fic: Food Porn (5/7) R - J2 AU
ONE | TWO | THREE | FOUR | FIVE | SIX | EPILOGUE
MASTER POST
CHAPTER FIVE
The next morning comes early and bright. Jensen feels a little better and a lot worse, because now the impulse to throw up has nothing to do with needing an anti-emetic and everything to do with avoiding life.
He rolls out of bed and goes and stares at himself in the bathroom mirror for a long time. He pretty much looks like shit, but at least the packaging is indicative of the contents. His eyes are all red and sunken behind his glasses, his skin's wan and a little greasy, and his hair is flat on one side and sticking up on the other. He’s prickly with stubble and in the bathroom’s fluorescent light it makes his skin look dirty. There’s some teeth marks on the side of his neck and he claps his hand over them so he doesn’t have to see.
“Fuck this,” he says, tearing off his glasses, then his clothes, and stepping into the shower.
He washes perfunctorily, barely working up a lather with his soap with the scent he hates, barely waiting long enough under the spray to rinse out his two-in-one shampoo. He feels a little dizzy from barely eating, so he sits on the toilet lid, still dripping wet, with his head in his hands and thinks about possible menus for a rehearsal dinner coming up at Supernatural. They want to just do a tasting menu, but the bride wants seafood and the groom wants lamb for the central course. The only thing they agree on is Kristen’s grapefruit torte for dessert.
When he feels a little better he gets up with a grunt and shaves. He brushes his teeth and grins meanly at himself in the mirror after he spits. He takes some DayQuil and goes back into his room with a towel around his waist.
It does look like somebody picked up his room and shook it and then maybe dropped it down a few flights of stairs. The sheets on the bed are dirty and rumpled. He doesn’t remember the last time he changed them or even made the bed, and he has a sneaking suspicion that he’s never done either since he’s lived here. He feels bad that he made Ross sleep on them, because ew. There are clothes scattered on every available surface, sticking out of open drawers, spilling over the broken futon in the corner, and piled up on the floor. It smells horrible.
He puts his iPod on shuffle and sticks it in the iHome he never uses, and gets dressed. Then he starts cleaning.
By eleven it looks like a different place. He finds a big Rubbermaid laundry basket in the mudroom, buried under a pile of Jared’s clothes, so he dumps it out and fills it with his own dirty laundry. He organizes his shoes on the organizer in his closet, a relic from his marriage that is actually useful even if he never uses it. He fills three garbage bags with junk and drags them out to the back porch to be taken out to the curb that night. He changes his sheets, he vacuums, and he even organizes his DVDs (which he doesn’t think he’s ever done in his life).
When he goes out into the hallway he's struck by how the whole place smells like dog and Jared and food, and how oddly comforting all of that is. It’s quiet, too, just the normal sounds of a lazy dog scratching itself and jingling its tags and the hum of appliances powering up and down. He goes around the downstairs and collects his scattered shit. He finds an old A-Rod Rangers jersey in the dining room in a box with a bunch of old issues of Food & Wine and the DVD player that doesn't work.
Jared likes doing dishes. The drying rack next to the sink’s full of Jensen’s gnocchi dishes and some dry pans Jared must have used to make breakfast. The room smells like lingering bacon grease.
His phone rings back in his bedroom while he’s pouring himself a glass of orange juice, but he has a missed call from Sandy by the time he gets to it and she doesn’t pick up when he calls back. She doesn’t leave a message, either, so Jensen gets to sit on the edge of his bed and obsess over what she could possibly want.
His eye catches on the little blue business card sitting on his bedside table, the one for the bartender Danneel’s bakery. Sugar therapy sounds good, but he doesn’t want to have to look Kristen in the eye.
He just can’t take the quiet house anymore.
--
Frosting isn’t open yet when he gets there. It’s in a trendy, older part of town, nestled between a Verizon outlet and an aquatic pet shop. There’s a pricey hair salon on the other side of the Verizon, and a pizza place on the other side of that. There are three bookstores in a row across the street. Jensen pauses outside Verizon and he really considers stopping to bitch about how much his phone sucks, but it was free with his contract and he doesn’t actually want to buy a new one.
He rings the buzzer next to Frosting’s front door and waits. It’s already hot as fucking balls out. One of those pomegranate Frappuccinos at Starbucks sounds like a good idea right now.
“The sign say closed?” a woman yells from inside. “Go away!”
“I’m having an existential crisis!” he yells back.
“Well, in that case.” The door swings open to reveal a fortyish woman with a bun of brown hair, dressed all in black. “What are we talking here?” she asks, one hand on her hip. “An earth-shaking, apocalypto kinda crisis, or your everyday existential crisis?”
“I made out with my male roommate last night,” he says flatly.
She nods, eyebrows jumping up. “Ah. Gay crisis. Well, c’mon in. You need chocolate. I’m Samantha and I own the place.” She backs into the store and he follows, squinting in the dim interior. “Wait, are you the one Danny gave a card? Look at those lips of yours, of course you are. Hang on, let me go get her. Park it." She points at one of the chairs and goes behind the counter and through a door.
The store looks like the bizarre bastard child of a shrink’s office and a bakery, with a big fluffy couch and a few overstuffed armchairs to one side. Seriously, it’s like the liger of bakeries. The walls are painted light blue with stainless steel wainscoting, and the old pressed tin ceiling is beautifully restored. A long bakery case runs along the length of the room and up one side and little placard hanging from the ceiling over the shorter arm of the case says Chocolaterie in the same script font as the bakery name on the business card. A similar sign over the longer side says Patisserie.
Danneel’s face appears in the window in the door to the back room and she grins when she recognizes him. She blows through the door, wiping her hands on a huge white dishtowel with familiar blue stitching then slinging the towel over her shoulder. She’s dressed all in black as well. “Baby blue!” she says. “I knew you’d be coming around soon. What can we do for ya today?”
He waves a hand and hopes it conveys exactly his level of disarray.
“I’m gonna need some words here, sweets,” she says, not looking tremendously impressed. “If you want a diagnosis, anyway. Sam said something about doom and gloom. What’s your misery?”
He scowls at his hands, fiddles with the empty space on his left ring finger. “Do I have to pick just the one, or can this be more of a misery buffet?”
She smirks a little and gestures around. “Well, Frosting here is the misery cure buffet. Let’s have a look at you, come on.” She beckons him closer to step into the glare of the big Tiffany-style lamp sitting next to the antique register where the two arms of the case meet.
He does, feeling pretty awkward, but since that’s his default setting lately it doesn’t even feel weird. She narrows her eyes and scans his face, and scribbles some notes down on a little pad of paper shaped like a cupcake.
“Well, first off, you need a Kiss Me Deadly,” she says, looking up at him through her bangs and pointing to the baked goods side with her pen. “Solid dark chocolate core in a white chocolate ganache filling. Flourless bittersweet chocolate torte, glazed with dark chocolate ganache and accented with a little bit of red-tinted white chocolate to look like blood spatter.”
He groans a little at the description. He’s not proud.
“Everybody needs a Kiss Me Deadly, though, I think. It cures everything but diabetes and maybe mesothelioma-don’t mess with asbestos, by the way.” She clucks her tongue and shakes her head. “Anyway, you come sit and we’ll decide the rest of your course of treatment.”
“Did the other woman-Samantha?-did she tell you what I said when she let me in?” he asks, taking a seat on the couch. His ass doesn’t hurt nearly as bad now, which is nice. No broken tailbone after all.
Danneel arranges herself in the closest chair and crosses her legs at the ankle, very ladylike. “No,” she says. “But I think I can probably guess, based on how freaked out you are and the fact she said ‘needs chocolate.’” She gives him a wink. “Well, talk to me.”
So he does.
While he talks, Jensen squints around at the inventory on the shelves. Each tray has a little gilt card in front with the name of the sweet. There some kind of cake things studded with silver dragées called Fortunate Sons, and an orange-colored truffle on the chocolaterie side called The Great Pumpkin. He has to smile at some of the names.
“Got anything called a Mind Eraser?” he asks finally.
She gives him an amused look. “Yep. Also got a Love Bite, but it doesn’t look like you need another one of those.”
He sinks down in his seat. The older woman comes back out front, brushing her hands off on her black apron. There’s a white handprint of flour on her left hip. She stands by the register and looks at them expectantly. “Starting with a Kiss Me Deadly?” she asks.
“Yeah, Sam, thanks,” Danneel says, not looking up. “I’m thinking a Canned Fruit, and a white I’m So Sorry to go.”
“What’s that one?”
Danneel shoots him a sympathetic look. “Raspberry-filled white cake with a chai-flavored glaze. Garnished with candied ginger and mint leaves.”
Jensen can feel his face go completely white. He’s been in coffee shops with Sandy and Jared enough times to know that given the choice Jared will always choose chai tea over coffee.
He clears his throat. “I don’t know what I’d be apologizing for,” he says quietly. “I’m not the one who kissed me, said I didn’t mean it, and then ran.”
Sam comes around the counter with the Kiss Me Deadly on a square black plate. “Men suck,” she says, sitting next to him and handing him a black plastic fork. “Ask me about my ex-husbands.”
He stares at the gorgeous confection sitting on his plate. Kind of morbid, since it looks like it’s bleeding profusely, but it’s beautiful.
“We have a truffle that’s shaped like the human heart,” Danneel says conversationally. “It’s called a Myocardial Infarction.”
“It’s flavored with cayenne pepper,” Sam adds.
Jensen takes a bite of his cake and groans with pleasure. “I’ll take two.”
--
He gets home in a much better mood. He leaves Frosting about forty dollars poorer, but you can’t buy peace of mind anyway, and he’s got a paper bag full of therapy that’s better for his liver than a bottle of tequila.
Daneel's advice had been to talk to Jared, and failing that, offer him the I'm So Sorry. It sounded like a pretty good plan.
He can hear voices upstairs, echoing through the living room ceiling. He stands there, toeing off his shoes and kicking them under the console table tucked against the back of the couch, trying to determine who it is. Definitely Jared and probably Sandy, he thinks as he scratches both dogs behind their ears.
He considers yelling up a hello as he passes the stairwell on his way to the kitchen, but then he realizes that the sounds are less like conversation and more like sex. He blinks in surprise, then shakes his head and tries to keep from letting the room lurch around him. He’s really very tired of throwing up.
Jensen hurries into the kitchen, where he can’t hear them anymore. Very deliberately, he sets the bag of human treats on top of the fridge. He tosses Harley and Sadie each a Milkbone, hoping it’ll get them to stop looking at him all woundedly, and he heads back for the door. He shoves his feet into his work clogs, not wanting to bother with laces and kind of needing the comfort and support the trusty old clogs offer. He grabs his keys and heads out. He doesn’t exactly mean to slam the door but it kind of happens anyway.
It’s a short drive to the grocery store.
It’s been a while since he’s had a proper nervous breakdown cooking marathon, really, which surprises him when he thinks about it. He turns the music up and tries to focus on Johnny Cash’s problems so he can ignore his own. It’s easier to do that, easier to worry himself sick over garbanzo beans versus lentils, lamb chops over tilapia, basil or saffron.
He grabs a cart and slumps against the handlebar, and he wanders around the store grabbing this or that with what he’s sure must be a shell-shocked look on his face. He nearly runs over a small child in the produce section and gets a disapproving look from the child’s gaunt, over-processed housewife mother. He does not apologize, and he beats her to the display of fresh herbs.
When he gets back to Jared’s house and surveys his pull, he’s pleasantly surprised. He’s got a huge package of diver scallops that had been on special, four gorgeous ribeyes that absolutely were not, a bag of basmati rice, three fat fennel bulbs, a jar of orange blossom honey, and a tiny box of expensive crackers. There’s some other stuff, too, a couple of yellow and orange Bell peppers, a bunch of flat-leaf parsley, a bag of shelled walnuts, and several different kinds of cheese.
He doesn’t hear anything upstairs.
He’s got the steaks prepped and just now stuck under the broiler, a pot of linguine simmering on a back burner, and a skillet full of caramelizing onions on the power burner when Sandy quietly enters the kitchen. There are two cutting boards on the counter, both covered in neat little piles of prepped ingredients. Jensen is busy whisking crumbled gorgonzola into a cream sauce on the other front burner, and he nearly knocks the pan onto the floor when he sees her.
“Um, hi,” he says, fumbling with the heat control for the linguine. Nothing sucks more than overcooked pasta.
She looks around the kitchen warily. “Did Food Network throw up?” she asks. She boosts up onto one of the barstools. It might be Jensen’s imagination, but she looks kind of uncomfortable and sad.
He grabs a colander to drain the linguine and sticks the gorgonzola sauce on the vacated back burner to reduce a little. He glances at her and shrugs. “I’m, um, making dinner,” he says. He’s pleased when his voice comes out sounding relatively normal.
“I’m not complaining, but… damn.” She looks around again. “I take it you no longer feel like you’re dying?”
Well, he kind of does, but he can’t tell her that. “Sure,” he says, giving the onions a stir and throwing in some minced garlic and shallots. He loves shallots. “It was a twenty-four-hour something, I think.”
She nods. “I’m glad to hear that,” she says. “So what are you making?”
He wipes his hands on his towel and surveys the kitchen. “Pan-seared diver scallops with lime-caper butter, which I haven’t actually started yet. Then there’s the linguine, which I’m going to toss with these onions, and walnuts, and some crushed tomatoes. I haven’t made the sauce before, but it’s one of Jeff’s recipes and he made it one time for some special party.” He points at the oven door. “Got some ribeyes in there, and the gorgonzola cream sauce is for those. Also got some summer vegetables roasting to go with that, and I have cardamom basmati rice pudding already chilling in the fridge for dessert.”
Sandy stares at him for a second, eyes a little glazed, then she hops off the stool and throws her arms around him. “I love you. You know that, right, Jen?” she says into his chest. Call him crazy, but there’s a bit of a hitch to her voice.
He pats her awkwardly and tries not to think about how it wasn’t even twenty-four hours ago that Jared was kissing him in exactly the same square of floor space.
“Can I help with anything?” she asks, drawing back and looking up at him.
“Just sit and watch,” he says, turning back to the stovetop and giving the sauce a stir. “Actually, no. Grab me that one and a half quart saucepan above your head. I need to start the caper butter.” He points at the pan he wants, his favorite piece of Calphalon in the whole kitchen. It was one of his gifts to himself when he got the job at Supernatural, part of a six-piece set. His mother ruined the three-quart when she flew up from Texas for some holiday a few years back and he still hasn’t quite forgiven her.
She takes the little pan down from its hook and hands it over. “Do you need me to grab the scallops from the fridge?” she asks.
“That would be nice,” he says. He throws a cut-up stick of butter in the saucepan and sets it on the other front burner to melt, then he grabs the jar of capers and opens it. “If you could unwrap them and S&P ‘em, that would be awesome,” he adds.
“The whole fridge smells like nutmeg and cardamom,” she says, breathing deeply. He knows that if he turned around he’d probably get a quick whiff of the sweet-scented air, too. “And to clarify, S&P is salt and pepper, right?” He nods, the corners of his mouth turning up a little.
They work in silence for a few minutes. He adds lime juice to the browning caper butter while she carefully seasons the gorgeous scallops bigger than her fist. He takes the onions off the heat and sets the pan on a trivet nearby.
“I’m sorry,” he says suddenly. He stirs the cream sauce again and takes the ribeyes out of the oven, setting the broiler pan on one of the off burners.
He sees her still, one hand hovering midway between the little bowl of S&P and the scallop in the other one. Her fingers slip and she ends up seasoning the countertop. She nods. “So am I,” she says very quietly, not looking up.
Jensen doesn’t even know where to start with that one, so he doesn’t.
He’s just finishing plating the food on his favorite pieces of his Fiestaware when Jared comes strolling into the room. It takes him precisely one second to make eye contact with Jared to decide that they are never, ever going to talk about what happened yesterday. He looks down at the plate of seared scallops in his hand and nods to himself. He is okay with that. He is totally okay with that.
“It smells like nirvana in here,” Jared says, voice just a little too loud. He stands next to Sandy, who’s sitting at the island again and staring very intently at an article in one of the magazines. She hasn’t turned the page in a very long time but Jensen doesn’t really have anything to say.
“Thank you,” Jensen says. He gathers up the dirty pans and prep dishes and stacks them in the sink, not up to the task of washing right now. He can feel Jared looking at him.
“Holy shit, this is the greatest surf and turf in history, man,” Jared says.
“Enjoy,” Jensen replies, folding up his towel and setting it on the counter. He gestures at the spread of food on the island. “I’m going to-I’ll see you two later, okay?” He kisses Sandy on the cheek and walks out of the room, ignoring the surprise on Jared’s face.
He closes his bedroom door behind him and heads for the bathroom. He has one contact out and is leaning towards the mirror to take out the other when he spots a blurry Jared-sized object out of the corner of his eye. “What?” he says, blinking and making eye contact in the mirror.
Jared just stands there with an unreadable look on his face.
“Right,” Jensen says, turning his attention back to the task at hand. Once he’s got his glasses on, he tosses the lens case back in his basket of toiletries and flicks the bathroom light off. Jared’s still just inside the doorway, looking at him, but now he’s backlit by the bedroom light and he seems bigger than he really is, and unhappy. Jensen’s heart bleeds for him, really it does.
“You are something else,” Jared says after Jensen pushes past him into the bedroom.
“We’re not having this conversation,” Jensen snaps, looking around for a different pair of shoes. He’s already sorry he cleaned the place up, because now he has no idea where he put anything.
“The fuck we’re not,” Jared snaps back, smacking the heel of his hand against the doorframe. Jensen ignores him and he huffs. “I’m sorry, man. I fucked everything up and I want to apologize.”
“Okay,” Jensen says, bending down on the other side of the bed to look underneath. “Apology accepted. Now go eat.”
Jared walks over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder. They both freeze. “That’s not what I-”
Jensen shakes him off and stands up, brushing off his knees. “Jared, I swear. Everything is okay.”
“No, it’s really not,” Jared says, sinking down on the mattress and putting his head in his hands. “Fuck, I don’t even-what’s going on here isn’t...”
“You’re right. It just isn’t.” Jensen steps out of his clogs and kicks them under the bed. The left one hits Jared’s foot and lands sideways. “Now for fuck’s sake, get out of here. I made a fantastic spread and I’m so sure Sandy wants to eat it all by herself.”
Jared looks up at him and shakes his head. “You are un-fucking-believable,” he says, but he doesn’t look surprised.
Jensen peers into the newly organized world of his closet and spots the shoes he’s looking for, soft brown leather bowling-style ones that are completely silent when he walks. They look good with the dirty jeans and vintage-looking tee he’s got on, and they make his back feel ten years younger.
He sits next to Jared to put the shoes on, back-to-back, close enough that he can feel his body heat. “Look, Jared, I get it. It didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry you feel like you have to be such a fucking girl about the whole thing, but Jesus, it’s done.” Jared draws in a sharp breath but says nothing. Jensen feels mean and hot and angry, and he’s not going to apologize, damn it. Jared deserves this. “It happened and now it’s done. It’s okay. It’s not a big deal.” Jared looks like he wants to argue but Jensen just shakes his head. “Just go eat,” he says tiredly, stopping in his doorway and looking back at Jared. “Please?”
Sandy’s sitting at the island, eating quietly off a cobalt-colored plate. She takes a sip of one of Jensen’s beers and looks up when he comes into the kitchen to grab the bag of Frosting goodies from on top the fridge. “The butter sauce is fucking orgasmic,” she says, pointing her fork at the scallop on her plate. “God, everything here is so good, Jensen.”
“Thank you,” he says.
--
He drives aimlessly around some residential neighborhood where the streets twist around and around back in on themselves. The houses are big and old, mostly columned Georgians with floodlights and neat little hedgerows out front. He can see people jumping into swimming pools in backyards.
He calls his old house.
“So… I think I’m in love with my roommate,” he says after Jessica answers.
“Oh, Jensen,” she says. Then she sighs.
He sighs too. “Yeah.”
He and Jess have an interesting relationship. They’d been great friends who fooled around back in school, tentatively trying out the dating thing when she got pregnant with Ross (despite their using two forms of birth control; Jensen laughs in the faces of people who live by the pill alone). And then Jess’s family had gotten all up in arms about him knocking up their little girl, and the next thing Jensen knew he was married.
They had an affectionate, pleasant, not particularly passionate relationship, and they got along well enough that it was just easier to stay a nuclear family while they finished school and embarked on careers, so they did. They lived in New York for a year after they graduated from CIA, and then she got the job at the Tribune so they moved to Chicago. By the time Jensen was working at Supernatural and her column got syndicated (and her combined salary shot up to more than double his for, like, half the effort), though, they decided that they just didn’t need the marriage anymore. Jessica bought a big dog, and Jensen moved in with Jared.
He can hear her doing kitcheny things on her end and he smiles as he makes a left-hand turn down another neat suburban street.
“Is he still doing the ‘it’s complicated’ with that med student who stabbed that Latino salad kid?” she asks.
Jensen sighs. “Far as I know,” he says. “Hey, wait a second. You don’t sound surprised. About the gay, I mean.”
She laughs. “Jensen, sweetie,” she says. Then she pauses like she’s trying to figure out how to break something to him. “Okay, give me a little credit here. The first time I saw you, you had your tongue down what’s his face? That Brad kid with the two different colored eyes's throat. That party Nicki Aycox had our first semester? Ringing any bells?”
He wrinkles his brow. “Wait, the Halloween party? You were there?” He didn’t even meet Jess formally until the next semester, when they were suffering through smarmy Weatherly’s pastry class together.
“You were the really, really hot kid dressed as Bill Clinton, Jen,” she says gently. “I have a picture of me sitting in your lap.”
“I hate you,” he says immediately, and she laughs again.
He can hear her oven timer go off and then the clatter of her moving the oven rack. She grunts with the effort of lifting something heavy, and he winces when the oven door bangs closed. “Oh, shit!” she says. “Sorry, Kenmore, baby. I didn’t mean it!”
“Abusing the appliances I paid for, woman?”
“He had it coming,” she snaps back. She yells something to Ross, who must be in another room. “Jensen, if this is really how you feel, then you need to tell him,” she says after a minute. Her advice for just about anything is to thunder ahead and count bodies later. She’s always been an apologies over regrets kind of girl.
“He tried to talk about it tonight, while Sandy was there,” he says. He pulls into the parking lot of a Wendy’s and kills the engine. No sense in wearing out another set of tires.
“Ouch,” she agrees. “Wait… why did he want to talk? Jensen, did something happen that you forgot to mention?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose and leans back against the headrest. “Okay, so you know how I had one of those twenty-four hour, parasite-from-hell, say-good-bye-to-your-intestines flu things? We talked about fireworks, right? That wasn’t just a hallucination, right? Anyway, so last night he was cooking something for me to cheer me up because I was starting to feel better. And then he-we kissed.”
“Okay, I’m going to need details,” she prompts.
“You don’t need any details, you perv. Just… yeah. It was intense. Movie stuff. I ended up boosted up on the counter with him all up between my legs, and I could feel his cock, like, right there against my thigh.”
She giggles. Fucking cackles. “Sorry, sorry!” she gasps out. “It’s just… wow, I always forget how… big the guy is, I guess, when we talk about him. But now I’m visualizing this whole scene, and actually, it’s really hot. God, I don’t need these images. You suck.”
It’s Jensen’s turn to snort out a laugh. It hurts a little. “There wasn’t any below-the-waist groping, don’t get too excited.”
“Oh, crush all my dreams there, tiger,” she says in a fake-wounded tone. Then her tone goes serious. “So what changed?”
He swallows and bites the bullet. “Today, I come back from some errands and I hear him and Sandy upstairs. Sex,” he says quietly.
She pauses, then, “Oh, Jensen.”
“Oh, Jensen,” he echoes. “Okay, can we mop up the pity parade a little?”
“Let me guess,” she says sadly, “you went all-out and cooked some ridiculous spread, except like always it didn’t work and now you’re calling me instead.”
He thumps his forehead once on the steering wheel. “I swear to God, I could’ve gotten the same response from Ross.”
“Well, fucking duh,” she says, deadpan. “Our son reads at a twelfth grade level. He goes to a school for gifted kids. Sometimes I get the feeling that he can actually move shit with his mind. Oh, and by the way, he says hello. He and Kees are making a salad in the dining room or I’d give him the phone.”
Jensen latches onto the distraction with both hands. “Kees? That the Belgian boyfriend? Ross seemed to really like him.”
“They amuse each other, I think.”
“How’s that going for you?”
“It’s good,” she says after a moment. She doesn’t sound thrilled with the subject change but she’s willing to go along with it. “I’m happy.”
“I’m glad, Jess,” he says. He really means it.
“I want you to be happy, too, Jen.”
“Yeah,” he echoes. “I’m going to go get a burger, I think.” He stares at one of the huge window clings facing him. “The Baconator’s back at Wendy’s! That sounds like self-flagellation by way of cholesterol and consequently atherosclerosis, right?”
--
On Tuesday, three days later, Chad corners him in Jeff’s office just before they close up for the night. He hands him a little envelope that’s sealed with-honest-to-god-a blob of gold sealing wax. “Keep it secret. Keep it safe,” he stage-whispers, grinning like a lunatic. Or Ian McKellan. Whichever.
“Do I even want to know?” Jensen asks tiredly, staring at the envelope. On the front it says Jensen in Sophia’s elaborate calligraphy.
“J-man’s birthday is coming up,” Chad says, rolling his eyes. “As if you didn’t know. Anyway, dude, me and Sandy? We talked to Eric and he’s totally gonna let us use this place to throw him a surprise party. I mean, we have to buy our own food and shit, and it has to be on a Monday, but whatever. It’s gonna be epic, basically.”
Jensen breaks the wax and pulls out the invitation. It’s a simple card, a piece of off-white cardstock with the pertinent details written next to a cartoon that’s presumably of Jared wearing his coat, checks, and toque, holding a whisk in one hand and looking sheepish with his shoulders up around his ears. Jensen loves Sophia.
“You okay, dude?” Chad asks. “You still look kind of shitty.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Jensen says, flashing him a quick, humorless smile that honestly feels more like a grimace. Chad grimaces right back. “Just tired, you know? It’s been a long night-a long week, you know?” Jensen just wants to go home and collapse into bed. He might not even bother slipping out of his clogs.
“Do I? Jesus, you know how it’s called morning sickness? Such a fucking lie,” Chad groans. “It’s more like all-the-time, crush-your-soul sickness. I’ve never loved my dick more.”
Jensen makes a face. “Sorry, asshole. I’d tell you it gets better, with the horny all the fucking time thing later on, but… you know. But then you have a kid, so it’s worth it, I guess.” He looks down at the invitation again, at Sophia’s little caricature. The cartoon’s got huge feet, he notices idly. “I don’t know if I can make it, man,” he says.
Chad gives him a look like somebody just shit on his grill. “Are you high? Like Jared will let you miss this.” Jensen says nothing and Chad makes a frustrated sound. “You know what? I give up. I listen to Sophia’s shit because I love her and I have to, but the rest of y’all can just go proceed through the intersection and on to hell, okay? I’m done.”
Jensen blinks at him, taken aback. “Excuse me?”
Chad waves his arms and goes off like a firework. “Every single goddamn person I know is psychotic! There’s Sandy with her mean-ass ‘I don’t know if I even want to be a doctor anymore so I’m going to be a crazy bitch and drunk dial you on a Tuesday just to say FUCK YOU!’ and Kristen spending all her time moping over you. My parents hate each other, and Sophia’s pregnant and it’s mine and I’m balls-in-a-blender fucking terrified, and my best friend spends every fucking minute we’re together whining with his ‘Wah! I’m in love with Jensen but he doesn’t love me back so I’ll keep fucking Sandy and buying kitchen shit I don’t need!’ bullshit, and then there’s you. You.” Chad pokes him in the sternum. Really fucking hard, too. “You are the worst of all, because you’re a crazy person and people like you and you don’t understand-Jesus Christ, why am I being the voice of reason? I am not a voice of reason! Do you look at me and think ‘Boy, he looks like he’d be good for exposition and knocking sense into stupid motherfuckers like me!’ or do you think ‘I wonder if he could score me some chronic’? I am Chad motherfucking Murray! I have had it with this shit! I am out of here!”
When he’s finished shouting, Chad takes a second to lean on the shelving unit to his left and pant. Jensen stares at him like he’s a turtle walking on its hind legs and maybe wearing a miniature toque on its head.
“Ya done?” Jensen asks in a small, awed voice, rubbing idly at the sore spot in the middle of his chest.
“Yeah, I think I am,” Chad says breathlessly, pointing one finger at the ceiling. “And I am leaving. You can lock this shit up. I’m going home, I’m getting a blowjob, and I am going to bed.”
Jensen watches after him for a long time after he’s gone. He feels like someone’s just shifted an integral piece of his understanding of the world, like all the chocolate he’s ever eaten is actually carob or something. Or maybe bleu cheese is actually chocolate.
He looks down at the invitation, which is now a little crushed from clenching his fingers during Chad’s rant. Next to Cartoon Jared’s cartoonishly large feet is a shopping bag that says Williams-Sonoma.
Jensen throws up in the trashcan under Jeff’s desk.
--
The next few days are decidedly odd. Jensen spends almost all of his free time out of the house because he hasn’t decided if he’s going with ‘hopelessly awkward’ or ‘pretending nothing is wrong,’ which means he ends up with ‘I don’t want to know.’
He spends a lot of time sitting on the couch at Frosting, listening to Samantha and Danneel psychoanalyzing their customers. He asks Danneel out to dinner, mostly to see if she’ll say yes. She frowns at him, but she has no qualms about letting him pay for dinner so she agrees. He takes her to a nice Italian place in Wrigleyville on Thursday. She looks fantastic in this filmy blue dress, boobs up under her chin practically, but the look on her face makes him think it’s probably a pity date. But whatever, he’s not opposed to a pity date with a hot chick.
They spend dinner talking sports and Robert Downey Jr., which further confirms to Jensen that the world is completely fucked, because this woman is awesome and gorgeous and for some reason she just doesn’t mean anything to him. Cue the Death Cab for Cutie soundtrack.
“Okay, I’m nipping this right here,” she says over tiramisu.
“What?”
“Seriously, sweetie,” she says. “I’m totally flattered, and I’m mad as hell to have to say this, but I am so not what you want right now.”
He stares at her for a second then sighs. “Check please?”
He still shows up to Frosting on Friday and they it on the couch and continue their discussion of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang like nothing like the date ever happened.
He avoids his coworkers like they’re diseased, hiding out in Jeff’s office with the stockroom door closed if he has to. He takes a personal day for his date with Danneel, in fact, which pleases Eric to no end.
“Go get you laid, kiddo,” Kripke had said, punching him on the arm really hard considering his small stature. “Come back with that frown turned upside down. The soundtrack to your life can’t be a BB King song forever. Tell yourself, ‘The thrill is not gone, motherfucker. The thrill is not gone!’”
The girls are not thrilled with his disappearing act at all. By Sunday night he has nine missed calls from Sophia, eleven from Kristen, and fourteen from Sandy. He’s honestly scared of how violent and swear-filled the voicemails must be growing. He hopes Kristen isn’t compromising her vow of clean language. He lets his phone battery die and sticks it in a drawer.
He stops checking the bathroom wall and his Facebook, and he deletes his bookmark for Jared’s blog.
He doesn’t want to read Jared’s funny, insightful posts, not when they hit close to home and feature characters Jensen knows. It’s one thing when Jared’s writing people at Gilmore’s, who Jensen’s never met, or the industry in general, but it’s another thing entirely to read about himself. Because the fact is that Chef Guy’s mancrush, Norm, is uncomfortably reminiscent of Jensen. Norm is neurotic and needy, tall and handsome, and recently divorced with a child. Chef Guy generally thinks that Norm invented puppies and ice cream, which is flattering, but really, Norm?
That week after the Fourth is always pretty dead and this one’s no different, and the atmosphere in the kitchen is quiet and tense. He and Jared are giving each other a wide berth, but Jensen doesn’t think anybody but Kristen and Chad has noticed. Jensen’s a little worried that Chad’s going to sprain something in his neck from all the headshaking he’s doing, though.
Jensen feels like a teenager again, which sucks. He was the most awkward teenager ever. He’s still awkward, but he likes to think he got better at faking being normal the older he got.
He studiously avoids all thought of the surprise party until Kristen brings it up in Friday morning’s stilted coffee machine conversation, mentioning how fun she doesn’t think it’ll be.
“Why?” he asks, surprised. It’s a party Jared will be attending. There is no way it won’t be fun.
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, that’s right. You’re currently sitting on Mars angsting over the time-space continuum. Dude, Jared and Sandy broke up. You are the least observant person ever, I swear. Have you completely not noticed how he’s been acting like he’s trapped at somebody’s wake?”
Honestly, no, he hasn’t. He sighs and stirs creamer into a second cup. “I just figured it was stress. His agent’s been calling a lot lately about the book. Although, I guess that explains why Sandy keeps calling me.”
Kristen gives him a look that is somehow both pitying and exasperated. “I take it back. You’re not unobservant, you’re actually just stupid. Like, terminally stupid. How do you function?”
He chokes on a mouthful of coffee. “What?”
“Ugh, I despair of you,” she adds with one last frustrated frown before walking away.
“And you did not just make a Watchmen joke at my expense!” he yells after her.
“Grow up, you wallower!” she snaps back.
He looks down into his mug and sighs.
He makes enchiladas for dinner that night after he gets home early from the restaurant, and in the morning when he gets up, the leftovers are gone from the fridge. Jared makes butter pecan ice cream in the new machine at some point and Jensen ends up eating most of it when he finds it in the freezer. They see each other exactly twice in the house, and both times they both look away and one of them leaves the room quickly.
Supernatural is closed between two and five every day, since it’s not cost-effective to stay open for five tables dribbling in between lunch and dinner and Kripke’s a cheapskate in his heart of hearts. Jensen usually spends his breaks either sticking around to do the nitpicky, less important prep that never really gets done or going home, but since he can’t do any of that after making out with Jared, he calls his ex-wife. He takes her to a late lunch at Hutton’s because Tim makes an absolutely orgasmic bean soup and the Irish fries are out of this world. They’re the only ones in the restaurant except for a couple of old men huddled over newspapers at the bar.
It helps, too, that Jessica is having problems of her own, so he can fret over somebody else’s issues for once. Kees had to fly back to Brussels for a family emergency and Jess is worried that he won’t come back.
“I know it’s selfish and stupid, but I just want him here, you know?” she says as they sit down.
Jensen winces. “Yeah,” he says softly, “I know.”
Their waiter, Aldis, has some wisdom to impart, too. “Have a beer with lunch,” he says. “Chris says you look like you need it.” He points over at the bar, where the bartender is watching them intently.
Jessica laughs and waves at him. “Hey asshole, how’s it hanging?” she yells. They’ve all been friends for years and Jessica is clearly delighted when Chris flips her the bird and starts drying some pint glasses.
“I’m on grill tonight,” Jensen says unhappily.
“And you can’t drink and grill?” Aldis says dubiously. “Are all those backyard suburban dads with their big freaking Weber grills doing it wrong?”
“Fine, get me a Sam Adams,” Jensen says, throwing up his hands in defeat.
“That’s my man,” Aldis laughs. “A’right, I’ll be back with that and the soups after I go teach your boy a lesson on how you treat a lady.”
“Bring it,” Chris calls over, sounding bored.
Jessica takes a long sip of her Diet Coke and then she fixes him with her best investigative journalist look and slaps the table. A piece of dark hair flops down in her eyes and she flicks it back with an annoyed look. It kind of ruins her tough image, though, and Jensen smiles fondly at her.
“Okay, so enough about me,” she says, scowling a little. “What are you doing about you?”
“Kristen-Bell, my pastry chef-she says I’m wallowing,” he says.
Jessica raises her eyebrows. “Are you?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know, maybe. She’s the one who made start to think about-well, you know, the Jared thing. Well, no. Not Jared specifically. But that I had a thing for somebody not her, and then the Jared thing actually happened… anyway. So now Kristen thinks she’s privileged to know things that I don’t even know. Fuck. Jess, I suck.”
“You do not,” Jessica says indignantly, but then her expression fades to something affectionate and vaguely sad. “Okay, so maybe you do, but just a little, I promise. Most of the time, though, you’re pretty awesome. Objectively speaking, I mean, you’re totally hot, you have a great job you absolutely love, you can cook, and you and your totally hot ex-wife have this awesome kid who could probably take over the world with his brain. Frankly, Jensen, I don’t know why you’re such a neurotic bastard. They should, like, bottle you and sell you at trade conventions.”
He laughs, short and surprised. “What?”
“Look, Jen, somewhere along the line you got convinced that you’re this huge loser and I don’t know, maybe I had something to do with it. I’m so sorry if I did. Because you’re not. You’re fantastic and fuck that jerkoff if he can’t see it.”
Jensen’s heart swells like a soufflé and he kind of feels like he wants to cry. He can’t help the huge, surprised grin that spreads across his face and crinkles around his eyes, but he can give her a mock-stern look and say, “You just want me to be having sex so you can live vicariously, don’t you?”
She grins. “You caught me. But-just keep it in mind, okay?” She looks like she has more to say, but Aldis comes back bearing two bowls of Hutton’s famous bean soup, and there’s no way Jensen’s missing out on that to keep talking about feelings.
When he walks her out to her car after lunch, he pulls her tight against him and breathes in her shampoo. “You are the best thing in my life,” he tells her when he pulls away.
“I’m not,” she says, thumping him on the shoulder, “but thank you.”
Later in the day, he asks Tom the meat vendor for some advice after they finish going over the order. He figures that Tom has no vested interest in any of what’s going on, not to mention that he’s a guy and he’s perfectly sane (which makes him the perfect person to ask).
“You’re married, right?” Jensen asks.
Tom gives him a funny look. “Three years in September,” he says. “Weren’t you married, though?”
Jensen waves his hand. “My own experience isn’t relevant here. Anyway, did you go through this long, drawn out flirtation with a bunch of false starts and stops and weird uncertainty with somebody you genuinely liked, only to fall for somebody else you did not expect, who’s better than everything else, except you go through the same shit with them. Only it’s worse this second time because you really, actually care?”
Tom stares at him for a long minute then raises his eyebrows. “Uh, can’t say that I did,” he says. He gives Jensen a wary look.
Jensen rubs his forehead. “That’s what I figured. I suck.”
“Well, that’s the spirit,” Tom says, awkwardly clapping him on the shoulder and backing away slowly.
“See you Wednesday,” Jensen says, waving.
He looks up at the calendar tacked to the wall above Jeff’s desk. It was a gag gift Chad gave the head chef for his last birthday, twelve months of insanely muscular firemen falling out of their uniforms and holding hoses close to their crotches. Jensen doesn’t find it in the least attractive, but Jeff thought it was the funniest fucking thing he’d ever seen. And because he’s Jeff and he will turn your joke back on you, the calendar enjoys a place of primacy and honor in the dead center of the bulletin board over the desk. Mr. July’s face has been covered with a cutout of Chad’s squinty mug.
Jensen circled Jeff’s return date, the eighteenth, in green Sharpie. It looks like Sophia added that the day after was Jared’s birthday.
In the employee women’s, where everyone actually pisses, somebody has written you are one srsly dumb mofo on the wall just above the toilet handle. It’s in response to a thread of conversation, but Jensen doesn’t think he’s wrong to take it out of context.
Part six