love song, J2 AU, 1/1, [PG], beach!verse
Title: love song
Author: sandymg
Beta: borgmama1of5
Summary: Jensen revisits the beach a week after making up with Jared. (Part of the beach!verse)
Wordcount: 2,400 - one-shot
Genre: RPS, J2 AU
Characters/Pairings: Jared/Jensen
Rating/Warnings: PG
Disclaimer: This is fiction. No harm intended. No profit made.
A/N: Story title from the poem Love Song by Suchoon Mo. Story follows past indifferent seagulls chronologically.
AO3
It’s been one week and Jensen still isn’t sure about this ‘being in love’ thing. Sure, he said it. Once. And he and Jared had Talked. And somehow, Jensen managed to work around verbalizing those three words again. It helped that Jared took understanding boyfriend to levels never before seen. To balance the scales, Jensen was more forthcoming when it came to discussing Jared and grad school. Because he absolutely didn’t want to keep Jared back. Or keep him from his dreams.
But he also didn’t want Jared to move away. And saying that was just as hard as saying the “L” word.
“Moving means giving you up and I can’t do that.”
“But, Jay, we could try it long distance … if … if it means a lot to you.”
“You mean a lot to me. School is a means to an end.”
Jared had approached and put an arm on each of his shoulders, peering down to meet Jensen’s eyes. “Besides, you asked me not to go.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Maybe I was selfish.”
And Jensen mentally kicked himself because Jared had pulled back and his eyes were wary, and fuck, what if Jared really did leave?
It was silent and Jared was waiting. That same, slightly desperate feeling washed over Jensen that he’d felt when they’d first fought a month back.
“Don’t go,” Jensen whispered.
And Jared smiled till his dimples appeared.
A bird’s flutter startles Jensen out of his memories. He’s back at the beach. It’s just as still and cold and untouched as it was a week ago. Only now, his heart feels warmer.
“Hey, Jonathon.” Jensen isn’t sure, of course, if this is the same seagull from a week ago. It pokes at some seaweed and tilts its neck in a sharp tick sideways. Hell, maybe it is the same bird. “I asked him to stay with me,” he tells the bird. The gull takes a few hopping steps forward, eyes dark and unfathomable. “I love him.”
It’s not that hard to say it here at the empty beach with a solitary bird as company.
Yet at home, when Jared really needs to hear it, silence strangles Jensen’s throat.
Immediately after that fight, when Jared walked away, and Jensen returned home to the stridence of the mindless reality show Danni had on the TV, Jensen thought all he wanted was silence. He was ready to submerge into it and never come out.
“’Sup, Jen? Where’s Jay?”
He’d wanted to get it done with as few words as possible. “J-Jay is moving.”
She didn’t register what he’d said for several moments. There was this sound like sucking in air. And then the slight snick of the TV remote clicking off. And then silence.
“You mean, like to a different apartment?” she’d asked slowly.
It was just words. Use them and maybe then it could be quiet again. “Yes. I suppose. He’s going to graduate school at UCLA.”
And there it was again. That blessed silence. Didn’t last long.
“You can’t mean that.”
“That’s what he told me.”
“He told you he was moving across country? He didn’t ask to talk to you about it? To discuss it … I don’t. That’s not possible.”
Jensen hadn’t replied. Danni’d whipped out her cell and Jensen thought, no, don’t do that. Leave him be.
“Jay? What’s going on? … What do you mean- ? I did, he isn’t …” The pause was longer. Jensen didn’t even try to imagine what Jared was saying. ”That was wrong, he shouldn’t have … It’s just … The way it was with Mrs. A. and his dad … No, of course, I get that.” Another long pause. “You’re wrong … he does … Shit. … I’m sorry. Jesus, this sucks. Yeah… you, too, bye.”
Warm brown eyes met his. He didn’t remember when they’d last looked that sad. Probably when her cat Stanley died.
“So you went and did it? Broke up with him? Broke his heart? Don’t do this, Jensen. Please.”
“Me? I didn’t do this. He said he wanted to go to UCLA.”
She’d approached slowly. “And you told him ‘okay’?”
“What was I supposed to say?”
She’d run her hands through her long hair, face twisting in frustration. “You were supposed to talk about it. I wish he hadn’t … expected things of you. But, Jensen, he loves you. He’s so in love with you. And I know you feel the same.”
He’d snapped then, pouncing on his best friend in a way he didn’t recall doing in a long time. “You don’t know anything. I don’t care about him. I don’t need him. Let him have his education and his dogs and his fucking smile and leave me the hell alone. I don’t care if he’s leaving. I don’t care that he left.”
Danneel’s eyes had filled with tears and then she’d walked away.
“I bet she kept talking to Jared. Never asked her. Hurt too much. But she kept telling me to talk to him.”
The seagull stood on one foot and pecked insistently at its wing. Its feathers were white with the tips a slightly darker gray. Ugly birds, really. Until they flew. Then they transformed. Sailing magnificently through the air, swoops of angles and soft waves. Like the ocean taking flight.
Jensen didn’t come to the beach much in the summer. Too hot and too crowded and too noisy. Plus, in the sun’s flare, his horrid freckles would multiply like ants across his skin.
Now though, in the fall, the chill chased the folks away and the town got sleepy and all his paintings sold via the internet because nobody walked the boardwalk any more. Nobody stopped by his studio to browse or chat with the artist. Nobody was around. Now was his favorite time to be here. And, as much as Jared knew about him - more than anybody outside of Danni - Jared hadn’t known that. Until, suddenly and miraculously last week. He had.
He’d found Jensen.
And Jensen had said he was in love with someone for the first time in his life. To that person’s face. Also for the last time, if this week was something to go by. Because the words just couldn’t come again. At least for now, he thought Jared was okay with it. They’d returned to normal in most ways. Jared said it as often as the whim struck. And Jensen could get as far as me, too. Before burying his face into his lover’s shoulder, aware he was literally hiding, but unable to stop.
Jensen wonders now what would have happened if he hadn’t come to the beach last week? Would Jared have tried to find him at home? Or would he have gotten on a plane and flown to California and never looked back?
The ocean turns gray-white when the weather changes. The sun is too far away to kiss it, and as a child he thought it paled in that same way that his mother’s skin went from honey to porcelain as the year waned.
“Where have you been, Jensen?”
“Nowhere. The beach.”
“What do you do out there by yourself all day?”
“Nothin’.”
“It’s weird.”
“Yes, mom.”
She’d sneered slightly. “Chores done?”
“Yep.”
Annoyed at having nothing to gripe over, she turned a considering look toward him. “Where’s that girl?”
That girl meant Danni. It’s not like his mother didn’t know her name. They’d been friends for the past nine years. Kindergarten to now, freshman year of high school. He’d chosen his words carefully. “She’s with her girlfriends.”
Unfortunately, his words hadn’t been careful enough. His mother exhaled a sharp laugh. “Well, that’s you these days isn’t it?”
She was joking. She’d taken his coming out remarkably well, and given what he’d read others go through, he was lucky. He forced himself to snark back. “Funny.”
In an uncharacteristic show of affection she ruffled his hair. “I do try.”
“Yeah. You even succeed sometimes.”
His mom’s disconcerting sensitivity had continued. “She’s a teenage girl, Jensen. She’ll need her girl talk now. I’m sure you’ll be back in each other’s pockets before you know it.” She looked away, stopped meeting his eyes. “I used to go to the beach by myself, too, you know. Like now, when it was empty.”
“Did you?”
“When I was pregnant with you.”
Eyes as startling blue as the ocean on the hottest summer day met his. “But I was born in the spring,” he said stupidly.
She stared a few moments. “There’s a lot of cold, bare months before that.”
Jensen hadn’t replied to that. He wanted so much to believe she was implying that things were better after he joined her life. Warmer and less lonely. He’d always wanted to believe that.
Except, of course, his father would likely not have left if he hadn’t been conceived.
“Do you think mom was in love with my father?” he asks the seagull now.
The wind picks up and the tall sea grass whispers in the distance. Rocking from foot to foot, he watches the imprints form in the moist, hard sand. It’s dark, slate gray, matching the soft black of the water fading into the horizon. The sun is lower now and the chill is a harsh sting. He’s half expecting Jared to show up again. But he can’t because he took on an extra shift at the shelter, and besides, they’d already come by the beach earlier in the day when the sun was tilting up.
“Anniversary tradition.”
“But you said not after Labor Day.”
“That’s before I knew that you liked the beach off-season.”
“I wouldn’t say I like it exactly.”
“What would you say?”
Jensen hadn’t known how to answer. “It started when I was fourteen. I take longer making friends than Danni.”
Jared smiled. “No? Really?”
“Shut up. I’m trying to communicate here.” He stressed the word in a way he knew would get Jared to smile again. Was it normal that he considered making Jared smile a life goal?
“I was out to my mom and Danni but not anywhere else. And I dunno. I felt left out, I guess. High school was about boys for Danni. And it was about girls to all the other boys. But not-“
“Not to you. I know.”
“So my freshman year, I guess I was a loner. She’d go off with her friends and I didn’t belong there. Well, anywhere, really. So I’d come here. It was the same every day. Waves making the same patterns. You can count on it, you know?”
“Did you start painting around then?”
He’d been startled that Jared picked up on that. Although with the way Jared could read him, he shouldn’t have been. “Yep. I’d always sketched. Well, since I was nine or so. But I started some simple watercolors then.” He’d rubbed the back of his neck. “They were rubbish. But Mom … she said we could pick one and get it framed.”
“She hung your paintings?”
“Yes. Well, one. In the hallway so it didn’t fight with her décor.”
“One?” Jared was biting back a grin.
“It was a small hallway.” Now Jared was laughing outright.
“Shut up.” Jensen accepted that his mother just wasn’t wired like other mothers. Or other people. Didn’t make her evil. Especially as he often felt she and he were more alike than not.
Arms enfolded him from behind. Soft brown hair teased his neck.
“Everyone can’t be like you,” Jensen said finally, fighting the urge to giggle at the way Jared was blowing raspberries into his neck.
A few days into knowing him, Jared had proclaimed Jensen the most talented artist in the history of ever. No matter how ridiculous that was, Jared wouldn’t hear a word to the contrary.
Flattered, Jensen had given Jared a painting which promptly went up on the wall in the old but well-sized apartment Jared shared with his friend Chad. That one painting was so beloved that Jensen gave him another. And, well, a few more. Jared now considered his apartment as his personal Jensen gallery.
Jensen and Danni’s place was covered with Jensen’s art as well. But that was normal. His mother had allowed him to hang pretty much what he wanted in his room growing up. It was odd though, visiting Jared and Chad and seeing so much of himself on their walls. It made him feel exposed. Which might be why they spent most of their time at Jensen’s place. Also, he wasn’t totally comfortable around Chad. Or the dogs. He didn’t mind them. Just wasn’t used to it. His mother had never allowed pets.
“Like me how?” Jared asked.
“Hanging my art all over the place. Like that. You know.”
“I love your paintings. They’re you.”
Jensen spun around. Thought the words and looked into Jared’s gorgeous, hazel eyes and wanted to say them.
Instead, he swallowed hard, and blinked, and drew their foreheads together before spinning back around and letting the splash of the waves soothe his nerves.
A week ago he almost hadn’t come here.
“And then he wouldn’t have found me.”
The seagull releases a piece of seaweed and lifts its head. Two short flicks, and it soars. Jensen follows its silent glide. It curves right, slopes back down, makes a quick loop and ascends again. Movements of coming closer and then dipping away. Bending the air like notes releasing from an instrument. It’s a melody, he thinks. It blows along the currents of this frozen space, it plays between the silence. Where the water meets the air meets the heavens.
He pulls his iPhone from his pocket and aims at the bird. It will barely show at this distance. A pale blur defying gravity in a hazy, blue expanse. But Jared can’t come to him now and Jensen hears it even though he can’t say it.
He opens a text box and attaches the short video clip.
He thinks a minute about what to say.
I’m sending you a love song.
The phone settles back in his pocket, a safe familiar weight. Danni’s probably home by now.
And later Jared will show up with pizza, and Jensen’s boyfriend and Danni will laugh and catch up and let Jensen be quiet. But Jared will smile that special smile that only Jensen gets - the one that thanks him for trying, for talking - even if he hasn’t said a thing.
fin
Continues chronologically in a dead crow under an elm tree
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Love Song
by Suchoon Mo
let the very silence
of a solitary bird
soaring in the sky
over the frozen land
be the song of love
too painful to sing