What If We Just Stay Here Forever, 2/2 [R], Jared/Jensen
Title: What If We Just Stay Here Forever (2/2)
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...with more chickens for her great job, I totally added stuff, mistakes are mine
Disclaimer: I own this story, nothing more.
Word Count: 15,000 over all
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.
Start Here
**
Jared felt like shit, which wasn’t new, but the look in Jensen’s eyes was so horrible, he felt like he was the social pariah that he knew that he should feel. He had never felt it before, until that look on Jensen’s face.
This was only compounded by the fact that Jensen didn’t want him, he was tarnished. All he could feel was the fact that he was never enough, never going to be enough.
There was a knock on the door that he didn’t answer.
Then Jensen threw open the door, carrying a box. One by one he brought in more and more boxes.
He took the final one and dropped it on the bed, by Jared’s head.
“This is my life,” Jensen said. “Every journal I’ve ever kept. The box by your fucking head is the ones that we wrote together, passing notebooks between classes, throwing them around, you carrying one around in your back pocket as we used those awful fake ID’s. Every incomprehensible word that we wrote is there.”
Jared looked at the box and swallowed before speaking. “You kept those?”
“Fucking hell I did,” Jensen informed him. “That boy, that is the one I want, not some made up memory, not some warm body to fuck. I can find that absolutely anywhere. The person I thought I had last night, is what I wanted. Not somebody who wanted to play out games about sex, not somebody to party with. I liked the guy in the journals, funny, quick on his feet.”
Jared could barely look up. “What if I’m not that guy. That was before.”
With effort Jared looked up, he knew that he had to look Jensen in the eyes. He was surprised to find that Jensen was nervous too.
“Well read the other journals,” Jensen said softly. “I’ve done a few things that I’m not so proud of.”
Jared swallowed and didn’t look away.
When Jensen spoke it was so soft. “I’ve pretended it doesn’t exist but I like you, Jared. So if we’re going to crash and burn lets do it, lets just do it for real.”
Jared just looked up at him incredulously.
“Do you mean…” Jared asked. “’Cause I’m…I’ve done…”
Jensen looked at him solidly. “You’re Jared.”
With that he walked out of the room.
**
“Thank you for not fucking me,” Jensen said plopping on Danneel’s bed.
Danneel paused in her packing. “Is he reading?”
Jensen nodded.
“Do you look slightly terrified?” Danneel asked, trying to tease, but sounding more incredulous.
Jensen didn’t look at her, didn’t dignify that with a response.
“I’ll be back after New Year’s,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go. Are you going to be okay?”
Jensen nodded distractedly.
She stopped and sat down next to him, “Does your heart hurt?”
Jensen looked down and played with the bedspread. “I hear it is common after years of unuse.”
“Why’d you do it, Jensen?” she asked, not looking at him, a little thing which was part of why he loved her. “You didn’t have to. You just gave him your soul on paper.”
Jensen tried to decide if he wanted to rescind the love, she was creepy in how much she could read him, but he didn’t really have ample people that he would consider caring about so he let it go.
“When Chad called he said Jared wouldn’t make it if he went back,” Jensen said and it felt like he was speaking for the first time in his life. “I just want him to be okay.”
Danneel looked at him. “I know that was hard for you Jensen. But you know that really isn’t an answer.”
**
Danneel bounded into Jared’s room.
“How unbelievably boring,” She sighed looking down at him and tapping a hand on her hip. “I was hoping that you would be naked and masturbating or hunched in a corner all tortured.”
Jared lay on his bed surrounded by composition books, some open, and yellow legal pads and an uncapped pen.
He was freshly showered and wearing clean pajamas.
She cleaned up a space on the bed and plopped down.
That is when she got a look at his red-rimmed eyes.
“Oh, honey,” she said.
“I don’t understand him,” Jared said. “You’re perfect. Why didn’t he just pick you?”
Danneel smiled. “Baby, that isn’t how it works.”
“But he loves you and he shows it,” Jared said with a hiccup.
“He shows it because he doesn’t want more,” Danneel countered.
She picked up one of the closed books.
“The only time he isn’t surface Jensen is between those pages. He’s never invited me in, I’m pretty sure that he’s never even invited himself in,” Danneel said looking at the book. “He shows me little pieces when he can’t figure out how to hide everything. I’m a safe place for him to fall apart until he can figure out how to put the façade back up. That is what I am to him.”
Jared looked at her and then he reached over the edge of the bed.
“I fixed our shirts from Chad,” Jared said throwing hers at her. She picked up the shirt and the letters had been cut out and replaced with Jensen’s. It was badly safety pinned in, gaping and holey in places, but it proudly proclaimed ‘Heart.’
She smiled a little.
“What does Jensen give you, Danni?” Jared asked. “What do you get out of your friendship?”
Danneel looked at him curiously. “He has never told me that I’m stupid or dumb or just a face. In fact, he encourages me to be more. When I was thirteen I told him that I wanted to be a princess. He didn’t laugh or think I was silly. He bought me books all about being a real princess, and after reading those there was no way I wanted to be one. To those he loves he’s still a dick, but he isn’t mean and if he cares about you he can’t figure out a way to sever that feeling. He doesn’t give up.”
Jared looked at her. “You are really not subtle.”
Danneel attempted innocence. “I was talking about me.”
“You just told me that Jensen would be fine if I told him all about the last three years, his feelings wouldn’t be change,” Jared sighed. “You are not subtle.”
Danneel smiled sweetly, “I have no idea what you are talking about. I’m just the face.”
“What proof do you have that he cared about anyone?” Jared demanded.
“Besides me? His mother is an awful drunk and he still calls home every week. His little sister came to him twice before she was eighteen for an abortion and he never put her down for it,” Danneel told him. “I know it isn’t much, but it’s enough.”
Jared thought about that.
Danneel got up. “I’m going to New York for New Year’s--you two be okay. Maybe you should show him who you are, let him decide. You’ve read his journals--do you really think that he’s going to judge?”
Jared looked down and grabbed for one of the journals and began to read. “I turned down Missy and her incredible rumpus room tonight. It’s his birthday and I am doing what I always do, I’m sitting here alone, in the dark. I have no idea what he is doing. I’m spending most of the night trying not to call him, trying not to get on a plane and fly off, trying to stay here. He’s out there, he’s out there and I just want to show up, to pull him out of whatever mess he’s in. If I had a heart, if I had feelings…but that is the thing. I just want…a smile. Right now in the dark I just want a smile. As I drink more, I just want to know that he’s somewhere that he’d smile.”
Danneel’s throat was closing up, because this is what she thought to be true.
Jared looked up. “I’m not really worried that he likes me. I’m really more worried about what I should do with that information. I’m so messed up, I wouldn’t know what a relationship looks like if it slapped me in the face. It’s been a long three years.”
“You two say a lot of like,” Danneel observed. “Its as if you’re in junior high and you just can’t say the word.”
“Well that word, its kind of big,” Jared replied. “When or if I say it for the first time I really want it to be to him, to his face.”
Danneel grinned.
Jared stopped, his lips slightly parted, and his eyes becoming watery. “That is what we’re talking about right? Him and me? I’m not missing something?”
Danneel wrapped him in a hug. “You’re missing a lot of things, but it looks like you have this one buttoned up.”
**
Jensen woke up around ten, as usual, and headed for the kitchen and the coffeemaker, but ended up face down on his plush bedroom carpet before he made it to the door. He lay there for a minute trying to figure out what was going on.
Then he looked towards his feet. Three yellow legal pads sat there, slightly falling off each other and topped with a white sheet of paper.
Jensen pulled himself to a seat and looked at the pile curiously.
Not much really surprised him, so he just smiled and let himself be surprised. Then he picked up the top sheet and red it, and that was when he realized that he wasn’t going to be smiling for a while.
Apparently Jared had been writing down his memories as he was reading. Jared was giving him a glimpse into himself. It was just as much a test as Jensen had put forth to him.
Jensen looked at the first page, in Jared’s script. Jared wrote as he thought and talked, long, wordy, and with charm and honesty.
I lost the line, where good and bad is, where right and wrong is. I always see these things and want more and more. Well, that turned out well. That turned out to be the folly of my life. I always think I can do it. I really should have learned better by now. So here it is, in no discernable order, simply how I remember it. Whatever pops into my head gets put on paper until I don’t know what to write any more.
Jensen blinked. He knew he was going to need coffee for this one.
**
A day later he lay back in bed, put his glasses down and massaged his temple.
He picked up the phone because it was easier than getting up and crossing the hallway. Jared’s door weighed more than anything.
Danneel picked up. “This better be important, I’m doing fabulous things.”
Jensen cocked his head. “You sound bored.”
“Out of my fucking mind,” she sighed. “I don’t remember this world being this bad. It’s your fault, so you are now going to distract me. What is going on? You don’t sound distraught enough to have done something horrible like sleep with him, so please tell me.”
Jensen paused, then finally spoke, it was quiet and raw.
“He wrote for me.”
There was silence between them, and then she let out little noise.
“Is it as bad?” she whispered. “I mean I have ideas…”
“It’s…” Jensen didn’t know how to finish that sentence. “It’s what you think. Some were okay. Some were horribly ugly. Some had atrocious body odor or something physically repulsive, but he did it with a smile, to get things from them. He was hit, he was beaten. Some of it sounds boring and some of it…yeah Danni, it is bad.”
She did say anything.
“The worst part,” Jensen said. “Isn’t just how fucking degrading it is. He was used. He was a thing. The details, well, they could have been worse, but, Danni they used him, and he didn’t care.”
Danneel didn’t make any noises, then it was muffled, like she was trying not to let him know that she as sobbing.
“Why didn’t I go?” she said in a wavery voice. “Why did I let that happen?”
“Jared says he had sucked enough from everybody,” Jensen said, staring again at his ceiling. “He thought he deserved it and nothing would have changed his mind until he was ready. He came to a point when he really couldn’t do it any more, and he kept doing it because he didn’t know what . That was when Chad hog tied him and forced him to go to rehab”
Danneel was quiet. “I feel like a shitty friend. Chad was the one who…”
“He’s the only one with enough stupidity to go through it. I am sure that it wasn’t easy,” Jensen said tiredly. “Jared was defiant and ridiculously independent.”
“Now,” Danneel asked. “What happens now?”
“I’m going to keep reading--he’s giving me more every morning,” Jensen said tiredly. “I don’t think he’s sleeping.”
“It’s okay for a little bit,” Danneel told him. “I think that it is time that both of you to wake up for a little while.”
**
It was New Year’s Eve and Jensen had finished reading Jared’s stuff and then, not knowing what to do and needing to do something, he went snowboarding. He got back and Jared’s door was still closed. At ten he didn’t know what do, he was more intimate with Jared than he had been with anyone, but he didn’t know how to speak to him.
Invading Jared’s space was just too much after he had just read Jared’s tale about the time two-business men who had brought him to Malibu for a week. They had used him, roughed him up, and taken little care about Jared. He had been starving, on too many different kinds of drugs, bruised, and fucked over.
So after reading about Jared being willingly violated for a week, he wasn’t really willing to even walk near Jared’s door in the fear of interrupting him.
Jensen twirled his pen above the page, trying to think of something to write. His mind was blank. He wanted Jared to say something, wanted him to ask Jensen to hang out on New Year’s.
Finally at ten-thirty, Jensen gave up and made some pretense of getting himself together and put on some clothes. He hadn’t gone out since Christmas, and tonight he just didn’t feel like it. He was doing it more out of boredom than anything else.
Before putting on his coat he heated up dinner for Jared, and put a piece of the tiramisu that Danneel had gotten before she left on a tray and put it outside of Jared’s room.
He stared at the door for a bit, longer than he would ever admit to, before turning to go down the stairs.
When the door opened it wasn’t subtle or hesitant. It was thrown open, it was just like the old Jared, careless, determined and bigger of life. He stood there, backlit by the lights in his room, and he looked clean and comfortable, feet bare.
Jensen could barely make out the expression on his face.
“Don’t go out,” Jared said taking a step to the top of the stairs.
Jensen cocked his head from the middle of the stairs.
“Stay in tonight,” Jared stated.
Which was something that nobody had ever asked of him. Nobody had just asked him to stay, nobody had ever dared. Jensen didn’t know what he was supposed to say to that.
Jared stepped forward and down a few of the stairs.
“See,” Jared began with a glimmer of that old smile, but this time it seemed real. “You’re always kissing skanks and people that you don’t care about on New Year’s Eve. It hasn’t done you well, so maybe this time you shouldn’t.”
Jensen was surprised to find that he was couldn’t feel anything, he was too shocked. Jared came down further until they stood on the same step. Jensen suddenly found himself where he was supposed to be, he was supposed to be on this step with Jared.
“So who am I supposed to be kissing on New Year’s Eve?’ Jensen asked, feeling like this was scripted, it was just so easy.
Jared’s eyes went a little panicked.
“No,” Jensen said, hand coming to tug on the hem of Jared’s t-shirt. “You brought it there. I would have stayed to play Madden if you asked, but you brought it there. Who am I supposed to be kissing on New Year’s Eve?”
Jared looked at him. Slowly he raised a hand to run a finger over Jensen’s shoulder, his eyes followed his finger. Then he looked up slowly.
Their eyes met, calm. They knew each other and as much as this moment was something new and innocent in a way that they couldn’t remember, they knew each other. It wasn’t complicated. The answer, in fact, was remarkably easy.
“Me,” Jared said, swallowing down any other remarks.
They both knew that was the answer from the time they were kids.
Jensen smiled and leaned in, his hand going to Jared’s neck.
“You?” he teased, leaning in.
Jared tried to pull away, with little effort. “Shouldn’t you wait to kiss me until midnight?”
Jensen leaned in and spoke into Jared’s lips. “I’m sure I’ll still be kissing you at midnight.”
**
Jensen opened his eyes and moved back a little bit. The world was first Jared’s hazel eyes, hazy and unfocused. Then the rest of his face came into view, and Jensen’s eyes tracked down to Jared’s kiss-swollen lips.
Jared lazily reached out a hand and rand the pad of his thumb over Jensen’s bottom lip.
“It’s been a real long while since I was mentally present for this kind of thing,” Jared said quietly.
Jensen just looked at the color of Jared’s hair, the texture of his skin, the slick look of his lips.
“I don’t know if I ever was here for this kind of thing,” Jensen said nudging his lips into another kiss, and Jared responded languidly. They were curled up on a couch, shirts off, pants on, just fooling around, ignoring the television playing the New Year’s Eve show.
Jensen pulled away again.
“I don’t like people,” Jared sighed. “I know that it seemed that way, but I didn’t. I just didn’t want to have to deal with people, it was easier that way, to just be what they wanted me to be. I didn’t have to worry about what I wasn’t supposed to be. Being a boy toy was almost a relief. I mean it wasn’t that great, but it wasn’t that bad.”
Jensen swallowed and looked at him. “I think that you really have no idea what bad is.”
Jared was lost in thought. “You always tell me it’s not so bad.”
“I’ve read your journals, Jared,” Jensen said slowly. “It was bad.”
Jared nodded. “I’ve read yours, Jen--you’re not alright either.”
“Let’s not pretend then,” Jensen told him. “Let’s not pretend that we know what we’re doing. That we’re not fucked up.”
“Okay,” Jared said slowly. “But let’s not pretend that we don’t know each other, that some part of us really wants to know what it’s like not to be so fucked up. We’re never going to have any kind of normal relationship, but these last few weeks have been kind of more normal that I’ve ever had.”
Jensen smiled. “We have everything in the world. When my dad died last year the inheritance was enough to make me never need to work again if I not dumb. But I don’t know if any of it has ever been important.”
“I know,” Jared sighed. “The thing is just that I had forgotten how good writing things down is. It’s like that is where I am honest, where I figure things out. It makes me feel alive again.”
Jensen reached up and trailed a finger along Jared’s neck to his collarbone. He watched as goosebumps rose up on Jared’s naked arms. He just watched Jared’s arms, then he looked lower to the crook of his elbow, to the small scars still there.
Jensen just looked at them.
“I am not going back,” Jared said resolutely. “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m not going back there. I think that something is going to happen here with us, for however long that I’m here for. I’m game. I just want to say when you have to go back to the real world I would really like to keep in touch with you. I don’t want to get lost again.”
Jensen couldn’t look up; nothing in his life had equipped him for this.
The phone rang and he jumped to pick it before snuggling back into Jared.
“Happy New Year,” Danneel said happily.
“Hi, sweetie,” Jensen said.
She paused for a moment. “You’re not out? Why aren’t you out?”
Jensen looked at Jared.
“Something better at home?” she teased.
“Yep,” Jensen said and changed the phone to speakerphone. “Say hi to Jared, Danni.”
“Oh, honey” Danneel laughed. “Is he being mean to you?”
“He took my shirt but won’t give it back,” Jared said sadly.
“Brat,” Danneel laughed. “Did he let you keep your pants?”
“For now,” Jensen said dryly.
“Sounds like you are having a much better New Year’s than I am,” Danneel sighed. “I’m wearing a dress and shoes and it is so boring.”
“When are you coming home?” Jensen asked.
Danneel paused and her voice was a little strained. “Tomorrow.”
Jared looked at Jensen confused.
“Come home soon,” he said.
Jensen hung up and looked at Jared. “We aren’t the only one who is finding things that have meaning.”
Jared smiled. “I’ve missed us, all of us.”
Jensen was still and quiet for a moment.
“What?” Jared said.
“I can’t pretend I don’t want you,” Jensen said, shifting. “I mean, I know you went through shit, I’m not going to pressure anything, but…”
“Are you going to diatribe or are you going to fuck me?” Jared said evenly. “Because honestly man I’ve been waiting for this for a very long time. God I just want to touch you, to be allowed to touch you in everyway I want to.”
Jensen Ackles, who had heard it all, who didn’t feel, was overwhelmed by it all.
“Jeeze Jensen,” Jared said, at the sensitive skin at the hollow of his ear. “You think that you’ve never been this gobsmacked before.”
“Never,” Jensen whispered.
“I kind of have,” Jared whispered. “I have been in love forever.”
Jensen covered Jared’s mouth with his.
**
"I moved in with Chad’s uncle," Jared said out of nowhere. The early morning light was coming up on a new year and they were under comforters, naked and spent.
Jensen thought for a moment, Jared's pillow talk left something to be desired.
"Which one? Jeff or Paul?" Jensen asked. Chad's father was a first class fuck up, and he raised his three boys to be just like him. Intervention from his two uncles probably kept Chad from jail, like his two older brothers. His uncles owned some of the greatest clubs in LA, which is how they had known Chad; it was an odd friendship, but it went back to when they would sneak into clubs when they were sixteen and Chad would help. Jeff was solid, Paul was a bastard. Jensen knew which one of them it was.
"Paul," Jared said. "He's a kinky fuck. Controlling as hell. Chad saw me there. He knew what kind of things Paul did. When he found me there he flipped out. I was already a mess and after Paul I was more of a mess. Chad and Jeff staged an intervention that was more like a kidnapping. I was in Vermont before I actually registered anything.”
Jensen wasn't one for snuggling, but at this moment he was. He pulled himself to Jared's side and curled into it, anything to make Jared stop.
"But it wasn't that bad," Jensen muttered into Jared's skin, echoing Jared’s words from earlier.
"I don't have perspective," Jared said.
"I get it," Jensen said, pulling closer, bare skin against bare skin.
"I know because you don't either," Jared whispered. "What you've done...it’s so cold, you were just so cold in the journals."
Jensen didn't know what to do but shrug. He didn't let go an inch. Jared's hand moved up and down his back.
"I'm not the kind of guy who says 'I love you'," Jensen said after the silence.
Jared pulled back in shock, his eyes searching Jensen's face.
Jensen swallowed every defense mechanism and hesitation. "But you make me wish I were."
Jared looked wide-eyed at him. Shocked that Jensen was going to say anything.
Jensen smiled, something rare and private. He leaned down and nibbled on Jared's ear. Jared turned his head and caught Jensen's lips, hand coming to cup his face.
"Love you, Jensen," Jared said into Jensen's lips before Jensen pulled him down into the downy softness of his bed.
**
Jensen opened the front door, tired from a day of snowboarding. No one was home. He didn't think that they would be just sitting around waiting for him, but after almost a month of co-habitation this was the first time that nobody was home.
He turned on the lights and wandered around the house. Two months ago that was what made him comfortable. Now it was depressing.
He heard the door opening and ran down the stairs, pretending not to run down the stairs.
There stood Danneel, looking like she won the lottery, covered in thick mud.
"Mud wrestling?" Jensen asked.
Danneel beamed. "I'm throwing pots."
Jensen raised an eyebrow.
"For you unenlightened sort," she said loftily. "That means that I am doing pottery and while my vases are lopsided, I'm getting better, and my teacher says that my glazing techniques are top notch."
"Congratulations," Jensen guessed. "When did you start doing this?"
"When Jared started pulling doubles," Danneel said. "Washing dishes in the morning and line cooking in the afternoon."
Jensen made a mild sad face. "Well, my work here is done; you two definitely don't need me anymore."
Danneel smiled. “That is the thing--we’re all getting better. We all need each other.”
Jensen looked at the mud on her forearm. “I kind of sort of maybe told Jared that I …”
She looked at him her eyes shining with joy. “You love him? Do you really now?”
Jensen looked at the floor. “Yes.”
“Oh, baby,” Danneel said laughing. “My work here is done. Maybe you don’t need me anymore.”
Jensen took her in a hug. “We are always going to need you. It’s the three of us.”
“What is going on here?” Jared said booming as he came in the room.
Jensen and Danneel jumped away and turned to plead their innocence to Jared that they were just hugging.
Jared doubled over laughing. “The looks on your faces!”
“Screw you,” Jensen pouted. “You’re calling for dinner tonight.”
**
When the snow began to melt, Jensen opened the door to the smell of cookies.
“Jensen!” Danneel squealed. “Where the fuck have you been? Jared decided since he was now a line cook at the restaurant he could bake. Come in here and eat cookies before I finish them and get fat.”
She pulled Jensen into the kitchen. Jared stood there, wearing quite a bit of food. Jensen raised an eyebrow and then walked up to him and licked a stretch of chocolate on Jared’s neck.
Jared shuddered and then grinned goofily at Jensen. “That tickles.”
“What me to stop?” Jensen asked, a little bit of husky creeping into his voice.
Jared just grinned and shook his head.
Danneel watched them his hands on her hips. “This is some fucked up fairy tale.”
Jensen was a little unable to look away from Jared.
“So Mr. Absent this morning,” Danneel faux huffed. “Jared cooks and makes us fat, I make us holidays and parties, what do you bring to our dysfunctional utopia?”
Jensen shrugged. “Road trip?”
Danneel and Jared looked at each other and shrugged. “Nothing better to do.”
“Where we going?” Jared asked.
“Please say Montreal strip clubs,” Danneel said clapping her hands.
**
An hour later Jensen drove his silver SUV into the middle of nowhere.
“Are you going to kill us and hide the bodies?” Jared asked looking at the trees and lack of civilization.
“Yes,” Jensen said absentmindedly, patting Jared’s leg.
“Stop with the screwed up happily ever after,” Danneel shrieked, lunging through the seat divide to put Jensen’s hand on his own side of the car.
Jared laughed.
“Oh, dear god,” Danneel groaned sinking back into the seat. “You do know every time you smile Jensen gets a goofy smile on his face.”
Jared’s dimples increased in strength.
The car pulled on to a dirt road, and after half a mile a house came into view, as did the lake behind it.
Jensen pulled up in front of the house and stopped. He got out of the car and looked at the other two.
“Wanna come see my house,” Jensen asked off-handedly.
“You bought a house!” Danneel said bounding out. “It’s so cute, so cute. It’s like a little farmhouse. You so need to get chickens. You could put them over here in the side yard--that little house is so a chicken coop.”
Danneel was off and running.
Jared came around the car to stand next to Jensen.
“You bought a house?” he asked.
“You know how we are always talking about how much we just don’t want to go back,” Jensen said. “I thought, what if I don’t have to leave? There is nothing out there for me; I’m older than I should be at twenty-three. So I quit my job, that I haven’t even started yet and decided that I’m just going to stay.”
Jared gave a tight smile and looked at the house. “It’s beautiful.”
“Come inside,” Jensen said, pulling him in. Before yelling to where Danneel had disappeared. “Danni, come see inside! You’re going to find a million more things to decorate.”
She appeared very quickly.
“Show me what you need done with that unlimited bank account of yours,” Danneel said, eyes shining.
Jensen took Danneel’s hand and put it on his arm and motioned for Jared to follow.
Jensen squinted. “This is the living room of sorts. I’m thinking that I’m going to put some comfortable, no matter what they look like, couches, I’m going to put a ginormous TV in there.” He pointed to the room under the stairs. “That is the weird room under the stairs, the light in it sucks and it smells. I think I’m going to make it a library.” He walked them to the huge kitchen. “This is the kitchen, very modern, I have no idea what to do with it, and it just came to the house. There is a wood-floored part over there--I think I’m supposed to put some kind of table there for dinner parties. I really don’t want dinner parties.” Then he took them to the back of the house, where someone had added on a section.
He turned to Danneel and grinned. “This is a gorgeous room, full of light, with a bathroom. The upstairs is a master bedroom penthouse or I would have taken this room. This is your room, Danni. I don’t care if you decide to do blood sacrifices, paint it with weird symbols, or leave bodies in here before you bury them. This is your room, you do whatever you want with it and when you come around, this will be your room. When you are gone, this is your room.”
Danneel looked at the spacious room, with plenty of windows and a slider that lead to the backyard where flowers were already starting to bud. She swallowed.
“Mine?” she said in a small voice.
“Just yours,” Jensen acknowledged.
Danneel’s eyes started watering. Tears fell down her cheeks and she looked up at Jensen.
“I think that deep deep down you aren’t an asshole,” Danneel said, muffled in his shirt.
“That is the sweetest thing that you’ve ever said,” Jensen said distractedly.
Danneel looked up to where Jensen was looking. He was looking at Jared who looked very uncomfortable.
Danneel looked up at Jensen. Jensen let her go.
“Come see the rest of the house,” Jensen said, reaching out for Jared this time, nodding for Danneel to stay in her new room.
Jared followed hesitantly. Jensen climbed the stairs and they walked into the upper floor. Besides one corner of the room that looked as if it housed a luxury bathroom and another corner that held a walk in closet, the rest of the floor was open; one side of the room had a large bay window over looking the trees and the lake.
The only thing in the room was a California king.
Jensen took a deep breath and then looked up at Jared.
“I put things in this house that you like,” Jensen said with more hesitancy than either of them had heard in their lives. “The huge TV will come with all the movies that you want. The house has a king sized bed and Danni is in this house.”
Jensen tugged Jared to the window that over looked the back yard. “There is a yard out there with a fence and I’d be okay with a dog, one of those big kinds that your mom would never let you have.”
Jared stared outside.
“You don’t have to,” Jensen continued. “I mean, I can fix up the creepy room under the stairs or you could stay at the condo.”
Jared turned around. He wasn’t smiling, he just looked at Jensen.
Jensen stood there, waiting. He had been in some sketchy situations, once even had a gun held on him, but nothing made him more terrified than this moment. Somewhere he heard Danneel going down the stairs.
He just saw Jared and the bottom of his world fell out. He was absolutely sure that Jared was going to leave.
"I'm sorry," he rushed to say, rooted where he was. "I should have talked to you before I bought a house. I just, I just wanted to stay here, I wanted to build a life here and you said that you wanted to stay in contact, I thought maybe you wanted us to be together. Whatever you want, I'll build another room down stairs and that will be yours and you can visit whenever you want, and..."
Jensen trailed off, feeling gross and vulnerable, Jared just staring blankly.
When he spoke it was the most difficult thing he had ever said, like he had never quite put together an arrangement of words.
"I love you, however you want to be, I can do," Jensen said, small and almost timid.
Jared looked at him and shook his head, as if he were trying to clear it.
Finally he spoke. “Harley.”
The noise was strangled and Jensen’s brow creased, trying to figure out what Jensen meant.
“You want a motorcycle?” Jensen said, a glazed look came over his face, because he didn’t want to keep Jared by buying him things. That was someone he thought Jared wasn’t. “You want a motorcycle to stay?”
Jared shook his head and took a step forward. “Can I name him Harley, my dog?”
Jensen almost went into shock, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was the moment he was getting everything that he wanted. Suddenly Jared’s hands came around him and sat him down on the gigantic bed that he had ordered in the hope of Jared saying yes.
Jensen looked up.
“Hi,” Jared said, his dimples appearing.
Jensen leaned in and kissed him, pulling him in. Jared grabbed him back.
Finally Jared started twitching. Jensen pulled back looking confused.
Jared was grinning. “You love me. You don’t get that back.”
“Don’t want it.” Jensen said. “It’s all yours.”
Jared started getting all-antsy.
“What is it?” Jensen asked.
“That is the most awesome thing that I have ever heard and this is the best idea in the entire world,” Jared sang, his smile electric. Then he stood up and did a dance that was a little embarrassing for both of them and they didn’t care.
“Danni,” Jared yelled down the stairs. “Come quick--I think that the world is ending. Jensen told me he loved me.”
Then Jared jumped on the bed and tackled Jensen, Danneel came up the stairs. Jared put his long octopus arms around Jensen and then put a leg around him, by the time Danneel came up the stairs Jensen was immobile.
“You’re just going to strangle him into submission?” Danneel said dryly.
“If I have to,” Jared said trying to keep Jensen in place as he wriggled about.
“What more do you want?’ Jensen bemoaned. “A house, a dog, a big TV, the world’s biggest bedroom and the most ginormous bed I could find without special ordering it.”
“Did you hear,” Jared said still wrestling in Jensen. “I’m moving in.”
Danneel came and jumped on the bed, and there was plenty of room. “Me too! Are you moving into Jensen’s room?”
“I’m right here,” Jensen said, his stomach uncurling a little bit. Jared didn’t let him go an inch.
“Do you think Jensen will let me build a studio out back, next to my chickens?” Danneel squealed.
“Still here,” Jensen said. “Actually, I own the house you are making plans for.”
“You can have the weird room,” Jared offered.
Jensen rolled his eyes, laid back, and just let them talk about the details of their lives.
**
Danneel lay sleeping in the backseat. They had spent the day making plans in the house. They had finished up by going to a restaurant in the town. A gourmet chef had moved to Vermont to retire, and ended opening up a comfort-food restaurant. Jensen had apparently visited and was welcomed. After whispering that he hadn’t slept with this manager, Jared got a job. In fact, the chief and his wife were completely charmed by Jared and Danneel.
They were fed and Danneel was exhausted.
“I’m not going to embarrass you by making it a big deal,” Jared said after the road stretched out in front of them. “But today, that was a big deal. That was the biggest deal of my life. Today you just gave me everything. Really, Jensen, you have given me everything. I don’t really get why.”
Jensen smiled. “You wonder what I get out of it.”
“Maybe,” Jared admitted.
“Would you believe me if I told you that maybe I’m not doing this for anything I can get out of it?” Jensen suggested. “Its like Danni and Christmas, I guess--I’m doing it because it makes me happy. I’ve never had a home and I have never had any one I wanted or trusted enough to have one with. I don’t want to take care of you, I just want to be with you.”
“Dear sweet fucking…” Jared trailed off. “I know you’re intense, but this is something else--you liking me, way more than I ever thought possible in any situation, and I know you. You’ve got me; you’re ridiculous.”
“I know,” Jensen said. “But time away has made me think that maybe I don’t want to be.”
“Whatever made you make this okay I am so glad it came,” Jared said happily.
"Yeah, Jared," Jensen said, staring straight ahead, "It was big for me too. This whole thing is pretty big for me too."
**
Jensen owned a house, but no furniture. Danneel was alive with redecorating ideas.
“Let me guess,” Jensen said. “You never really decorated, you always had someone decorate for you and you are giddy as a school girl to try to paint my house colors--not too girly colors, but nice masculine colors.”
“Yes,” Danneel said, looking over pages of furniture brochures. “Except for the room that is mine.”
Jared popped in and looked at the brochures, daunted.
“I always thought that the furniture finds you,” Jared said, munching on a chicken wing. “Like you go out and you find the things that are supposed to live in your house. These things all seem so fake.”
Danneel looked at it. “Wow, score an insightful point for the Personality.”
Jared shrugged.
Jensen got a look of dread on his face.
Danneel got a look of glee. “Oh my, shopping with Jensen. My most favorite thing in the whole world.”
Jensen glared at Jared. “You are a horrible human being.”
“I love you too, Pookey,” Jared said smacking his lips and turning to the kitchen for more chicken wings.
**
Jensen was dreading the pound, almost as much as he had dreaded shopping with Danneel. He really wasn't sure about Jared being around that many dogs. He was correct to feel that way.
"But Jensen," Jared whined. "The boy puppy needs company."
"That is what we are for," Jensen tried patiently.
Jared sat with a puppy on his lap and next to him sat another one, ignoring both Jared and the other puppy, but shifting closer.
"Jensen," Jared pouted. "Dogs need other dogs. They like each other."
Jensen looked at the girl puppy, who was looking away. "I think she's indifferent."
What Jensen wasn't saying was he was afraid that the dogs were going to get huge; by the size of their paws they were not going to be lap dogs, not even for Jared's lap.
Jared just looked at him pleadingly.
After a long sigh, Jensen realized that Jared hadn't asked him for anything during his stay, except for the dogs. Knowing that it would make Jared deliriously happy was one reason he said yes; the other was the way that Jared looked spooked on some occasions when he was alone. Jensen knew that there were still some demons on Jared's back. Jensen would give him a whole pack of dogs if it would make Jared feel safer.
So Jensen said yes.
Jared kissed him within an inch of his life.
And Jensen prayed that they would house train quickly.
**
They had furniture that wasn't the prettiest, but it was large and comfortable, and it was theirs. They handpicked and loved each piece. Danneel would come in on a plane in a whirlwind and unpack the boxes that she sent from wherever she was in the world.
She took care of the chickens, and had Jensen do it when she was gone. The chickens were fertile. Very very fertile.
"We have to sell some of these," Jensen told her, looking at the day’s three dozen eggs.
Danneel still was modeling, which only left Jensen. That is how he got started having a stand at the local farmer's market.
He'd wake up early on Saturday and Sunday, muttering about how the mighty had fallen. Jared would sleepily remind him how he wasn’t that mighty and that farmers were sexy, and to go sell eggs and then he would get laid. Jared told the joke every week, laughed hysterically, and then fell back asleep.
But Jensen loved the chickens. The chickens were certifiably crazy. They thought they were puppies part of the time, playing with the dogs more often than not. Jensen prayed all the activity would curtail the egg production.
His prayers fell on deaf chicken god ears.
**
"Danni," Jared whispered over the phone.
Danneel was in Milan, doing a shoot; she was dressed in designer wear, dreaming of her second hand cut off shorts.
"Why are you whispering?" Danneel asked. "Is there something wrong?"
"I'm sending you a video," Jared whispered. There was a tone in Jared's voice; he sounded like he was going to cry.
"Are you okay?" Danneel asked worried.
"Just look at the video," Jared said, voice breaking.
Danneel was expecting Jensen naked in bed with a girl, a guy, an orgy, or even with the dogs. What she was not expecting was to watch thirty-seven seconds of Jensen generally swearing and beating up the ground.
"What is he doing?" Danneel whispered, before realizing that she didn't need to whisper.
"He's tilling the earth," Jared said seriously, before starting to laugh.
"What the hell?" Danneel asked.
"The biddies," Jared said between gasps of laughter, "The ones at the market that he shares a stall with, are teaching Jensen gardening and he decided he was going to plant a garden this spring, so Jensen is tilling the earth."
"Jensen Ackles," Danneel whistled. "I never thought I would see the day."
Jared stopped laughing. "As funny as it is, and it is even more funny in person, it kind of sucks. He's getting blisters, even with the gardening gloves. It really is starting to interfere with my sex life."
"Too much info, Jare," Danneel said. "I'll call back later."
**
Danneel pondered getting a horse, some sheep, a pig, and an alpaca. However it was when she brought home her pet that Jensen called a stop to getting any more pets.
However, he was stuck with the tiny little ball of fur that she brought home--a little ball of fur that seemed to always be trying to snuggle into Jensen.
"Why didn't you go to a shelter?" Jensen asked.
Danneel shrugged. "Someone had to take him home."
Jensen was the one who christened the immensely fluffy dog 'Icarus', hoping he would grow into his name. Danneel called him 'Icky', which stuck.
When Danneel left three weeks later, the dog stayed firmly by Jensen's side as he did everything.
When she got back, Icky was Jensen's shadow.
She sighed. "Looks like you have your pet now."
Jared giggled. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”
**
Danneel and Jensen were painting the chicken coop. Danneel wanted it yellow, and as with most color and styling points Jensen acquiesced to her requests.
Jared was teaching the dogs how to fetch. Icky and Sadie were good at it, Harley just liked to chase them and didn't care about the ball, the trotted after Harley like besotted junior high girls. It was quite a rousing game.
"Are we co-dependent or cooperative?" Danneel pondered.
"Dunno," Jared said, throwing the ball for the gaggle again. "I don’t think we’re doing anything wrong. I just don't think people are meant to be alone."
"When you find people that you click with you keep them," Jensen said almost sheepishly. "I can't believe those words are coming out of my mouth."
"How the mighty have fallen," Jared said almost automatically. The only one who was surprised at Jensen's lack of crusty exterior these days was Jensen.
"Look at Mr. Enlightened," Danneel teased.
"Shut it," Jensen told her. "Doesn't mean you shouldn't be dating because you have us at home."
Danneel faltered. Jared caught the action.
"Do tell," he said coming to stand with his hands on his hips.
"There is this guy, Riley," Danneel said sheepishly. "I'm thinking that he's maybe a guy I would want to bring home."
Jensen looked up surprised. "You've never brought anyone to any place."
"Pshaw," Jared said. "What kind of name is Riley?"
Danneel made a face. "What kind of name is Jensen?"
"Point taken," Jared admitted.
"Hey!" Jensen said.
Jared thought for a moment and then spoke seriously. "I am going to have to research this, you know proper grilling techniques for when a guy is brought home."
"We could watch 'Meet the Parents'," Jensen offered, apparently over being offended.
"Good start," Jared said, the wheels in his head spinning. "Baby pictures, do we have baby pictures?"
Jensen thought about this. "We have high school hair."
Danneel was turning as red as her hair. "Good grief."
"Stop it," Jared chastised her. "We're being awesome. We don't even like people, what we should be doing is buying a shot gun."
"What is the waiting period again?" Jensen asked innocently.
"I so should have been less supporting of your fucking epic love," Danneel said, attacking the chicken coop with her very very yellow paint.
**
Jensen was the one who wrote first, all throughout the summer and part of the way into the freezing cold winter that saw Jensen buying a snow blower, Jared accepting Jensen buying him a warm jacket, and many many days in bed because it was freezing outside.
Jensen wrote the book first. Then Jared wrote in the margins, and pretty much added pages. It was a tale taken from one of the first journals. Danneel stole it one day and took it with her to New York.
Jared and Jensen got a call. It was confusing. The man on the other end was throwing out numbers and saying something about the juxtaposition of straightforward, honest lines, with flowing, charming prose.
Eventually they figured out that the man was offering them a book deal. The straightforward lines he quoted were Jensen’s, the flowery ones were Jared’s.
They loved the story.
The phone was hung up and they both ran to their room and looked for the book.
“I’m going to kill Danneel,” Jensen growled.
Jared was strangely composed. “Why were you writing it in the first place, wasn’t this an end game? Jensen, we can be authors.”
Jensen looked at him. “You’re okay with it? I mean, it’s our teen years, but do you really want that? And that guy was talking about maybe more.”
Jared smiled a little bit. “I can think of worse things than putting myself out there, my life all intertwined with yours.”
“Okay then,’ Jensen said moving in towards him. “You and me.”
**
The summer came, bright and beautiful. The garden was blooming.
They sat one night watching the sun set over the lake, side by side in
Adirondack chairs.
Danneel sighed contentedly. "Let’s just stay here forever."
Jensen smiled, because he knew that they would.
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...with more chickens for her great job, I totally added stuff, mistakes are mine
Disclaimer: I own this story, nothing more.
Word Count: 15,000 over all
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.
Start Here
**
Jared felt like shit, which wasn’t new, but the look in Jensen’s eyes was so horrible, he felt like he was the social pariah that he knew that he should feel. He had never felt it before, until that look on Jensen’s face.
This was only compounded by the fact that Jensen didn’t want him, he was tarnished. All he could feel was the fact that he was never enough, never going to be enough.
There was a knock on the door that he didn’t answer.
Then Jensen threw open the door, carrying a box. One by one he brought in more and more boxes.
He took the final one and dropped it on the bed, by Jared’s head.
“This is my life,” Jensen said. “Every journal I’ve ever kept. The box by your fucking head is the ones that we wrote together, passing notebooks between classes, throwing them around, you carrying one around in your back pocket as we used those awful fake ID’s. Every incomprehensible word that we wrote is there.”
Jared looked at the box and swallowed before speaking. “You kept those?”
“Fucking hell I did,” Jensen informed him. “That boy, that is the one I want, not some made up memory, not some warm body to fuck. I can find that absolutely anywhere. The person I thought I had last night, is what I wanted. Not somebody who wanted to play out games about sex, not somebody to party with. I liked the guy in the journals, funny, quick on his feet.”
Jared could barely look up. “What if I’m not that guy. That was before.”
With effort Jared looked up, he knew that he had to look Jensen in the eyes. He was surprised to find that Jensen was nervous too.
“Well read the other journals,” Jensen said softly. “I’ve done a few things that I’m not so proud of.”
Jared swallowed and didn’t look away.
When Jensen spoke it was so soft. “I’ve pretended it doesn’t exist but I like you, Jared. So if we’re going to crash and burn lets do it, lets just do it for real.”
Jared just looked up at him incredulously.
“Do you mean…” Jared asked. “’Cause I’m…I’ve done…”
Jensen looked at him solidly. “You’re Jared.”
With that he walked out of the room.
**
“Thank you for not fucking me,” Jensen said plopping on Danneel’s bed.
Danneel paused in her packing. “Is he reading?”
Jensen nodded.
“Do you look slightly terrified?” Danneel asked, trying to tease, but sounding more incredulous.
Jensen didn’t look at her, didn’t dignify that with a response.
“I’ll be back after New Year’s,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go. Are you going to be okay?”
Jensen nodded distractedly.
She stopped and sat down next to him, “Does your heart hurt?”
Jensen looked down and played with the bedspread. “I hear it is common after years of unuse.”
“Why’d you do it, Jensen?” she asked, not looking at him, a little thing which was part of why he loved her. “You didn’t have to. You just gave him your soul on paper.”
Jensen tried to decide if he wanted to rescind the love, she was creepy in how much she could read him, but he didn’t really have ample people that he would consider caring about so he let it go.
“When Chad called he said Jared wouldn’t make it if he went back,” Jensen said and it felt like he was speaking for the first time in his life. “I just want him to be okay.”
Danneel looked at him. “I know that was hard for you Jensen. But you know that really isn’t an answer.”
**
Danneel bounded into Jared’s room.
“How unbelievably boring,” She sighed looking down at him and tapping a hand on her hip. “I was hoping that you would be naked and masturbating or hunched in a corner all tortured.”
Jared lay on his bed surrounded by composition books, some open, and yellow legal pads and an uncapped pen.
He was freshly showered and wearing clean pajamas.
She cleaned up a space on the bed and plopped down.
That is when she got a look at his red-rimmed eyes.
“Oh, honey,” she said.
“I don’t understand him,” Jared said. “You’re perfect. Why didn’t he just pick you?”
Danneel smiled. “Baby, that isn’t how it works.”
“But he loves you and he shows it,” Jared said with a hiccup.
“He shows it because he doesn’t want more,” Danneel countered.
She picked up one of the closed books.
“The only time he isn’t surface Jensen is between those pages. He’s never invited me in, I’m pretty sure that he’s never even invited himself in,” Danneel said looking at the book. “He shows me little pieces when he can’t figure out how to hide everything. I’m a safe place for him to fall apart until he can figure out how to put the façade back up. That is what I am to him.”
Jared looked at her and then he reached over the edge of the bed.
“I fixed our shirts from Chad,” Jared said throwing hers at her. She picked up the shirt and the letters had been cut out and replaced with Jensen’s. It was badly safety pinned in, gaping and holey in places, but it proudly proclaimed ‘Heart.’
She smiled a little.
“What does Jensen give you, Danni?” Jared asked. “What do you get out of your friendship?”
Danneel looked at him curiously. “He has never told me that I’m stupid or dumb or just a face. In fact, he encourages me to be more. When I was thirteen I told him that I wanted to be a princess. He didn’t laugh or think I was silly. He bought me books all about being a real princess, and after reading those there was no way I wanted to be one. To those he loves he’s still a dick, but he isn’t mean and if he cares about you he can’t figure out a way to sever that feeling. He doesn’t give up.”
Jared looked at her. “You are really not subtle.”
Danneel attempted innocence. “I was talking about me.”
“You just told me that Jensen would be fine if I told him all about the last three years, his feelings wouldn’t be change,” Jared sighed. “You are not subtle.”
Danneel smiled sweetly, “I have no idea what you are talking about. I’m just the face.”
“What proof do you have that he cared about anyone?” Jared demanded.
“Besides me? His mother is an awful drunk and he still calls home every week. His little sister came to him twice before she was eighteen for an abortion and he never put her down for it,” Danneel told him. “I know it isn’t much, but it’s enough.”
Jared thought about that.
Danneel got up. “I’m going to New York for New Year’s--you two be okay. Maybe you should show him who you are, let him decide. You’ve read his journals--do you really think that he’s going to judge?”
Jared looked down and grabbed for one of the journals and began to read. “I turned down Missy and her incredible rumpus room tonight. It’s his birthday and I am doing what I always do, I’m sitting here alone, in the dark. I have no idea what he is doing. I’m spending most of the night trying not to call him, trying not to get on a plane and fly off, trying to stay here. He’s out there, he’s out there and I just want to show up, to pull him out of whatever mess he’s in. If I had a heart, if I had feelings…but that is the thing. I just want…a smile. Right now in the dark I just want a smile. As I drink more, I just want to know that he’s somewhere that he’d smile.”
Danneel’s throat was closing up, because this is what she thought to be true.
Jared looked up. “I’m not really worried that he likes me. I’m really more worried about what I should do with that information. I’m so messed up, I wouldn’t know what a relationship looks like if it slapped me in the face. It’s been a long three years.”
“You two say a lot of like,” Danneel observed. “Its as if you’re in junior high and you just can’t say the word.”
“Well that word, its kind of big,” Jared replied. “When or if I say it for the first time I really want it to be to him, to his face.”
Danneel grinned.
Jared stopped, his lips slightly parted, and his eyes becoming watery. “That is what we’re talking about right? Him and me? I’m not missing something?”
Danneel wrapped him in a hug. “You’re missing a lot of things, but it looks like you have this one buttoned up.”
**
Jensen woke up around ten, as usual, and headed for the kitchen and the coffeemaker, but ended up face down on his plush bedroom carpet before he made it to the door. He lay there for a minute trying to figure out what was going on.
Then he looked towards his feet. Three yellow legal pads sat there, slightly falling off each other and topped with a white sheet of paper.
Jensen pulled himself to a seat and looked at the pile curiously.
Not much really surprised him, so he just smiled and let himself be surprised. Then he picked up the top sheet and red it, and that was when he realized that he wasn’t going to be smiling for a while.
Apparently Jared had been writing down his memories as he was reading. Jared was giving him a glimpse into himself. It was just as much a test as Jensen had put forth to him.
Jensen looked at the first page, in Jared’s script. Jared wrote as he thought and talked, long, wordy, and with charm and honesty.
I lost the line, where good and bad is, where right and wrong is. I always see these things and want more and more. Well, that turned out well. That turned out to be the folly of my life. I always think I can do it. I really should have learned better by now. So here it is, in no discernable order, simply how I remember it. Whatever pops into my head gets put on paper until I don’t know what to write any more.
Jensen blinked. He knew he was going to need coffee for this one.
**
A day later he lay back in bed, put his glasses down and massaged his temple.
He picked up the phone because it was easier than getting up and crossing the hallway. Jared’s door weighed more than anything.
Danneel picked up. “This better be important, I’m doing fabulous things.”
Jensen cocked his head. “You sound bored.”
“Out of my fucking mind,” she sighed. “I don’t remember this world being this bad. It’s your fault, so you are now going to distract me. What is going on? You don’t sound distraught enough to have done something horrible like sleep with him, so please tell me.”
Jensen paused, then finally spoke, it was quiet and raw.
“He wrote for me.”
There was silence between them, and then she let out little noise.
“Is it as bad?” she whispered. “I mean I have ideas…”
“It’s…” Jensen didn’t know how to finish that sentence. “It’s what you think. Some were okay. Some were horribly ugly. Some had atrocious body odor or something physically repulsive, but he did it with a smile, to get things from them. He was hit, he was beaten. Some of it sounds boring and some of it…yeah Danni, it is bad.”
She did say anything.
“The worst part,” Jensen said. “Isn’t just how fucking degrading it is. He was used. He was a thing. The details, well, they could have been worse, but, Danni they used him, and he didn’t care.”
Danneel didn’t make any noises, then it was muffled, like she was trying not to let him know that she as sobbing.
“Why didn’t I go?” she said in a wavery voice. “Why did I let that happen?”
“Jared says he had sucked enough from everybody,” Jensen said, staring again at his ceiling. “He thought he deserved it and nothing would have changed his mind until he was ready. He came to a point when he really couldn’t do it any more, and he kept doing it because he didn’t know what . That was when Chad hog tied him and forced him to go to rehab”
Danneel was quiet. “I feel like a shitty friend. Chad was the one who…”
“He’s the only one with enough stupidity to go through it. I am sure that it wasn’t easy,” Jensen said tiredly. “Jared was defiant and ridiculously independent.”
“Now,” Danneel asked. “What happens now?”
“I’m going to keep reading--he’s giving me more every morning,” Jensen said tiredly. “I don’t think he’s sleeping.”
“It’s okay for a little bit,” Danneel told him. “I think that it is time that both of you to wake up for a little while.”
**
It was New Year’s Eve and Jensen had finished reading Jared’s stuff and then, not knowing what to do and needing to do something, he went snowboarding. He got back and Jared’s door was still closed. At ten he didn’t know what do, he was more intimate with Jared than he had been with anyone, but he didn’t know how to speak to him.
Invading Jared’s space was just too much after he had just read Jared’s tale about the time two-business men who had brought him to Malibu for a week. They had used him, roughed him up, and taken little care about Jared. He had been starving, on too many different kinds of drugs, bruised, and fucked over.
So after reading about Jared being willingly violated for a week, he wasn’t really willing to even walk near Jared’s door in the fear of interrupting him.
Jensen twirled his pen above the page, trying to think of something to write. His mind was blank. He wanted Jared to say something, wanted him to ask Jensen to hang out on New Year’s.
Finally at ten-thirty, Jensen gave up and made some pretense of getting himself together and put on some clothes. He hadn’t gone out since Christmas, and tonight he just didn’t feel like it. He was doing it more out of boredom than anything else.
Before putting on his coat he heated up dinner for Jared, and put a piece of the tiramisu that Danneel had gotten before she left on a tray and put it outside of Jared’s room.
He stared at the door for a bit, longer than he would ever admit to, before turning to go down the stairs.
When the door opened it wasn’t subtle or hesitant. It was thrown open, it was just like the old Jared, careless, determined and bigger of life. He stood there, backlit by the lights in his room, and he looked clean and comfortable, feet bare.
Jensen could barely make out the expression on his face.
“Don’t go out,” Jared said taking a step to the top of the stairs.
Jensen cocked his head from the middle of the stairs.
“Stay in tonight,” Jared stated.
Which was something that nobody had ever asked of him. Nobody had just asked him to stay, nobody had ever dared. Jensen didn’t know what he was supposed to say to that.
Jared stepped forward and down a few of the stairs.
“See,” Jared began with a glimmer of that old smile, but this time it seemed real. “You’re always kissing skanks and people that you don’t care about on New Year’s Eve. It hasn’t done you well, so maybe this time you shouldn’t.”
Jensen was surprised to find that he was couldn’t feel anything, he was too shocked. Jared came down further until they stood on the same step. Jensen suddenly found himself where he was supposed to be, he was supposed to be on this step with Jared.
“So who am I supposed to be kissing on New Year’s Eve?’ Jensen asked, feeling like this was scripted, it was just so easy.
Jared’s eyes went a little panicked.
“No,” Jensen said, hand coming to tug on the hem of Jared’s t-shirt. “You brought it there. I would have stayed to play Madden if you asked, but you brought it there. Who am I supposed to be kissing on New Year’s Eve?”
Jared looked at him. Slowly he raised a hand to run a finger over Jensen’s shoulder, his eyes followed his finger. Then he looked up slowly.
Their eyes met, calm. They knew each other and as much as this moment was something new and innocent in a way that they couldn’t remember, they knew each other. It wasn’t complicated. The answer, in fact, was remarkably easy.
“Me,” Jared said, swallowing down any other remarks.
They both knew that was the answer from the time they were kids.
Jensen smiled and leaned in, his hand going to Jared’s neck.
“You?” he teased, leaning in.
Jared tried to pull away, with little effort. “Shouldn’t you wait to kiss me until midnight?”
Jensen leaned in and spoke into Jared’s lips. “I’m sure I’ll still be kissing you at midnight.”
**
Jensen opened his eyes and moved back a little bit. The world was first Jared’s hazel eyes, hazy and unfocused. Then the rest of his face came into view, and Jensen’s eyes tracked down to Jared’s kiss-swollen lips.
Jared lazily reached out a hand and rand the pad of his thumb over Jensen’s bottom lip.
“It’s been a real long while since I was mentally present for this kind of thing,” Jared said quietly.
Jensen just looked at the color of Jared’s hair, the texture of his skin, the slick look of his lips.
“I don’t know if I ever was here for this kind of thing,” Jensen said nudging his lips into another kiss, and Jared responded languidly. They were curled up on a couch, shirts off, pants on, just fooling around, ignoring the television playing the New Year’s Eve show.
Jensen pulled away again.
“I don’t like people,” Jared sighed. “I know that it seemed that way, but I didn’t. I just didn’t want to have to deal with people, it was easier that way, to just be what they wanted me to be. I didn’t have to worry about what I wasn’t supposed to be. Being a boy toy was almost a relief. I mean it wasn’t that great, but it wasn’t that bad.”
Jensen swallowed and looked at him. “I think that you really have no idea what bad is.”
Jared was lost in thought. “You always tell me it’s not so bad.”
“I’ve read your journals, Jared,” Jensen said slowly. “It was bad.”
Jared nodded. “I’ve read yours, Jen--you’re not alright either.”
“Let’s not pretend then,” Jensen told him. “Let’s not pretend that we know what we’re doing. That we’re not fucked up.”
“Okay,” Jared said slowly. “But let’s not pretend that we don’t know each other, that some part of us really wants to know what it’s like not to be so fucked up. We’re never going to have any kind of normal relationship, but these last few weeks have been kind of more normal that I’ve ever had.”
Jensen smiled. “We have everything in the world. When my dad died last year the inheritance was enough to make me never need to work again if I not dumb. But I don’t know if any of it has ever been important.”
“I know,” Jared sighed. “The thing is just that I had forgotten how good writing things down is. It’s like that is where I am honest, where I figure things out. It makes me feel alive again.”
Jensen reached up and trailed a finger along Jared’s neck to his collarbone. He watched as goosebumps rose up on Jared’s naked arms. He just watched Jared’s arms, then he looked lower to the crook of his elbow, to the small scars still there.
Jensen just looked at them.
“I am not going back,” Jared said resolutely. “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m not going back there. I think that something is going to happen here with us, for however long that I’m here for. I’m game. I just want to say when you have to go back to the real world I would really like to keep in touch with you. I don’t want to get lost again.”
Jensen couldn’t look up; nothing in his life had equipped him for this.
The phone rang and he jumped to pick it before snuggling back into Jared.
“Happy New Year,” Danneel said happily.
“Hi, sweetie,” Jensen said.
She paused for a moment. “You’re not out? Why aren’t you out?”
Jensen looked at Jared.
“Something better at home?” she teased.
“Yep,” Jensen said and changed the phone to speakerphone. “Say hi to Jared, Danni.”
“Oh, honey” Danneel laughed. “Is he being mean to you?”
“He took my shirt but won’t give it back,” Jared said sadly.
“Brat,” Danneel laughed. “Did he let you keep your pants?”
“For now,” Jensen said dryly.
“Sounds like you are having a much better New Year’s than I am,” Danneel sighed. “I’m wearing a dress and shoes and it is so boring.”
“When are you coming home?” Jensen asked.
Danneel paused and her voice was a little strained. “Tomorrow.”
Jared looked at Jensen confused.
“Come home soon,” he said.
Jensen hung up and looked at Jared. “We aren’t the only one who is finding things that have meaning.”
Jared smiled. “I’ve missed us, all of us.”
Jensen was still and quiet for a moment.
“What?” Jared said.
“I can’t pretend I don’t want you,” Jensen said, shifting. “I mean, I know you went through shit, I’m not going to pressure anything, but…”
“Are you going to diatribe or are you going to fuck me?” Jared said evenly. “Because honestly man I’ve been waiting for this for a very long time. God I just want to touch you, to be allowed to touch you in everyway I want to.”
Jensen Ackles, who had heard it all, who didn’t feel, was overwhelmed by it all.
“Jeeze Jensen,” Jared said, at the sensitive skin at the hollow of his ear. “You think that you’ve never been this gobsmacked before.”
“Never,” Jensen whispered.
“I kind of have,” Jared whispered. “I have been in love forever.”
Jensen covered Jared’s mouth with his.
**
"I moved in with Chad’s uncle," Jared said out of nowhere. The early morning light was coming up on a new year and they were under comforters, naked and spent.
Jensen thought for a moment, Jared's pillow talk left something to be desired.
"Which one? Jeff or Paul?" Jensen asked. Chad's father was a first class fuck up, and he raised his three boys to be just like him. Intervention from his two uncles probably kept Chad from jail, like his two older brothers. His uncles owned some of the greatest clubs in LA, which is how they had known Chad; it was an odd friendship, but it went back to when they would sneak into clubs when they were sixteen and Chad would help. Jeff was solid, Paul was a bastard. Jensen knew which one of them it was.
"Paul," Jared said. "He's a kinky fuck. Controlling as hell. Chad saw me there. He knew what kind of things Paul did. When he found me there he flipped out. I was already a mess and after Paul I was more of a mess. Chad and Jeff staged an intervention that was more like a kidnapping. I was in Vermont before I actually registered anything.”
Jensen wasn't one for snuggling, but at this moment he was. He pulled himself to Jared's side and curled into it, anything to make Jared stop.
"But it wasn't that bad," Jensen muttered into Jared's skin, echoing Jared’s words from earlier.
"I don't have perspective," Jared said.
"I get it," Jensen said, pulling closer, bare skin against bare skin.
"I know because you don't either," Jared whispered. "What you've done...it’s so cold, you were just so cold in the journals."
Jensen didn't know what to do but shrug. He didn't let go an inch. Jared's hand moved up and down his back.
"I'm not the kind of guy who says 'I love you'," Jensen said after the silence.
Jared pulled back in shock, his eyes searching Jensen's face.
Jensen swallowed every defense mechanism and hesitation. "But you make me wish I were."
Jared looked wide-eyed at him. Shocked that Jensen was going to say anything.
Jensen smiled, something rare and private. He leaned down and nibbled on Jared's ear. Jared turned his head and caught Jensen's lips, hand coming to cup his face.
"Love you, Jensen," Jared said into Jensen's lips before Jensen pulled him down into the downy softness of his bed.
**
Jensen opened the front door, tired from a day of snowboarding. No one was home. He didn't think that they would be just sitting around waiting for him, but after almost a month of co-habitation this was the first time that nobody was home.
He turned on the lights and wandered around the house. Two months ago that was what made him comfortable. Now it was depressing.
He heard the door opening and ran down the stairs, pretending not to run down the stairs.
There stood Danneel, looking like she won the lottery, covered in thick mud.
"Mud wrestling?" Jensen asked.
Danneel beamed. "I'm throwing pots."
Jensen raised an eyebrow.
"For you unenlightened sort," she said loftily. "That means that I am doing pottery and while my vases are lopsided, I'm getting better, and my teacher says that my glazing techniques are top notch."
"Congratulations," Jensen guessed. "When did you start doing this?"
"When Jared started pulling doubles," Danneel said. "Washing dishes in the morning and line cooking in the afternoon."
Jensen made a mild sad face. "Well, my work here is done; you two definitely don't need me anymore."
Danneel smiled. “That is the thing--we’re all getting better. We all need each other.”
Jensen looked at the mud on her forearm. “I kind of sort of maybe told Jared that I …”
She looked at him her eyes shining with joy. “You love him? Do you really now?”
Jensen looked at the floor. “Yes.”
“Oh, baby,” Danneel said laughing. “My work here is done. Maybe you don’t need me anymore.”
Jensen took her in a hug. “We are always going to need you. It’s the three of us.”
“What is going on here?” Jared said booming as he came in the room.
Jensen and Danneel jumped away and turned to plead their innocence to Jared that they were just hugging.
Jared doubled over laughing. “The looks on your faces!”
“Screw you,” Jensen pouted. “You’re calling for dinner tonight.”
**
When the snow began to melt, Jensen opened the door to the smell of cookies.
“Jensen!” Danneel squealed. “Where the fuck have you been? Jared decided since he was now a line cook at the restaurant he could bake. Come in here and eat cookies before I finish them and get fat.”
She pulled Jensen into the kitchen. Jared stood there, wearing quite a bit of food. Jensen raised an eyebrow and then walked up to him and licked a stretch of chocolate on Jared’s neck.
Jared shuddered and then grinned goofily at Jensen. “That tickles.”
“What me to stop?” Jensen asked, a little bit of husky creeping into his voice.
Jared just grinned and shook his head.
Danneel watched them his hands on her hips. “This is some fucked up fairy tale.”
Jensen was a little unable to look away from Jared.
“So Mr. Absent this morning,” Danneel faux huffed. “Jared cooks and makes us fat, I make us holidays and parties, what do you bring to our dysfunctional utopia?”
Jensen shrugged. “Road trip?”
Danneel and Jared looked at each other and shrugged. “Nothing better to do.”
“Where we going?” Jared asked.
“Please say Montreal strip clubs,” Danneel said clapping her hands.
**
An hour later Jensen drove his silver SUV into the middle of nowhere.
“Are you going to kill us and hide the bodies?” Jared asked looking at the trees and lack of civilization.
“Yes,” Jensen said absentmindedly, patting Jared’s leg.
“Stop with the screwed up happily ever after,” Danneel shrieked, lunging through the seat divide to put Jensen’s hand on his own side of the car.
Jared laughed.
“Oh, dear god,” Danneel groaned sinking back into the seat. “You do know every time you smile Jensen gets a goofy smile on his face.”
Jared’s dimples increased in strength.
The car pulled on to a dirt road, and after half a mile a house came into view, as did the lake behind it.
Jensen pulled up in front of the house and stopped. He got out of the car and looked at the other two.
“Wanna come see my house,” Jensen asked off-handedly.
“You bought a house!” Danneel said bounding out. “It’s so cute, so cute. It’s like a little farmhouse. You so need to get chickens. You could put them over here in the side yard--that little house is so a chicken coop.”
Danneel was off and running.
Jared came around the car to stand next to Jensen.
“You bought a house?” he asked.
“You know how we are always talking about how much we just don’t want to go back,” Jensen said. “I thought, what if I don’t have to leave? There is nothing out there for me; I’m older than I should be at twenty-three. So I quit my job, that I haven’t even started yet and decided that I’m just going to stay.”
Jared gave a tight smile and looked at the house. “It’s beautiful.”
“Come inside,” Jensen said, pulling him in. Before yelling to where Danneel had disappeared. “Danni, come see inside! You’re going to find a million more things to decorate.”
She appeared very quickly.
“Show me what you need done with that unlimited bank account of yours,” Danneel said, eyes shining.
Jensen took Danneel’s hand and put it on his arm and motioned for Jared to follow.
Jensen squinted. “This is the living room of sorts. I’m thinking that I’m going to put some comfortable, no matter what they look like, couches, I’m going to put a ginormous TV in there.” He pointed to the room under the stairs. “That is the weird room under the stairs, the light in it sucks and it smells. I think I’m going to make it a library.” He walked them to the huge kitchen. “This is the kitchen, very modern, I have no idea what to do with it, and it just came to the house. There is a wood-floored part over there--I think I’m supposed to put some kind of table there for dinner parties. I really don’t want dinner parties.” Then he took them to the back of the house, where someone had added on a section.
He turned to Danneel and grinned. “This is a gorgeous room, full of light, with a bathroom. The upstairs is a master bedroom penthouse or I would have taken this room. This is your room, Danni. I don’t care if you decide to do blood sacrifices, paint it with weird symbols, or leave bodies in here before you bury them. This is your room, you do whatever you want with it and when you come around, this will be your room. When you are gone, this is your room.”
Danneel looked at the spacious room, with plenty of windows and a slider that lead to the backyard where flowers were already starting to bud. She swallowed.
“Mine?” she said in a small voice.
“Just yours,” Jensen acknowledged.
Danneel’s eyes started watering. Tears fell down her cheeks and she looked up at Jensen.
“I think that deep deep down you aren’t an asshole,” Danneel said, muffled in his shirt.
“That is the sweetest thing that you’ve ever said,” Jensen said distractedly.
Danneel looked up to where Jensen was looking. He was looking at Jared who looked very uncomfortable.
Danneel looked up at Jensen. Jensen let her go.
“Come see the rest of the house,” Jensen said, reaching out for Jared this time, nodding for Danneel to stay in her new room.
Jared followed hesitantly. Jensen climbed the stairs and they walked into the upper floor. Besides one corner of the room that looked as if it housed a luxury bathroom and another corner that held a walk in closet, the rest of the floor was open; one side of the room had a large bay window over looking the trees and the lake.
The only thing in the room was a California king.
Jensen took a deep breath and then looked up at Jared.
“I put things in this house that you like,” Jensen said with more hesitancy than either of them had heard in their lives. “The huge TV will come with all the movies that you want. The house has a king sized bed and Danni is in this house.”
Jensen tugged Jared to the window that over looked the back yard. “There is a yard out there with a fence and I’d be okay with a dog, one of those big kinds that your mom would never let you have.”
Jared stared outside.
“You don’t have to,” Jensen continued. “I mean, I can fix up the creepy room under the stairs or you could stay at the condo.”
Jared turned around. He wasn’t smiling, he just looked at Jensen.
Jensen stood there, waiting. He had been in some sketchy situations, once even had a gun held on him, but nothing made him more terrified than this moment. Somewhere he heard Danneel going down the stairs.
He just saw Jared and the bottom of his world fell out. He was absolutely sure that Jared was going to leave.
"I'm sorry," he rushed to say, rooted where he was. "I should have talked to you before I bought a house. I just, I just wanted to stay here, I wanted to build a life here and you said that you wanted to stay in contact, I thought maybe you wanted us to be together. Whatever you want, I'll build another room down stairs and that will be yours and you can visit whenever you want, and..."
Jensen trailed off, feeling gross and vulnerable, Jared just staring blankly.
When he spoke it was the most difficult thing he had ever said, like he had never quite put together an arrangement of words.
"I love you, however you want to be, I can do," Jensen said, small and almost timid.
Jared looked at him and shook his head, as if he were trying to clear it.
Finally he spoke. “Harley.”
The noise was strangled and Jensen’s brow creased, trying to figure out what Jensen meant.
“You want a motorcycle?” Jensen said, a glazed look came over his face, because he didn’t want to keep Jared by buying him things. That was someone he thought Jared wasn’t. “You want a motorcycle to stay?”
Jared shook his head and took a step forward. “Can I name him Harley, my dog?”
Jensen almost went into shock, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was the moment he was getting everything that he wanted. Suddenly Jared’s hands came around him and sat him down on the gigantic bed that he had ordered in the hope of Jared saying yes.
Jensen looked up.
“Hi,” Jared said, his dimples appearing.
Jensen leaned in and kissed him, pulling him in. Jared grabbed him back.
Finally Jared started twitching. Jensen pulled back looking confused.
Jared was grinning. “You love me. You don’t get that back.”
“Don’t want it.” Jensen said. “It’s all yours.”
Jared started getting all-antsy.
“What is it?” Jensen asked.
“That is the most awesome thing that I have ever heard and this is the best idea in the entire world,” Jared sang, his smile electric. Then he stood up and did a dance that was a little embarrassing for both of them and they didn’t care.
“Danni,” Jared yelled down the stairs. “Come quick--I think that the world is ending. Jensen told me he loved me.”
Then Jared jumped on the bed and tackled Jensen, Danneel came up the stairs. Jared put his long octopus arms around Jensen and then put a leg around him, by the time Danneel came up the stairs Jensen was immobile.
“You’re just going to strangle him into submission?” Danneel said dryly.
“If I have to,” Jared said trying to keep Jensen in place as he wriggled about.
“What more do you want?’ Jensen bemoaned. “A house, a dog, a big TV, the world’s biggest bedroom and the most ginormous bed I could find without special ordering it.”
“Did you hear,” Jared said still wrestling in Jensen. “I’m moving in.”
Danneel came and jumped on the bed, and there was plenty of room. “Me too! Are you moving into Jensen’s room?”
“I’m right here,” Jensen said, his stomach uncurling a little bit. Jared didn’t let him go an inch.
“Do you think Jensen will let me build a studio out back, next to my chickens?” Danneel squealed.
“Still here,” Jensen said. “Actually, I own the house you are making plans for.”
“You can have the weird room,” Jared offered.
Jensen rolled his eyes, laid back, and just let them talk about the details of their lives.
**
Danneel lay sleeping in the backseat. They had spent the day making plans in the house. They had finished up by going to a restaurant in the town. A gourmet chef had moved to Vermont to retire, and ended opening up a comfort-food restaurant. Jensen had apparently visited and was welcomed. After whispering that he hadn’t slept with this manager, Jared got a job. In fact, the chief and his wife were completely charmed by Jared and Danneel.
They were fed and Danneel was exhausted.
“I’m not going to embarrass you by making it a big deal,” Jared said after the road stretched out in front of them. “But today, that was a big deal. That was the biggest deal of my life. Today you just gave me everything. Really, Jensen, you have given me everything. I don’t really get why.”
Jensen smiled. “You wonder what I get out of it.”
“Maybe,” Jared admitted.
“Would you believe me if I told you that maybe I’m not doing this for anything I can get out of it?” Jensen suggested. “Its like Danni and Christmas, I guess--I’m doing it because it makes me happy. I’ve never had a home and I have never had any one I wanted or trusted enough to have one with. I don’t want to take care of you, I just want to be with you.”
“Dear sweet fucking…” Jared trailed off. “I know you’re intense, but this is something else--you liking me, way more than I ever thought possible in any situation, and I know you. You’ve got me; you’re ridiculous.”
“I know,” Jensen said. “But time away has made me think that maybe I don’t want to be.”
“Whatever made you make this okay I am so glad it came,” Jared said happily.
"Yeah, Jared," Jensen said, staring straight ahead, "It was big for me too. This whole thing is pretty big for me too."
**
Jensen owned a house, but no furniture. Danneel was alive with redecorating ideas.
“Let me guess,” Jensen said. “You never really decorated, you always had someone decorate for you and you are giddy as a school girl to try to paint my house colors--not too girly colors, but nice masculine colors.”
“Yes,” Danneel said, looking over pages of furniture brochures. “Except for the room that is mine.”
Jared popped in and looked at the brochures, daunted.
“I always thought that the furniture finds you,” Jared said, munching on a chicken wing. “Like you go out and you find the things that are supposed to live in your house. These things all seem so fake.”
Danneel looked at it. “Wow, score an insightful point for the Personality.”
Jared shrugged.
Jensen got a look of dread on his face.
Danneel got a look of glee. “Oh my, shopping with Jensen. My most favorite thing in the whole world.”
Jensen glared at Jared. “You are a horrible human being.”
“I love you too, Pookey,” Jared said smacking his lips and turning to the kitchen for more chicken wings.
**
Jensen was dreading the pound, almost as much as he had dreaded shopping with Danneel. He really wasn't sure about Jared being around that many dogs. He was correct to feel that way.
"But Jensen," Jared whined. "The boy puppy needs company."
"That is what we are for," Jensen tried patiently.
Jared sat with a puppy on his lap and next to him sat another one, ignoring both Jared and the other puppy, but shifting closer.
"Jensen," Jared pouted. "Dogs need other dogs. They like each other."
Jensen looked at the girl puppy, who was looking away. "I think she's indifferent."
What Jensen wasn't saying was he was afraid that the dogs were going to get huge; by the size of their paws they were not going to be lap dogs, not even for Jared's lap.
Jared just looked at him pleadingly.
After a long sigh, Jensen realized that Jared hadn't asked him for anything during his stay, except for the dogs. Knowing that it would make Jared deliriously happy was one reason he said yes; the other was the way that Jared looked spooked on some occasions when he was alone. Jensen knew that there were still some demons on Jared's back. Jensen would give him a whole pack of dogs if it would make Jared feel safer.
So Jensen said yes.
Jared kissed him within an inch of his life.
And Jensen prayed that they would house train quickly.
**
They had furniture that wasn't the prettiest, but it was large and comfortable, and it was theirs. They handpicked and loved each piece. Danneel would come in on a plane in a whirlwind and unpack the boxes that she sent from wherever she was in the world.
She took care of the chickens, and had Jensen do it when she was gone. The chickens were fertile. Very very fertile.
"We have to sell some of these," Jensen told her, looking at the day’s three dozen eggs.
Danneel still was modeling, which only left Jensen. That is how he got started having a stand at the local farmer's market.
He'd wake up early on Saturday and Sunday, muttering about how the mighty had fallen. Jared would sleepily remind him how he wasn’t that mighty and that farmers were sexy, and to go sell eggs and then he would get laid. Jared told the joke every week, laughed hysterically, and then fell back asleep.
But Jensen loved the chickens. The chickens were certifiably crazy. They thought they were puppies part of the time, playing with the dogs more often than not. Jensen prayed all the activity would curtail the egg production.
His prayers fell on deaf chicken god ears.
**
"Danni," Jared whispered over the phone.
Danneel was in Milan, doing a shoot; she was dressed in designer wear, dreaming of her second hand cut off shorts.
"Why are you whispering?" Danneel asked. "Is there something wrong?"
"I'm sending you a video," Jared whispered. There was a tone in Jared's voice; he sounded like he was going to cry.
"Are you okay?" Danneel asked worried.
"Just look at the video," Jared said, voice breaking.
Danneel was expecting Jensen naked in bed with a girl, a guy, an orgy, or even with the dogs. What she was not expecting was to watch thirty-seven seconds of Jensen generally swearing and beating up the ground.
"What is he doing?" Danneel whispered, before realizing that she didn't need to whisper.
"He's tilling the earth," Jared said seriously, before starting to laugh.
"What the hell?" Danneel asked.
"The biddies," Jared said between gasps of laughter, "The ones at the market that he shares a stall with, are teaching Jensen gardening and he decided he was going to plant a garden this spring, so Jensen is tilling the earth."
"Jensen Ackles," Danneel whistled. "I never thought I would see the day."
Jared stopped laughing. "As funny as it is, and it is even more funny in person, it kind of sucks. He's getting blisters, even with the gardening gloves. It really is starting to interfere with my sex life."
"Too much info, Jare," Danneel said. "I'll call back later."
**
Danneel pondered getting a horse, some sheep, a pig, and an alpaca. However it was when she brought home her pet that Jensen called a stop to getting any more pets.
However, he was stuck with the tiny little ball of fur that she brought home--a little ball of fur that seemed to always be trying to snuggle into Jensen.
"Why didn't you go to a shelter?" Jensen asked.
Danneel shrugged. "Someone had to take him home."
Jensen was the one who christened the immensely fluffy dog 'Icarus', hoping he would grow into his name. Danneel called him 'Icky', which stuck.
When Danneel left three weeks later, the dog stayed firmly by Jensen's side as he did everything.
When she got back, Icky was Jensen's shadow.
She sighed. "Looks like you have your pet now."
Jared giggled. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”
**
Danneel and Jensen were painting the chicken coop. Danneel wanted it yellow, and as with most color and styling points Jensen acquiesced to her requests.
Jared was teaching the dogs how to fetch. Icky and Sadie were good at it, Harley just liked to chase them and didn't care about the ball, the trotted after Harley like besotted junior high girls. It was quite a rousing game.
"Are we co-dependent or cooperative?" Danneel pondered.
"Dunno," Jared said, throwing the ball for the gaggle again. "I don’t think we’re doing anything wrong. I just don't think people are meant to be alone."
"When you find people that you click with you keep them," Jensen said almost sheepishly. "I can't believe those words are coming out of my mouth."
"How the mighty have fallen," Jared said almost automatically. The only one who was surprised at Jensen's lack of crusty exterior these days was Jensen.
"Look at Mr. Enlightened," Danneel teased.
"Shut it," Jensen told her. "Doesn't mean you shouldn't be dating because you have us at home."
Danneel faltered. Jared caught the action.
"Do tell," he said coming to stand with his hands on his hips.
"There is this guy, Riley," Danneel said sheepishly. "I'm thinking that he's maybe a guy I would want to bring home."
Jensen looked up surprised. "You've never brought anyone to any place."
"Pshaw," Jared said. "What kind of name is Riley?"
Danneel made a face. "What kind of name is Jensen?"
"Point taken," Jared admitted.
"Hey!" Jensen said.
Jared thought for a moment and then spoke seriously. "I am going to have to research this, you know proper grilling techniques for when a guy is brought home."
"We could watch 'Meet the Parents'," Jensen offered, apparently over being offended.
"Good start," Jared said, the wheels in his head spinning. "Baby pictures, do we have baby pictures?"
Jensen thought about this. "We have high school hair."
Danneel was turning as red as her hair. "Good grief."
"Stop it," Jared chastised her. "We're being awesome. We don't even like people, what we should be doing is buying a shot gun."
"What is the waiting period again?" Jensen asked innocently.
"I so should have been less supporting of your fucking epic love," Danneel said, attacking the chicken coop with her very very yellow paint.
**
Jensen was the one who wrote first, all throughout the summer and part of the way into the freezing cold winter that saw Jensen buying a snow blower, Jared accepting Jensen buying him a warm jacket, and many many days in bed because it was freezing outside.
Jensen wrote the book first. Then Jared wrote in the margins, and pretty much added pages. It was a tale taken from one of the first journals. Danneel stole it one day and took it with her to New York.
Jared and Jensen got a call. It was confusing. The man on the other end was throwing out numbers and saying something about the juxtaposition of straightforward, honest lines, with flowing, charming prose.
Eventually they figured out that the man was offering them a book deal. The straightforward lines he quoted were Jensen’s, the flowery ones were Jared’s.
They loved the story.
The phone was hung up and they both ran to their room and looked for the book.
“I’m going to kill Danneel,” Jensen growled.
Jared was strangely composed. “Why were you writing it in the first place, wasn’t this an end game? Jensen, we can be authors.”
Jensen looked at him. “You’re okay with it? I mean, it’s our teen years, but do you really want that? And that guy was talking about maybe more.”
Jared smiled a little bit. “I can think of worse things than putting myself out there, my life all intertwined with yours.”
“Okay then,’ Jensen said moving in towards him. “You and me.”
**
The summer came, bright and beautiful. The garden was blooming.
They sat one night watching the sun set over the lake, side by side in
Adirondack chairs.
Danneel sighed contentedly. "Let’s just stay here forever."
Jensen smiled, because he knew that they would.