fic: Deadsville (J2 AU) 1/3
MASTER POST
ONE | TWO | THREE
NOTES & SOUNDTRACK
ART POST
PART ONE
Jared collapses to the side and presses his face into a cold spot on the pillowcase, fisting his hand in the fitted sheet just under the pillow.
“God, that was good,” he gasps.
“Jared,” says Jensen, voice soft in a way that terrifies Jared, just freezes his spinal fluid solid. He shoves Jared over a little more with three tentative fingertips to the spine of his shoulder blade.
Jared raises his head, propping himself up on an elbow to look at him.
“This has got to stop,” says Jensen, and then he rolls away, back to Jared, the pale bare line of him only just visible against the dark sheets and the shadowy room. Jared squints beyond him, at the window where the glow of the city keeps it from ever getting really dark even up here in the hills, and wishes that he’d left the lights on.
Jared turns over onto his back and counts to ten. Then twenty. “What?” he says finally.
“I can’t. I can’t do this anymore,” Jensen replies. Jared turns his head and stares at the back of Jensen’s neck, where the sweat-damp hair is curling up at the ends, thinking absently that it’s going to need cut soon. “I’m just tired, Jared,” Jensen continues, voice low and gravelly like he’s choking on something. Jared hopes he is choking.
“So go to sleep,” says Jared, squeezing his eyes closed.
“My wife is eight and a half months pregnant. I’m tired of checking the scores on my phone so I know who won when I have to lie, and I’m tired of wearing the same cologne you do so that she doesn’t smell you. And it all feels like I’m just breathing in nothing but water,” says Jensen. “I. I can’t do it anymore.”
Jared draws in a sharp breath, feels it like a defibrillator to the chest.
May has been unusually hot this year and the air-conditioning is up full-blast. It’s hard to hear exactly, but Jared thinks that soft snick-huff sound must be the hitch in Jensen’s breath, too. But even if it’s not, even if somebody in the bed is breathing normally, Jared can’t miss the tremor that starts in the breadth of Jensen’s shoulders and shimmies its way down his spine, twitching his arm against his flank and making his bad leg jerk. But the room is dark, and it’s late, and the pillow under Jared’s head smells too much like his wife’s shampoo, because he always sleeps on her side of the bed when she’s on the road with the team. He can’t focus at all.
But he knows what this is.
“Oh. Oh god,” he says. He clamps a hand over his eyes and grips so hard onto his temples that a hot ache ricochets through his head.
They lie there for several minutes, quiet and tense and careening apart at a dead tilt that Jared feels acutely but can’t track. It seems like Jensen is measuring his breaths out with great care, here at the edge, while it’s all Jared can do to keep breathing.
“Sleep here?” Jared whispers finally. He shivers as the sweat dries.
“Where is she tonight?” Jensen asks.
Jared thinks for a second, then feels bad that he has to stop and think. He looks at the bedside table and catches sight of one of her three hundred bobbleheads, this one a pitcher with a comically high leg kick, knee right up under his bobbling chin. There’s a breeze in the room. “Middle of the roadtrip. Getaway day. They’re playin’ Cleveland tomorrow,” he says, swallowing. “They won last night.”
Jensen doesn’t say anything, just punches his pillow hard enough to jiggle the whole bed. A lot more time passes, enough that Jared figures Jensen’s staying, but then Jensen reaches out and squeezes Jared’s arm, tight and sharp, just above the elbow joint. He looks calm, but his lips are thin and his eyes are dull. Then he pulls back and swings his legs over the side of the mattress. He pauses, feet flat on the ground and his head in his hands, takes a deep rattling breath with his spine looped over into a C. Jared just watches and tries not to make any sudden movements, and eventually Jensen gets up and limps around collecting his things. The only sounds are a rustle of a shirt, the clink of a belt buckle.
Jared flips over onto his stomach and faces away, watches the numbers on his clock so that he doesn’t have to watch Jensen leave. He hears Jensen’s footfalls pause, over by the doorway, and Jared can imagine him opening his mouth to say something and then close it when he can’t think of any words. But the three turns into a four turns into a five, and then the footsteps start up again, fading down the hallway.
The worst of it burns itself out in a couple of days. It helps that he has a few good surgeries to distract him-a perforated bowel is one of the highlights. Plus he can sit around in the dark at home, all by himself because his wife is with the team on the other side of the country and her kid is across the bay having Daddy time.
He has lunch with a group of other surgical residents and spends the whole time thinking about all the ways his life is going to be different and how he’s going to deal with that. He sketches out a list of numbers in ketchup, vinegary red lines on his plate, but stops when Chad calls him on it. Then he spots Jensen across the cafeteria looking exhausted and pale, stethoscope around his neck and scrubs rumpled, and Jared steals a French fry from Chad’s plate, smearing it through the list in case Jensen comes over and sees it. Jared refuses to be the one who isn’t dealing well.
“Look alive, motherfucker,” says Chad, then flings a fry at his head. Jared catches it before it hits the ground and drags it through his ketchup. Chad chatters on, mostly self-interested like usual. “Hey, d’your hot wife get me those autographs I asked for while she was in Atlanta?”
“I’ll ask,” says Jared. He watches Jensen pay for a bottle of orange juice, and he smiles tightly when he looks up. Jensen nods and taps his wrist, their longstanding method of arranging a meeting later. Jared nods back.
Hours later, they meet in a break room near Peds. The only other people there are a cluster of nurses in pink scrubs watching the TV over in the far corner. Some movie star, that Vincennes guy from that really terrible Aquaman movie a few years back, just got outed pretty spectacularly. It’s all anyone has talked about in weeks.
“So I’ve been thinking,” says Jensen. He tugs on the neck of his own scrub top, which is the most unflattering shade of magenta ever. Nobody looks good in that color, not even Jensen. “Cold turkey sucks. So I have this idea that maybe we get together-together once a year. Go on vacation somewhere just you and me.”
“Vacation?” Jared repeats.
Jensen nods. “We’ll tell the girls we’re going fishing or something, and then we’ll just spend the whole time in bed.” He takes a drink from his Thermos and shifts to lean his hip against the counter at a different angle. It’s the side he injured in a car accident back in undergrad, long before they knew each other. He walks with a bit of a limp, and Jared knows it still hurts him sometimes.
Jared makes a face. He can’t help it. “But what about when we come home without any fish?” he asks.
“Oh, fuck,” says Jensen, scratching the back of his neck with his free hand. He frowns for a second, staring blankly at the microwave, then he waves his hand dismissively. “Fine, you think of something.”
“What’s a good excuse two guys having an affair give their wives?” Jared asks, tone sharp and airy like steel wool. Jensen turns a few degrees away, watching the nurses as they start to trickle out of the room.
Jensen scowls. “Okay then,” he says. “Maybe a pilgrimage for the Cowboys-‘Skins game wherever it is this year-I think in DC, probably. God, I hope it’s not Dallas.” He pauses and looks at the ceiling, calculating, then he flashes a grin in Jared’s direction. “Yeah, no, I think it’s in DC. We could do that-could even actually go to the game.”
Jared smiles back. “You think we can take a break from lying in our own filth to go sit in the fucking cold to watch football?” he asks quietly. He doesn’t give a shit about football, not like Jensen does.
“Point,” Jensen says, eyes flashing dark. He turns away and tops off his thermos of coffee from the machine on the counter.
Jared feels his heart give a painful, wobbly throb, and he stands there by the microwave for a long time after Jensen says something about “getting back to the birth canals” and leaves. He wanders over to the TV and rubs his fingertips over his sternum and watches part of an old interview from when Aquaman first came out.
“Yeah, Aquaman’s kind of a joke in pop culture, which really sucks,” the actor says. He twists around in his chair and points at the huge poster behind him, where a very stylized image of himself in scaly green rubber pants is looking very determined and underwater. “But we’re trying to change that in this film. Aquaman can totally kick ass!”
Jared doesn’t get how it can possibly be surprising that this guy likes dick.
--
It was two years ago they were out celebrating Jared’s birthday, not too long after Jensen got back from his honeymoon, just the two of them having some beers at a bar near the hospital. This tiny dark-haired woman came stumbling up to them in a bar, more exotic than pretty, all dark eyes and lush lips and swimming in a green Zito jersey that was scuffed with dirt on the number on the front. The three of them stood there for a second, staring at each other quietly-Jensen’s mouth still open in the middle of a word-then she latched onto Jensen’s wrist and gave him a moony look. His jaws clicked shut.
“I just want to tell you something. You are the prettiest person in this place,” she told him very seriously. He glanced at Jared over the top of her head and Jared held his hands up. “No, seriously. I know pretty people, okay? And, like, you’re way prettier than I am, and that really has to stop. The guys being prettier than me thing. Givin’ me a complex just going to work. And you’re a dude-wait, you are a guy, right? I mean, sometimes you can’t tell. This has happened to me before. Like, I go up to somebody to compliment them for being the best looking guy in the room and it turns out to be a super androgynous-looking girl. And that’s really awkward. Kind of rude, too.”
“Uh, I’m sorry?” said Jensen, giving Jared a ‘help me, asshole’ look that Jared, who was too busy laughing so hard he was going to hurt himself, totally ignored.
“Nah, it’s cool,” the girl said, waving a hand dismissively. She leaned closer and squinted up at his face, and he raised an eyebrow at her. “It doesn’t look like you’re wearing makeup, but then again it’s not like the really manly bull-dykes are lining up for the mascara and lipstick combo, am I right? So I’m not sure. You kind of have stubble, though. But you could be hormone treating. So I don’t know. God, you’re pretty. I’m having a hard time looking away, like I’m a fly and you’re one of those blue zappy things.” She giggled drunkenly.
Jensen blinked stupidly at her. He took a deep breath and tried to think of something to say that might get her to go away. “Okay, look, uh… scary drunk girl-”
“Jen,” she said, cutting him off.
He stared at her for a second. “What?”
She looked equally baffled. “What?”
“I don’t even know you,” he said slowly. “You don’t get to call me Jen. Even this dickhole doesn’t get to call me Jen.” He waved his beer at Jared, who just kept laughing and wiping tears out of his eyes.
She shook her head. “Wait, your name is Jen, too? Holy shit! I’m so sorry-please don’t, like, hit me, okay?” She gave him a pleading, rather pathetic look, all big dark eyes sparkling in the green Heineken neon Jensen kept whacking his head on right behind him. She shook her head again, like she was trying to clear out some fog. “Wow, how does this keep happening to me? I need, like, Superman’s laser vision so I can see through people’s pants and make sure I’m not going up to anybody else with a vag and telling her how she’s the prettiest dude in the room. I promise not to even use it for nefarious purposes.”
“What? Oh, Jesus.” He thunked his head against the Heineken sign on purpose this time. “No! It’s not-this time you were totally right. I mean… okay. Fuck it. Yes, I am a guy.”
She narrowed her eyes and pointed at him. “But your name is-”
Jensen sighed. “No, my name is Jensen. Two syllables.”
“But that’s, like, somebody’s last name,” she said, still looking confused. Jared howled, pounding the wall behind him and hiccupping.
“And it’s my first name,” he said wearily, glaring at Jared over her head. “Trust me, it’s confusing when you’re sober, so I’m sure it’s pretty fuckin’ beyond you right now.” He got the feeling he was being a dick, especially with the overly sympathetic look he had on his face, but she just shrugged and motioned for him to continue. “Look, I-your name is Jen, right?”
“Genevieve,” she said, nodding. “So, like, Gen with a ‘g.’” She wiggles her finger in the air like she’s drawing her initial.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. His wedding ring pinched the webbing between his fingers. It was new and he wasn’t used to it yet. “Okay, Gen,” he said slowly. “My name is Jensen. I am a guy. Thank you for the compliment.” He hoped the now go away was implied.
She flashed him a bright grin. “I am so glad we got that cleared up,” she said happily. “I’m really glad you have a penis.”
“Me too,” Jensen agreed. Jared collapsed against the wall and gasped for breath, slapping his thigh so loud Jensen could hear it over the music.
“And your lips are amazing, by the way.”
Jensen blinked. “Uh, thank you?”
“Any time,” she said. Then she abruptly pivoted forty-five degrees and grinned up at Jared. “Okay, you. Tall guy. So. My boys over there just won, which I approve of like I approve of kittens and sunshine, and I am really drunk right now, and this might turn out to be another questionable life choice I’ll live to regret, but fuck it. You’re hot. You’re tall and gangly with funny hair and… God, I have a type, don’t I? Ask my son’s dad about how I have a type.” She frowned for a moment, eyes focused across the bar at a group over by the dartboard. Then her smile reignited and she shook her head. “So anyway, yeah. You wanna dance?”
Jared married her.
--
“We’re going to call her Lila Adele,” Jensen croaks. He led the way through the maze of parents in scrubs and babies in little glass boxes, coming to a stop next to one incubator in particular and gazing down through the shell. Jared watches and feels his heart lurch in his chest, a sharp up and down like a curveball.
The baby inside was big for the Neonatal unit, a full-term seven-plus pounds that looked absurd surrounded by premies that would fit in cereal bowls. Jared feels entirely too huge to be in the room, glancing around uncomfortably. He looks down at Baby Girl Ackles and thinks that at least her grayish color fits in with the rest of them.
“Yeah?” says Jared, resting his hand on the edge of the plastic. “Lila.”
“I think we’re already calling her Lila-dele,” says Jensen, voice very flat. “What’s that called, a portmanteau? Something French.”
“She’s gonna be okay, Jensen,” says Jared finally, moving his hand to Jensen’s shoulder.
“It’s just a staph infection,” says Jensen hollowly, nodding once. “It’s common. I know this.”
There were complications from the epidural and his wife’s labor stopped, and they had to deliver the baby via emergency C-section, which had horrified her. “I have a birth plan! This is not on it!” she had yelled at Misha, Jensen’s chief resident who had been on tap to deliver the baby, and the maternal-fetal surgeon, even as the anesthesiologist was getting to work.
Jared edges up closer and peers at the baby, on her belly with a tiny pink hat on her head, marveling like always that something so small and wrinkly will be a person someday, a full-grown woman with a job and a family and a life. Babies never really seem like people to him. Hell, he still has trouble thinking of his six-year-old stepson as a person and not just a dumb little kid that sleeps at his house sometimes.
“She’s gonna be fine. Perfect, even,” Jared babbles, rubbing his hand up and down Jensen’s upper arm. “You’ll see. She’s gonna bounce back so far it’ll be ridiculous.”
Jensen leans into the touch for a second, eyes going thin with pleasure, but he doesn’t respond. He just reaches one of his hands through the little hatch and brushes his finger down one tiny arm. Jared drops his own hand and watches as the baby wraps her tiny hand around the tip of Jensen’s finger, and he shakes his head. This isn’t something he has any business watching, a moment that isn’t his to share, and he takes a step away.
One of the other dads, orbiting another incubator, glances up and gives Jared a distracted almost-smile, taking in Jared’s scrubs and probably thinking, oh look a doctor, never seen one of those before. Jensen looks up, too. He’s got terrible bruises under his eyes and waxy skin, days of stubble shadowing badly hollowed-out cheeks.
“Hey,” he says. “Stay with me?”
So Jared stays.
--
The first time they met was three weeks into their first semester of med school. Jensen was out with some friends from Caltech who were up looking for jobs. He was three weeks in and already exhausted and overwhelmed and considering maybe research instead of medicine.
There wasn’t even any alcohol involved, just two designated drivers sitting awkwardly at neighboring tables while their groups of friends got shitfaced, and eventually it was just him and the stupidly tall kid at the tables while everybody else was dancing. They struck up a conversation about the music, which was bad, but the talk was good.
“I’m Jared,” the kid said finally.
“Yeah, I know,” said Jensen. He took a sip of his Coke and hid a smile.
Jared looked startled. “What?”
“Pharmacology,” said Jensen. “With Dr. Shapiro? You sit in the back and make shitty jokes about psychotropic drugs.”
“No shit?” Jared laughed, running a hand through his hair. “You do look kinda familiar, though. Wait, are you that asshole who sits up front, the one with the two last names and the fuckin’ questions that go on forever?”
Jensen rolled his eyes. “What do you mean, ‘go on forever’? That shit is important,” he said, then cringed at how defensive he sounded.
“Oh, relax, man. No harm meant.” Jared grinned and held out a hand. “So yeah. I’m Jared.”
“Jensen,” he replied, shaking on it.
He wasn’t particularly surprised when he woke up in Jared’s bed the next morning. Jared smiled and made Eggo waffles in the toaster, and they talked about nothing over orange juice. And after that, Jensen just borrowed some clothes that were too big, loose in the shoulders and long in the arms but all together awesome, and they walked to Shapiro’s class together.
--
More time passes. It’s almost June and the weather just gets thicker, a sticky fog that comes in off the bay and fills every bit of space. The hospital’s climate controls can barely handle it. It’s completely airless in the on-call rooms.
“So let me get this straight. We’re going to do this once a year?” says Jared. Jensen nods quickly, sitting down on the edge of the bunk and looking like he doesn’t quite trust his legs to keep holding him up.
“That’s what we decided,” says Jensen, sounding strangled. Not enough oxygen in the world for this, certainly not enough in the room.
“That’s gonna be enough, right?”
“It’s gotta be,” Jensen replies. Jared sinks down in front of him and kneels between his thighs. Jensen’s breath hitches and he jerks back so they aren’t touching, but Jared’s fits his hands over Jensen’s upper arms and doesn’t let go. “I have-Jared, two days ago I had a baby. I’m… Jared, I’m somebody’s dad right now, and you’re somebody’s husband and.” He breaks off when Jared just slides closer, pressing their chests together, and opens his mouth against his neck. Jensen threads his hand through the hair at the back of Jared’s neck, tips his own head to give him better access. Jared runs with it, shoving his face against the hot, salty-smelling line of neck and just inhaling. “Fuck,” Jensen breathes. “Jared, once a year has to be enough.”
Jared draws back and catches his gaze, giving him a serious look he hopes conveys everything he feels and can’t say. “Yeah,” he says. “Yes. Okay? Yes.”
Jensen uses the hand still on the back of Jared’s neck to pull him close, resting their foreheads together. Jared strokes his thumb over cheekbones and the curve of jaw and squeezes his eyes closed.
“It’s gotta be enough,” Jensen whispers.
--
They pulled away one time before, is the thing. It’s practically old hat, an old wound they can cut open like a guideline. Jared sat him down and dispassionately went through a list of reasons why they shouldn’t see each other for a while-just a break, you know-early in the summer after they finished the classroom part of medical school. They were looking down the long corridor of internship rotations and residencies, which would begin in September but at different hospitals, one of them on either side of the Bay.
“We’ll never survive it if we don’t do this now, dude,” Jared had said, not making eye contact. “It’s better this way.”
Jensen was crushed, but he just nodded, sure, sure, man. Of course. He couldn’t come up with the words to fight it, so he just went along with whatever Jared said. So they didn’t see each other for a long time, although they still talked on the phone a lot, but at least there was the chaos of suddenly being a doctor-a real, actual medicine-practicing doctor-to distract him from Jared’s throbbing phantom limb presence, and the calendar slipped by easily enough.
Then, in December Jensen’s sister came to town for some job interviews with some of the big PR firms in San Francisco, and she ended up spending the holiday with him since he couldn’t take enough time off from the hospital to fly home to Texas. She took one look at him and made it her mission in life to get him to stop moping and go out.
“Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you?” she asked one night, a week or so before Christmas, glaring through her slightly damp bangs. She was wearing a fluffy purple bathrobe that made her look like a Muppet, frowning at him from the mouth of the hallway where it emptied into the kitchen. He was sitting with his feet up on the kitchen table because goddamnit, it was his table and he could put his feet up if he wanted to, no matter how much she scowled at him.
“Two thirds of the Big Three just got traded in the last couple of days,” he said irritably, holding up the front page of the day’s sports section. “I, like the rest of my adoptive city, am in mourning.”
“Okay, I have no idea what that means,” said McKenzie, rolling her eyes. “Come on, I’m going to get ready. Keep me company, ‘kay?”
He brought the paper with him and followed her. “Jesus. How are you taking up my entire bathroom?” he said, boggling at the huge spread of girl stuff covering his bathroom counter.
She paused, flat iron halfway down a long chunk of hair. “That’s it,” she said. She unclamped the iron and set it down. She grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him into his bedroom. “You’re coming out with me tonight and we’re getting you laid. You don’t have to be at the hospital tonight, right?”
“I just got off a forty-eight, so I have a full twenty-four off,” he said. She let go of his arm and threw open his closet door. “I don’t see why I have to go out with you.”
She glared at him. “Jensen, I get that you’re going through a breakup or something. But seriously, buddy, no girl is worth this froth of crazy you’ve worked up. Now pick a shirt.” He froze and swallowed heavily, but she just turned back to the selection of clothes and shook her head. “Actually, no. You go shower and do something less gay with your hair, and I’ll pick your clothes.”
He patted his hair awkwardly, feeling hunted. “What’s wrong with my hair?”
“Jensen,” she said patiently.
“Fine,” he acquiesced.
Not quite an hour later, they were crawling into the ancient pickup truck that had been handed down from each Ackles sibling to the next, which his sister had somehow managed to keep in running condition. He was wearing a dark collared shirt and jeans, and the overprotective big brother in him wanted to cover up her amazing amount of bare skin with a sheet.
“Can it,” she said, tugging her skirt down a little once they were settled on the bench seat. “Drive.”
The club they ended up at was one of those stupid trendy places with the obnoxious theme and overpriced drinks, but some girl at the last place McKenzie interviewed got her a VIP pass so at least they didn’t have to wait in the line outside. Jensen, who preferred domestic on tap and a Niners game on the TV if he had to be in a bar when he was in San Francisco, was not tremendously impressed.
“This is actually the ancient spawning ground of douchebags, isn’t it?” he said to his sister, casting a disdainful look around. “They all somehow manage to converge here to mate. I am not going to walk out of here without either a popped collar, a spray-on tan, or the overwhelming urge to wear aviators indoors. Why would you bring me here?”
“Because you need to get laid, big brother,” she said, patting him on the chest. “Now you’re in a douchebag club, so go pretend you’re a douchebag and do as they do.”
“Go find somebody pretty to rub up against, is what you’re saying.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re a doctor, Jennybean, I assume you know how it works.”
Halfway through the night, Jensen found himself with a hot redhead in a white dress. Half the room was looking at her, but he wasn’t sure if it was because they recognized her or because she was wearing a skirt that was actually shorter than his sister’s. All he could think was, thank god for uncomplicated pretty girls.
“Are you thirsty?” she yelled in his face when the song changed. She was glistening with sweat, especially her collarbones and her fantastic cleavage.
“I could drink!” he said, nodding. She grabbed his arm and dragged him towards the VIP area, which appeared to be a raised platform above the main dance floor.
“Hey, Clif, this one’s with me, okay?” she said to the bouncer standing in front of the short flight of steps leading up to the VIP section. He was a gigantic man, bigger than Jared even, but he smiled affectionately at her and stepped aside. “You’re a peach,” she said, pecking him on the cheek as they passed.
“I’m a prince, sweetheart,” he said gruffly.
“I’m Danneel,” she said, turning to Jensen once they got to the top of the stairs. She looked at him expectantly and he shrugged. And that night he went home with her because she was new and she wanted him and she was there.
She worked for some big PR firm, one of the ones his sister had an interview with, and she was working on a campaign for the club. She was thoroughly unmoved by his being a doctor, which he welcomed like the scotch she kept ordering them. They really clicked, though. She told dirty jokes and could burp the alphabet, and later that night he discovered that she could actually wrap her legs around her neck.
“I hate you just a little,” McKenzie told him a few days later, after she walked in on him fucking Danneel against the bathroom counter.
“I could put in a good word for you,” he offered.
“Eat shit and die,” she replied. “You’re out of milk, by the way.”
She got the job at Danneel’s firm, though, so she couldn’t bitch too much. She even commented that Jensen seemed happier.
It was another two weeks before he spoke to Jared again, and it was just on the phone after a long day at work. Jared sounded sad and tired, but Jensen didn’t have a lot of sympathy.
“So, hey,” said Jensen after a lull in the conversation. He idly scratched his balls and crunched a handful of Cheez-Its. “I met somebody. A girl. And she’s amazing and I want you to meet her.”
Jared didn’t answer for a second and Jensen started to repeat himself, but Jared just stammered, “Yeah?” He even sounded happy, if bewildered.
Jared snorted. “She hot?”
“She’s so hot it hurts to look at her, man. Seriously, google her. Danneel Harris. D, A, two Ns, two Es, and an L,” said Jensen. He tossed some more Cheez-Its in his mouth. “She works in PR, I don’t know, apparently she’s kind of a big deal. So… she wants to meet you. I guess I talk about you a lot, or something,” he added, laughing nervously. Jared didn’t say anything. “She offered to cook for us-and I swear to god, her jambalaya would make Jesus cry it’s so good-and she asked me to invite you over so that she could ‘have a look at you.’”
He didn’t think she meant it like she wanted to have a look at the competition, but he’d noticed her eyes going shuttered when he would catch himself talking a little too much about Jared, so he wasn’t sure.
“Dude, okay,” said Jared, laughing shortly. “When you go and throw food the pot and make it all sweet-like you know I’m gonna be there. God. I’m so fuckin’ busy I don’t have time to eat some days, let alone sleep.” His voice was starting to fade.
“Remind me why you picked surgical again,” Jensen asked.
“Fuck you,” Jared retorted tonelessly. “Why d’you like OB so much?”
Jensen paused. He chewed thoughtfully and then he said, “Obviously the nonstop pussy.”
Jared’s answering laugh was finally full and hearty and real, and the subject changed to their patients. Jensen forgot about everything else for a few hours, and they fell asleep still on the phone.
--
They develop a habit where they go out to eat with the wives on most of the Sundays that Andy’s dad is in town and can take the kid. Sometimes they have brunch and sometimes it’s dinner, and oddly it’s never really awkward. They sit across from each other usually but sometimes not, because the girls have become friends and sometimes they want to giggle together.
Jared doesn’t like Danneel, not really. Sure, she’s perfectly nice and gorgeous and funny, and Jensen really does love her, and she cooks like a fucking rock star. She seems to like Jared just fine, in an abstract kind of way where she’s glad he makes Jensen happy, but Jared can’t stand to be anywhere near her. He doesn’t like her laugh, or how sometimes her smile flickers when she looks at Jensen, like she’s trying to figure out a really tough Sudoku puzzle but she’s one number short of really solving it.
That number, obviously, is Jared, and he isn’t exactly inclined to help her out.
He wants to ask her if Jensen says anything when they’re in bed, if Jensen’s ever told her about the scars. He doesn’t think he’s jealous, but he’s something, and it’s getting harder to be around her.
A few Sundays after Lila is born, the four of them are at some relentlessly trendy restaurant one of Danneel’s friends owns. Jared can see the harassed-new-parent look melting off of Jensen’s and Danneel’s faces as the meal progresses, both of them enjoying the first real reprieve they’ve had since they brought their daughter home. Jensen’s wearing a suit that’s tailored too well, and a tie Jared wants to use to do dirty things to him. He wants to shove him down on a flat surface and kiss away the exhaustion. He just wants to touch him and he can’t, so he holds his flatware too tightly and doesn’t pay any attention to what he orders except for a bottle of cabernet.
Halfway through the main course, one of Jensen’s patients goes into labor and he gets a panicked phone call from the father. “Okay, I need you to calm down, Mr. Welling. Yes, I know it’s scary. But I need you to breathe,” he’s saying, standing up and straightening his suit jacket and gathering his keys, making a face as he tries to soothe the poor man.
After he’s gone, looking harassed again and barely saying goodbye to anyone, Danneel leans over to Gen and says, “Oh, he was just like that dad when I went into labor, I promise you.” Jared watches, a little bemused and a lot drunk on wine by then, as both women erupt into laughter.
Gen grins. “Did I ever tell you about when Andy was born? His dad was in the middle of a roadtrip at the time, of course, way out east. Like, Baltimore or something. And god, I love him to death but the man’s mostly useless. I couldn’t get a hold of him until the next night, and I’m shrieking when I get him on the line finally, so mad I could reach through the phone and throttle him and then he was just like, ‘What? Sorry, the game was- and then we got really drunk afterwards.’ And then he pauses like it’s sinking in and he goes, ‘Wait, the baby? You had the baby? Oh my god.’ Like, over and over again until somebody came and made him get off the phone because he needed to get some sleep. Luckily, I found me a non-idiot this time around.” She puts her hand on Jared’s arm and squeezes. Jared looks at Jensen’s empty seat and thinks she’s probably wrong about that.
But Gen’s still talking, because talking is what she does best. She’s saying, “I’m sure this one’ll be properly Tasmanian devil nervous when our time comes. Right, honey?”
Jared doesn’t even have time to arrange his face into a surprised expression before she blusters on with an impression of Jared in a tizzy that isn’t flattering at all. Danneel laughs that horrible braying laugh. It makes Jared want to fling the butter at her face, but that’s not exactly socially acceptable so he punishes the remains of his pork chops instead and looks covetously at the steak abandoned on Jensen’s plate.
“I mean, it’s way in the future for us, but yeah,” Gen continues, laughing as well. “I just know Jared’s going to be going all to pieces, but luckily Jensen’ll be there, right?”
A bite of pork nearly goes down Jared’s trachea. “What?” he croaks, taking a sip of wine to keep from choking.
Gen rolls her eyes. “I mean, obviously Jensen’ll be delivering our babies, right?” she says, thumping him on the back. “It’s his job and he’s your best friend, and I just figured… but, yeah, okay, I guess it is kind of weird to be planning on your husband’s best friend having intimate knowledge of your stretched-out vag, huh?”
Both women laugh again. Jared looks down at his dinner and tries not to feel sick. Either he doesn’t very hard or that is some talented sick. He drops his silverware and chokes down water.
--
They slipped, of course, slid back into each other like always, and eventually it just got to be habit. One time, the day Jensen delivered his first baby completely on his own, Jensen drove straight to the house Jared was sharing with a couple other surgicals from his hospital, collapsed into Jared’s bed, and bitched about it for an hour, the Red Sox breaking their curse in the background. It was the first time they had seen or spoken to each other in three weeks.
Jared laid there next to him for a few moments, feeling strangely awkward with Jensen’s face in his armpit, and then he curled his arm around him. Jensen adjusted in turn and snuffled contentedly, cheek resting finally on Jared’s chest.
“Okay, that was the worst experience of my life,” he groaned. “Remember how I hated biochem? Fifty times worse.”
“Bullshit,” said Jared, laughing and jostling him a little. “You’re gonna go back and do it again tomorrow and you know it.”
“Damn fuckin’ straight,” Jensen snapped, shifting back on his elbow to give Jared a seriously? glare. “God, I thought I was going to fuck it all up, kill them both maybe. And Misha-my chief resident, crazy son of a bitch-he’s standing behind me, right there and practically laughing his ass off and not being helpful at all. Motherfucker.”
“I’ll beat his ass next time I see him,” Jared promised. “How’s that sound.”
“Fuck you,” Jensen replied sulkily, settling back down and sliding his icy hands up under Jared’s shirt. Jared squawked, grabbing his wrist with one hand.
“How ‘bout I fuck you instead?” he said. He skated the fingertips of his other hand up the cut of Jensen’s spine, right down to the elastic of his shorts.
Jensen sighed and arched into the touch. “Later, maybe,” he said, settling down against Jared. “I think I musta forgot to take my meds this morning or something. Now that I’m down I’m way too sore to do anything but lay here and be.”
Jared didn’t know all the details, but he had pieced together what he could from Jensen’s standing painkiller prescriptions and the nasty tangle of scars spiderwebbing over his right side, the epicenter on his right hip and radiating up to his last rib and halfway down his thigh. The most information Jared had been able to get out of him was that he had spent three hours pinned under a Honda Civic and that he’d gone through four surgeries to rebuild his crushed pelvis, and Jared learned that the second day he knew him.
“It’s been years, man,” Jensen had said, waving a dismissive hand. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Dude,” Jared had protested, “it was bad enough that you’re still not completely better how many years later.”
“Just let it go, okay?” Jensen had warned, then distracted him with his mouth.
Jared didn’t forget, though. He wasn’t sure what to think about it. Maybe Jensen had been drunk and he’d killed someone, nearly killing himself in the process. Maybe someone he loved died in the crash, or maybe he’d sustained a head injury and didn’t actually remember anything. It was just another one of those things that they both thought about constantly and never discussed.
Their relationship had always been a silent one. Sometimes Jared wondered what it might be like if it weren’t, but he was too busy to dwell on the subjunctive.
Jensen’s breathing had evened out, but Jared didn’t think he was quite asleep yet. His shoulders were still tense, the leg kicked over Jared’s twitching a little. Jared ran his hand down his side and thought about how the ruined skin on the other side of the fabric would feel.
“Okay then,” he said, closing his own eyes and letting himself sink back down into the mattress. He groped around for the remote and turned off the TV. The game was a wash anyway. “Just lay here. That’s what we’ll do.”
--
In mid-July, Jensen invites Jared out to some charity thing Danneel’s firm is throwing at some club in downtown San Francisco, an extra ticket to burn because Danneel herself is in New York for the weekend. When they get there it turns out to be the same club where he and Danneel met, which he tells Jared as they park the car.
“Awkward,” Jared comments, looking up at the building, a converted warehouse full of hip loft apartments and expensive boutiques. The club itself is still ugly inside, still packed with beautiful empty-eyed people.
They get drinks at the bar and find a table nearby, tucked kind of into a corner and away from the crush. Nearby, a drug deal is going down between a pretty blonde with too much makeup and a skinny boy who looks like he should be getting home soon if he’s going to make it to class in the morning. The guest list is a who’s who of the Bay Area, a few minor celebrities up for the event, politicians and athletes mingling, plus the attractive filler that managed to score tickets. A thin, blondish man with a hooked nose passes by their table and recognizes Jared, stops and greets him, “Oh, hey! Genevieve’s husband, right? What’s up? How’s he little man?” Jensen can place him as a player but isn’t quite sure who, out of uniform and without a hat. He squints, tries to imagine the man with a green brim instead of a forehead but it’s a no-go. He wonders for a second why he’s not on a field somewhere, but it’s the All-Star Break, isn’t it?
“I’m gonna get another round,” says Jared, standing and looking ill at ease, shoulders up around his ears and looking around like everybody’s watching him. Jensen leans back in his chair and thinks that Jared deserves to feel hunted, this isn’t Jensen’s fault.
He rests his head back against the wall and watches. People who look vaguely familiar to him pass by, girls in too-short skirts and men in too-expensive pants, but he’s not interested. He’s not even sure why this seemed like a good idea, especially when Jared turns away from the bar and looks back at him, eyes dark with something Jensen wants so bad he feels like he’ll die from wanting, but then the bartender steals Jared’s attention back.
Jensen closes his eyes, feeling like he’s been kicked in the chest. He’s not going to survive this, he thinks hysterically. No way. These wounds were already mortal when he broke it off in May, and that football game in DC can’t come fast enough. He presses two knuckles into the groove between his eyebrows and exhales slowly through his nose.
He’s willing to concede the obvious. This was such a bad idea.
--
Genevieve worked in the Oakland Athletics front office, which was pretty cool but not even the third coolest thing about her. Jared wasn’t entirely sure what she did, exactly, but she talked about the players a lot in oddly personal terms, and her anecdotes all rang like she was at the team’s beck and call (the dinner date in July of ’08 that she had to leave early to go talk her drunk closer down off a roof, for example, or virtually any time Barry Zito called).
She spent most of dinner their first date talking about the upcoming trade deadline, the odds of which teams would be buyers and which would be sellers and which big names were on the block, until she noticed Jared’s eyes glazing over and changed the subject to something neutral.
Later, while they were waiting in line to see Aquaman, she got a phone call from her boss that really set her off. As soon as she hung up she launched into a rant that Jared didn’t follow at all, about the organization’s tendency toward using players up and then shipping them out for new shinies, don’t you dare move Zito now, please god let this be our year please.
After she finished, panting a little, he grinned at her. “Are you even real?” he asked, amazed and thoroughly charmed.
She glanced down and grinned back. “Totally real,” she said.
He choked on his tongue. “What?”
“What?You’re a surgeon, right? I’m just pointing out how I’m not surgically enhanced, even if they aren’t all that spectacular. Well, I mean okay, yeah I have a kid, but... Wait, is that not how surgeon training works? I totally failed biology, so all I know about doctoring is what I see on TV. And not even the serious shows like ER. And not even House, although I wouldn’t turn Dr. Chase away if he showed up on my doorstep with a bouquet of weeds and a hopeful look, you know? That accent kills me. And you kind of have Dr. Chase hair, too, only dark, which I like. I don’t know about you, but I think blond pubic hair is just weird. Anyway, yeah. So I watch shit like Grey’s Anatomy and Nip/Tuck, and I’m pretty sure they’ve given me unrealistic images of doctors. What do you think?”
“Maybe,” he said, blinking in surprise to find they were at the front of the line. He smiled at the kid in the ticket booth and slid his credit card in the well at the bottom of the glass. “Two for Aquaman.”
Genevieve just kept talking.
“That’s what I thought! I mean, basically the image they give is that you spend your med school years doing nothing but studying and boning indiscriminately. Like the minor leagues or something.” She pauses, smirking fiercely, and gives him a thoughtful look. “I bet you have all kinds of raunchy stories about blowing off steam after, like, gross anatomy lab or finals, don’t you?”
He did, of course, but since most of them involved Jensen, he kept mum.
“Sure,” he said. “Cadavers really get me hot, you know? Dead girls don’t say no.”
She pumped her fist in the air. “I knew it!”
“Popcorn?”
“Nah. Reminds me of work. Let’s get Raisinets.” She scratched her nose and led the way across the lobby to get in the concessions line. “Got, I should’ve gotten a tutor in bio and gone to med school instead, huh? I have not had nearly enough sex in my life. My business degree did not serve me well in that respect.” She sighed dramatically and glanced around. “And trust me, I am not a virgin by, like, any stretch of the imagination… Okay, that’s not true. All that and I’ve never done anal. I know, weird. It just doesn’t sound like a fun time to me. For a girl, I mean. I get why you menfolk are into it, believe me. Not that you are. Unless you are. Right. So. Yeah. I get why buttsex is fun for dudes. I’ve even gotten the explanation, how you have that happy little gland up there and all. But girls? Not so much. Plus, we have that other, conveniently self-lubricating hole that’s, like, right next door, and…” she trailed off, noticing that the concessions girl and Jared were both staring at her with their mouths open. “Oh, wow, this is so not a first date-appropriate topic, is it? I’m really, really sorry. I don’t get to talk to normal people much and I bet it shows, huh?”
“Nah,” he said, smiling and thanking the concessions girl, “usually it’s me who talks too much. Ask Jensen sometime.”
She gives him a slightly too-close look that makes him laugh uncomfortably. “D’you talk about gay sex with him the first time you two hung out?”
“Yes, actually,” said Jared, holding open the theater door for her and avoiding eye contact. “It comes up a lot, apparently.”
“Doctors,” she said, rolling her eyes.
continued...
ONE | TWO | THREE
NOTES & SOUNDTRACK
ART POST
PART ONE
Jared collapses to the side and presses his face into a cold spot on the pillowcase, fisting his hand in the fitted sheet just under the pillow.
“God, that was good,” he gasps.
“Jared,” says Jensen, voice soft in a way that terrifies Jared, just freezes his spinal fluid solid. He shoves Jared over a little more with three tentative fingertips to the spine of his shoulder blade.
Jared raises his head, propping himself up on an elbow to look at him.
“This has got to stop,” says Jensen, and then he rolls away, back to Jared, the pale bare line of him only just visible against the dark sheets and the shadowy room. Jared squints beyond him, at the window where the glow of the city keeps it from ever getting really dark even up here in the hills, and wishes that he’d left the lights on.
Jared turns over onto his back and counts to ten. Then twenty. “What?” he says finally.
“I can’t. I can’t do this anymore,” Jensen replies. Jared turns his head and stares at the back of Jensen’s neck, where the sweat-damp hair is curling up at the ends, thinking absently that it’s going to need cut soon. “I’m just tired, Jared,” Jensen continues, voice low and gravelly like he’s choking on something. Jared hopes he is choking.
“So go to sleep,” says Jared, squeezing his eyes closed.
“My wife is eight and a half months pregnant. I’m tired of checking the scores on my phone so I know who won when I have to lie, and I’m tired of wearing the same cologne you do so that she doesn’t smell you. And it all feels like I’m just breathing in nothing but water,” says Jensen. “I. I can’t do it anymore.”
Jared draws in a sharp breath, feels it like a defibrillator to the chest.
May has been unusually hot this year and the air-conditioning is up full-blast. It’s hard to hear exactly, but Jared thinks that soft snick-huff sound must be the hitch in Jensen’s breath, too. But even if it’s not, even if somebody in the bed is breathing normally, Jared can’t miss the tremor that starts in the breadth of Jensen’s shoulders and shimmies its way down his spine, twitching his arm against his flank and making his bad leg jerk. But the room is dark, and it’s late, and the pillow under Jared’s head smells too much like his wife’s shampoo, because he always sleeps on her side of the bed when she’s on the road with the team. He can’t focus at all.
But he knows what this is.
“Oh. Oh god,” he says. He clamps a hand over his eyes and grips so hard onto his temples that a hot ache ricochets through his head.
They lie there for several minutes, quiet and tense and careening apart at a dead tilt that Jared feels acutely but can’t track. It seems like Jensen is measuring his breaths out with great care, here at the edge, while it’s all Jared can do to keep breathing.
“Sleep here?” Jared whispers finally. He shivers as the sweat dries.
“Where is she tonight?” Jensen asks.
Jared thinks for a second, then feels bad that he has to stop and think. He looks at the bedside table and catches sight of one of her three hundred bobbleheads, this one a pitcher with a comically high leg kick, knee right up under his bobbling chin. There’s a breeze in the room. “Middle of the roadtrip. Getaway day. They’re playin’ Cleveland tomorrow,” he says, swallowing. “They won last night.”
Jensen doesn’t say anything, just punches his pillow hard enough to jiggle the whole bed. A lot more time passes, enough that Jared figures Jensen’s staying, but then Jensen reaches out and squeezes Jared’s arm, tight and sharp, just above the elbow joint. He looks calm, but his lips are thin and his eyes are dull. Then he pulls back and swings his legs over the side of the mattress. He pauses, feet flat on the ground and his head in his hands, takes a deep rattling breath with his spine looped over into a C. Jared just watches and tries not to make any sudden movements, and eventually Jensen gets up and limps around collecting his things. The only sounds are a rustle of a shirt, the clink of a belt buckle.
Jared flips over onto his stomach and faces away, watches the numbers on his clock so that he doesn’t have to watch Jensen leave. He hears Jensen’s footfalls pause, over by the doorway, and Jared can imagine him opening his mouth to say something and then close it when he can’t think of any words. But the three turns into a four turns into a five, and then the footsteps start up again, fading down the hallway.
The worst of it burns itself out in a couple of days. It helps that he has a few good surgeries to distract him-a perforated bowel is one of the highlights. Plus he can sit around in the dark at home, all by himself because his wife is with the team on the other side of the country and her kid is across the bay having Daddy time.
He has lunch with a group of other surgical residents and spends the whole time thinking about all the ways his life is going to be different and how he’s going to deal with that. He sketches out a list of numbers in ketchup, vinegary red lines on his plate, but stops when Chad calls him on it. Then he spots Jensen across the cafeteria looking exhausted and pale, stethoscope around his neck and scrubs rumpled, and Jared steals a French fry from Chad’s plate, smearing it through the list in case Jensen comes over and sees it. Jared refuses to be the one who isn’t dealing well.
“Look alive, motherfucker,” says Chad, then flings a fry at his head. Jared catches it before it hits the ground and drags it through his ketchup. Chad chatters on, mostly self-interested like usual. “Hey, d’your hot wife get me those autographs I asked for while she was in Atlanta?”
“I’ll ask,” says Jared. He watches Jensen pay for a bottle of orange juice, and he smiles tightly when he looks up. Jensen nods and taps his wrist, their longstanding method of arranging a meeting later. Jared nods back.
Hours later, they meet in a break room near Peds. The only other people there are a cluster of nurses in pink scrubs watching the TV over in the far corner. Some movie star, that Vincennes guy from that really terrible Aquaman movie a few years back, just got outed pretty spectacularly. It’s all anyone has talked about in weeks.
“So I’ve been thinking,” says Jensen. He tugs on the neck of his own scrub top, which is the most unflattering shade of magenta ever. Nobody looks good in that color, not even Jensen. “Cold turkey sucks. So I have this idea that maybe we get together-together once a year. Go on vacation somewhere just you and me.”
“Vacation?” Jared repeats.
Jensen nods. “We’ll tell the girls we’re going fishing or something, and then we’ll just spend the whole time in bed.” He takes a drink from his Thermos and shifts to lean his hip against the counter at a different angle. It’s the side he injured in a car accident back in undergrad, long before they knew each other. He walks with a bit of a limp, and Jared knows it still hurts him sometimes.
Jared makes a face. He can’t help it. “But what about when we come home without any fish?” he asks.
“Oh, fuck,” says Jensen, scratching the back of his neck with his free hand. He frowns for a second, staring blankly at the microwave, then he waves his hand dismissively. “Fine, you think of something.”
“What’s a good excuse two guys having an affair give their wives?” Jared asks, tone sharp and airy like steel wool. Jensen turns a few degrees away, watching the nurses as they start to trickle out of the room.
Jensen scowls. “Okay then,” he says. “Maybe a pilgrimage for the Cowboys-‘Skins game wherever it is this year-I think in DC, probably. God, I hope it’s not Dallas.” He pauses and looks at the ceiling, calculating, then he flashes a grin in Jared’s direction. “Yeah, no, I think it’s in DC. We could do that-could even actually go to the game.”
Jared smiles back. “You think we can take a break from lying in our own filth to go sit in the fucking cold to watch football?” he asks quietly. He doesn’t give a shit about football, not like Jensen does.
“Point,” Jensen says, eyes flashing dark. He turns away and tops off his thermos of coffee from the machine on the counter.
Jared feels his heart give a painful, wobbly throb, and he stands there by the microwave for a long time after Jensen says something about “getting back to the birth canals” and leaves. He wanders over to the TV and rubs his fingertips over his sternum and watches part of an old interview from when Aquaman first came out.
“Yeah, Aquaman’s kind of a joke in pop culture, which really sucks,” the actor says. He twists around in his chair and points at the huge poster behind him, where a very stylized image of himself in scaly green rubber pants is looking very determined and underwater. “But we’re trying to change that in this film. Aquaman can totally kick ass!”
Jared doesn’t get how it can possibly be surprising that this guy likes dick.
--
It was two years ago they were out celebrating Jared’s birthday, not too long after Jensen got back from his honeymoon, just the two of them having some beers at a bar near the hospital. This tiny dark-haired woman came stumbling up to them in a bar, more exotic than pretty, all dark eyes and lush lips and swimming in a green Zito jersey that was scuffed with dirt on the number on the front. The three of them stood there for a second, staring at each other quietly-Jensen’s mouth still open in the middle of a word-then she latched onto Jensen’s wrist and gave him a moony look. His jaws clicked shut.
“I just want to tell you something. You are the prettiest person in this place,” she told him very seriously. He glanced at Jared over the top of her head and Jared held his hands up. “No, seriously. I know pretty people, okay? And, like, you’re way prettier than I am, and that really has to stop. The guys being prettier than me thing. Givin’ me a complex just going to work. And you’re a dude-wait, you are a guy, right? I mean, sometimes you can’t tell. This has happened to me before. Like, I go up to somebody to compliment them for being the best looking guy in the room and it turns out to be a super androgynous-looking girl. And that’s really awkward. Kind of rude, too.”
“Uh, I’m sorry?” said Jensen, giving Jared a ‘help me, asshole’ look that Jared, who was too busy laughing so hard he was going to hurt himself, totally ignored.
“Nah, it’s cool,” the girl said, waving a hand dismissively. She leaned closer and squinted up at his face, and he raised an eyebrow at her. “It doesn’t look like you’re wearing makeup, but then again it’s not like the really manly bull-dykes are lining up for the mascara and lipstick combo, am I right? So I’m not sure. You kind of have stubble, though. But you could be hormone treating. So I don’t know. God, you’re pretty. I’m having a hard time looking away, like I’m a fly and you’re one of those blue zappy things.” She giggled drunkenly.
Jensen blinked stupidly at her. He took a deep breath and tried to think of something to say that might get her to go away. “Okay, look, uh… scary drunk girl-”
“Jen,” she said, cutting him off.
He stared at her for a second. “What?”
She looked equally baffled. “What?”
“I don’t even know you,” he said slowly. “You don’t get to call me Jen. Even this dickhole doesn’t get to call me Jen.” He waved his beer at Jared, who just kept laughing and wiping tears out of his eyes.
She shook her head. “Wait, your name is Jen, too? Holy shit! I’m so sorry-please don’t, like, hit me, okay?” She gave him a pleading, rather pathetic look, all big dark eyes sparkling in the green Heineken neon Jensen kept whacking his head on right behind him. She shook her head again, like she was trying to clear out some fog. “Wow, how does this keep happening to me? I need, like, Superman’s laser vision so I can see through people’s pants and make sure I’m not going up to anybody else with a vag and telling her how she’s the prettiest dude in the room. I promise not to even use it for nefarious purposes.”
“What? Oh, Jesus.” He thunked his head against the Heineken sign on purpose this time. “No! It’s not-this time you were totally right. I mean… okay. Fuck it. Yes, I am a guy.”
She narrowed her eyes and pointed at him. “But your name is-”
Jensen sighed. “No, my name is Jensen. Two syllables.”
“But that’s, like, somebody’s last name,” she said, still looking confused. Jared howled, pounding the wall behind him and hiccupping.
“And it’s my first name,” he said wearily, glaring at Jared over her head. “Trust me, it’s confusing when you’re sober, so I’m sure it’s pretty fuckin’ beyond you right now.” He got the feeling he was being a dick, especially with the overly sympathetic look he had on his face, but she just shrugged and motioned for him to continue. “Look, I-your name is Jen, right?”
“Genevieve,” she said, nodding. “So, like, Gen with a ‘g.’” She wiggles her finger in the air like she’s drawing her initial.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. His wedding ring pinched the webbing between his fingers. It was new and he wasn’t used to it yet. “Okay, Gen,” he said slowly. “My name is Jensen. I am a guy. Thank you for the compliment.” He hoped the now go away was implied.
She flashed him a bright grin. “I am so glad we got that cleared up,” she said happily. “I’m really glad you have a penis.”
“Me too,” Jensen agreed. Jared collapsed against the wall and gasped for breath, slapping his thigh so loud Jensen could hear it over the music.
“And your lips are amazing, by the way.”
Jensen blinked. “Uh, thank you?”
“Any time,” she said. Then she abruptly pivoted forty-five degrees and grinned up at Jared. “Okay, you. Tall guy. So. My boys over there just won, which I approve of like I approve of kittens and sunshine, and I am really drunk right now, and this might turn out to be another questionable life choice I’ll live to regret, but fuck it. You’re hot. You’re tall and gangly with funny hair and… God, I have a type, don’t I? Ask my son’s dad about how I have a type.” She frowned for a moment, eyes focused across the bar at a group over by the dartboard. Then her smile reignited and she shook her head. “So anyway, yeah. You wanna dance?”
Jared married her.
--
“We’re going to call her Lila Adele,” Jensen croaks. He led the way through the maze of parents in scrubs and babies in little glass boxes, coming to a stop next to one incubator in particular and gazing down through the shell. Jared watches and feels his heart lurch in his chest, a sharp up and down like a curveball.
The baby inside was big for the Neonatal unit, a full-term seven-plus pounds that looked absurd surrounded by premies that would fit in cereal bowls. Jared feels entirely too huge to be in the room, glancing around uncomfortably. He looks down at Baby Girl Ackles and thinks that at least her grayish color fits in with the rest of them.
“Yeah?” says Jared, resting his hand on the edge of the plastic. “Lila.”
“I think we’re already calling her Lila-dele,” says Jensen, voice very flat. “What’s that called, a portmanteau? Something French.”
“She’s gonna be okay, Jensen,” says Jared finally, moving his hand to Jensen’s shoulder.
“It’s just a staph infection,” says Jensen hollowly, nodding once. “It’s common. I know this.”
There were complications from the epidural and his wife’s labor stopped, and they had to deliver the baby via emergency C-section, which had horrified her. “I have a birth plan! This is not on it!” she had yelled at Misha, Jensen’s chief resident who had been on tap to deliver the baby, and the maternal-fetal surgeon, even as the anesthesiologist was getting to work.
Jared edges up closer and peers at the baby, on her belly with a tiny pink hat on her head, marveling like always that something so small and wrinkly will be a person someday, a full-grown woman with a job and a family and a life. Babies never really seem like people to him. Hell, he still has trouble thinking of his six-year-old stepson as a person and not just a dumb little kid that sleeps at his house sometimes.
“She’s gonna be fine. Perfect, even,” Jared babbles, rubbing his hand up and down Jensen’s upper arm. “You’ll see. She’s gonna bounce back so far it’ll be ridiculous.”
Jensen leans into the touch for a second, eyes going thin with pleasure, but he doesn’t respond. He just reaches one of his hands through the little hatch and brushes his finger down one tiny arm. Jared drops his own hand and watches as the baby wraps her tiny hand around the tip of Jensen’s finger, and he shakes his head. This isn’t something he has any business watching, a moment that isn’t his to share, and he takes a step away.
One of the other dads, orbiting another incubator, glances up and gives Jared a distracted almost-smile, taking in Jared’s scrubs and probably thinking, oh look a doctor, never seen one of those before. Jensen looks up, too. He’s got terrible bruises under his eyes and waxy skin, days of stubble shadowing badly hollowed-out cheeks.
“Hey,” he says. “Stay with me?”
So Jared stays.
--
The first time they met was three weeks into their first semester of med school. Jensen was out with some friends from Caltech who were up looking for jobs. He was three weeks in and already exhausted and overwhelmed and considering maybe research instead of medicine.
There wasn’t even any alcohol involved, just two designated drivers sitting awkwardly at neighboring tables while their groups of friends got shitfaced, and eventually it was just him and the stupidly tall kid at the tables while everybody else was dancing. They struck up a conversation about the music, which was bad, but the talk was good.
“I’m Jared,” the kid said finally.
“Yeah, I know,” said Jensen. He took a sip of his Coke and hid a smile.
Jared looked startled. “What?”
“Pharmacology,” said Jensen. “With Dr. Shapiro? You sit in the back and make shitty jokes about psychotropic drugs.”
“No shit?” Jared laughed, running a hand through his hair. “You do look kinda familiar, though. Wait, are you that asshole who sits up front, the one with the two last names and the fuckin’ questions that go on forever?”
Jensen rolled his eyes. “What do you mean, ‘go on forever’? That shit is important,” he said, then cringed at how defensive he sounded.
“Oh, relax, man. No harm meant.” Jared grinned and held out a hand. “So yeah. I’m Jared.”
“Jensen,” he replied, shaking on it.
He wasn’t particularly surprised when he woke up in Jared’s bed the next morning. Jared smiled and made Eggo waffles in the toaster, and they talked about nothing over orange juice. And after that, Jensen just borrowed some clothes that were too big, loose in the shoulders and long in the arms but all together awesome, and they walked to Shapiro’s class together.
--
More time passes. It’s almost June and the weather just gets thicker, a sticky fog that comes in off the bay and fills every bit of space. The hospital’s climate controls can barely handle it. It’s completely airless in the on-call rooms.
“So let me get this straight. We’re going to do this once a year?” says Jared. Jensen nods quickly, sitting down on the edge of the bunk and looking like he doesn’t quite trust his legs to keep holding him up.
“That’s what we decided,” says Jensen, sounding strangled. Not enough oxygen in the world for this, certainly not enough in the room.
“That’s gonna be enough, right?”
“It’s gotta be,” Jensen replies. Jared sinks down in front of him and kneels between his thighs. Jensen’s breath hitches and he jerks back so they aren’t touching, but Jared’s fits his hands over Jensen’s upper arms and doesn’t let go. “I have-Jared, two days ago I had a baby. I’m… Jared, I’m somebody’s dad right now, and you’re somebody’s husband and.” He breaks off when Jared just slides closer, pressing their chests together, and opens his mouth against his neck. Jensen threads his hand through the hair at the back of Jared’s neck, tips his own head to give him better access. Jared runs with it, shoving his face against the hot, salty-smelling line of neck and just inhaling. “Fuck,” Jensen breathes. “Jared, once a year has to be enough.”
Jared draws back and catches his gaze, giving him a serious look he hopes conveys everything he feels and can’t say. “Yeah,” he says. “Yes. Okay? Yes.”
Jensen uses the hand still on the back of Jared’s neck to pull him close, resting their foreheads together. Jared strokes his thumb over cheekbones and the curve of jaw and squeezes his eyes closed.
“It’s gotta be enough,” Jensen whispers.
--
They pulled away one time before, is the thing. It’s practically old hat, an old wound they can cut open like a guideline. Jared sat him down and dispassionately went through a list of reasons why they shouldn’t see each other for a while-just a break, you know-early in the summer after they finished the classroom part of medical school. They were looking down the long corridor of internship rotations and residencies, which would begin in September but at different hospitals, one of them on either side of the Bay.
“We’ll never survive it if we don’t do this now, dude,” Jared had said, not making eye contact. “It’s better this way.”
Jensen was crushed, but he just nodded, sure, sure, man. Of course. He couldn’t come up with the words to fight it, so he just went along with whatever Jared said. So they didn’t see each other for a long time, although they still talked on the phone a lot, but at least there was the chaos of suddenly being a doctor-a real, actual medicine-practicing doctor-to distract him from Jared’s throbbing phantom limb presence, and the calendar slipped by easily enough.
Then, in December Jensen’s sister came to town for some job interviews with some of the big PR firms in San Francisco, and she ended up spending the holiday with him since he couldn’t take enough time off from the hospital to fly home to Texas. She took one look at him and made it her mission in life to get him to stop moping and go out.
“Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you?” she asked one night, a week or so before Christmas, glaring through her slightly damp bangs. She was wearing a fluffy purple bathrobe that made her look like a Muppet, frowning at him from the mouth of the hallway where it emptied into the kitchen. He was sitting with his feet up on the kitchen table because goddamnit, it was his table and he could put his feet up if he wanted to, no matter how much she scowled at him.
“Two thirds of the Big Three just got traded in the last couple of days,” he said irritably, holding up the front page of the day’s sports section. “I, like the rest of my adoptive city, am in mourning.”
“Okay, I have no idea what that means,” said McKenzie, rolling her eyes. “Come on, I’m going to get ready. Keep me company, ‘kay?”
He brought the paper with him and followed her. “Jesus. How are you taking up my entire bathroom?” he said, boggling at the huge spread of girl stuff covering his bathroom counter.
She paused, flat iron halfway down a long chunk of hair. “That’s it,” she said. She unclamped the iron and set it down. She grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him into his bedroom. “You’re coming out with me tonight and we’re getting you laid. You don’t have to be at the hospital tonight, right?”
“I just got off a forty-eight, so I have a full twenty-four off,” he said. She let go of his arm and threw open his closet door. “I don’t see why I have to go out with you.”
She glared at him. “Jensen, I get that you’re going through a breakup or something. But seriously, buddy, no girl is worth this froth of crazy you’ve worked up. Now pick a shirt.” He froze and swallowed heavily, but she just turned back to the selection of clothes and shook her head. “Actually, no. You go shower and do something less gay with your hair, and I’ll pick your clothes.”
He patted his hair awkwardly, feeling hunted. “What’s wrong with my hair?”
“Jensen,” she said patiently.
“Fine,” he acquiesced.
Not quite an hour later, they were crawling into the ancient pickup truck that had been handed down from each Ackles sibling to the next, which his sister had somehow managed to keep in running condition. He was wearing a dark collared shirt and jeans, and the overprotective big brother in him wanted to cover up her amazing amount of bare skin with a sheet.
“Can it,” she said, tugging her skirt down a little once they were settled on the bench seat. “Drive.”
The club they ended up at was one of those stupid trendy places with the obnoxious theme and overpriced drinks, but some girl at the last place McKenzie interviewed got her a VIP pass so at least they didn’t have to wait in the line outside. Jensen, who preferred domestic on tap and a Niners game on the TV if he had to be in a bar when he was in San Francisco, was not tremendously impressed.
“This is actually the ancient spawning ground of douchebags, isn’t it?” he said to his sister, casting a disdainful look around. “They all somehow manage to converge here to mate. I am not going to walk out of here without either a popped collar, a spray-on tan, or the overwhelming urge to wear aviators indoors. Why would you bring me here?”
“Because you need to get laid, big brother,” she said, patting him on the chest. “Now you’re in a douchebag club, so go pretend you’re a douchebag and do as they do.”
“Go find somebody pretty to rub up against, is what you’re saying.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re a doctor, Jennybean, I assume you know how it works.”
Halfway through the night, Jensen found himself with a hot redhead in a white dress. Half the room was looking at her, but he wasn’t sure if it was because they recognized her or because she was wearing a skirt that was actually shorter than his sister’s. All he could think was, thank god for uncomplicated pretty girls.
“Are you thirsty?” she yelled in his face when the song changed. She was glistening with sweat, especially her collarbones and her fantastic cleavage.
“I could drink!” he said, nodding. She grabbed his arm and dragged him towards the VIP area, which appeared to be a raised platform above the main dance floor.
“Hey, Clif, this one’s with me, okay?” she said to the bouncer standing in front of the short flight of steps leading up to the VIP section. He was a gigantic man, bigger than Jared even, but he smiled affectionately at her and stepped aside. “You’re a peach,” she said, pecking him on the cheek as they passed.
“I’m a prince, sweetheart,” he said gruffly.
“I’m Danneel,” she said, turning to Jensen once they got to the top of the stairs. She looked at him expectantly and he shrugged. And that night he went home with her because she was new and she wanted him and she was there.
She worked for some big PR firm, one of the ones his sister had an interview with, and she was working on a campaign for the club. She was thoroughly unmoved by his being a doctor, which he welcomed like the scotch she kept ordering them. They really clicked, though. She told dirty jokes and could burp the alphabet, and later that night he discovered that she could actually wrap her legs around her neck.
“I hate you just a little,” McKenzie told him a few days later, after she walked in on him fucking Danneel against the bathroom counter.
“I could put in a good word for you,” he offered.
“Eat shit and die,” she replied. “You’re out of milk, by the way.”
She got the job at Danneel’s firm, though, so she couldn’t bitch too much. She even commented that Jensen seemed happier.
It was another two weeks before he spoke to Jared again, and it was just on the phone after a long day at work. Jared sounded sad and tired, but Jensen didn’t have a lot of sympathy.
“So, hey,” said Jensen after a lull in the conversation. He idly scratched his balls and crunched a handful of Cheez-Its. “I met somebody. A girl. And she’s amazing and I want you to meet her.”
Jared didn’t answer for a second and Jensen started to repeat himself, but Jared just stammered, “Yeah?” He even sounded happy, if bewildered.
Jared snorted. “She hot?”
“She’s so hot it hurts to look at her, man. Seriously, google her. Danneel Harris. D, A, two Ns, two Es, and an L,” said Jensen. He tossed some more Cheez-Its in his mouth. “She works in PR, I don’t know, apparently she’s kind of a big deal. So… she wants to meet you. I guess I talk about you a lot, or something,” he added, laughing nervously. Jared didn’t say anything. “She offered to cook for us-and I swear to god, her jambalaya would make Jesus cry it’s so good-and she asked me to invite you over so that she could ‘have a look at you.’”
He didn’t think she meant it like she wanted to have a look at the competition, but he’d noticed her eyes going shuttered when he would catch himself talking a little too much about Jared, so he wasn’t sure.
“Dude, okay,” said Jared, laughing shortly. “When you go and throw food the pot and make it all sweet-like you know I’m gonna be there. God. I’m so fuckin’ busy I don’t have time to eat some days, let alone sleep.” His voice was starting to fade.
“Remind me why you picked surgical again,” Jensen asked.
“Fuck you,” Jared retorted tonelessly. “Why d’you like OB so much?”
Jensen paused. He chewed thoughtfully and then he said, “Obviously the nonstop pussy.”
Jared’s answering laugh was finally full and hearty and real, and the subject changed to their patients. Jensen forgot about everything else for a few hours, and they fell asleep still on the phone.
--
They develop a habit where they go out to eat with the wives on most of the Sundays that Andy’s dad is in town and can take the kid. Sometimes they have brunch and sometimes it’s dinner, and oddly it’s never really awkward. They sit across from each other usually but sometimes not, because the girls have become friends and sometimes they want to giggle together.
Jared doesn’t like Danneel, not really. Sure, she’s perfectly nice and gorgeous and funny, and Jensen really does love her, and she cooks like a fucking rock star. She seems to like Jared just fine, in an abstract kind of way where she’s glad he makes Jensen happy, but Jared can’t stand to be anywhere near her. He doesn’t like her laugh, or how sometimes her smile flickers when she looks at Jensen, like she’s trying to figure out a really tough Sudoku puzzle but she’s one number short of really solving it.
That number, obviously, is Jared, and he isn’t exactly inclined to help her out.
He wants to ask her if Jensen says anything when they’re in bed, if Jensen’s ever told her about the scars. He doesn’t think he’s jealous, but he’s something, and it’s getting harder to be around her.
A few Sundays after Lila is born, the four of them are at some relentlessly trendy restaurant one of Danneel’s friends owns. Jared can see the harassed-new-parent look melting off of Jensen’s and Danneel’s faces as the meal progresses, both of them enjoying the first real reprieve they’ve had since they brought their daughter home. Jensen’s wearing a suit that’s tailored too well, and a tie Jared wants to use to do dirty things to him. He wants to shove him down on a flat surface and kiss away the exhaustion. He just wants to touch him and he can’t, so he holds his flatware too tightly and doesn’t pay any attention to what he orders except for a bottle of cabernet.
Halfway through the main course, one of Jensen’s patients goes into labor and he gets a panicked phone call from the father. “Okay, I need you to calm down, Mr. Welling. Yes, I know it’s scary. But I need you to breathe,” he’s saying, standing up and straightening his suit jacket and gathering his keys, making a face as he tries to soothe the poor man.
After he’s gone, looking harassed again and barely saying goodbye to anyone, Danneel leans over to Gen and says, “Oh, he was just like that dad when I went into labor, I promise you.” Jared watches, a little bemused and a lot drunk on wine by then, as both women erupt into laughter.
Gen grins. “Did I ever tell you about when Andy was born? His dad was in the middle of a roadtrip at the time, of course, way out east. Like, Baltimore or something. And god, I love him to death but the man’s mostly useless. I couldn’t get a hold of him until the next night, and I’m shrieking when I get him on the line finally, so mad I could reach through the phone and throttle him and then he was just like, ‘What? Sorry, the game was- and then we got really drunk afterwards.’ And then he pauses like it’s sinking in and he goes, ‘Wait, the baby? You had the baby? Oh my god.’ Like, over and over again until somebody came and made him get off the phone because he needed to get some sleep. Luckily, I found me a non-idiot this time around.” She puts her hand on Jared’s arm and squeezes. Jared looks at Jensen’s empty seat and thinks she’s probably wrong about that.
But Gen’s still talking, because talking is what she does best. She’s saying, “I’m sure this one’ll be properly Tasmanian devil nervous when our time comes. Right, honey?”
Jared doesn’t even have time to arrange his face into a surprised expression before she blusters on with an impression of Jared in a tizzy that isn’t flattering at all. Danneel laughs that horrible braying laugh. It makes Jared want to fling the butter at her face, but that’s not exactly socially acceptable so he punishes the remains of his pork chops instead and looks covetously at the steak abandoned on Jensen’s plate.
“I mean, it’s way in the future for us, but yeah,” Gen continues, laughing as well. “I just know Jared’s going to be going all to pieces, but luckily Jensen’ll be there, right?”
A bite of pork nearly goes down Jared’s trachea. “What?” he croaks, taking a sip of wine to keep from choking.
Gen rolls her eyes. “I mean, obviously Jensen’ll be delivering our babies, right?” she says, thumping him on the back. “It’s his job and he’s your best friend, and I just figured… but, yeah, okay, I guess it is kind of weird to be planning on your husband’s best friend having intimate knowledge of your stretched-out vag, huh?”
Both women laugh again. Jared looks down at his dinner and tries not to feel sick. Either he doesn’t very hard or that is some talented sick. He drops his silverware and chokes down water.
--
They slipped, of course, slid back into each other like always, and eventually it just got to be habit. One time, the day Jensen delivered his first baby completely on his own, Jensen drove straight to the house Jared was sharing with a couple other surgicals from his hospital, collapsed into Jared’s bed, and bitched about it for an hour, the Red Sox breaking their curse in the background. It was the first time they had seen or spoken to each other in three weeks.
Jared laid there next to him for a few moments, feeling strangely awkward with Jensen’s face in his armpit, and then he curled his arm around him. Jensen adjusted in turn and snuffled contentedly, cheek resting finally on Jared’s chest.
“Okay, that was the worst experience of my life,” he groaned. “Remember how I hated biochem? Fifty times worse.”
“Bullshit,” said Jared, laughing and jostling him a little. “You’re gonna go back and do it again tomorrow and you know it.”
“Damn fuckin’ straight,” Jensen snapped, shifting back on his elbow to give Jared a seriously? glare. “God, I thought I was going to fuck it all up, kill them both maybe. And Misha-my chief resident, crazy son of a bitch-he’s standing behind me, right there and practically laughing his ass off and not being helpful at all. Motherfucker.”
“I’ll beat his ass next time I see him,” Jared promised. “How’s that sound.”
“Fuck you,” Jensen replied sulkily, settling back down and sliding his icy hands up under Jared’s shirt. Jared squawked, grabbing his wrist with one hand.
“How ‘bout I fuck you instead?” he said. He skated the fingertips of his other hand up the cut of Jensen’s spine, right down to the elastic of his shorts.
Jensen sighed and arched into the touch. “Later, maybe,” he said, settling down against Jared. “I think I musta forgot to take my meds this morning or something. Now that I’m down I’m way too sore to do anything but lay here and be.”
Jared didn’t know all the details, but he had pieced together what he could from Jensen’s standing painkiller prescriptions and the nasty tangle of scars spiderwebbing over his right side, the epicenter on his right hip and radiating up to his last rib and halfway down his thigh. The most information Jared had been able to get out of him was that he had spent three hours pinned under a Honda Civic and that he’d gone through four surgeries to rebuild his crushed pelvis, and Jared learned that the second day he knew him.
“It’s been years, man,” Jensen had said, waving a dismissive hand. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Dude,” Jared had protested, “it was bad enough that you’re still not completely better how many years later.”
“Just let it go, okay?” Jensen had warned, then distracted him with his mouth.
Jared didn’t forget, though. He wasn’t sure what to think about it. Maybe Jensen had been drunk and he’d killed someone, nearly killing himself in the process. Maybe someone he loved died in the crash, or maybe he’d sustained a head injury and didn’t actually remember anything. It was just another one of those things that they both thought about constantly and never discussed.
Their relationship had always been a silent one. Sometimes Jared wondered what it might be like if it weren’t, but he was too busy to dwell on the subjunctive.
Jensen’s breathing had evened out, but Jared didn’t think he was quite asleep yet. His shoulders were still tense, the leg kicked over Jared’s twitching a little. Jared ran his hand down his side and thought about how the ruined skin on the other side of the fabric would feel.
“Okay then,” he said, closing his own eyes and letting himself sink back down into the mattress. He groped around for the remote and turned off the TV. The game was a wash anyway. “Just lay here. That’s what we’ll do.”
--
In mid-July, Jensen invites Jared out to some charity thing Danneel’s firm is throwing at some club in downtown San Francisco, an extra ticket to burn because Danneel herself is in New York for the weekend. When they get there it turns out to be the same club where he and Danneel met, which he tells Jared as they park the car.
“Awkward,” Jared comments, looking up at the building, a converted warehouse full of hip loft apartments and expensive boutiques. The club itself is still ugly inside, still packed with beautiful empty-eyed people.
They get drinks at the bar and find a table nearby, tucked kind of into a corner and away from the crush. Nearby, a drug deal is going down between a pretty blonde with too much makeup and a skinny boy who looks like he should be getting home soon if he’s going to make it to class in the morning. The guest list is a who’s who of the Bay Area, a few minor celebrities up for the event, politicians and athletes mingling, plus the attractive filler that managed to score tickets. A thin, blondish man with a hooked nose passes by their table and recognizes Jared, stops and greets him, “Oh, hey! Genevieve’s husband, right? What’s up? How’s he little man?” Jensen can place him as a player but isn’t quite sure who, out of uniform and without a hat. He squints, tries to imagine the man with a green brim instead of a forehead but it’s a no-go. He wonders for a second why he’s not on a field somewhere, but it’s the All-Star Break, isn’t it?
“I’m gonna get another round,” says Jared, standing and looking ill at ease, shoulders up around his ears and looking around like everybody’s watching him. Jensen leans back in his chair and thinks that Jared deserves to feel hunted, this isn’t Jensen’s fault.
He rests his head back against the wall and watches. People who look vaguely familiar to him pass by, girls in too-short skirts and men in too-expensive pants, but he’s not interested. He’s not even sure why this seemed like a good idea, especially when Jared turns away from the bar and looks back at him, eyes dark with something Jensen wants so bad he feels like he’ll die from wanting, but then the bartender steals Jared’s attention back.
Jensen closes his eyes, feeling like he’s been kicked in the chest. He’s not going to survive this, he thinks hysterically. No way. These wounds were already mortal when he broke it off in May, and that football game in DC can’t come fast enough. He presses two knuckles into the groove between his eyebrows and exhales slowly through his nose.
He’s willing to concede the obvious. This was such a bad idea.
--
Genevieve worked in the Oakland Athletics front office, which was pretty cool but not even the third coolest thing about her. Jared wasn’t entirely sure what she did, exactly, but she talked about the players a lot in oddly personal terms, and her anecdotes all rang like she was at the team’s beck and call (the dinner date in July of ’08 that she had to leave early to go talk her drunk closer down off a roof, for example, or virtually any time Barry Zito called).
She spent most of dinner their first date talking about the upcoming trade deadline, the odds of which teams would be buyers and which would be sellers and which big names were on the block, until she noticed Jared’s eyes glazing over and changed the subject to something neutral.
Later, while they were waiting in line to see Aquaman, she got a phone call from her boss that really set her off. As soon as she hung up she launched into a rant that Jared didn’t follow at all, about the organization’s tendency toward using players up and then shipping them out for new shinies, don’t you dare move Zito now, please god let this be our year please.
After she finished, panting a little, he grinned at her. “Are you even real?” he asked, amazed and thoroughly charmed.
She glanced down and grinned back. “Totally real,” she said.
He choked on his tongue. “What?”
“What?You’re a surgeon, right? I’m just pointing out how I’m not surgically enhanced, even if they aren’t all that spectacular. Well, I mean okay, yeah I have a kid, but... Wait, is that not how surgeon training works? I totally failed biology, so all I know about doctoring is what I see on TV. And not even the serious shows like ER. And not even House, although I wouldn’t turn Dr. Chase away if he showed up on my doorstep with a bouquet of weeds and a hopeful look, you know? That accent kills me. And you kind of have Dr. Chase hair, too, only dark, which I like. I don’t know about you, but I think blond pubic hair is just weird. Anyway, yeah. So I watch shit like Grey’s Anatomy and Nip/Tuck, and I’m pretty sure they’ve given me unrealistic images of doctors. What do you think?”
“Maybe,” he said, blinking in surprise to find they were at the front of the line. He smiled at the kid in the ticket booth and slid his credit card in the well at the bottom of the glass. “Two for Aquaman.”
Genevieve just kept talking.
“That’s what I thought! I mean, basically the image they give is that you spend your med school years doing nothing but studying and boning indiscriminately. Like the minor leagues or something.” She pauses, smirking fiercely, and gives him a thoughtful look. “I bet you have all kinds of raunchy stories about blowing off steam after, like, gross anatomy lab or finals, don’t you?”
He did, of course, but since most of them involved Jensen, he kept mum.
“Sure,” he said. “Cadavers really get me hot, you know? Dead girls don’t say no.”
She pumped her fist in the air. “I knew it!”
“Popcorn?”
“Nah. Reminds me of work. Let’s get Raisinets.” She scratched her nose and led the way across the lobby to get in the concessions line. “Got, I should’ve gotten a tutor in bio and gone to med school instead, huh? I have not had nearly enough sex in my life. My business degree did not serve me well in that respect.” She sighed dramatically and glanced around. “And trust me, I am not a virgin by, like, any stretch of the imagination… Okay, that’s not true. All that and I’ve never done anal. I know, weird. It just doesn’t sound like a fun time to me. For a girl, I mean. I get why you menfolk are into it, believe me. Not that you are. Unless you are. Right. So. Yeah. I get why buttsex is fun for dudes. I’ve even gotten the explanation, how you have that happy little gland up there and all. But girls? Not so much. Plus, we have that other, conveniently self-lubricating hole that’s, like, right next door, and…” she trailed off, noticing that the concessions girl and Jared were both staring at her with their mouths open. “Oh, wow, this is so not a first date-appropriate topic, is it? I’m really, really sorry. I don’t get to talk to normal people much and I bet it shows, huh?”
“Nah,” he said, smiling and thanking the concessions girl, “usually it’s me who talks too much. Ask Jensen sometime.”
She gives him a slightly too-close look that makes him laugh uncomfortably. “D’you talk about gay sex with him the first time you two hung out?”
“Yes, actually,” said Jared, holding open the theater door for her and avoiding eye contact. “It comes up a lot, apparently.”
“Doctors,” she said, rolling her eyes.
continued...