Gone Are The Days (4/6)
four
Mackenzie cornered him in his bedroom the next day, hands on her hips and looking as serious as he'd ever seen her. Her bright pink shirt with 'ROFL' written across the front kind of lessened the effect a little, but Jensen did his best not to grin.
"Can I help you?" He teased, letting his algebra textbook slam shut with a scary-sounding thud. The young girl nodded her head dramatically, the silver bangles on her wrist jangling with the force of the action.
"Yeah," She said, firmly. "You can."
Jensen's eyebrow raised and he swung his desk chair around to face her more fully.
"What the hell is going on between you and Jared?" She blurted, and Jensen sent a brief thank to the heavens that she'd had the sense to shut the door behind her, and then she continued. "Because I am not buying this crap about you two not knowing each other very well.
Seriously, do you think that we're stupid? Because we're not. Why even lie? Who cares if you used to be friends or whatever. It's not like mom was gonna kick him out or something."
Jensen winced a little at the genuine hurt laced in her tone, and he sighed, letting his shoulders drop as his inclined his head towards his bed - indicating for the girl to take a seat.
"You're right," He agreed. "I should never have lied, but things between Jay and I are... well, complicated."
She raised an eyebrow, but dropped obediently onto his bed. "Complicated how?"
"Like, he's the best friend that I had a huge fight with and then didn't see for two and a half years. That's how complicated." He replied as evenly as he could, doing his best to keep her from sticking her nose in where neither of them needed it. "It's just... better if you guys don't get involved at the moment, okay? We need to work through it on our own, otherwise this will never work."
"Okay," She said slowly, shifting her weight a little, looking less pissed off and more unsure of herself. "But can you work through it pretty quickly? Because being around you two right now is not fun. I get that it's probably not great for either of you two, either, but your awkward silences are starting to rub off on everyone else."
Jensen groaned, rubbing at his temples in irritation.
"Damn it," He sighed. "I know, I'm sorry. I didn't even think about that."
She shrugged, hesitating awkwardly on the edge of the bed.
"For the record?" She asked softly. "Whatever happened between the two of you, Jared still really cares about you. I don't think he's as angry as he's making himself out to be."
Jensen's eyebrow shot up in surprise.
"What do you mean?" He frowned. "Did he say something to you."
Mackenzie shook her head, glancing at the wooden door as if she was worried that Jared might overhear her. "No. I heard him talking to someone on the phone... I don't know what they were talking about, and I know that I shouldn't have eavesdropped, but he said that he was glad when he realised that you'd finally gotten a good home."
The young man frowned thoughtfully, grabbing his adoptive sister's wrist as she rose from the bed and headed to the door, finally giving voice to the question that had been plaguing him since the younger man's arrival. "Did he say anything about the family he was living with? Why he went back into the group home?"
Mackenzie shrugged, looking apologetic. "If he did, I didn't hear anything."
***
In all of the excitement, Jensen had forgotten that Josh and Jeff were due home.
Friday passed in a brief blur of classes. Jensen sat with his usual group of friends at lunch, faked a grin and a laugh when they started fooling around, and did his best to pretend that nothing was wrong. Internally, he couldn't help but keep turning over the events of the past few days - the incident with Jared in the supermarket, Mack's words from the night before, and Donna's reassurance that this was something that could be fixed.
He tried to focus on the road, keeping an eye out for black ice, because the last thing that they needed was a car accident, and by the time that he was pulling his truck into the driveway - the girls giggling between themselves in the back - all he wanted was to crawl into bed and sleep for a few years. Which, of course, was when he spotted Jeff's Astra parked to the side of the garage.
Clearly spotting it at the same time, Megan released a high-pitched squeal that had Jensen wincing.
"Yes!" She cheered, and Jensen rolled his eyes as he caught sight of her fist pumping in the rear-view mirror. "They're home!"
She fumbled with the door handle, and by the time that she was jumping out onto the drive and heading for the front door, Mack had already disappeared inside. Groaning to himself, Jensen allowed himself a brief moment to slump forwards and smack his head off the steering wheel a few times.
It wasn't that he disliked his adoptive brothers - in fact, the two of them were pretty awesome - but they were also more than a little rambunctious, and Jensen really didn't have the energy to deal with pretty much anything today, never mind prank wars and nerf gun battles that nobody walked away from without bruises.
Taking a deep breath, Jensen grabbed his backpack from the passenger seat, and reluctantly made his way from the calm tranquillity of his truck cab and into the house. The front door was still swinging open in the slight Texan breeze, the sounds of laughter and squealing drifting out onto the street. Jensen couldn't stop the small grin that broke free at the sound, dropping his backpack on the hallway floor next to Megan and Mackenzie's, and kicking his shoes off as neatly as he could without using his hands, barely thinking to shove the front door shut with his foot as he headed to the lounge.
As he'd expected, Megan was tossed casually over Jeff's shoulder, making a strange noise that was - Jensen assumed - was a mixture of a squeal and hysterical laughter. Mackenzie was darting from one end of the couch to the other, slipping slightly in her sock-clad feet, with Josh laughingly tried to capture her.
"Come here!" He yelled, amusement thick in his voice. "You know it'll only be worse when I catch you!"
Alan was sat on the sofa, casually flicking through a newspaper, and Jensen could hear the distant sounds of china clinking together in the kitchen. On the far side of the room, Jared was curled up in an armchair, knees tucked into his chest and sleeves pulled down over his hands, eyes locked on Jensen's siblings with a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
Jeff looked up when Jensen stepped into the room, and grinned wide, tossing Mack onto the sofa, where she bounced a few times before settling there with a dramatic eye roll.
"Jenny!" Jeff cheered, dragging Jensen into a hug. A second later, a second body slammed into his back, and he resigned himself to having the life squeezed out of him for what felt like far too long. Finally they released him, Josh giving him a friendly punch in the arm in greeting, and Jensen rolled his eyes affectionately.
"I'd say it's been far too long," he groused. "But I've been enjoying the quiet."
Jeff laughed, slapping Jensen's back. "You always have been a spoil sport, kiddo."
"The way I recall it," Alan interrupted evenly, grinning over at his adopted sons. "Jensen's saved both of you from a fair bit of trouble by being a spoil sport. Jensen, girls, your mother said to tell you that dinner's early tonight. Apparently your brothers are hungry."
Jensen rolled his eyes, not at all surprised, and crossed the room to settle onto the sofa. Mack leapt over him, sinking into the seat between him and Megan happily.
"Hey!" Jeff defended. "We're growing boys!"
Alan rolled his eyes.
"I hate to break it to you, Jeff," he said without lifting his eyes from his paper. "But if you grow any more than you already have, we'll have to remodel the house so you don't smack your head off the ceiling."
Jensen snickered quietly at his big brother's mock-offended look, his eyes unconsciously flickering over to Jared.
The younger boy's position made him look smaller than he was, head tucked down on his knees, but he seemed amused by Jeff and Josh's actions. His hazel eyes were tracking the two older boys evenly, leaving him apparently unaware of Jensen studying him, and Jensen smiled a little to himself. If Josh and Jeff could get Jared to relax this quickly, maybe them being here wasn't going to be so bad, after all.
Jensen had been raised in an environment where curling into a ball typically meant that you were trying to make yourself a smaller target. Jared had always been the exception to that rule of thumb - even as a kid he'd curled up when he was happy, a ball of loose limbs and an easy smile, chestnut hair flopping into his eyes.
Now, he looked almost as relaxed as Jensen could remember him being back when they were seven year olds crammed onto the small sofa in their group home, everyone else long since in bed and it was just the two of them, TV muted and the flickering lights highlighting the easy curl of Jared's lips. His wide grin, because sneaking out of their rooms in the middle of the night was the only time when they got to watch what they wanted - regardless of whether they had to watch it with the subtitles on.
"Dinner!" Donna shouted, and Jensen jerked, startled out of his silent study by the sudden noise. There was a sudden rush of movement towards the kitchen, and Jensen rose to his feet, grinning slightly as Mackenzie and Megan started bickering between themselves, shoving and jostling to get into the kitchen first.
"One day," Alan muttered with a wry shake of his head. "We'll have a nice, quiet house that's not full of kids."
His eyes betrayed the lie for what it was, glittering with humour.
"Liar," Jensen accused, chuckling a little despite himself. Alan shrugged a little, gently nudging Jensen towards his seat.
Jared seemed relaxed enough, despite having to sit next to Jensen a little closer than normal thanks to the two extra people sat around the table. In fact, there were only a few seconds of hesitation between him sitting down, and him taking a small bite of chicken without so much as pushing it around his plate once.
Conversation drifted easily, Jared joining in the few times he was prompted, a lot less reluctantly than he had been at their previous meals. Finally, as always, it landed back on the prank wars that had become the bane of Jensen's life over the past two and a bit years.
"No," Jeff laughed. "The best one was when Meg cut her finger that time, and you told her that lime juice would take the sting away! I've never heard a screech like it!"
Josh tipped his head back with laughter, nodding his head enthusiastically.
"Or when you hid all of those alarm clocks from the dollar store in Meg and Mack's room and set them to go off every half hour." He returned eagerly, ignoring the huff from the young girl. "Every time they thought they'd found them all, another one would go off."
"That wasn't funny!" Megan defended loudly. "I got detention for falling asleep in class the next day. My teacher was so mad at me!"
Jensen rolled his eyes. "You didn't even have to go to detention. Donna bailed you out, remember? Rang the school and came up with some story."
Megan shrugged, pouting a little. "It sucked. Everyone saw."
"You totally made up for it," Josh reminded her evenly. "How do you not remember? You left me and Jeff in that cupboard for, like, two hours. I was going crazy."
The sharp clang of metal hitting china had Jensen flinching instinctively, turning wide-eyed to look at Jared. The younger boy was sitting ram-rod straight, face suddenly ashen.
"Jared?" Donna asked, panic clear in her voice. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"
The teenager let out a shuddering breath, shaking his head and standing abruptly, nearly toppling his chair over. He was visibly trembling.
"I-" He stopped and cleared his throat before continuing. "Feel a bit sick. Think I might lie down for a while."
He didn't say anything else, just turned and left, leaving the rest of them staring after his back, completely puzzled. Jensen's hand was white-knuckled on the back of his chair, wishing he knew what was wrong - or, better yet, how to fix it.
"Dude," Josh breathed, looking a little embarrassed. "Do you think it was something I said?"
Donna frowned, shaking her head a little.
"It doesn't seem likely," She offered, and Jensen could see how worried she was by the tight set of her mouth. "You didn't really say anything wrong."
As if on some unspoken cue, both she and Mack turned to look at Jensen. The teenager threw up his hands in the universal sign of surrender.
"Don't look at me!" He said emphatically. "I'm just as clueless as the rest of you."
Donna sighed again, staring out of the kitchen door as if Jared might sense her stare and suddenly return, laughing the whole thing off as a joke. "I hope he's okay. Do you think I should check on him?"
She looked at Jensen again, and he hesitated for a second before shaking his head.
"Probably best you don't," he offered softly, sinking back into his own chair. "He kind of prefers to be left alone when he's upset or irritated."
Donna nodded regretfully, and Alan forced a bright smile on his face as he complimented her on her cooking, not-so-subtly indicating that they should all get on with eating their dinner. Jensen hesitated, glancing back down the hallway one last time, before reluctantly turning back to his own meal. With the stricken look on Jared's face still fresh in his mind, the food tasted like ash, sitting heavy in his stomach.
It seemed like everyone was having the same problem, picking at their food rather than eating it, and it was only a few more minutes before Donna sighed, tossing her own fork onto her plate.
"Enough of this," she said decisively. "How about we go out for ice cream instead?"
Jensen was relieved to find that everyone else looked just as confused as he did, though gradually they started nodding.
"Okay." She nodded. "I'll ask Jared if he wants to come, and then we'll head out, okay?"
Jensen hesitated, and then regretfully shook his head. "I think I'm just gonna stay home. Don't think I'd eat any even if I came."
Donna paused, eyes locked intently on him, and for a second he thought she might make him go with them, and then she nodded. "Okay."
"I'll have to stay, too," Alan piped up. "Being a doctor on call is not easy when your cell phone is broken. I told them they'd have to call me at home."
Donna nodded again, shepherding the other four out of the room and in search of their shoes. She disappeared upstairs, presumably to try and convince Jared to tag along (Jensen couldn't help but wonder if she'd tell him 'but Jensen isn't coming' to try and help change his mind).
Predictably, she returned alone, dropping a kiss on Jensen's head and offering him a small, sad smile as she herded everyone out of the door.
Almost as soon as the door swung shut behind them, the house fell silent. Alan was watching him carefully, both of them still seated on the dining room table.
"You going to try talking to him again?" He asked slowly. Jensen wasn't surprised that Donna had told him about his and Jared's somewhat disastrous conversation in the supermarket car park... and, if he wasn't mistaken, everything else, too.
"Not sure if it'd make things better or worse." Jensen admitted, slumping back into his seat. Alan tipped his head in acknowledgement.
"Isn't it worth a try?" He asked quietly, his tone carefully judgement-free. "He looked incredibly upset to me. Do you really want to leave him by himself when he's like that?"
Something in the way that he said it had Jensen's spine straightening, and he shook his head firmly. "No. No, I really don't."
He was out of his seat before his brain really registered that he was moving, leaving Alan smiling after him as he headed up the stairs to the third floor. His hands were trembling at his sides, nervous anticipation of how Jared was going to react to him trying to start another conversation, but Alan was right. The kid had looked more than a little upset at the dinner table, and there was no way that Jensen could just leave him like that.
Taking a deep breath, he knocked carefully on the younger man's door. There was no response, and he paused with his hand on the door handle for a few moments before he carefully pushed it open.
His eyes flickered over the familiar room, taking in the complete lack of personal possessions anywhere with an uncomfortable pang in his heart. This had been Jensen once - a room bare of anything save for what a foster carer deigned to put out for them; usually nothing more than a bed and a chest of drawers, a wardrobe if they were lucky.
In the two or so years he'd been with the Ackles family, Jensen's room had slowly started to fill with the little things that he'd never had before - pointless nick nacks, three baseball trophies from his brief stint on the team the year before. Books that were his, rather than from the library, framed photos and posters on the walls.
On the other side of the room, Jared was curled into a small ball on the window seat, forehead resting against the cold pane of glass. He twisted his head a little when Jensen stepped into the room, not seeming at all surprised when he saw who it was, and turned his gaze back to the green expanse of the back garden.
"You don't need to check on me," he said quietly, voice rough. The red rings around his eyes seemed to suggest that he'd been crying, but he didn't seem annoyed or angry by Jensen letting himself into his bedroom. "I'm fine."
Jensen offered the younger man a small smile.
"I really don't think you are," he offered quietly, crossing the room and sinking onto the edge of the kid's pristinely-made bed. "I saw your face at the table, remember. Something was really wrong, dude. You wanna talk about it?"
Something dark and unreadable passed over Jared's face, and he once more twisted his head to face the guy who had once been the only person in the world he knew that he could trust.
"Why?" He demanded.
Jensen blinked, more than a little confused. "Why what?"
The kid uncurled himself, and Jensen could see the anger now, in the stiff way that he moved and the way that he leant forward. "Why do you care, Jensen? Why are you sitting there, right now?"
"Because you're my best friend." Jensen replied without pause. "You always have been, and now... I just want that back again. I just want to go back to the way that things were before."
Jared snorted bitterly.
"We can't go back to the place we were before," the younger man informed him, tone simple and emotionless. "It doesn't matter how hard we try - too much has happened since then. We've both changed... we're completely different people."
Jensen's heart sunk at having it all lain out like that, the very same concern that he'd been harbouring in the weeks since the younger man had arrived, the thought that they were just too different now, but he refused to let go without a fight. Jared rose to his feet, and Jensen didn't know where he was going, but he stopped him without thought.
"Are we really?" He demanded anxiously, reaching out to grab a hold of the younger man's wrist. Jared shook him off instinctively, and Jensen tried not to take it as a personal insult, staring desperately up at him. "Because the last time I checked, I was still Jensen and you were still Jared. We were best friends for nine years, Jay. How can you just let that go?"
Jared's face darkened with anger and hurt, and Jensen knew what was coming a split-second before the younger man's mouth opened and the words spilled out.
"Really?" Jared snapped, stepping further away, eyes blazing with something that Jensen couldn't determine. "You're going to lecture me about giving up on us? The way I remember it, it was me that was left standing in the rain, and it was me that had to watch you turn your back and walk away."
"I did that to protect you!" Jensen yelled, frustration and anger warring in the pit of his stomach. He rose to his feet in a smooth movement, and Jared flinched back. "To give you a chance to be a normal kid, with a normal family who loved you!"
Jared scoffed, facing crumpling in a way that Jensen didn't understand, eyes filling with tears so quickly that Jensen's stomach lurched painfully, self-righteous anger refusing to give way to comfort and console the kid, to make better whatever it was that was upsetting him.
"Yeah," The teenager muttered bitterly, shaking his head and swiping angrily at his face when a single tear slipped free, turning so he was half-facing away from Jensen again. "Because they were such great people."
Jensen faltered for the first time since the argument had begun, finding himself suddenly lost, feeling like he was missing something and not quite sure that he wanted to know what. Logically, he knew something must have gone wrong somewhere, because Jared was here rather than with the family that Jensen had been so sure were perfect for him, but he didn't know what... and he suddenly wasn't sure that he wanted to.
"I don't understand," He admitted softly, doing his best to keep the desperation from his voice. He tried to close the gap between them, backing off slightly when Jared jerked away. He moved back, close to the wall, giving Jared the option to sit if he wanted to. "You liked living with them."
Jared scoffed again. Jensen was really starting to hate that sound.
"I can't believe that you still don't get it! I never liked it there, I was just too scared to try and leave them!"
The air in Jensen's lungs rushed out so sharply that he was left with a sensation that he could only compare to drowning; for a horrible moment, he nearly accused Jared of lying, but even after two and half years, he knew the kid well enough to know the truth when he saw it. Words escaped him, eluded him completely no matter how hard he scrambled for something to say, and it was all he could do to stare at Jared in a quiet state of shock.
For his part, Jared didn't seem to notice. Another tear slipped free, tearing Jensen's heart just a little more, and he sunk down onto his bed, pressing his face into the heels of his hands.
"For the first few weeks they were so nice, you know? And I kept waiting for the punch line, and it didn't come, and then when I'd finally thought that everything was going to be okay... everything changed."
His voice was muffled by his hands, but Jensen could hear it when he sucked in a sharp breath, physically trembling. Jensen wanted to go to him, to wrap an arm around him and tell him that everything was going to be okay, but his feet were glued to the floor, and he refused to make a promise that he couldn't keep.
There was no promising Jared that things would be okay, because whatever had him feeling like this had already happened, and Jensen couldn't change the past.
The following silence was one of the most agonising of Jensen's life, and he waited in a sort of limbo, a horrified anticipation of what might follow.
"It was just little things at first. I was so happy to finally have a decent home that I let them slide, didn't pay too much attention when he lingered too long after a hug or put his hand on my knee. I think I knew what it might lead to, but I didn't even want to consider it... I thought I'd finally caught my lucky break, and I didn't want anything to fuck it up."
Jensen felt sick, and even as his brain tried to race ahead and put the pieces together, he clamped down on the traitorous whisper in the back of his head that told him how this story was going to end, refused to believe it until he had no other choice.
"God," Jared continued, voice filled with self-loathing and desperation. "I was so stupid. After all of the shit we've been through, I should have known better. When he came into my room, that first night, I didn't even realise anything was wrong until he wrapped his hand around my mouth and shoved me over, climbed in right next to me."
Jensen staggered backwards, his back meeting the wall with a dull thump, and he wanted to tell Jared to stop talking. To just shut up and never bring it up ever again, but the kid just kept talking.
"I tried to tell Krissy, the next morning, and she called me a liar. Slapped me around the face and said that if I ever said anything like that to anyone ever again, she'd kill me." He laughed, a tinge of hysteria to his voice. "God, Jensen, I really thought she meant it. So I didn't say anything, and the next time I didn't fight, and he just kept coming back for more, until I just couldn't take it anymore."
Somehow, that was the final puzzle piece for Jensen, and the breath he didn't know he'd taken whooshed out of him in a broken-sounding sob.
"That's why you wanted to meet," He breathed. "That night in the park."
And God, but it made a horrifying amount of sense.
That night when Jared had phoned him, there'd been something in his voice that had made Jensen on edge and nervous, but he'd just dismissed it as Jared planning on blowing him off for his new family. The kid had been distant for weeks, never quite seeming to be fully there when they hung out together, and how goddamn selfish was Jensen that it had taken him two years and a confession to realise that there was even something wrong?
Hell, Jared had turned up that night with red-rimmed eyes and a backpack slung over his shoulder, and Jensen had lain into him before the kid had even had a chance to explain anything. The things that the older boy had said to him had been completely unforgivable; he'd taken every insecurity that he knew that Jared had, and thrown it back in his face without any hesitation.
The worse part had been realising that Jared wasn't even going to defend himself. The fifteen-year-old had just stood there and taken it, tears mixing with the rain that was soaking his clothes to his skin and met Jensen's eyes with an unwavering loyalty that had been the final straw for Jensen.
He'd turned and walked away without another look back, spent the next two and a half years defending his actions to himself, playing them off as him trying to give Jared the life that he wanted, trying to protect him. Looking back now, he couldn't help but wonder that it hadn't been jealousy that Jared might have found himself the perfect family, whilst Jensen was still stuck in group homes and with crappy fosters who drunk themselves to sleep and forgot he existed. Anger that Jared was doing it without him - leaving him behind.
"It was stupid," Jared laughed again, bitterness and self-deprecation once more finding their way into his voice. "I'd saved my money from working in the book store, figured we'd buy ourselves two tickets to California and just book it. Find a crappy apartment and get away from the whole fucking system. Like it would have been that easy."
Jensen's breath whistled painfully in and out of his chest.
"Jared," he forced out. "What happened after?"
The young man lifted his head, met his eyes straight on and smiled. Jensen was taken aback by the deadness of his eyes, the wry curve of his lips.
"I went back," he replied, easy as breathing, as if he was commenting on the weather or telling Jensen what he'd eaten for lunch that day. "What other choice did I have? Not like I had anywhere else to go. So I crawled back to them, and Krissy locked me in a cupboard for three days in punishment, and then everything went back to the way it was before. I was there until three months ago, when David drank himself stupid and Krissy walked in on us. He tried to chase after her and fell down the stairs. Bashed his brains in on the banister and bled out on the hallway floor. Krissy didn't want me around after that. Can't say I really blame her."
Jensen thought he might actually throw up.
"Why didn't you tell someone?" He asked desperately.
Jared rolled his eyes, clouding his features once more. "And who would I have told, Jensen? You were the only person who might have believed me, and you made it pretty damn clear that I wasn't worth the time of day. He'd have lied, and who was a social worker gonna believe? Some kid who'd been bounced around and kicked out of more homes than he can count, or a foster parent without a record? They would have just shipped me someplace else, and he'd have started all over again with some other poor kid who didn't deserve it half as much."
Jensen made a wounded sound. "God, you didn't deserve that. Is that what you think? Nobody deserves that, what they did was-"
"Unforgivable."
Both boys jumped, Jared going from sitting to standing so quickly that he staggered slightly. Alan was stood in the doorway, hands white-knuckled on the door frame, his face serious and eyes frighteningly intense.
Jared seemed frozen, watching Alan with the kind of nervousness usually reserved by a puppy that's been kicked one too many times by its master.
"We need to report this, Jared," Alan said firmly, no room for argument in his tone. "You need to give us their names, and we'll make sure that they're punished."
He moved forwards then, hand outstretched towards Jensen - his father figure caught his eye, sent him a small half-smile that was just as forced as it was reassuring - and there was no ulterior motive in his actions, but Jensen registered his mistake a moment too late to stop it. Jared's eyes widened as the man began to move further into the room, his eyes locking on the outstretched hand, and he was bolting before Jensen had a chance to stop him.
Jensen bolted after him without a second's hesitation, almost surprised to find that his legs suddenly had the strength to hold him up, but Jared had always been faster when it counted. By the time that he hit the hallway of the bottom floor, Alan only a handful of steps behind him, the front door was open, swinging in the wind, and Jared was nowhere to be seen.
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