Taking Advice from Cookies and Riding in Cars with Idiots Chapter 11

Apr 14, 2014 02:12


Löwenbräu's Not a Beer

They go to an Asian Latin fusion place nearby that Jensen has hated on principle since it opened, but Jared told Genevieve he'd already had the studio make the reservation. Jensen doubts the truth of this, but he doesn't know how to tell Genevieve that without inviting uncomfortable questions about why Jared is pissed enough to lie about something so stupid. Instead he resigns himself to a menu he imagines will consist of things like sashimi tacos, plantain fried rice, and a general culinary theory that consists of taking foods he actually likes and ruining them beyond the telling of it.

On the ride to the restaurant, Jensen leaves Genevieve to handle more than her fair share of the small talk, which he does genuinely feel guilty about. By the time they get to the restaurant and are seated, they've exhausted all the obvious topics, and Genevieve is clearly struggling to keep the conversation going.

“So, you know what I just realized?” she asks brightly looking up from her menu. “We kind of have the same name. Like, Jen -” she points at him, “and Gen.” She gestures to herself with a smile. “It’s kind of funny, right?” Off his look she groans and rolls her eyes. “So it sounded as dumb out loud as it did in my head? Yeah. Great. Good to know.”

Jensen gives a hearty laugh and she joins in. “Give me a break!” she exclaims. “I'm running on fumes here. I used up all my good small talk in the car. I'm trying, and you are not making this easy!”

“I'm sorry. I know. I just - I'm - today was long.” He finishes with a small smile.
“Yeah, are you OK? I stuck around to watch the rest of filming, and I saw you had a really tough time coming out of character. I hate when that happens.”
“Yeah,” Jensen replies hollowly. He opens his mouth to elaborate but realizes almost immediately there’s not a lot more he can say without giving away too much so he closes his mouth again.

“Use your words, Jensen.” Genevieve teases gently. “You can do this. It’s called a conversation.”

“It was an intense scene,” Jensen begins safely. “Because, I mean - ”

“You guys are fighting,” Genevieve volunteers.

“We’re - ” Jensen looks up flushed and frantic. “No! Not - we’re not, like, it’s fine. We’ll be fine.”

“On the show,” Genevieve supplies slowly looking at him curiously.

“Right,” Jensen deflates and mentally kicks himself for being so obvious, but Genevieve just smiles softly. “On the show.”

“That must be hard, then. Given how close you two are. It must be hard fighting with him. On the show.”

“Yeah,” Jensen begins to explain and when he does, he feels something inside him breaking and he feels like if he doesn’t get all this out in a rush he’s going to start crying again. Because suddenly he has a strong desire to keep talking, to keep describing the tangle of emotions that have been swirling inside of him since early today and, when he really thinks about it, since earlier than that.

So he takes a big sip of wine and continues. “Because I feel so bad - Dean feels so bad. And I look at him - at Jared - and he’s the only one I want to see when I feel like this, but then he’s the reason I feel like this. And I’m supposed to be angry at him for being selfish and for not knowing that I’m only doing all of this to save him; that I’m letting myself die for him but really more than I’m angry it just hurts because. I can’t imagine having to lose him.”

“On the show.” Genevieve says again simply - kindly - and Jensen suspects it has more to do with giving him an out than with making a distinction she has any interest in at all.

“On the show.” Jensen agrees with a smile.

Their food chooses that moment to be ready, and they’re interrupted by huge plates and a fortunate distraction. After that, the conversation starts to feel easier, and it’s only partly due to them finishing the first bottle of wine and ordering a second. It’s not until Genevieve mentions visiting her brother in Chicago that Jensen gets quiet again. The story she tells reminds Jensen of the first time he and Jared traveled there for a convention and the pizza place they went to, and how they blew off the architecture tour to get drunk and then got lost on their way back to the hotel room.

He starts to tell the story, but then remembers his date with Danneel from months ago and decides that telling a story about Jared right now may not be a good idea.

He is so lost in thought that he doesn’t notice Genevieve has stopped talking and has fixed him with a curious stare.

“You do that a lot,” she observes. “It’s like you have a thought, but you overanalyze it, and I can practically see you playing the entire rest of the conversation out in your mind, and then you, like, decide you wouldn’t like where the fictitious conversation would end so you don’t let yourself say anything at all.”
Jensen startles at how frighteningly accurate that is and Genevieve continues.

“Yeah,” he admits. “That’s - yeah, that’s a really good description of how my mind works.”

“That makes me indescribably sad.”

“Why?” Jared blinks at her.

She shrugs and shakes her head. “I’m sorry. That sounded awful. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“What did you mean?”

“Nothing. Jensen. Really. Nothing.” Genevieve looks so desperate to change the subject that Jensen takes pity on her and drops it.

“Well, I was just going to tell you about the first time Jared and I went to Chicago,” he supplies instead.

“Ooh! Yes. Tell me.” Genevieve takes a sip of her wine and grins with what Jensen calculates is 6% genuine excitement over the story and 94% relief he was willing to change the subject.

The conversation doesn’t wane again, in large part because Jensen forces himself not to overthink what he wants to say to avoid giving Genevieve more reasons to give him that sweet but knowing smile he has been both grateful and resentful to be on the other end of.

“You guys are gonna be tough to work with,” Genevieve laughs after Jensen tells her about the massive prank they’d just played on Eric to celebrate the show getting renewed that involved having the impalas towed from set. She takes a beat and closes her eyes and opens them looking serious. “I mean, if I get - not that I’m necessarily going to - crap. I didn’t mean to sound so -” She gives a short laugh. “God, I’m the worst!”

Jensen laughs. “It’s fine. It was pretty obvious today you were the frontrunner. I won’t let the word get out that you’re an entitled princess.”

“Great, then I promise to keep your secret that you’re a standoffish prick,” she grins into her wine glass as he sputters a response.

“Was I really that bad? I’m sorry - I really am. You caught me on a bad day.”

“I’m teasing, Jensen, it’s fine. You’re fine. Truth be told, I decided I liked you before I decided I liked Jared.”

That earns a disbelieving look as Jensen cocks his head at her. “It’s true,” she continues. “Jared’s sweet, but he’s a lot. You’re just a lot more my speed. Plus, I liked you - in part - because watching you guys together made me like him more. There’s something about you guys together. He seems so manic and you seem so distant, but he can make you belly laugh from just a look and you can calm him down just by offering to buy him a beer.”

Jensen looks at her curiously at that and she explains. “When we were waiting for Eric and everyone today, I heard you say something about Löwenbräu, and he immediately just came down a notch. It was like magic.”

Jensen gives a big laugh at that and thinks back. He remembers deciding to help calm Jared down after Genevieve had impressed him, despite his best efforts at the time not to be impressed. But he hadn’t been paying attention enough to remember when he’d said “Löwenbräu,” though, now that Genevieve has mentioned it, he has no doubt he said it.

“Löwenbräu’s not a beer,” Jensen responds automatically. “Well, it is,” he quickly corrects himself off Genevieve’s look. “But that’s not what we mean when we say it.”

“Then what do you mean when you say it?” Genevieve asks.

“It’s just - we screw around a lot. We figured out we needed a way of signaling when we don’t want to joke about something or when we need the other one to get serious or if we need something to stay just between us and not get talked about in interviews. So if one of us says ‘Löwenbräu,’ that means ‘no more joking’ or ‘keep this a secret; or…anything we need it to really.”

“Why Löwenbräu?”

“We both really like it,” Jensen lies easily.

Jensen can’t reveal the real story of Löwenbräu, of course, because, well, that’s what Löwenbräu means.

**************************************************************************************************************************************************
Jensen had been the one who taught Jared to drive stick, a fact, which, now given their relationship, has provided them with an endless amount of amusement.
There was a time, though, that the fact that he couldn’t drive stick couldn’t have been less funny to Jared and, in fact, had been a huge source of embarrassment that he’d only admitted to Jensen late one night during first season while they waited for a car to come pick them up from a dive bar outside of Vancouver. Learning to drive means driving a manual transmission for Texas guys, and not having learned made Jared feel decidedly unmanly.

But Jared had moved to LA when he was young, and the car given to him by his parents, a 1969 Camaro, had an automatic transmission. It was the car he learned how to drive on and it would be the car to last him well until he’d been driving for a while, and at that point, it hadn’t been exactly convenient to learn.

So when he admitted it to Jensen that night, right before downing the rest of his drink as they sat watching the bartenders close up behind them, he’d flushed sheepishly, betraying what a huge confession he’d thought it was.

Jensen had nodded quietly and shrugged that it wasn’t that big of a deal because they never drove themselves anywhere anyway. But that weekend, he’d shown up early at Jared’s house in LA and offered to take him out and teach him to drive his truck.

They’d driven around North Hollywood, Jensen reasoning that it was both close by Jared’s place and that it would let him practice dealing with hills and inclines that would be the hardest part of learning.

They spent the better part of a day finding random errands to run and allowing Jared to practice. Jensen showed no end of patience, reminding Jared again and again as the car stalled that he needed to keep the gas and clutch even and grinning happily whenever Jared got it right.

They stopped by a boutique liquor store because Jensen had needed to stock his bar and Jared had sworn by this place. When they went in, Jensen yelped when he saw that this placed carried Löwenbräu - real Löwenbräu as opposed to the crap knock-off version Anheuser-Busch had started manufacturing, which had prompted the brewers to pull the real stuff off the shelves in the U.S.

Jensen insisted on buying four six-packs and sliding it in on the bench in front in between him and Jared as they started home. Everything was fine until Jared went to find parking a few blocks from his house in an effort to show off to Jensen that he could park on a hill. But as soon as Jared tried to park, the truck began rolling backwards.

Jared panicked, and in a move he still can’t completely justify, picked up the beer - two six packs at a time - and began throwing it out the window like he was baling out a sinking boat.

Jensen was dumbfounded for a good twenty seconds before his mind was able to process what Jared was doing and just how stunningly stupid it was.

“Jared - J - stop! What the hell are you doing, man?”

“We’re rolling backwards!” Jared exclaimed by way of explanation as if it was possible Jensen had not realized that yet.

“Put the - stop chucking the beer! Put the car in first! What are you - ” Jensen had reached over and shifted the car and put his hands on Jared’s to calm him down.

They stared at each other for one moment of shocked silence before they began laughing hysterically, doubling over, barely able to breathe.

“What the fuck was that?” Jensen asked incredulously when he caught his breath.

“I don’t know, dude! We were rolling backwards! I thought if - ”

“You thought the secret to driving stick was throwing beer out the window?”

“I thought maybe it was weighing us down!” They’d begun laughing hysterically again.
“If weight was the problem, why the hell would you start with the lightest thing - we weigh more than the beer, Jared!”

“Did you want me to throw us out?” Jared asked throwing his hands up.

“Oh, you’re never hearing the end of this. I’m telling this story at Paleyfest, dude.”

Suddenly all laughter was gone from his voice and Jared’s eyes had gone wide as he’d shaken his head frantically. “Please, Jen,” he’d begged. “But for real. Don’t.” His voice had gotten quiet. “I don’t want anyone else to know I can’t drive stick.”

Jensen had immediately held his hands up in surrender. “First of all, you can drive stick now,” Jensen had pointed out with a grin, relaxing only when Jared gave a small smile back at that. “But don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone about the Löwenbräu.”

And just like that, they had a safeword.

“Löwenbräu” became the word they whispered to each other after all their most embarrassing moments. When Jensen had gotten so drunk the night before he was still drunk the next morning and threw up on Jared while he was spotting him lifting weights, he said it to Jared as he apologized through the bathroom door while Jared showered. When Jensen had walked in on Jared crying because he was tired and homesick, Jared barely got the word out through hiccups and tears as Jensen just sat quietly next to him letting him sob and then letting him talk about Texas and his family for the rest of the night. When Jared freaked out and called Jensen from a girl’s bathroom because the girl had asked if Jared was into watersports and Jared didn’t know what that meant, the call had ended with a hurried whisper of “fuck. Löwenbräu. And come pick me up now.”

It became pre-emptive. When they went to a party where they knew that Chad or Tom or Chad and Tom would talk them into getting stoned, they promised anything either of them did while high would “go on the Löwenbräu list.” They declared a “Löwenbräu shield” around the bar where Jared had his 24th birthday party.

But the most frequent uses came on set. Jensen had become incredibly skilled at not breaking when Jared messed with him during their scenes, but every once in a while it was too much to take and Jensen really wanted to nail his coverage, or one of them had to get off set at a reasonable time, or they’d just had a hard day and couldn’t deal with the constant screwing around. On those days, one of them would simply say, “Löwenbräu” and the other would give him what he needed.

That’s what it means. More than no more joking or keep this a secret; more than this never happened or what happens here stays here. Löwenbräu is their code word that means I trust you to know me.

After Jensen’s brief explanation to Genevieve he swallows hard, thinking about how hurt Jared must have been over the past few months that Jensen has been so unable - and what probably seems unwilling - to live up to their simply agreement to just know. I wonder how many times he’s been trying to say Löwenbräu to me, Jensen wonders sadly.

“What did you mean?” Jensen says suddenly with a sly smile.

“Hmm?” Genevieve looks up from her salad.

“What you said? About it making you sad? The way my mind works. What did you mean?”

“Jensen really - ”

“What did you mean, Genevieve?”

Genevieve lets out a small sigh and cocks her head to the side, letting her hair fall perfectly around one side of her face. “I meant - I imagine you’re always like that. Not just overthinking the things you let yourself say but the things you let yourself do. Playing them through to the conclusion you think is most likely and determining whether to let yourself proceed based on how it all unfolds in your head. And that’s - that makes me sad. Because it seems hard. Because - ” She stops for a moment like she’s choosing the next words incredibly carefully. “Because he’s not like that. And that has to be painful for you both.”

Jensen’s mouth goes completely dry and he reaches for his water but comes up with his wine. He honestly doesn’t think he can choke out a single word, so he still drains the glass before he lets himself speak. It turns out it didn’t matter because all that comes out is, “uh.”

“It’s - Jensen. It’s fine. You guys are - you’re careful. I’m just really attuned to these things. I - my brother is gay so - whereas some people might see you and think ‘codependent best friends with boundary issues’ I think…something else.”

“We’re - we’re still.” Jensen scrubs his hand across his mouth because he doesn’t know what to say and he doesn’t feel like lying and he’d actually really like to talk about it. So he just sighs, “You’re right. Jared is the exact opposite. He just rushes in without thinking so - ”

Genevieve shakes her head frantically. “No, actually. That’s not what I meant. He doesn’t rush in without thinking. He - ” She exhales looking at a loss for words before she continues. “He’s not your opposite. He’s your inverse. He overthinks too it’s just - he rushes in because he thinks about it.”

“How do you - ”

“Well, I think about how you both treated me. He embraced me immediately. You were much more reserved - ”

“I believe the term you used earlier was “a standoffish prick.”

“Exactly. Thank you.” Genevieve grins. “So opposing reactions, right? But based on the exact same assumption - I was going to be your new costar.”

Jensen blinks slowly considering this. He thinks about what Jared had been trying to tell him about the scene they’d worked on that day. It’s not that Sam didn’t understand Dean’s sacrifice. He’d completely understood it. And they were fighting because Sam wanted to do the exact same thing for Dean. They reacted differently, but they had the same underlying motivation - they would each do anything for their brother. Then Jensen about their fight. Jared was pissed because Jensen tried to let him off the hook because he’d assumed they were dating, and Jensen was terrified Jared wasn’t taking this as seriously as he was because…he’d assumed they were dating. He thought he and Jared had had a misunderstanding. But…they didn’t. Not really. They actually had the same understanding and just hadn’t realized they had been on the same page. And when he thinks about it, he could laugh because of course they were thinking the same thing. Because, really, when weren’t they?

“You’re scared.” Genevieve doesn’t bother making it a question. Jensen’s head is spinning and he tries to make sense of the fear bubbling up inside of him.

“I - we’re not just - I think - I think I may be in love with him.” He whispers it and doesn’t look at Genevieve right away.

When she responds he can practically hear the smile in her voice that forces his head up to meet her eyes. “You work together, live together, and even when you have time to yourselves, you look for opportunities spend it with each other. And now you're actually concerned because you think you might be in love with him?"
Jensen shakes his head with a small smile. Maybe he's worrying over nothing. “You don't think I should be concerned?”

“I think you should be concerned you're only just now figuring it out.” Genevieve grins and looks down. The network had called ahead to take care of their bill, and she reaches out for the small tray showing it had been paid and pushes it toward Jensen. “Here. Do you want your fortune cookie?”

“Nah, I’m good.” Jensen smiles. “I need to head home. I’ll call you a car too?”

“Thanks Jensen.” Genevieve smiles and stands up. “I think this conversation will lead to something fruitful for all involved.”

Jensen looks back at her with a bewildered expression and she grins. “That’s what my fortune cookie said.”

Jensen throws his head back to laugh at that as they walk out of the restaurant together.
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