. Jared understands that, too well maybe, and he wishes he could tell him, promise him. Convince him. But he doesn’t know how; words can be so weak. And Jensen knows. He knows how fragile every path is once you’ve stumbled, how unstable. How one wrong step, an ordinary, tiny misstep can send one tumbling down into the abys below. How easily can a promise be broken and how it can not mean a thing. How logic and rational thinking fail to work through pain… He reaches for Jensen’s hand and turns it around, runs his fingers over his palm, crossing his life and heart line, all the mellow wrinkles on it. Moving up, he slides his thumb under the various cords that embrace Jensen’s wrist, finding the raised skin, pale pink, silver white. Faded, almost gone. But there. Still. “Do you?” he asks instead.
“It…” Jensen swallows thickly around the surprise, the shock. The painful reminder he hides so well. Like he’s forgotten. “It was a long time ago.” It’s not an excuse, just a side note.
Nineteen. Lost. Scared. Being someone else than what he was allowed to show. Quietly scratching the very bottom.
“Yeah.” But you held that razor, not me.
Jensen nods, again. A silent agreement with the no-promise promise they share. The vow of I’ll try. He bites his lip thoughtfully, sighs. He slips his hand out of Jared’s hold and reaches up, stroking Jared’s cheek. He drags his touch further and on, over the bun Jared’s learned to wear at home. Occasionally outside. Not for the fun that Jensen makes of him when people are looking. But for the sparkle of desire in his eyes, the grab-pull of his fingers when no one’s there. He maps Jared’s face with his fingertips, like he doesn’t recall it, like he’s trying to remember. “I love you.” It sounds so sure, so solid. And so breakable at once. So hauntingly real.
“And I love you.” Jared pulls him closer by the front of his T-shirt, guiding him in for a kiss; a proper one. Tongues and teeth and barely cut off moans, proximity that’ll never be enough.
The sound of thundering footsteps shouldn’t be surprising. But it is. Jared’s teeth graze Jensen’s lip in startle, catching on the poorly sealed scab. Jensen jumps; a full-on body jerk at the cheerful, “Daddy’s here! … Daddy?”
Jared follows Jensen into the hallway, watches him as he crouches down and picks up both his daughter, with the turtle in her hand, and Thomas. He stands up again, holding each on one arm, and waits for Danneel to come up to him. She smiles, sadly, worried by his appearance, the absolutely worn expression in his eyes, the shadows in his face. “Hey, baby,” he says as he leans forward, through ice cream-smeared mouths and small hands holding onto his T-shirt, and kisses her gently on the cheek.
There’s love, there’s care. So evident, touchable. There’s You’re my everything and I’d die for you. But the passion is Jared’s. His is the You make me feel alive.
2, 373 words
Title by Madonna
Summary: Jensen comes back from Rome...
A/N: I never wanted to write a fic about Jared and the reason he cancelled his appearance in Italy and in Australia. It just happened. I am also in no way trying to decrease the seriousness of Jared's 'illness' or the reasons for it. This is just a fiction, complete and utter. I'm not trying to hurt any of you by this, the least Jared. I love him to pieces, and I hope that he's doing alright and that he'll never feel bad again. The same goes for Jensen.
Warning: Open marriage. Hints of depression. Hint of a suicidal attempt.
Un-beta'd, if you spot some errors, please, PM me.
darklondonsky
„Hey.“ Jensen’s voice is hoarse, practically gone as he drags himself up the stairs of Jared’s front porch, a little teeter to his steps; jet lag and tiredness mingling beneath his feet like a stray dog. He walks like he just barely remembers how to do it, like every step requires more energy than he’s got saved.
“You look awful,” Jared tells him as he steps across the threshold, and it’s hardly an exaggeration. Jensen looks like he hasn’t slept in days. Or like he kept waking up from nightmares. His eyes are red-rimmed and dark, and, although undoubtedly green, they appear almost black. His face’s got this winter shade of pale, all misty mornings and sparse sunlight, and everything about his posture screams close to breaking, handle with care.
“I’m good,” Jensen smiles. A grin full of cracks and potholes, and wrinkles at his mouth like smears of a charcoal on painter’s hands.
Jared wonders how many times he said it over the weekend, if he rolled these words on his tongue often enough to make them sound real, believable. Convincing enough to make himself believe them, too.
He walks up to Jared; a worn travel bag thrown over his shoulder, a Hundreds baseball cap put on backwards, and a pink stuffed turtle in his hand. A quiet apology for missed smiles and scraped knees. Fluffy toys instead of goodnight kisses and lullabies sang over the phone. Fatherhood spent on the road, in airplanes and taxicabs, hundreds of miles away.
Jensen looks at the animal in his hand, then around, taking in the abandoned tricycles and balls, forgotten shoes and damaged chew toys. The silence surrounding them. There’s something startlingly vulnerable in his gaze, something that makes him look both incredibly old and truly young. Not like a husband, even less like a father. More like a criminal returning to the crime scene. Guilty, of whatever.
“They went to the park,” Jared tells him. “Should be back soon.”
Jensen nods, but he doesn’t say a word. Just puts his bag on the floor and sets the turtle gently on top of it. It looks just as haggard as Jensen himself. He shoves his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and takes a step forward, two, oddly stiff, unsure. “You missed our date at the de' Fiori,” he remarks, no reproofs in his tone, just a mild disappointment, negligible traces of sadness.
“I know,” Jared consents regretfully. “I’m sorry.”
Campo de' Fiori. A little, secret spot in Rome they call ‘theirs’. Their first date, years ago. In Europe, where everything felt somewhat simpler, less guarded, less complicated. Where everyone felt far, so comfortably remote. The first paragraphs of a story that sounds like Chaplin’s excessive comedies, or a tragedy written by Shakespeare. A novel that shouldn’t work, but surprisingly does. The Padalecki’s & The Ackles’, and inserted chapters full of PadaleckiAckles. Organized, lined chaos and lies, and withheld details that’d only hurt.
Jared missed more than just the date, Italian dinner, great wine and delicious Tiramisu. He passed up the late night after; modern city lights reflecting on ancient edifices and the echo of footsteps on aged cobblestones. And Jensen in the morning, beside him. Asleep and naked, content. The freedom of a hotel room, of a locked door and walls that don’t talk.
“Rain check?”
“Anytime.” It’s so quiet it could be just a thought.
Jensen draws in a deep breath and meets Jared’s eyes, fully for the first time, his gaze filled with unvoiced worries and pleads. He reaches out, but his hand stops there, poised in the air, undecided, frightened. “I--”
Jared grabs him by the hem of his shirt and pulls him in, troubled and impatient, arbitrating it for him.
Jensen’s arms fall on his shoulders, heavy, almost enough to unbalance him, and his fingers close around fistfuls of his T-shirt, convulsive and shaking, gripping the fabric tight enough to tear a hole in the neckline. Jared doesn’t mind; desperate and needy, it feels like them. Jensen’s whole body presses up against his, all hard bones and warm flesh, tensed like a bow ready to snap. A too old skeleton model ready to fall apart if not held firmly enough. Jared squeezes him a little tighter.
Minutes pass, four minutes, five, crammed with unbearable silence and things that neither of them want to say. Jared is no longer sure who’s holding onto whom, who is the supposedly malfunctioning one here.
Tuckered out. A subtle, vague term for complete exhaustion. For the sorrow and unreasonable anger. For the feeling, the conviction that everything was pointless, that nothing in his life made sense. The image of Jensen, completely careworn and thoroughly soaked; new sneakers, his favorite jeans and a t-shirt clinging to his skin just like Jared was. Jensen’s strong arms wrapped around his torso, rocking him back and forth on the shower floor.
Jensen, who was just another lie. Just another face in the shadows. Everything about him, about them made up, because the reality just didn’t fit. Half-truths and masks that had the tendencies to be too heavy to wear at times; a monster’s ball. A whole encyclopedia of wrong and fucked up.
Jensen pulls back and looks up at Jared, his eyes hardened, guarded. Glistening with tears.
“It’s alright,” Jared says. “I’m alright.”
Jensen’s nodding, but he’s not really listening, too caught up in the spider web of his own mind, in his frights and memories.
It was bad back then, only Jensen knows. How every smile tasted of acid and how hard every breath was. How it ached.
Jared hates dragging him down with himself, triggering Jensen’s own traumas, drawing his own ghosts out of the closets. That’s why he wanted him to stay in Rome, in Europe, or head to Australia, days earlier. Why he didn’t want to have Jensen around when he felt at his lowest. Because Jensen is like a magnet, pulling it all onto himself, accumulating it. But Jensen, of course, didn’t listen.
Jared leans in and kisses one lonely tear off a high cheekbone, strokes warm, chapped lips with his own. Jensen returns the kiss, hesitantly, slow. The want is there, always. The need, flowing steadily beneath the surface, the urge to take it further, right now, here, but this is more of an assurance. It’s Still here. Still going.
*
Jared takes a sip of his coffee and glances up at the other mug abandoned on the railing over the brim of his cup. There’s a dark dry path from a few spilled drops on the side of the X-Men logo, and a faint brown circle on the dark wood under it. The cup is still more than half full, but undoubtedly cold, definitely a lot colder than how Jensen likes it.
“I’ll be right back,” Jensen said twenty minutes ago. Right before he stood up and disappeared in the shadows of the house. After minutes of just sitting there, looking over at Jared and looking away, nervous and jittery, his knee bouncing up and down in a maddening rhythm.
Another five minutes later, Jared knocks on the door of the guest bathroom. He wants to knock, anyway, but the door’s not closed properly. The light above the mirror is on, but the silence inside is nearly complete. There’s no sound or movements, just the sense of someone’s presence.
Through the chink in the door Jared can see Jensen standing at the sink, his fingers spread upon the chilling marble counter. His head is bowed, every bump of his vertebras so prominent and visible beneath the thin cotton of his T-shirt. Scared, just pretending. Not doing well at all, not believing.
He doesn’t quite look like on the photos from Rome that Jared saw. He doesn’t look like the guy from there at all. Just like a poor infusion of him, laughter and smiles forgotten on the stage, drowned in one of the fountains, reality and pessimism taking their place.
Jared’s knuckles slide over the door, more of an accident than an actual knock, and he pushes it open, walking in. “Jensen?”
Jensen startles at the sound of his voice, then straightens up, immediately, keeping his head down. He clears his throat, but his voice cracks anyway, breaking at the obvious lie. “I’m good.” It sounds even less believable than before. “I’ll be right there.”
“Yeah.” Jared moves closer to him and Jensen immediately takes a step aside, makes to leave. Jared puts his hands on Jensen’s hips, just lightly, halting him. “Stay.” He can hear the shallow intake of breath, feel the shudder wrecking the body under his touch, the spike of want. “Look at me.” Jensen doesn’t, keeps staring at the floor, like there’s future in there, safety that Jared’s face doesn’t have. He shakes his head. “Jen, look at me. Please.”
The simple, innocent word is what breaks him, eventually. Jensen lifts his head and meets Jared’s eyes through the mirror involuntarily.
He looks even paler than before, his eyes nearly hollow, haunted. But maybe it’s just the blood; his lower lip bitten through, the few fat ruby drops cleaving to its brim. The dry traces on his chin.
Jared closes his eyes, just for seconds, fighting the sickness, the guilt poisoning his insides. He drops his head on Jensen’s shoulder, kisses his warm skin through the fabric of his shirt, his bare neck. "Talk to me.”
Jensen stands there for a moment, looking back at Jared, the same shattered fragility on his face like on Dean’s in the last episode, then pulls away again. He paces the small space of the bathroom for a while, a minute too long, then sits down heavily on the edge of the bathtub. “Te.. tell me that it’s not getting worse,” he says, finally, his eyes and the tone of his voice; shaky and weak, the absolute panic in it, nailing Jared to the spot. “That… that I’m just seeing things. Imagining things… Tell me that it’s never gonna be that bad.”
That bad. That it hurts. That you cry, scream. That you’ll never try to soothe it on your own. That you’ll never try to make it stop. Say that suicide is not even an option…
Jensen sees demons everywhere; bad mood can only get worse, depression’s got only one end. That’s why he was keeping distance at first, why he got involved into the campaign only later. Because he doesn’t believe that Always Keep Fighting can withhold a step into the void, that it can stop a bullet or the slide of a blade. He doesn’t believe it, because inside, he’s doubting it, too.
“No. It’s not.” Jared erases the distance between them in two long strides and crouches down in front of him, his hand just a touch on Jensen’s knee. “Never.”
Jared is doing better. In contrast with Jensen’s fears, he’s doing fantastic. Despite of all the mess, he knows that this family, however big or unconventional is what he wants, what’s essentially keeping him up. And Jensen. Not his, never only his, but available, allowed.
“You promise?”
Jensen isn’t scared, he is terrified. Jared understands that, too well maybe, and he wishes he could tell him, promise him. Convince him. But he doesn’t know how; words can be so weak. And Jensen knows. He knows how fragile every path is once you’ve stumbled, how unstable. How one wrong step, an ordinary, tiny misstep can send one tumbling down into the abys below. How easily can a promise be broken and how it can not mean a thing. How logic and rational thinking fail to work through pain… He reaches for Jensen’s hand and turns it around, runs his fingers over his palm, crossing his life and heart line, all the mellow wrinkles on it. Moving up, he slides his thumb under the various cords that embrace Jensen’s wrist, finding the raised skin, pale pink, silver white. Faded, almost gone. But there. Still. “Do you?” he asks instead.
“It…” Jensen swallows thickly around the surprise, the shock. The painful reminder he hides so well. Like he’s forgotten. “It was a long time ago.” It’s not an excuse, just a side note.
Nineteen. Lost. Scared. Being someone else than what he was allowed to show. Quietly scratching the very bottom.
“Yeah.” But you held that razor, not me.
Jensen nods, again. A silent agreement with the no-promise promise they share. The vow of I’ll try. He bites his lip thoughtfully, sighs. He slips his hand out of Jared’s hold and reaches up, stroking Jared’s cheek. He drags his touch further and on, over the bun Jared’s learned to wear at home. Occasionally outside. Not for the fun that Jensen makes of him when people are looking. But for the sparkle of desire in his eyes, the grab-pull of his fingers when no one’s there. He maps Jared’s face with his fingertips, like he doesn’t recall it, like he’s trying to remember. “I love you.” It sounds so sure, so solid. And so breakable at once. So hauntingly real.
“And I love you.” Jared pulls him closer by the front of his T-shirt, guiding him in for a kiss; a proper one. Tongues and teeth and barely cut off moans, proximity that’ll never be enough.
The sound of thundering footsteps shouldn’t be surprising. But it is. Jared’s teeth graze Jensen’s lip in startle, catching on the poorly sealed scab. Jensen jumps; a full-on body jerk at the cheerful, “Daddy’s here! … Daddy?”
Jared follows Jensen into the hallway, watches him as he crouches down and picks up both his daughter, with the turtle in her hand, and Thomas. He stands up again, holding each on one arm, and waits for Danneel to come up to him. She smiles, sadly, worried by his appearance, the absolutely worn expression in his eyes, the shadows in his face. “Hey, baby,” he says as he leans forward, through ice cream-smeared mouths and small hands holding onto his T-shirt, and kisses her gently on the cheek.
There’s love, there’s care. So evident, touchable. There’s You’re my everything and I’d die for you. But the passion is Jared’s. His is the You make me feel alive.