All the Flowers of all the Tomorrows
Jared had decided that today would be the day.
It needed to be, before things progressed too much further and decisions became fixed and finalised. He needed to tell Jensen, and he felt emboldened by Jensen’s actions the previous week, the light in his eyes as Jared had played and sung his music in front of the townspeople.
It was the Saturday after the Fayre, school holidays, and Jensen had agreed to take the day off work so they could go for a long hike up and over Cairnsmore of Fleet. They hadn’t done much hiking recently. Jensen had been working on Saturdays over at Logan Botanical Gardens a couple of hours away. It was a massive opportunity that Jensen couldn’t and wouldn’t miss. He’d come home full of enthusiasm about the plants and the other gardeners, and repaid Yates threefold for getting him the gig, by working extra hard in the week on the estate. The job mollified Fran a little who was still, a year later, smarting over Jensen’s decision to take up Mr Padalecki’s offer of work in the garden rather than going to college. She didn’t know that Jensen had decided to delay further study so that he and Jared could go together.
Every time Jared thought of their plans for the autumn, he’d feel a buzz of excitement, and that warming sense of wonder that Jensen had agreed to go with him, followed by a sickening dread in his stomach. He felt guilty. He would watch Jensen in the garden, with enough self-awareness to sense that it was a creepy thing to do, but, at the same time, unapologetic. It was as if Jensen had grown up from the very earth of Kilcowen, a genius loci, eyes shining with deep content.
He knew, deep in his heart, that Jensen loved this small patch of Scotland with all his heart and soul, and although originally a Texas boy, he had found his place here. Jared was intending on taking it away from him, because he desperately wanted to study his music, and he also desperately wanted Jensen.
Jensen, who had never once indicated anything other than friendship towards Jared.
Yes, it seemed a strong friendship. But there had never, ever, been any hints that Jensen felt anything other than affection for Jared and he often doubted how sincere that might be. Suppose they were right, suppose Jensen had been a kind kid taking pity on the weirdo and now he was stuck with him.
And that was the other problem. Jared was utterly consumed by a love for Jensen that was not so platonic. He didn’t want to be just friends, not even best friends. He wanted Jensen heart, body and soul. And he ached so much with the want.
He had made his decision when his conscience finally screamed too loud. It was possible that Jensen, away from his friends here, the girls who always seemed all over him, the gardens and his job, might suddenly and inexplicably decide he loved Jared in the way that Jared loved him, but Jared couldn’t count on it. And would it ever be possible for Jared to continue living in such proximity to the one thing he would always want, but could never have?
He decided he needed to tell Jensen how he felt and then take it from there. He would let Jensen go if he had to.
He waited until after their packed lunch, eaten sat looking down over the valleys towards the sea. It had been cool for the time of the year; a brisk breeze counteracting the warmth of the summer sun. Jensen had given Jared one or two strange looks, Jared’s distraction were causing him to fall over his feet more frequently than usual, and he found himself falling back into the silence he relied on when in crowds. Surely, Jensen couldn’t help but observe that Jared had something on his mind.
The food sitting heavily in his stomach, and almost breathless with terror, he took two quick breaths and then spoke.
“Would it make any difference to you if I told you I was gay?” He asked, although that hadn’t been what he had planned to say.
Jensen neither looked surprised, nor particularly disgusted, but there was a quiet intentness about him that Jared found unsettling.
“Are you?” Jensen asked, his words quietly spoken.
Jared nodded and, unable to hold Jensen’s gaze, stared into the distance.
“How do you know?”
This was Jared’s opening, but he found himself tongue-tied.
“You haven’t had a lot of experience, Jay, so do you know for sure or is this just something you have been thinking about?”
Jared looked back at his friend. “I’m… pretty sure.”
Jensen’s eyebrows climbed his forehead, and there was a flash of something in his eyes accompanied by the tightening of his lips. He was pissed about something.
“But you’re right, I haven’t had a lot of experience. There’s a reason for that,” Jared continued.
Jensen seemed to relax a little at Jared’s words, but his look was uncomfortably penetrating, and quizzical.
“I know I am gay because I am in love with you. Like proper in love, hearts and roses, in love,” Jared said quickly before he got too scared to say the words. “And I needed to tell you because I don’t want you coming with me to London if you wanted to stay here, and feel like you have to be friends, if it’s too weird for you. I don’t expect you to feel the same way back.”
As he had no idea how Jensen was going to react to his declaration, Jared waited in trepidation for his response. He was silent at first. And still. Or so Jared thought at first, but getting the courage to look properly at Jensen, he noticed tautness in the muscles in Jensen’s face, the closed eyes. He was in fact quivering. In horror? Disappointment? Jared had no idea.
“Jensen?” He had the most awful idea that he had just ruined the best thing in his life and was terrified.
“There’s a lot to unpack in what you said, Jay,” Jensen answered with a slightly bitter tone. “I don’t know where to start.”
Jared curled himself over, cradling his head on his knees.
“First, why would I be worried if you’re gay? I hope I have never given anyone the impression that I might be homophobic.” Was that a little disingenuous? Did Jensen have no idea what the crew he was mixing with said on a frequent basis?
“Secondly, I said I was coming to London with you, didn’t I? Would you prefer me not to come?” Jensen’s tone was becoming increasingly accusatory. Jared winced, miserable, because Jensen was upset, maybe even angry with him.
“And to the other? Oh, God, Jay. I don’t know what to say to you about that. You are so young, just a kid… you don’t know…”
“Not such a kid anymore and I know what I want,” Jared hated being called a kid. He was always called the kid. He was already halfway to his feet, eyes blazing.
Jensen didn’t move. Just stared at Jared.
“You don’t have to insult me. Just turn me down gently and I’ll be on my way to London in a few weeks and out of your life!”
Jared couldn’t understand why Jensen looked like he was about to burst into tears.
“Jay, just fucking sit down, will you? Listen to me!” All trace of Jensen’s previous anger had left his voice. He was begging now.
“It’s not that… I wish… Jesus, why didn’t I see this coming? Jay, just listen. You’re young, and talented, you need to have a shot at a life so much better than this. I can’t… You need to get away from here, learn that this place doesn’t define you, what your father, what others say and do, doesn’t define who you are! I can’t…”
“You don’t need to keep saying it. I got the message,” Jared sat back down, more weary than anything else now.
“No, Jay, I don’t think you understand. You need time, and space to do your own thing… And I am all you have ever had. It’s no wonder that you’ve fixated on me…”
“Fixated? Am I like one of those ducklings who impress on the first whoever who shows them kindness? I know what I am feeling, Jensen. I know that I want you, and yes, I do know what that means. I want…”
“STOP, just stop! Fucking hell, Jared, I’m not good at this sort of thing at the best of times… I don’t know how to explain…”
“You’d rather I shut up about it, and we can pretend I never said anything?”
“Oh fuck off. I think you are deliberately misunderstanding now, that is not what I am saying. I just…. I don’t… I can’t….”
“Fine.” All the fight left Jared. He was tired, and his heart felt like his chest wasn’t large enough to contain it any more. His eyes were beginning to sting with tears.
“Jay?”
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t but he didn’t want to argue any more. “I get it. I never really thought you’d love me back anyway… I just didn’t want you to go all the way to London, then find out, and be angry and regret it.”
He looked at Jensen, heart full but resigned. Jensen was agitated, looking first at him, and then away, hands in constant motion, knee jigging.
“Jay, I…”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I’m going home.” Jared roughly packed up his stuff into his bag and twisted to get his arms through the shoulder strap. He was hyper aware of Jensen’s silent gaze. He wanted to reassure him that it would okay, and that nothing had changed, but he knew everything had and that nothing felt right now. He left Jensen sitting there.
***
About three years after Jared had left Newton Stewart, he thought he had seen Jensen. It was a year after he had been thrown out of the Guildhall, and out of Uncle Thomas’ house, and he was fronting his first band. He’d grown another five inches, develop a few muscles alongside one godawful attitude and had become the stereotypical angry young man. He had run away from home angry and upset and that anger and pain had just increased through time.
The music was good. Loud, obnoxious, fierce. He both revelled in it and hated it, his heart still with the gentle folk tunes that Jensen loved and the intricacies and melodies of church music he had preferred but couldn’t listen to anymore. He hadn’t even stepped inside St Pauls again, even though it was just round the corner from his digs.
The gig had been going well. He’d been nursing a sore throat all day, but that seemed to give his voice an even darker edge. He liberally self-medicated and filled the room with the charisma that he had discovered when he put on Tris Galloway’s clothes. There was a pretty boy waiting for him backstage, as there was every night, although it was not always the same pretty boy. No-one stayed because Jared didn’t let them.
At first it was a glimpse. A split-second glance and a recognition which he dismissed as ridiculous. But there had been that moment when green eyes met his own, and he was convinced. He didn’t see him again and in the long drawn-out hours of a sleepless night when not even pretty boys could distract him, he persuaded himself that it had been a mirage.
But there had been other moments too. Outside a stage door in Glasgow, from a balcony in the Apollo. Jared ignored them, telling himself that they were only products of a poor deluded soul that couldn’t heal because he still loved and wanted Jensen Ackles more than anything in the world.
Now he knew. He had seen Jensen. Jensen had been there because Jensen hadn’t been able to break his bond with Jared either.
“It was something that Tanya had said,” Jensen told him, now they had finally found the time and place they needed to open up to each other. “She didn’t mean to, I suspect she was just being mean, but she made me think, you know?”
Jared didn’t know and didn’t want to. Anything Tanya would have said would have been poison.
“I think Ham and Tommy and you were kicking a ball about, and it was suddenly very obvious that you were getting tall, and she said that you were growing up into an even weirder freak than you had been.”
Jared rolled his eyes. Jensen pressed on.
“Yeah, I know. She’d say things like that, but it just sounded like affectionate teasing to me. I said the same things to your face, sometimes and I never meant it and you never took it as insulting.”
“That’s because you weren’t Tanya, or Ham or any other fucking kid in that school. They said those things to my face and more, and it was meant to be malicious.”
“I know that now. I’m sorry.” The piano keyboard was digging into Jared’s back but there was no way he was going to move. Jensen was a hot solid line at his side.
“Anyway, I was looking at you, and you weren’t this little kid anymore. You were tall and rangy, like a bean plant, with this stupid long hair in your face, and I just thought you were beautiful. I mean, I’d always liked how you looked - your big smile and cheeky dimples…”
“What?”
“Oh come on, you’ve read the comments on your message boards. I certainly have. What was it one of them said, “I love the fury in his eyes but his dimples are really cute…”
“I’m not sure what worries me most, that you’ve read my message boards or that you remember that quote?”
“It made me laugh. And not a lot about you, Jay, has made me laugh in the last fifteen years.” The silence that followed was a little uneasy.
“And I suddenly realised why I wasn’t interested in any of the girls.”
Jared’s mouth was dry and he only managed a quiet croak. “What do you mean? There were always hundreds of girls around.”
Jensen waggled his eyebrows suggestively, but Jared couldn’t do anything but sit there staring at him. Jensen’s face transformed as his smile deepened into a grin.
“So there were! Jensen Ackles, Newton High School heart throb. All the girls wanted me and all the boys wanted to be me!”
“It’s true.” Jared managed. “They were making themselves stupid over you!”
“Can’t help being born this good looking! Take it up with my Momma!” He knocked his knee against Jared’s. “Thing is, they might have been interested in me but I wasn’t interested in them, not really. And I didn’t know why until I saw this lanky freakzoid playing football.”
Jared was speechless.
“It was quite the revelation - I was what? Seventeen, and suddenly I was perving on a kid two years younger.”
“You’re gay?” Jared finally asked.
“Uh huh! Did try it with a couple of girls after you left, but infinitely more satisfying with a man. At least, to some extent. Wasn’t you, though.”
“Why didn’t I know this?” Jared could hear the dismay leaking out of every word.
“Because I was fucking careful to make sure you never found out!”
“Why?”
“Because… I thought you’d think I was disgusting. I was old enough to drive and you were… you were just younger.”
Jensen got up and started pacing the room. Jared’s side missed his warmth and felt the chill immediately.
“And we hung out and stuff, but you seemed to hate it…”
“That’s because your friends were bullies…”
“Well, I know that now!”
Jared watched as Jensen picked up his Gibson. He didn’t seem to know what to do with it, though Jared knew he was a passable guitarist. He held it awkwardly before putting it down.
“I used to go and see you play,” he suddenly said. Jared could have screamed in frustration. “At least, when I could. I hated it. It wasn’t you.”
All those caught flashes… the moments that Jared had convinced himself were his imagination…
“You used to come to the gigs. I knew it! I’m sure I saw you several times.”
Jensen barely registered his words. “I wondered if I had never really known you… that all the stuff we did as children was just… nothing… you know. It was like looking at a stranger. And I wanted to yell at all those other kids idolising you that they had no idea how truly beautiful you were, how your eyes reflect the colours of the hills around the house where you grew up… I wanted to tell them what a wicked imagination you have, how we felled dragons, and fought off pirates and found treasure. And while they thought all that brooding was sexy, I wanted to tell them that your laugh was my jerking off material.”
“Why did you keep going?
“Because I wanted to see you.” He was still now, looking out of the bow window, lost inside of his thoughts.
Jared waited for moment, letting Jensen just be. His own thoughts were a confused mess. This is what he had been worried about, ever since he had started to untangle the truths from the lies, that he would find out something that meant the last fifteen years were a wasted opportunity.
“So you didn’t tell me because I was too young?” It sounded too much like an excuse.
“And because you never gave me any reason to think that you were gay, or thought of me like that… I realised after… you know… after you had told me that you were probably afraid of what I might say too. And you probably felt justified. I didn’t exactly handle that well. There was something else too… and I wanted to explain… but I was afraid of causing even more trouble, and… I made it sound like I was rejecting you, didn’t I?”
Jared nodded. There was no point in equivocating now.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it sound like that.”
“What did you mean to say?” Jared asked carefully.
“You got me so shook up and surprised, that I couldn’t put my words in order.”
“What did you mean to say?” Jared repeated doggedly, desperate now to hear.
“I meant to say that I loved you too and wanted to be with you but that I wanted to wait until you were older, until your father….”
“What about my father,” Jared interrupted quickly. “What did my father do?” He was beginning to put all the clues together and he didn’t like his conclusions. “My father said something to you, didn’t he? Did he tell you to back off? Threaten you?”
Jensen didn’t need to answer.
“He threatened Frannie.” Jared’s words were simply said but devastating in their realisation.
“He told me that he didn’t want his son polluted by a fag and that if I and Momma wanted to carry on living and working here, I had better keep my filthy hands to myself.”
“How did he know?”
“I think it was only you who was oblivious to my love-sick heart.” Jensen’s smile was very small.
“The fucking bastard.” Jared looked around the room, and how thought about how completely he had managed to erase all sense and memory of his father from it. He was glad. Savagely and ferociously glad.
But there was still Jensen standing there, looking lost and a little terrified. Pushing his indignant anger aside, Jared went to him. Jensen’s eyes were glittering with tears which Jared knew Jensen would do his damnedest to keep from falling, the muscles in his jaw convulsing. The grief that Jared felt for their lost years, was echoed in every cell of Jensen’s body too.
Jared lifted his hand to softly trace over beloved freckles. Jensen shuddered at the touch, but then leaned into it.
“You loved me,” Jared whispered in wonder.
“I loved you.”
Jensen stepped in closer, reaching out to lay a hand over Jared’s speeding heart.
“And I still love you,” Jensen said as he leaned in further, and his lips touched Jared’s, a whisper of a touch, a barely there touch. Overwhelmed with Jensen’s scent, of earth and green things, Jared felt every nerve light up in an electrical storm. His hand slipped round to the back of Jensen’s neck and pulled him closer still. In his hand he held the most valuable and beloved thing in his life. And Jensen wasn’t running away or screaming with loathing. He was pushing back, deepening the kiss until Jared thought they would be absorbed into one another.
“Uncle Jensen?”
They leapt apart. Breathless.
“Granny says can you run me into Newton? She’s in the middle of something and says that if she stops she’ll never get started again.” The voice was calling from the hallway
Jared looked at Jensen to find him looking back. They both chuckled ruefully and a little embarrassed.
“I’d better…” Jensen shrugged.
“I could take him…” Jared offered. “If you want to get back out to the Garden…”
Jensen shook his head a fraction and raised a quizzical eyebrow.
It brought heat to Jared’s cheeks.
“Oh, here you are? Did you hear? Can you give me a lift into town?” Will burst into the room. He looked from one to the other, but either didn’t notice anything strange, or made the diplomatic decision not to say anything.
“Of course,” Jensen answered, his voice deeper and huskier than normal. “Got your stuff ready?” He smiled at Jared as he left.
Jared took the smile as a promise.
***
“I feel so guilty,” Jared said later. He had pottered about the house aimlessly for a while, and then had sought out Fran. She was doing something unspeakably vicious to a rug, red in face and breathing hard so when he grabbed her hand and dragged her to the garden room to sit, she went willingly.
He had asked her first if she didn’t mind discussing her son. And then, when she acquiesced, he repeated everything that Jensen had said to him. She listened intently and in silence until Jared had said his peace.
“You were both so young,” she finally said. Jared was beginning to find references to his age irritating.
“I wouldn’t even let him explain.”
“Sounds like he was making a right mess of it anyway, not the best with words, our Jensen,” Fran smiled faintly. “Perhaps you needed to give him time, but that’s all very well in hindsight. The big thing decision now is what you are going to do with all this new information?”
“What do you think?”
“Oh no, I am not getting involved. I love you both far too much for that.”
“I didn’t think I could hate my father even more than I do, but I want to go and spit on his grave.”
“Well, he was only doing what he thought was right too.” Fran was measured in her response but, surely, she felt as angry as Jared?
“If he were still alive…?
“Well, he isn’t, and if he were you would never have come back here. So go desecrate his tombstone if you wish, but I daresay it won’t make you feel any better. And there’s no point in being angry with yourself either. Jensen had plenty of time to explain better and he didn’t. And you didn’t have the mental capacity to discriminate between people who loved you and people who didn’t. Which just goes to prove that teenage boys shouldn’t be allowed to make such life changing important decisions, so maybe your father was right.”
Jared shrugged. He hated the idea that he and Jensen had lost fifteen years, but perhaps there was some truth in what Fran said. Maybe they needed the time apart. It gave them the chance to grow into the men they were supposed to be, particularly Jared. It took him fifteen years to realise he needed to come back here, and who knew if they could have survived being childhood sweethearts with the competing drives of Jared’s music and Jensen’s gardening.
The sun was lower in the sky now and the long-fingered shadows of the trees were reaching out over the garden. Autumn was coming and there was just the gilt edge of gold on some of the leaves. The flowers beds were looking a little jaded and sorry for themselves, as though they were stepping back to allow the trees their moment.
“Come here,” she reached over to grab him into a hug. She was soft and warm, and smelled of dusty carpets and disinfectant. He buried his face into her shoulder, breathing in the smell of the mother and home that she had always been for him.
“So little Jay bear,” she said, her voice muffled but smiley, “What are you going to do now?”
***
When Jensen still hadn’t returned and the sky was purpling to dusk, Jared decided to go looking for him. It didn’t take long because there was only one place Jensen would be when life became overwhelming for him.
He was covered with a fine sheen of sweat, and that, and the darker track of soil behind, evidenced the effort he had put into turning over the old lettuce bed. He stilled when he saw Jared approaching, face impassive, but eyes steady on Jared’s own. He was so beautiful, the warm light of the fading day made his hair fire red and put jewels in his eyes. There was a smudge of dirt on his cheek, but his freckles were a drift of autumn leaves across his face. He looked as though he had been born out of the very earth, a spirit of this place more than Jared, the heir and legacy, had ever been. Jared counted the years that had separated them in the lines on their faces, and the strength in the limbs, but the ghost of the children they had been were still there in the glint of mischief and the gentle smirk now crossing Jensen’s face as he watched Jared’s slow approach.
Jared halted and closed his eyes and saw two boys running through the watching trees, and through the whispering grass, the music of their laughter accompanying the birdsong. He didn’t realise he was crying until Jensen’s rough hand was brushing away the tears.
“It’s okay,” Jensen breathed as Jared fell into his enveloping arms. “You’re home now.”
***
The terrace fell to the sea before him, slashes of darkening colour crossing the hill down to the dark glitter of the lake in the valley below. The roses were a shocking, pale contrast, a wide eye at the heart of the garden. There was a clear blue sky, and a cool breeze bringing just a touch of the scent of the sea.
Jared breathed it in, then turned back to the house. He crossed the cool tiles in the garden room, and the stone flagstones in the hallway. His footsteps were silenced as he entered the music room.
Fran did a good job of keeping the dust at bay, but there was still a slight stale smell in the room. It needed airing. He battled the catch on the window and opened the casement wide, letting the freshness blow into the room. He sat at the piano for a while, lid closed, before finally reaching for his old childhood guitar.
He winced at the tuneless notes and spent some time retuning it. Then he sat for a long while with the instrument on his lap, staring out of the window. His fingers found the strings and frets eventually. Without consciously making the decision, he began to pick out chords to accompany his musings, memories of two bodies moving together, the exquisite bliss and pain of finally achieving all that he had only ever wanted. The chords began to resolve themselves into a structure, and an unintentional melody was softly hummed under his breath.
He only noticed Jensen standing silent at the doorway when the last notes died away. He smiled invitingly, and Jensen smiled back. He was covered in sprinkles of green and smelled of fresh mown grass. He sauntered over and combed his fingers through Jared’s hair.
“That sounded good,” he said, looking down at Jared, smile broadening even further.
“Inspired, I guess,” Jared nearly shrugged but suddenly didn’t want to dismiss the moment by making light of it.
“Oh, who inspired you?” Jensen’s smugness was oozing from his every pore.
“Fran,” Jared answered, driving all sweetness away. Jensen hit him on his upper arm, but Jared grabbed his hand before it withdrew too far. He brought it up to his lips. The fingers were calloused, with ingrained dirt, but they were long and elegant. Jared felt heat as he remembered what those fingers had done to him that previous night.
“I might want,” he kissed Jensen’s palm, “to keep on with my music.”
“Would you come home to here if you did?” Jensen asked, with only a small thread of concern.
“I was thinking of converting the outhouse into a studio and then I won’t ever have to leave, except for gigs and you could come with me. You could be my favourite groupie.”
“Not if you are going to be playing that god-awful stuff you have been playing…”
“Hey, that god-awful stuff is paying the bills for this place and all the wages - including yours.” He let his tongue run over Jensen’s thumb, tasting the garden on his lover’s hand. He pulled him down onto his lap.
“But no, I think Tris Galloway is dead and gone. Maybe, something different…”
“How about Jared Padalecki?”
“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Jared snaked his arms round Jensen’s waist.
“You can stop paying me if you want,” Jensen suddenly said breaking away from a promising kiss. “This will all be mine anyway when you marry me.”
Jared laughed a full body laugh full of his heart and soul.
“Is that a yes?” Jensen asked, trying to keep his balance.
Jared nodded. It was yes, of course, it was a yes.
The quickening evening breeze drove tendrils of rose laden scent through the bow window.
Home.
“It is not beauty that endears, it is love that makes us see beauty.” Gertrude Jekyll
Fran and Will were sat watching the television in the sitting room. The house felt empty without Jared and Jensen, and they huddled together on the sofa, ignoring the dark corners.
“I still don’t know why I couldn’t go?” Will complained.
“Exams,” Fran said, short and to the point. She had become sick of the endless arguments about the subject which had only stopped once Jensen had left. “Shhh…. There he is!”
Sure enough, Jared was emerging from a big black car, lights flashing, to heightened screams. He looked very handsome, something black and sheer clinging to his torso under the sharply cut suit. His chestnut hair looked burnished and his grin was miles wide. He waved at the crowds, who were screaming. He towered over the security guards, as they jostled around him. Fran could hear people calling out ‘Jared! Jared!” and smiled in satisfaction.
Will guffawed loudly. “Uncle Jensen looks like a complete dork!”
Behind Jared, Jensen emerged from the same car. He didn’t look anything like a dork, of course, he looked stunning if a little stunned. More flashes of light. Jared was back beside him in an instant, hand on Jensen’s back, looking down at him and smiling that small but very fond smile he seemed to reserve for Jensen alone.
Jensen was wearing an open-necked white shirt with a matching black suit. Fran burst with maternal pride. Her boys were the most beautiful men in the world. And she wasn’t biased, judging by the screams she could hear in the background. She watched in satisfaction as they made their way up the red carpet.
A wee small dram of Jensen’s favourite Bladnoch for her and a beer for Will later, and they were both waiting breathlessly as award after award was given out. They both cried out every time the cameras lingered on Jared and Jensen.
“And the British Music Award for Best Album goes to Jared Padalecki-Ackles for “The Heartbeat of the Trees”.
Will shrieked with delight, dancing around the room with joy. “He did it, he did it!”
“Shhh… listen…” Fran glared at him.
She watched as both Jared and Jensen stood, as Jared bent down to kiss his husband, and then as Jared walked towards the stage.
“Ahhh, Granny, you’re crying!” Will exclaimed before sitting down to listen to Jared’s speech. And Fran realised that she was, but happy tears.
“I know that this album wasn’t what anyone expected. Thank you for forgiving me for the demise of Tris Galloway, and for giving this music a chance. It was inspired by a return to the place I grew up and where I found myself, and it is, therefore, the most truthful music I have ever written. I want to thank my beloved fans who have stuck with me and kept an open mind, and the record company who wanted anything but folksy acoustic songs but still found value in it enough to release it. But mostly I want to thank my family and community who, despite long years of absence, kept me in their hearts, and who helped me recover myself. But enough of that, this award doesn’t belong to me, anyway - it belongs to my muse, my inspiration and my heart. Jensen, I wrote this album for you. I hope you like it better than the previous ten.”
Fran laughed through her tears.
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