Happy Live Journal Anniversary to ME! You get fic.
Title: What If We Just Stay Here Forever (1/2)
Author: truelyesoteric
Rating: R
Pairings: Jared/Jensen. Moment of Jared/Danneel. Implication of lots of hookups for all!
Warning: Mentions past drug use. Mentions less than savory human interactions
Beta: The always lovely and willing to beta for me kathickers
Disclaimer: I own this story, nothing more.
Word Count: 15,000 over all (7000 this part)
Summary: Jensen was the brain, Danneel was the face, Jared was the personality. It worked when they were together. It didn’t when they weren’t. It really didn't when they weren't. Four and a half years later, Jensen really didn't want to care about anything anymore, didn't want to want anything ever, refused to admit that he could feel. Except for the one thing he knew he couldn't leave alone.
a/n: The second half will be up this weekend. Its done but it needs more chickens. Sorry, but its my LJ Anniversary and I must post story.
“What if we just say here forever?” Danneel sighed, stretching in the sun. The three of them lay on the chaise lounges by the ocean in the Caribbean. It had been Danneel’s present before Jensen went off to college.
“It’s okay--I’m never moving,” Jared sighed. It had been a week of beautiful days and wild nights, just the three of them. It had been a calm moment in the turmoil of their lives
Jensen was quiet. He felt like they were clawing to hold onto something they didn’t realize was fading away.
***
Once upon a time they had just been kids.
Jensen had never really been sure what his father did, and his mother never seemed to do anything. Jared’s father owned quite a few things and was always trying to manage them, his mother long gone. Danneel’s parents did a lot of things, all of which made money. None of them really paid much attention to their parents, which was fair because their parents didn’t pay much attention to them.
The three of them had grown up wanting nothing.
They gravitated towards each other because they could understand each other. They weaved in and out of closeness, but the three of them were called the Dynamic Threesome by the time they hit their posh little private high school. Which was funny because the only ones they didn’t even think of sleeping with were each other.
They would fuck around with anyone. Strangers, their parents, their peers, but by unspoken rule they would never fuck with each other. What existed between the three of them was real instead of the meaninglessness that they threw at other people, both physically and verbally. The only thing that they trusted was each other.
Jensen was the golden boy, grades and popularity. He was smarter than about ninety-five percent of everybody; he was a hell of a lot prettier than anyone who had ever existed and he had no qualms using these things to his advantage. The only ones who knew that his smile never lit his eyes were Jared and Danneel. He was bored by the easy grades, the easy lays, the easy life, but that never stopped him from doing it.
Danneel was the princess. She smiled loud enough that nobody ever asked her opinion. She laughed loud enough that nobody asked how she was feeling. She could lie so sweetly that you would always believe her. She knew when everyone around her was lying, but she never called anyone on it; she was too bored with them to care.
Jared was the wild child. He was the one who could always score. Jared was always high or stoned, and he would laugh his way through life. He was a charmer and the life of any party. When it was just the three of them he was the one who offered a little bit of hope in their empty lives that they knew they shouldn’t complain about. He added dimension. He just had no idea what he actually was.
They never dated; they just fucked people on the sly that they would never deem worthy to bring to parties with their friends. Danneel loved hopeless musicians that nobody would ever hear about because they were never sober or ambitious enough. Jensen loved the help--waitresses, pool boys, and house staff--they were the only way he ever saw a world outside of his own. Jared just loved people; he would take whatever was given.
But in public, in the day, it was just the three of them.
With one little exception.
It wasn’t rare, under the influence that Jensen and Jared would end up sandwiching some faceless girl. That was complicated, but it was okay.
Jared and Jensen were indefinable; the electricity they produced between them was enough to light Vegas. When they had their heads together, just talking, it was as if another world had been created and nobody could cross into it. When they had a girl between them she felt as if she were going to die from the connection, but what a way to go. They never touched except when they had a body between them, stolen caresses, accidental kisses, and eyefuls of open expression--it only happened with a buffer.
They were in each other’s presence constantly; they knew what the other was thinking most of the time. Part of the reason for that was that they kept a shared journal. They would write in it, commentary on classes, commentary on parties, thought about random facts. Between classes they would pass the notebooks, one of them typically had the current journal in their back pocket at any given time. Some days they would take turns writing down a back and forth thought, sitting inches from each other.
What they didn’t understand, and only Danneel could conceive, was why: why they just didn’t cave to what was between them.
She knew that Jensen thought that recognizing anything good or anything happy would lead to its immediate demise. Jared, as always, could read the thought and trusted Jensen to lead. They just believed that if they said it or acted on it, it would no longer exist.
It was okay; they still had each other, but Jensen was looking to get out. He went to his Ivy League in the East. The balance disappeared. Jared took it the hardest, to him it felt like being abandoned.
But everything was always okay.
What wasn’t okay was when Jensen came home from the East Coast on his first winter break and Danneel was fucking Jared.
Naked, writhing, and active.
This was something they didn’t do, they did not fuck each other, but it seemed that the leaving broke the coveted bond between them.
He watched them for a little while before they registered him. They both looked up, glassy eyed.
He looked at them.
For the first time in their friendship his head was clear. He was not mired in their life, the parties, the drugs, the vapidness. He had gone to school to get out, he had stopped thinking inside the bubble
The first thing that he felt was hurt and left out because they were together without him, but that quickly faded and his world was thrumming with jealousy, because those long limbs moving, the stretch of back, the hair wet from sweat hadn’t been for him. He had wanted to touch for so long, he had never touched and now it wasn’t some random stranger that Jared was fucking. For a moment he hated Danneel more than anything else, he had let her in and she was there, wrapped around Jared. She had taken the one thing that he didn’t even know he wanted more than anything in the world.
So he stuffed down everything, he just stuffed it away, and walked out.
He left and never went back to his childhood home.
He was done.
He refused calls, except for from his mother.
And Chad. Chad who had been on the periphery of his life, a loose acquaintance, but one who Jared always kept around. Taking these calls were what he considered a chink in his otherwise perfect armor.
But he did it anyway.
He knew his mother would talk about Danneel. He hoped that Chad would talk about Jared. The first was wildly successful; the second never seemed to happen.
His mother would tell him how Danneel had taken up acting and modeling and was traveling the world, a well-known face. Jensen saw her picture in many places. He would catch images of her and there was something so dead about her eyes. Jensen wondered if she was like that when he knew her.
Chad spoke of everything but Jared. Jensen listened to the endless chatter for one word. This was his hell, to listen to Chad for the one thing Chad would never speak of.
But part of Jensen couldn’t leave the hearing of Jared.
And he went on the hallowed halls of his education, once again he was smarter and prettier than most. He created a whole new bubble a million times hollower than ever before.
He could never be bothered anymore to try to find someone to let in. He was known as elusive and kind of slutty on campus. It was a reputation that he reveled in with as much amusement as he ever showed. Some liked him and some thought he was an asshole. Very few actually knew him and Jensen didn’t care.
Nobody really had ever knew him.
He had never let Danneel in, not all the way. Save one, he had never let anyone in.
There was one part of him…
He didn’t think about that part.
He liked the mystique of his persona. He liked thinking that he was just that cynical guy, dryly cracking his way through life.
Once in the years since he left, Danneel had tried to call just once. He didn’t remember when exactly, in the timeline of his life, but it was after he had walked out on her and Jared and before he graduated. He remembered that it happened some night at three in the morning and he was in Boston in the middle of a minor orgy, covered in glitter. He got the message on his phone the next morning.
He had never erased it.
You left us, you know. Her voice was unemotional, empty, and slightly slurred. We were fucked up, but when we were there together we were stable. It was okay. But you left and there was nothing else. Fucking him was just because I was afraid when you left that everything was going to fall apart, but for him it was different, for him he stopped caring it mean absolutely nothing to him, he was already gone when we fucked, it was because you left him. I’m just a face you know. That is all anyone sees. You asked me things like my favorite color. Jared always asked me how I felt and made sure I told him the real answer, he stopped when you left. I was special when I was part of the three. When you left, that was the last time that anyone ever saw me as anything but a face.
That was the end of the first message.
She had called back.
He erased the second message, the one where her voice was breaking with an honesty that he didn’t think that their friendship warranted, not after all this time.
He’s fucked up, really fucked up. He’s doing all these things. He has borrowed so much money from people he shouldn’t, thinking the next club or label is going to be his ticket, but you know Jared, well maybe you don’t any more. He’s using. He’s gone. So gone. The only thing that he has left is…fucking being polite anymore. His father doesn’t want anything to with him. He has nothing, he just…he’s a boy toy to these old guys, they give him clothes and money and so many drugs. You left, I’m a face, and he’s nothing better than a whore.
Jensen erased that message and hung up the phone and aced his economics exam, then fucked his way through the next week.
Yet, it remained etched in the part of his brain that he stored things he tried not to remember.
He graduated in four and a half years. He had a job that began in June; it was early December when he temporarily moved to the mountains of Vermont. He rented a condo on the slopes and snowboarded. He decided that he was gong to do nothing for seven months.
He brought with him his journals, where he scribbled down life and put down the things he barely liked to be thinking.
He wrote and snowboarded and was as content as he could be with his life.
It barely a week when he got the call. He had been out on the slopes at the time, he got back and it had been Chad. Chad didn’t leave messages.
He contemplated erasing the message without listening to it. He wanted this call and at the same time he wanted to stay in his own little bubble.
Instead he drank half a bottle of whiskey and put the phone to his ear.
You were his best friend once so do me a fucking favor. He’s in Vermont, right next door. Pick him up from rehab. It’s bad, real bad. He has been, well I’ve never said, I didn’t know, I didn’t want to know, but then I knew, just - well fuck man, just pick him up, and don’t let him come back here. He won’t make it.
Jensen was pretty quick to grab his coat and go out, he found a willing body that he barely remembered in the morning, but he had to, he had to because feelings were getting far too close to something he couldn’t bear to have someone touch.
The last thing that he wanted was to want anything.
The next day he had it under control, but Jared was still in his backyard and he couldn’t say no. He could never find enough to want to say no.
On the day that Jared was getting out he looked at his temporary condo, called a cleaning service, took a shower, called a grocery service, and opened one of the boxes of journals.
We’re not going to remember everything, Jared’s scrawl said. So we’re going to write down our lives so that the world will know we lived.
Jensen closed his eyes and the book. There were eleven more books that. Eleven books of their combined scrawling. Jensen wondered if Jared could remember anything anymore without writing it down.
Jensen tried very had to remember the feeling of being apart of something. He couldn’t, but he willed himself not to feel hollow and lonely.
He remembered Jared’s smile--god, Jared’s smile--bright and open, dimples. Full of life.
Jensen looked at the other books, the volumes that held only his own handwriting. He had never read them, putting them away as soon as they were filled.
In those boxes was his life.
He put them away.
**
Rehab release seemed to be very much not like prison. Jensen waited in what looked like an office reception room. He sat hunched over, elbows on his knees, one hand in a fist, the other covering it, just staring down at the plain beige carpet.
He found it ridiculous that he knew exactly when Jared entered the room, as if footsteps were as unique as fingerprints.
He looked up and Jared stood there, eyes wide. His eyes were dead, though, dead as Danneel’s. His face wore lines that it shouldn’t.
And Jensen realized that it was Jared.
Really here.
And he didn’t have a clue what to do with that fact.
**
The drive home was twenty minutes. Jared leaned against the doorframe, barely acknowledging that Jensen was there, through half lidded eyes Jared watched the mountains go by.
They pulled out and got out of the SUV. Jensen opened the door and walked into the house. Jensen waved towards the kitchen and living room. Jared barely registered it.
They walked to the second floor, a landing with a room on either side and a bathroom in the middle, there was a staircase leading up to the room that Jensen’s stuff was in. Jensen pointed towards one of the bedrooms, the one with sunlight. Jared hefted his small bag and walked towards it.
“There is the bathroom, your room doesn’t have a bathroom in your room. Sorry,” Jensen said. It was the first thing said between them.
He thought that Jared heard him.
Jared went into his room. Jensen had no idea what to do with him.
Jensen went down to the kitchen where he had food. Jensen was lacking of what to do with food, but he supposed he could make a sandwich, any fool could do that.
Jensen slowly made a sandwich, hearing quiet footsteps and the shower turn on.
It was weird suddenly to have someone in the same house as him, it hadn’t happened in four years.
He snuck up and left books outside of the door, Vonnegut and Hemmingway. Later, he put food outside of the door. They both went in the room. When Jensen woke up the tray was outside of the door.
**
Jared didn’t leave his room, as far as Jensen knew, unless it was to go to the bathroom.
On day four Jensen picked up the phone. She wouldn’t change her number.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said after the call was connected.
“You’re the brain,” she said, in that even tone, feeling him out.
“Please come,” Jensen asked, the closest that he had come to begging in his life.
“Its cold and winter,” she said, slightly complaining.
She hung up. Jensen knew that she would be here by morning, because that was the kind of girl she was.
**
The doorbell rang at ten am.
He opened it to her and her mass amounts of luggage.
“Staying long, sweetheart?” he asked casually, leaning on the doorframe.
“Fuck you,” she replied.
“Not likely,” Jensen retorted. “And if you fuck him I’ll kill you.”
She smiled, a little, something secretive, as if she understood something he didn’t .
“I took a red eye, you bastard,” she told him, lifting her sunglasses. “I’m in the fucking cold. Be a doll and grab my luggage.”
“Your words charm me,” Jensen said dully.
She walked in the house without a look back. “Where is your coffee? I’m sure there is a huge pot brewing unless you somehow found a way to shoot it up.”
Despite himself Jensen shuddered.
She looked back at him, and her bored eyes showed some worry. If they were normal they would have discussed it, she would have apologized for the words that were too soon; she knew Jensen had seen the remainder of Jared’s track marks.
Instead she blinked back some tears and walked out the door and picked up her own luggage and brought it in the house.
When it all was inside and the door shut she shrugged. “Coffee?”
He got her a cup and took one of her bags. “You’re in the master bedroom.”
She followed him up the stairs to the third floor. She didn’t comment that the bedroom on the second floor with the open door held his hastily thrown together things, the one right across from Jared’s. She knew why she was upstairs in the suite and not in this room.
She didn’t say anything; she wasn’t really up for that after not speaking to him for years.
They got her things settled and walked back down to Jared’s door.
“Is it locked?” she asked, eyeing it.
“No,” Jensen answered.
“Well you didn’t have to call me,” she snorted, moving to the door. “You could have just opened it.”
She moved forward because they both knew that Jensen couldn’t.
She opened the door. Jared was on the floor, staring at the ceiling.
“Hi, pookie,” she said, with obvious fake charm.
His eyes slid to her, empty.
“Take a shower,” she told him. “I’m starving and none of us can cook. There is no way that I’m taking your stinky body out in public like that.”
**
“Ready?” Danneel asked.
Jared stood with his hair wet, wearing a t-shirt. Jensen and Danneel were bundled in their winter coats. He didn’t say anything, just put his hands in his pockets and looked at his socked feet. The socks had a hole in the toe.
“You hate winter. Why did you go to rehab in Vermont?” Jensen muttered as he went to the closet. He had a jacket and he was pretty sure would do some kind of coverage to Jared’s frame.
Jensen was buried in the hall closet; he didn’t notice the look Jared gave his back. Danneel did.
**
They were sitting in the diner. Jared was staring off into space.
“We can buy you a coat and stuff later,” she offered.
Jared’s face took on a stormy look, one so vehement that she nearly jumped back. She had never seen him look like that.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “No buying you stuff.”
The waitress came up and his expression changed. I It was that old Jared look, charming and carefree.
“Hey, Melinda,” he said, leaning forward a bit. “I’m new here and I’m looking for work, you know of anything?”
Melinda was twenty something and even with Jared looking thin and a little bedraggled, he had a smile that could and had charmed the pants off many a people.
She grinned back, a little dazed. “Um, well the morning dishwasher didn’t show up for the second time. Harry wants to fire him, but can’t really if we don’t have another one. It’s early, six am, and dirty, but I’m sure…”
“I’ll take it,” Jared said leaning back and throwing her a flirty smile.
“Do you have references or anything?” Melinda asked. “I’ll totally send Harry over.”
Jared shrugged carelessly.
“I’ll vouch for him,” Jensen said from his corner of the table. He bit his lip a little and smiled. “You know me, Harry and I know each other.”
Danneel watched the two men and the blushing waitress.
“Okay,” Melinda said. “I’ll talk to Harry. Do you know what you want to order?”
They gave their orders. Jensen looked down at the Formica, but smiled a little as Jared ordered more food than Jensen and Danneel combined.
When Melinda left Danneel watched Jared’s face go blank again.
“You are ridiculous,” she tried to keep it light. “You still have it. Jensen, we don’t even what to know HOW you know this Harry dude. And Jared Padalecki--have you ever washed a dish in your life?”
At the mention of his own name Jared turned towards Danneel.
“It will probably be a little more demanding than my last ‘job’,” Jared said quietly, but clearly. “I think that washing dishes is a step up, in that whole moral sense. But if you are more worried about the technicalities than the depths to which I have fallen, I think I can figure out how to clean a few dishes.”
Danneel leaned forward and touched his face. “Hi, Jared.”
He blinked.
“That is the first thing you’ve said to me in over four years,” she said quietly. “You haven’t spoken to me since that day in the loft when Jensen caught us. Great way to break the silence.”
Jared looked startled, and then he slipped behind the blank mask and stared off into space.
“Stay with us,” Danneel said.
Jared closed his eyes for a minute and then looked at them. “What do you want, Danni? What do you want me to say? I’m not trying to be rude or anything here, but I am not talking about the past and I’m definitely not seeing a future right now. I’ve got nothing. I’ve got two pairs of jeans and three shirts and a pair of shoes and a job as a dishwasher and I’ll probably get a hairnet. That is the extent to what I have going for me right now.”
“You could use a haircut,” Jensen said as he ripped up his napkin.
Danneel shot him a look.
“What?” Jensen said. “I think that I have a razor, we could buzz it real short.”
Jared shot him a glare. “No way, man.”
The corner of Jensen’s mouth lifted. “So are you are saying that I should get out the scrunchies and barrettes, ‘cause you are getting out of control.”
Jared looked panicked, like he didn’t know how to react to this kind of ribbing.
“I could cut it,” Jensen said, he was well in control of what he was doing. “I did it that time when we were skiing in Aspen.”
Jared glared at him and it was the old Jared, petulant and not so jaded.
“We were six,” Jared pointed out. “And you took the dull kitchen scissors to cut out gum.”
“And you looked excellent,” Jensen teased.
“After my mother took me to see Cherie, her stylist extraordinaire,” Jared said. “I swear what that woman could do with hair…”
Melinda came back with the food and a job for Jared. Jared looked at the food.
He picked up his fork and looked straight at Jensen. “I’m considering this meal repayment for the horrible job that you did on my hair.”
Jensen smiled, teeth showing white. “Brat.”
Jared took a huge bite of pancake and did something that was almost a smile.
Danneel’s face eased, as if their acting like they usually did made the things okay. As if trying a little bit was enough. They ate in silence for a little while.
“I will pay you a thousand dollars to write my Christmas cards for me,” Jensen said off handedly.
Jared raised his eyebrows.
Jensen shrugged. “My grandmother likes you, write her some of that shit you are always bending her ear about. Do that magic so those people who kind of like me like me enough.”
Jared looked up, as Melinda waved him over.
“Okay,” Jared said distracted, as he got up.
Danneel looked over at Jensen. “If you have a Christmas card list I will join a convent.”
Jensen shrugged, his face alarmingly neutral. “It’s ok. Your lack of virtue is safe. How hard can it be to come up with a couple hundred names? He needs money and he isn’t going to take it from me for nothing.”
Danneel raised an eyebrow. “Be careful Jensen, that is getting very close to being something like nice.”
Jensen’s eyes tracked Jared, who was smiling and being charming.
“We wouldn’t want that now,” Jensen said absentmindedly.
**
After breakfast Jensen gave Jared money to go buy five hundred Christmas cards at the boutique down the street.
“Keep the change,” Jensen said as if was no big deal. “It doesn’t count towards your grand.”
He walked with Danneel back to the apartment.
“Do you worry that he’s going to…” she waved her hand around the town.
“Get blitzed?” Jensen asked. “Find someone who has some kind of stash and go on a bender with the money I gave him and then start sucking cock for his next fix? Find a whole new level of debauchery?”
“Jesus, Jensen,” Danneel chastised.
Jensen pulled out a cigarette and shrugged. “If he wants to do it then he is going to do it. We can’t stop him.”
Despite his words he looked to where Jared had walked to the boutique.
She stood with him for a moment and then sighed and walked to Jensen’s condo.
Jensen stood and watched until he saw Jared’s tall figure coming up the street.
He slipped inside.
**
Jared set cross-legged on the bed, composing a card to Jensen’s mother.
Danneel came and lay on the sofa.
“Jensen went out,” Danneel sighed. “Amuse me.”
Jared looked up and then picked up a book and threw it at her.
“Amuse yourself,” he told her.
Danneel picked up the book and looked at it skeptically. “Didn’t you get the memo? I’m just the face.”
“Bullshit,” Jared told her.
“I miss nice Jared,” she pouted. “Where is the boy who would make marshmallow puppets to make me laugh when I failed a history quiz? Bring him back please.”
Jared looked up at her, his eyes still dull. “Wish I could.”
Danneel looked at him and her eyes began to tear up.
“What happened, baby?’ Danneel said. “I know that we were fucked up, I know what it is like to start down the rabbit hole and the next thing doesn’t look so bad, but Jared when did you stop caring? The two of us, we would have--all you had to do was call.”
Jared put a note in the envelope. “He had school, you had contracts.”
Danneel cross the room and crashed on the bed. “Fuck that. All you had to do was call.”
“You would have come,” Jared acknowledged.
“But you were afraid that he wouldn’t,” Danneel said.
He gave her a look.
Danneel sniffled. “I really want to give you a hug, because you’re an idiot, but if Jensen comes home to find me hugging you I’m dead.”
They exchanged a look. She expected Jared to deny it, but it didn’t look like Jared was into any kind of lie, especially the one that he wanted so badly to be true.
“He’s out,” Jared said putting down the pen and putting his arms around her.
She knew what that meant. They both knew what that meant, Jensen would go out--that was how he dealt with things, especially things that involved feelings.
Danneel pulled away, she was not in the mood to start crying.
“Some days I think that you two are the only two people who ever cared about me,” Danneel said stretching and reaching for a book, her voice flippant and light, the admission more honest than anything she had said in years.
Jared didn’t look up, “Someday that is the only truth I know.”
**
“Hi, honey, I’m home!” Danneel said somewhat muffled.
Jensen came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a paper towel. “It’s about time, where have you been?”
He stopped short when he saw Danneel lugging in quite a few bags, followed by Jared, who was carrying a tree.
Danneel looked at the clock where it was blinking ‘5:06.’
“Oh, I see it is past curfew,” she noted blandly.
“Some of us are carrying trees,” Jared said, pushing the tree into the house and into Danneel’s back.
Danneel pushed back and then walked into the house laughing, she looked back at Jensen. “Did you cook for us, honey? Slave away in a kitchen for us all day.”
Jensen lifted his eyes skyward.
Danneel popped in the kitchen. “Jared--come see! Jensen got us take out!”
Jared, who presumably had put the tree somewhere in the living room, walked into the kitchen and came out munching on an egg roll.
He gave Jensen a half grin. “Thanks for slaving away all day over take out menus.”
Danneel swatted him away. “No food, none at all, until the tree is standing in the living room.”
Jensen stood there laughing.
“Oh, big guy, what do you have to laugh about,” Danneel said hands on her hips. “You are going to help him or no food.”
Jensen looked at her incredulously. “I got the food.”
“You picked up a phone,” Danneel said. “You are going to set up the tree.”
Jensen looked at a loss. Danneel raised an eyebrow.
“You have forgotten you have no defense against me?” She said tapping her fingers against her hip.
Jensen just stood there and crossed his arms.
Danneel smiled pretty and charming. “Jared will have to do it alone, if you don’t help.”
With that Jensen faltered a little bit.
She watched him change and her face got a little sad as she listened to Jensen and Jared put up the tree. Danneel closed her eyes, listening to their loud silence from the other room, only little scraping noises.
**
They sat in the living room, surrounded by cellophane wrappers and empty boxes. The tree was lit with white lights and red and silver balls. There were pieces of broken bulbs around the room, and interspersed with some of the fallen parts of Christmas were cartons of Chinese food and a very tired Jared and Jensen.
Danneel was glowing looking at the tree and other assorted decorations around the living room.
“Jeeze, Danni,” Jensen muttered. “When did you get taken over by the Christmas spirit?”
She threw a handful of wrapping at him.
“I’ve never done Christmas,” Danneel said. “I’ve had it done for me a million times, I just wanted to see what it was like.”
Jensen made a face.
“Jared likes it,” Danneel said.
“And you’re speaking for me now,” Jared said.
“He speaks!” Danneel squealed. “It’s a Christmas miracle.”
Jensen and Jared looked at each other.
“She sounds like your mom on Christmas after eggnog,” Jared said in a monotone.
Jensen grinned and turned to Danneel.
“Dan-nneeee,” Jensen said in a singsong voice. “Are you wasted?”
“I am drunk on Christmas spirit,” Danneel informed them studiously.
Jared was the one who cracked up first.
**
“What am I going to do when I lose you two?” Danneel was in her room at the mirror.
Jared was at work and Jensen had padded upstairs in his pajamas to lay on her bed and stare at the ceiling while Danneel went through the considerable amount of clothes that she had managed to bring.
Jensen lolled his head towards her.
“What does that mean?” Jensen asked.
Danneel sighed. “About a million things that I’m sure that you’re not ready to confront at this moment. But one day you’re going to grow a heart and he’s going to grow a brain, and I’m going to be back on magazine covers.”
“Maybe you’ll get a personality,” Jensen said poking a little bit at her.
Danneel bit her lip. “Way low, Jensen.”
“I know you have one, Killer,” Jensen said, trying to ease back into it. “Maybe you’d just decide to show that instead of your face.”
“You are an asshole,” Danneel sighed and posed again in the mirror. “A gigantic asshole. You are just mad that I know that you aren’t an asshole. I know that you are confused and scared and you like to make everyone believe other wise, but you never go after anything you know you can’t do better than anyone else. You are a fucking chicken.”
Jensen looked up at the ceiling again, he was too smart not to know what she was thinking.
“Dance around it, Jensen,” Danneel said. “You’re so much like your father.”
“Fuck you, Danni,” Jensen muttered.
Danneel took that moment to dance around the room, doing a very good rendition of a waltz with one of her dresses.
“How long have you known?’ Jensen asked, trying not to be obvious.
Danneel came and fell on the bed. “Jensen, I know you. I watched the two of you always, it has been there for so long I don’t know how you two denied it, but if you’re asking when I was sure; it was when you walked in on us. We were blitzed out of our minds, but I remember your face. You were looking at him, destroyed. That is all I ever needed. If Jared would have talked to me afterward I would have told him, but you two are the most stubborn brats ever.”
She got up again, knowing Jensen well enough to know that this conversation was at an end. It was way to close to feelings.
He surprised her.
“He’s somebody else right now,” Jensen said quietly, the voice almost not him anymore. “I’d kill just to catch him in a moment where I could reach him.”
Danneel turned to look at him.
“What am I going to be when you two don’t need a girl between you?” she asked and walked out of the room.
**
Christmas came on the twenty-fifth, as was its custom. Danneel came and knocked on their doors ridiculously early, especially for Jensen who had gotten to bed at two, as he had been doing the last couple of days.
“Get up, Sleepyhead,” she said. “It’s Christmas.”
A very heavy thud landed on the other side of the bed. Jensen cracked an eye. Sitting there smiling was Jared Padalecki, wearing that smile, dimples creasing his face and a shine in his eyes that Jensen hadn’t even realized that he missed, wasn’t even aware that he could be missing.
“Hi,” he said, and blamed sleepiness for the tone instead of anything else. It was a little breathless.
“Jenny,” Jared said, pushing him. “C’mon. Danni got presents.”
“Jay,” Jensen said, trying to burrow into the pillow. “I’m seriously going to kill you. Is it light yet?”
“Jen-nen-sen,” Jared whined. “Presents.”
Jensen stayed buried in the pillow and bit back the prickle behind his eyes. Jared just sounded, like Jared. He had no defense in the early hour.
So he went with a glare. “She got to you too?”
Jared pouted.
Jensen hadn’t seen anything more beautiful than that in years.
Danneel put one of her tiny feet into Jensen’s ribs.
“Get up,” she said in a harshly shrill voice.
Jensen dove under the covers, but Jared just calmly patted her on the head. “With a voice like that you should have gone into drill sargentry.”
“Help me?” Danneel asked, calmly again.
Before Jensen could emerge from the blankets to see what she was talking about, he found himself being harshly yanked by both feel off the end of his king-sized bed.
**
Jared sat surrounded by wrapping paper with a bow on his head. He squinted at three badly wrapped packages.
“Chad sent us presents?” Jared asked.
“Looks like he wrapped them, too,” Jensen commented and held his hand out warily for the gift.
Danneel sneered a bit, but took hers too. Jared dove in and pulled out a shirt that said ‘if I only had a brain’. He looked confused. Jensen opened his: ‘if I only had a heart’. Danneel rolled her eyes and opened hers. It said ‘if I only had a personality’.
She threw it across the room. “Chad is a douche.”
Jared also threw his shirt away and opened a present from Jensen and looked up with a scornful look.
“A Flobee?” he stated.
Jensen started snickering.
And he couldn’t stop.
Danneel and Jared looked at him.
Jared just got up with bows in either hand. “Looks like someone needs to get the Christmas spirit.”
“Stay away from me, Gigantor,” Jensen said, backing over a couch.
“Jenny,” Jared sang out. “You need to get all pretty.”
“I’m already pretty,” Jensen said hiding behind the couch. “You’re the one who needs a haircut.”
Jared narrowed his eyes. “You are so going to pay for that!”
What ensued was a battle of bows and paper in more than appropriate places and hands all over bodies and a lot of laughter.
Jensen closed his eyes. He couldn’t ever remember feeling this alive.
**
Jensen was scribbling in his notebook when Jared popped his head in the door.
“Wanna go out?” he said with a grin.
Jensen thought of a great many reasons why the answer to that was a ‘no.’
“I promise not to drink,” Jared defended. “Let’s just go out tonight. You always go out. It will be like old times.”
Jensen wanted to say no, but then Jared let loose that megawatt smile and Jensen was a goner.
“Yeah,” Jensen said, feeling like he could actually reach out for the first time in his life. “Yeah.”
**
They were in the bar and Jensen was nursing a beer, listening to Jared tell a story about his mornings washing dishes. There was something so awesome about this Jared. This Jared touched him, like the old rules didn’t apply.
Jensen was being warmed between touches; he was feeling downright molten, just little teases. Jensen usually didn’t need to read into things because he didn’t need to-the people around him were overtly obvious about what they wanted from him. Jensen knew how to read people.
But he didn’t know with Jared.
Then Jared leaned in and started speaking, hot and warm against Jensen’s ear, sending shivers down his spine.
“Wanna find one to take home?” Jared said.
Jensen was prepared for a great many things, but not for that. Suddenly he went ice cold.
“What?” he asked.
Jared still had that smile, but it didn’t pierce him any more.
“Like old days,” Jared asked.
Suddenly Jensen got it, because he knew Jared. The realization washed over him with a wave a nausea.
“You did this for my Christmas present,” Jensen said slowly as he figured out the game of this new Jared. “You were giving me old you.”
Jared shrugged a little. “That is what you want, right? Old simple me?”
Jared’s look faltered. Old Jared never faltered.
Jensen sucked in a breath through his mouth.
“Fuck you,” Jensen said, anger replacing everything. “You really think what I want is a fucking game, a woman sandwiched between us?”
Jared’s brow creased. “Do you want just me?”
Jensen’s first answer was along the lines of ‘dear lord, yes’ until he realized that Jared was offering his body in payment.
And at that second Jensen was so angry he could barely see straight.
Jensen just looked at him. Jared sat there; there was a glimmer of that very young innocent Jared, buried under mistrust and resignation.
Jensen cursed everyone who had ever put that wariness in Jared’s eye and at the same time hated himself for feeling like he wanted to say yes, and fuck everything else.
With a morality that he didn’t know he possessed, Jensen stood up.
“Fuck you, Jared,” Jensen said and walked out blindly, without a coat, into the cold winter night.
He stormed into the house and ran into Danneel’s bed. She shuddered at his cold frame and shrunk away from his ice-cold fingers.
“What are you doing?” she asked incredulously.
“I want you,” Jensen said, and even to his own ears it sounded desperate and needy, two things that he wasn’t.
“Jen,” she said softly.
“Please,” he begged, hiccupping and phlegm bubbles obscuring the words in his throat.
Danneel looked at him, her green eyes luminous, tears following. “Baby, what happened?”
Jensen started sobbing.
She put her arms around him and let him cry himself to sleep.
Finish
Author: truelyesoteric
Rating: R
Pairings: Jared/Jensen. Moment of Jared/Danneel. Implication of lots of hookups for all!
Warning: Mentions past drug use. Mentions less than savory human interactions
Beta: The always lovely and willing to beta for me kathickers
Disclaimer: I own this story, nothing more.
Word Count: 15,000 over all (7000 this part)
Summary: Jensen was the brain, Danneel was the face, Jared was the personality. It worked when they were together. It didn’t when they weren’t. It really didn't when they weren't. Four and a half years later, Jensen really didn't want to care about anything anymore, didn't want to want anything ever, refused to admit that he could feel. Except for the one thing he knew he couldn't leave alone.
a/n: The second half will be up this weekend. Its done but it needs more chickens. Sorry, but its my LJ Anniversary and I must post story.
“What if we just say here forever?” Danneel sighed, stretching in the sun. The three of them lay on the chaise lounges by the ocean in the Caribbean. It had been Danneel’s present before Jensen went off to college.
“It’s okay--I’m never moving,” Jared sighed. It had been a week of beautiful days and wild nights, just the three of them. It had been a calm moment in the turmoil of their lives
Jensen was quiet. He felt like they were clawing to hold onto something they didn’t realize was fading away.
***
Once upon a time they had just been kids.
Jensen had never really been sure what his father did, and his mother never seemed to do anything. Jared’s father owned quite a few things and was always trying to manage them, his mother long gone. Danneel’s parents did a lot of things, all of which made money. None of them really paid much attention to their parents, which was fair because their parents didn’t pay much attention to them.
The three of them had grown up wanting nothing.
They gravitated towards each other because they could understand each other. They weaved in and out of closeness, but the three of them were called the Dynamic Threesome by the time they hit their posh little private high school. Which was funny because the only ones they didn’t even think of sleeping with were each other.
They would fuck around with anyone. Strangers, their parents, their peers, but by unspoken rule they would never fuck with each other. What existed between the three of them was real instead of the meaninglessness that they threw at other people, both physically and verbally. The only thing that they trusted was each other.
Jensen was the golden boy, grades and popularity. He was smarter than about ninety-five percent of everybody; he was a hell of a lot prettier than anyone who had ever existed and he had no qualms using these things to his advantage. The only ones who knew that his smile never lit his eyes were Jared and Danneel. He was bored by the easy grades, the easy lays, the easy life, but that never stopped him from doing it.
Danneel was the princess. She smiled loud enough that nobody ever asked her opinion. She laughed loud enough that nobody asked how she was feeling. She could lie so sweetly that you would always believe her. She knew when everyone around her was lying, but she never called anyone on it; she was too bored with them to care.
Jared was the wild child. He was the one who could always score. Jared was always high or stoned, and he would laugh his way through life. He was a charmer and the life of any party. When it was just the three of them he was the one who offered a little bit of hope in their empty lives that they knew they shouldn’t complain about. He added dimension. He just had no idea what he actually was.
They never dated; they just fucked people on the sly that they would never deem worthy to bring to parties with their friends. Danneel loved hopeless musicians that nobody would ever hear about because they were never sober or ambitious enough. Jensen loved the help--waitresses, pool boys, and house staff--they were the only way he ever saw a world outside of his own. Jared just loved people; he would take whatever was given.
But in public, in the day, it was just the three of them.
With one little exception.
It wasn’t rare, under the influence that Jensen and Jared would end up sandwiching some faceless girl. That was complicated, but it was okay.
Jared and Jensen were indefinable; the electricity they produced between them was enough to light Vegas. When they had their heads together, just talking, it was as if another world had been created and nobody could cross into it. When they had a girl between them she felt as if she were going to die from the connection, but what a way to go. They never touched except when they had a body between them, stolen caresses, accidental kisses, and eyefuls of open expression--it only happened with a buffer.
They were in each other’s presence constantly; they knew what the other was thinking most of the time. Part of the reason for that was that they kept a shared journal. They would write in it, commentary on classes, commentary on parties, thought about random facts. Between classes they would pass the notebooks, one of them typically had the current journal in their back pocket at any given time. Some days they would take turns writing down a back and forth thought, sitting inches from each other.
What they didn’t understand, and only Danneel could conceive, was why: why they just didn’t cave to what was between them.
She knew that Jensen thought that recognizing anything good or anything happy would lead to its immediate demise. Jared, as always, could read the thought and trusted Jensen to lead. They just believed that if they said it or acted on it, it would no longer exist.
It was okay; they still had each other, but Jensen was looking to get out. He went to his Ivy League in the East. The balance disappeared. Jared took it the hardest, to him it felt like being abandoned.
But everything was always okay.
What wasn’t okay was when Jensen came home from the East Coast on his first winter break and Danneel was fucking Jared.
Naked, writhing, and active.
This was something they didn’t do, they did not fuck each other, but it seemed that the leaving broke the coveted bond between them.
He watched them for a little while before they registered him. They both looked up, glassy eyed.
He looked at them.
For the first time in their friendship his head was clear. He was not mired in their life, the parties, the drugs, the vapidness. He had gone to school to get out, he had stopped thinking inside the bubble
The first thing that he felt was hurt and left out because they were together without him, but that quickly faded and his world was thrumming with jealousy, because those long limbs moving, the stretch of back, the hair wet from sweat hadn’t been for him. He had wanted to touch for so long, he had never touched and now it wasn’t some random stranger that Jared was fucking. For a moment he hated Danneel more than anything else, he had let her in and she was there, wrapped around Jared. She had taken the one thing that he didn’t even know he wanted more than anything in the world.
So he stuffed down everything, he just stuffed it away, and walked out.
He left and never went back to his childhood home.
He was done.
He refused calls, except for from his mother.
And Chad. Chad who had been on the periphery of his life, a loose acquaintance, but one who Jared always kept around. Taking these calls were what he considered a chink in his otherwise perfect armor.
But he did it anyway.
He knew his mother would talk about Danneel. He hoped that Chad would talk about Jared. The first was wildly successful; the second never seemed to happen.
His mother would tell him how Danneel had taken up acting and modeling and was traveling the world, a well-known face. Jensen saw her picture in many places. He would catch images of her and there was something so dead about her eyes. Jensen wondered if she was like that when he knew her.
Chad spoke of everything but Jared. Jensen listened to the endless chatter for one word. This was his hell, to listen to Chad for the one thing Chad would never speak of.
But part of Jensen couldn’t leave the hearing of Jared.
And he went on the hallowed halls of his education, once again he was smarter and prettier than most. He created a whole new bubble a million times hollower than ever before.
He could never be bothered anymore to try to find someone to let in. He was known as elusive and kind of slutty on campus. It was a reputation that he reveled in with as much amusement as he ever showed. Some liked him and some thought he was an asshole. Very few actually knew him and Jensen didn’t care.
Nobody really had ever knew him.
He had never let Danneel in, not all the way. Save one, he had never let anyone in.
There was one part of him…
He didn’t think about that part.
He liked the mystique of his persona. He liked thinking that he was just that cynical guy, dryly cracking his way through life.
Once in the years since he left, Danneel had tried to call just once. He didn’t remember when exactly, in the timeline of his life, but it was after he had walked out on her and Jared and before he graduated. He remembered that it happened some night at three in the morning and he was in Boston in the middle of a minor orgy, covered in glitter. He got the message on his phone the next morning.
He had never erased it.
You left us, you know. Her voice was unemotional, empty, and slightly slurred. We were fucked up, but when we were there together we were stable. It was okay. But you left and there was nothing else. Fucking him was just because I was afraid when you left that everything was going to fall apart, but for him it was different, for him he stopped caring it mean absolutely nothing to him, he was already gone when we fucked, it was because you left him. I’m just a face you know. That is all anyone sees. You asked me things like my favorite color. Jared always asked me how I felt and made sure I told him the real answer, he stopped when you left. I was special when I was part of the three. When you left, that was the last time that anyone ever saw me as anything but a face.
That was the end of the first message.
She had called back.
He erased the second message, the one where her voice was breaking with an honesty that he didn’t think that their friendship warranted, not after all this time.
He’s fucked up, really fucked up. He’s doing all these things. He has borrowed so much money from people he shouldn’t, thinking the next club or label is going to be his ticket, but you know Jared, well maybe you don’t any more. He’s using. He’s gone. So gone. The only thing that he has left is…fucking being polite anymore. His father doesn’t want anything to with him. He has nothing, he just…he’s a boy toy to these old guys, they give him clothes and money and so many drugs. You left, I’m a face, and he’s nothing better than a whore.
Jensen erased that message and hung up the phone and aced his economics exam, then fucked his way through the next week.
Yet, it remained etched in the part of his brain that he stored things he tried not to remember.
He graduated in four and a half years. He had a job that began in June; it was early December when he temporarily moved to the mountains of Vermont. He rented a condo on the slopes and snowboarded. He decided that he was gong to do nothing for seven months.
He brought with him his journals, where he scribbled down life and put down the things he barely liked to be thinking.
He wrote and snowboarded and was as content as he could be with his life.
It barely a week when he got the call. He had been out on the slopes at the time, he got back and it had been Chad. Chad didn’t leave messages.
He contemplated erasing the message without listening to it. He wanted this call and at the same time he wanted to stay in his own little bubble.
Instead he drank half a bottle of whiskey and put the phone to his ear.
You were his best friend once so do me a fucking favor. He’s in Vermont, right next door. Pick him up from rehab. It’s bad, real bad. He has been, well I’ve never said, I didn’t know, I didn’t want to know, but then I knew, just - well fuck man, just pick him up, and don’t let him come back here. He won’t make it.
Jensen was pretty quick to grab his coat and go out, he found a willing body that he barely remembered in the morning, but he had to, he had to because feelings were getting far too close to something he couldn’t bear to have someone touch.
The last thing that he wanted was to want anything.
The next day he had it under control, but Jared was still in his backyard and he couldn’t say no. He could never find enough to want to say no.
On the day that Jared was getting out he looked at his temporary condo, called a cleaning service, took a shower, called a grocery service, and opened one of the boxes of journals.
We’re not going to remember everything, Jared’s scrawl said. So we’re going to write down our lives so that the world will know we lived.
Jensen closed his eyes and the book. There were eleven more books that. Eleven books of their combined scrawling. Jensen wondered if Jared could remember anything anymore without writing it down.
Jensen tried very had to remember the feeling of being apart of something. He couldn’t, but he willed himself not to feel hollow and lonely.
He remembered Jared’s smile--god, Jared’s smile--bright and open, dimples. Full of life.
Jensen looked at the other books, the volumes that held only his own handwriting. He had never read them, putting them away as soon as they were filled.
In those boxes was his life.
He put them away.
**
Rehab release seemed to be very much not like prison. Jensen waited in what looked like an office reception room. He sat hunched over, elbows on his knees, one hand in a fist, the other covering it, just staring down at the plain beige carpet.
He found it ridiculous that he knew exactly when Jared entered the room, as if footsteps were as unique as fingerprints.
He looked up and Jared stood there, eyes wide. His eyes were dead, though, dead as Danneel’s. His face wore lines that it shouldn’t.
And Jensen realized that it was Jared.
Really here.
And he didn’t have a clue what to do with that fact.
**
The drive home was twenty minutes. Jared leaned against the doorframe, barely acknowledging that Jensen was there, through half lidded eyes Jared watched the mountains go by.
They pulled out and got out of the SUV. Jensen opened the door and walked into the house. Jensen waved towards the kitchen and living room. Jared barely registered it.
They walked to the second floor, a landing with a room on either side and a bathroom in the middle, there was a staircase leading up to the room that Jensen’s stuff was in. Jensen pointed towards one of the bedrooms, the one with sunlight. Jared hefted his small bag and walked towards it.
“There is the bathroom, your room doesn’t have a bathroom in your room. Sorry,” Jensen said. It was the first thing said between them.
He thought that Jared heard him.
Jared went into his room. Jensen had no idea what to do with him.
Jensen went down to the kitchen where he had food. Jensen was lacking of what to do with food, but he supposed he could make a sandwich, any fool could do that.
Jensen slowly made a sandwich, hearing quiet footsteps and the shower turn on.
It was weird suddenly to have someone in the same house as him, it hadn’t happened in four years.
He snuck up and left books outside of the door, Vonnegut and Hemmingway. Later, he put food outside of the door. They both went in the room. When Jensen woke up the tray was outside of the door.
**
Jared didn’t leave his room, as far as Jensen knew, unless it was to go to the bathroom.
On day four Jensen picked up the phone. She wouldn’t change her number.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said after the call was connected.
“You’re the brain,” she said, in that even tone, feeling him out.
“Please come,” Jensen asked, the closest that he had come to begging in his life.
“Its cold and winter,” she said, slightly complaining.
She hung up. Jensen knew that she would be here by morning, because that was the kind of girl she was.
**
The doorbell rang at ten am.
He opened it to her and her mass amounts of luggage.
“Staying long, sweetheart?” he asked casually, leaning on the doorframe.
“Fuck you,” she replied.
“Not likely,” Jensen retorted. “And if you fuck him I’ll kill you.”
She smiled, a little, something secretive, as if she understood something he didn’t .
“I took a red eye, you bastard,” she told him, lifting her sunglasses. “I’m in the fucking cold. Be a doll and grab my luggage.”
“Your words charm me,” Jensen said dully.
She walked in the house without a look back. “Where is your coffee? I’m sure there is a huge pot brewing unless you somehow found a way to shoot it up.”
Despite himself Jensen shuddered.
She looked back at him, and her bored eyes showed some worry. If they were normal they would have discussed it, she would have apologized for the words that were too soon; she knew Jensen had seen the remainder of Jared’s track marks.
Instead she blinked back some tears and walked out the door and picked up her own luggage and brought it in the house.
When it all was inside and the door shut she shrugged. “Coffee?”
He got her a cup and took one of her bags. “You’re in the master bedroom.”
She followed him up the stairs to the third floor. She didn’t comment that the bedroom on the second floor with the open door held his hastily thrown together things, the one right across from Jared’s. She knew why she was upstairs in the suite and not in this room.
She didn’t say anything; she wasn’t really up for that after not speaking to him for years.
They got her things settled and walked back down to Jared’s door.
“Is it locked?” she asked, eyeing it.
“No,” Jensen answered.
“Well you didn’t have to call me,” she snorted, moving to the door. “You could have just opened it.”
She moved forward because they both knew that Jensen couldn’t.
She opened the door. Jared was on the floor, staring at the ceiling.
“Hi, pookie,” she said, with obvious fake charm.
His eyes slid to her, empty.
“Take a shower,” she told him. “I’m starving and none of us can cook. There is no way that I’m taking your stinky body out in public like that.”
**
“Ready?” Danneel asked.
Jared stood with his hair wet, wearing a t-shirt. Jensen and Danneel were bundled in their winter coats. He didn’t say anything, just put his hands in his pockets and looked at his socked feet. The socks had a hole in the toe.
“You hate winter. Why did you go to rehab in Vermont?” Jensen muttered as he went to the closet. He had a jacket and he was pretty sure would do some kind of coverage to Jared’s frame.
Jensen was buried in the hall closet; he didn’t notice the look Jared gave his back. Danneel did.
**
They were sitting in the diner. Jared was staring off into space.
“We can buy you a coat and stuff later,” she offered.
Jared’s face took on a stormy look, one so vehement that she nearly jumped back. She had never seen him look like that.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “No buying you stuff.”
The waitress came up and his expression changed. I It was that old Jared look, charming and carefree.
“Hey, Melinda,” he said, leaning forward a bit. “I’m new here and I’m looking for work, you know of anything?”
Melinda was twenty something and even with Jared looking thin and a little bedraggled, he had a smile that could and had charmed the pants off many a people.
She grinned back, a little dazed. “Um, well the morning dishwasher didn’t show up for the second time. Harry wants to fire him, but can’t really if we don’t have another one. It’s early, six am, and dirty, but I’m sure…”
“I’ll take it,” Jared said leaning back and throwing her a flirty smile.
“Do you have references or anything?” Melinda asked. “I’ll totally send Harry over.”
Jared shrugged carelessly.
“I’ll vouch for him,” Jensen said from his corner of the table. He bit his lip a little and smiled. “You know me, Harry and I know each other.”
Danneel watched the two men and the blushing waitress.
“Okay,” Melinda said. “I’ll talk to Harry. Do you know what you want to order?”
They gave their orders. Jensen looked down at the Formica, but smiled a little as Jared ordered more food than Jensen and Danneel combined.
When Melinda left Danneel watched Jared’s face go blank again.
“You are ridiculous,” she tried to keep it light. “You still have it. Jensen, we don’t even what to know HOW you know this Harry dude. And Jared Padalecki--have you ever washed a dish in your life?”
At the mention of his own name Jared turned towards Danneel.
“It will probably be a little more demanding than my last ‘job’,” Jared said quietly, but clearly. “I think that washing dishes is a step up, in that whole moral sense. But if you are more worried about the technicalities than the depths to which I have fallen, I think I can figure out how to clean a few dishes.”
Danneel leaned forward and touched his face. “Hi, Jared.”
He blinked.
“That is the first thing you’ve said to me in over four years,” she said quietly. “You haven’t spoken to me since that day in the loft when Jensen caught us. Great way to break the silence.”
Jared looked startled, and then he slipped behind the blank mask and stared off into space.
“Stay with us,” Danneel said.
Jared closed his eyes for a minute and then looked at them. “What do you want, Danni? What do you want me to say? I’m not trying to be rude or anything here, but I am not talking about the past and I’m definitely not seeing a future right now. I’ve got nothing. I’ve got two pairs of jeans and three shirts and a pair of shoes and a job as a dishwasher and I’ll probably get a hairnet. That is the extent to what I have going for me right now.”
“You could use a haircut,” Jensen said as he ripped up his napkin.
Danneel shot him a look.
“What?” Jensen said. “I think that I have a razor, we could buzz it real short.”
Jared shot him a glare. “No way, man.”
The corner of Jensen’s mouth lifted. “So are you are saying that I should get out the scrunchies and barrettes, ‘cause you are getting out of control.”
Jared looked panicked, like he didn’t know how to react to this kind of ribbing.
“I could cut it,” Jensen said, he was well in control of what he was doing. “I did it that time when we were skiing in Aspen.”
Jared glared at him and it was the old Jared, petulant and not so jaded.
“We were six,” Jared pointed out. “And you took the dull kitchen scissors to cut out gum.”
“And you looked excellent,” Jensen teased.
“After my mother took me to see Cherie, her stylist extraordinaire,” Jared said. “I swear what that woman could do with hair…”
Melinda came back with the food and a job for Jared. Jared looked at the food.
He picked up his fork and looked straight at Jensen. “I’m considering this meal repayment for the horrible job that you did on my hair.”
Jensen smiled, teeth showing white. “Brat.”
Jared took a huge bite of pancake and did something that was almost a smile.
Danneel’s face eased, as if their acting like they usually did made the things okay. As if trying a little bit was enough. They ate in silence for a little while.
“I will pay you a thousand dollars to write my Christmas cards for me,” Jensen said off handedly.
Jared raised his eyebrows.
Jensen shrugged. “My grandmother likes you, write her some of that shit you are always bending her ear about. Do that magic so those people who kind of like me like me enough.”
Jared looked up, as Melinda waved him over.
“Okay,” Jared said distracted, as he got up.
Danneel looked over at Jensen. “If you have a Christmas card list I will join a convent.”
Jensen shrugged, his face alarmingly neutral. “It’s ok. Your lack of virtue is safe. How hard can it be to come up with a couple hundred names? He needs money and he isn’t going to take it from me for nothing.”
Danneel raised an eyebrow. “Be careful Jensen, that is getting very close to being something like nice.”
Jensen’s eyes tracked Jared, who was smiling and being charming.
“We wouldn’t want that now,” Jensen said absentmindedly.
**
After breakfast Jensen gave Jared money to go buy five hundred Christmas cards at the boutique down the street.
“Keep the change,” Jensen said as if was no big deal. “It doesn’t count towards your grand.”
He walked with Danneel back to the apartment.
“Do you worry that he’s going to…” she waved her hand around the town.
“Get blitzed?” Jensen asked. “Find someone who has some kind of stash and go on a bender with the money I gave him and then start sucking cock for his next fix? Find a whole new level of debauchery?”
“Jesus, Jensen,” Danneel chastised.
Jensen pulled out a cigarette and shrugged. “If he wants to do it then he is going to do it. We can’t stop him.”
Despite his words he looked to where Jared had walked to the boutique.
She stood with him for a moment and then sighed and walked to Jensen’s condo.
Jensen stood and watched until he saw Jared’s tall figure coming up the street.
He slipped inside.
**
Jared set cross-legged on the bed, composing a card to Jensen’s mother.
Danneel came and lay on the sofa.
“Jensen went out,” Danneel sighed. “Amuse me.”
Jared looked up and then picked up a book and threw it at her.
“Amuse yourself,” he told her.
Danneel picked up the book and looked at it skeptically. “Didn’t you get the memo? I’m just the face.”
“Bullshit,” Jared told her.
“I miss nice Jared,” she pouted. “Where is the boy who would make marshmallow puppets to make me laugh when I failed a history quiz? Bring him back please.”
Jared looked up at her, his eyes still dull. “Wish I could.”
Danneel looked at him and her eyes began to tear up.
“What happened, baby?’ Danneel said. “I know that we were fucked up, I know what it is like to start down the rabbit hole and the next thing doesn’t look so bad, but Jared when did you stop caring? The two of us, we would have--all you had to do was call.”
Jared put a note in the envelope. “He had school, you had contracts.”
Danneel cross the room and crashed on the bed. “Fuck that. All you had to do was call.”
“You would have come,” Jared acknowledged.
“But you were afraid that he wouldn’t,” Danneel said.
He gave her a look.
Danneel sniffled. “I really want to give you a hug, because you’re an idiot, but if Jensen comes home to find me hugging you I’m dead.”
They exchanged a look. She expected Jared to deny it, but it didn’t look like Jared was into any kind of lie, especially the one that he wanted so badly to be true.
“He’s out,” Jared said putting down the pen and putting his arms around her.
She knew what that meant. They both knew what that meant, Jensen would go out--that was how he dealt with things, especially things that involved feelings.
Danneel pulled away, she was not in the mood to start crying.
“Some days I think that you two are the only two people who ever cared about me,” Danneel said stretching and reaching for a book, her voice flippant and light, the admission more honest than anything she had said in years.
Jared didn’t look up, “Someday that is the only truth I know.”
**
“Hi, honey, I’m home!” Danneel said somewhat muffled.
Jensen came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a paper towel. “It’s about time, where have you been?”
He stopped short when he saw Danneel lugging in quite a few bags, followed by Jared, who was carrying a tree.
Danneel looked at the clock where it was blinking ‘5:06.’
“Oh, I see it is past curfew,” she noted blandly.
“Some of us are carrying trees,” Jared said, pushing the tree into the house and into Danneel’s back.
Danneel pushed back and then walked into the house laughing, she looked back at Jensen. “Did you cook for us, honey? Slave away in a kitchen for us all day.”
Jensen lifted his eyes skyward.
Danneel popped in the kitchen. “Jared--come see! Jensen got us take out!”
Jared, who presumably had put the tree somewhere in the living room, walked into the kitchen and came out munching on an egg roll.
He gave Jensen a half grin. “Thanks for slaving away all day over take out menus.”
Danneel swatted him away. “No food, none at all, until the tree is standing in the living room.”
Jensen stood there laughing.
“Oh, big guy, what do you have to laugh about,” Danneel said hands on her hips. “You are going to help him or no food.”
Jensen looked at her incredulously. “I got the food.”
“You picked up a phone,” Danneel said. “You are going to set up the tree.”
Jensen looked at a loss. Danneel raised an eyebrow.
“You have forgotten you have no defense against me?” She said tapping her fingers against her hip.
Jensen just stood there and crossed his arms.
Danneel smiled pretty and charming. “Jared will have to do it alone, if you don’t help.”
With that Jensen faltered a little bit.
She watched him change and her face got a little sad as she listened to Jensen and Jared put up the tree. Danneel closed her eyes, listening to their loud silence from the other room, only little scraping noises.
**
They sat in the living room, surrounded by cellophane wrappers and empty boxes. The tree was lit with white lights and red and silver balls. There were pieces of broken bulbs around the room, and interspersed with some of the fallen parts of Christmas were cartons of Chinese food and a very tired Jared and Jensen.
Danneel was glowing looking at the tree and other assorted decorations around the living room.
“Jeeze, Danni,” Jensen muttered. “When did you get taken over by the Christmas spirit?”
She threw a handful of wrapping at him.
“I’ve never done Christmas,” Danneel said. “I’ve had it done for me a million times, I just wanted to see what it was like.”
Jensen made a face.
“Jared likes it,” Danneel said.
“And you’re speaking for me now,” Jared said.
“He speaks!” Danneel squealed. “It’s a Christmas miracle.”
Jensen and Jared looked at each other.
“She sounds like your mom on Christmas after eggnog,” Jared said in a monotone.
Jensen grinned and turned to Danneel.
“Dan-nneeee,” Jensen said in a singsong voice. “Are you wasted?”
“I am drunk on Christmas spirit,” Danneel informed them studiously.
Jared was the one who cracked up first.
**
“What am I going to do when I lose you two?” Danneel was in her room at the mirror.
Jared was at work and Jensen had padded upstairs in his pajamas to lay on her bed and stare at the ceiling while Danneel went through the considerable amount of clothes that she had managed to bring.
Jensen lolled his head towards her.
“What does that mean?” Jensen asked.
Danneel sighed. “About a million things that I’m sure that you’re not ready to confront at this moment. But one day you’re going to grow a heart and he’s going to grow a brain, and I’m going to be back on magazine covers.”
“Maybe you’ll get a personality,” Jensen said poking a little bit at her.
Danneel bit her lip. “Way low, Jensen.”
“I know you have one, Killer,” Jensen said, trying to ease back into it. “Maybe you’d just decide to show that instead of your face.”
“You are an asshole,” Danneel sighed and posed again in the mirror. “A gigantic asshole. You are just mad that I know that you aren’t an asshole. I know that you are confused and scared and you like to make everyone believe other wise, but you never go after anything you know you can’t do better than anyone else. You are a fucking chicken.”
Jensen looked up at the ceiling again, he was too smart not to know what she was thinking.
“Dance around it, Jensen,” Danneel said. “You’re so much like your father.”
“Fuck you, Danni,” Jensen muttered.
Danneel took that moment to dance around the room, doing a very good rendition of a waltz with one of her dresses.
“How long have you known?’ Jensen asked, trying not to be obvious.
Danneel came and fell on the bed. “Jensen, I know you. I watched the two of you always, it has been there for so long I don’t know how you two denied it, but if you’re asking when I was sure; it was when you walked in on us. We were blitzed out of our minds, but I remember your face. You were looking at him, destroyed. That is all I ever needed. If Jared would have talked to me afterward I would have told him, but you two are the most stubborn brats ever.”
She got up again, knowing Jensen well enough to know that this conversation was at an end. It was way to close to feelings.
He surprised her.
“He’s somebody else right now,” Jensen said quietly, the voice almost not him anymore. “I’d kill just to catch him in a moment where I could reach him.”
Danneel turned to look at him.
“What am I going to be when you two don’t need a girl between you?” she asked and walked out of the room.
**
Christmas came on the twenty-fifth, as was its custom. Danneel came and knocked on their doors ridiculously early, especially for Jensen who had gotten to bed at two, as he had been doing the last couple of days.
“Get up, Sleepyhead,” she said. “It’s Christmas.”
A very heavy thud landed on the other side of the bed. Jensen cracked an eye. Sitting there smiling was Jared Padalecki, wearing that smile, dimples creasing his face and a shine in his eyes that Jensen hadn’t even realized that he missed, wasn’t even aware that he could be missing.
“Hi,” he said, and blamed sleepiness for the tone instead of anything else. It was a little breathless.
“Jenny,” Jared said, pushing him. “C’mon. Danni got presents.”
“Jay,” Jensen said, trying to burrow into the pillow. “I’m seriously going to kill you. Is it light yet?”
“Jen-nen-sen,” Jared whined. “Presents.”
Jensen stayed buried in the pillow and bit back the prickle behind his eyes. Jared just sounded, like Jared. He had no defense in the early hour.
So he went with a glare. “She got to you too?”
Jared pouted.
Jensen hadn’t seen anything more beautiful than that in years.
Danneel put one of her tiny feet into Jensen’s ribs.
“Get up,” she said in a harshly shrill voice.
Jensen dove under the covers, but Jared just calmly patted her on the head. “With a voice like that you should have gone into drill sargentry.”
“Help me?” Danneel asked, calmly again.
Before Jensen could emerge from the blankets to see what she was talking about, he found himself being harshly yanked by both feel off the end of his king-sized bed.
**
Jared sat surrounded by wrapping paper with a bow on his head. He squinted at three badly wrapped packages.
“Chad sent us presents?” Jared asked.
“Looks like he wrapped them, too,” Jensen commented and held his hand out warily for the gift.
Danneel sneered a bit, but took hers too. Jared dove in and pulled out a shirt that said ‘if I only had a brain’. He looked confused. Jensen opened his: ‘if I only had a heart’. Danneel rolled her eyes and opened hers. It said ‘if I only had a personality’.
She threw it across the room. “Chad is a douche.”
Jared also threw his shirt away and opened a present from Jensen and looked up with a scornful look.
“A Flobee?” he stated.
Jensen started snickering.
And he couldn’t stop.
Danneel and Jared looked at him.
Jared just got up with bows in either hand. “Looks like someone needs to get the Christmas spirit.”
“Stay away from me, Gigantor,” Jensen said, backing over a couch.
“Jenny,” Jared sang out. “You need to get all pretty.”
“I’m already pretty,” Jensen said hiding behind the couch. “You’re the one who needs a haircut.”
Jared narrowed his eyes. “You are so going to pay for that!”
What ensued was a battle of bows and paper in more than appropriate places and hands all over bodies and a lot of laughter.
Jensen closed his eyes. He couldn’t ever remember feeling this alive.
**
Jensen was scribbling in his notebook when Jared popped his head in the door.
“Wanna go out?” he said with a grin.
Jensen thought of a great many reasons why the answer to that was a ‘no.’
“I promise not to drink,” Jared defended. “Let’s just go out tonight. You always go out. It will be like old times.”
Jensen wanted to say no, but then Jared let loose that megawatt smile and Jensen was a goner.
“Yeah,” Jensen said, feeling like he could actually reach out for the first time in his life. “Yeah.”
**
They were in the bar and Jensen was nursing a beer, listening to Jared tell a story about his mornings washing dishes. There was something so awesome about this Jared. This Jared touched him, like the old rules didn’t apply.
Jensen was being warmed between touches; he was feeling downright molten, just little teases. Jensen usually didn’t need to read into things because he didn’t need to-the people around him were overtly obvious about what they wanted from him. Jensen knew how to read people.
But he didn’t know with Jared.
Then Jared leaned in and started speaking, hot and warm against Jensen’s ear, sending shivers down his spine.
“Wanna find one to take home?” Jared said.
Jensen was prepared for a great many things, but not for that. Suddenly he went ice cold.
“What?” he asked.
Jared still had that smile, but it didn’t pierce him any more.
“Like old days,” Jared asked.
Suddenly Jensen got it, because he knew Jared. The realization washed over him with a wave a nausea.
“You did this for my Christmas present,” Jensen said slowly as he figured out the game of this new Jared. “You were giving me old you.”
Jared shrugged a little. “That is what you want, right? Old simple me?”
Jared’s look faltered. Old Jared never faltered.
Jensen sucked in a breath through his mouth.
“Fuck you,” Jensen said, anger replacing everything. “You really think what I want is a fucking game, a woman sandwiched between us?”
Jared’s brow creased. “Do you want just me?”
Jensen’s first answer was along the lines of ‘dear lord, yes’ until he realized that Jared was offering his body in payment.
And at that second Jensen was so angry he could barely see straight.
Jensen just looked at him. Jared sat there; there was a glimmer of that very young innocent Jared, buried under mistrust and resignation.
Jensen cursed everyone who had ever put that wariness in Jared’s eye and at the same time hated himself for feeling like he wanted to say yes, and fuck everything else.
With a morality that he didn’t know he possessed, Jensen stood up.
“Fuck you, Jared,” Jensen said and walked out blindly, without a coat, into the cold winter night.
He stormed into the house and ran into Danneel’s bed. She shuddered at his cold frame and shrunk away from his ice-cold fingers.
“What are you doing?” she asked incredulously.
“I want you,” Jensen said, and even to his own ears it sounded desperate and needy, two things that he wasn’t.
“Jen,” she said softly.
“Please,” he begged, hiccupping and phlegm bubbles obscuring the words in his throat.
Danneel looked at him, her green eyes luminous, tears following. “Baby, what happened?”
Jensen started sobbing.
She put her arms around him and let him cry himself to sleep.
Finish