The Solid Body of a Dream 6/6
J2 RPS AU
NC-17
Part 6 of 6
Master post
Art
Now
Jensen doesn't know how his daughter managed to convince him to take her to New York and show her his old stomping grounds, but here they are, traipsing around the Lower East Side and the East Village while he tries to lay his old memories over new sights and she provides a running commentary of what she thinks he might have done.
"This is where Dad held Mom's hair while she puked. This is where Mom rubbed Dad's back while he puked. This is where Dad drew all over his bedroom walls because it was a cheap-ass apartment and there was no security deposit. This is where Dad - "
"JJ, stop." He's embarrassed at her not-entirely-inaccurate replay of his wild youth.
"You don't want to take me on the nostalgia tour?" She grins.
"Not really, no."
"I thought that's why we were here. I bet New York looks a lot different now."
"That's an understatement."
The parts of the city he knew are almost unrecognizable. Alphabet City is overrun with cute little stores and hip little restaurants and expensive little apartments. CBGB's is a John Varvatos boutique, for Christ's sake.
The Judson Health Center is still on Spring Street, where Danneel went for prenatal care and Chad once hit on a nurse right before she told him he had walking pneumonia. But St Vincent's, where JJ was born, is completely gone. Jensen doesn't know how an entire hospital can vanish, how a place like St Vincent's can go bankrupt, but it did.
He does manage to find the building where he lived first with Chris and Alona, then with Chris and Jared, and finally with Jared alone. JJ has seen photos of the bathtub in the kitchen and Jensen sitting on the fire escape, and she comments that it's a lot cleaner than it was in the pictures. Well, of course it is. The entire city is cleaner than it used to be. The guys selling shit off blankets on East Village sidewalks have all been swept away. The subways are shockingly nice and Times Square feels like the city by way of Disneyland.
Jensen talks his way into the Foundation Building at Cooper Union and shows JJ the printmaking shop and the painting office and the galleries and the studio spaces where he and Danneel worked on projects and hated their art and produced the pieces for their senior shows that would demonstrate what they'd learned and what styles and points of view they'd developed.
Even the school looks different - there are dorms now - and Jensen hadn't thought it would ever change.
"Do you miss it?" JJ asks, as they walk down 8th Street towards Washington Square Park.
"Do I miss what?" Jensen asks, his mind thirty-five years away. He remembers making a point to see the Washington Square Arch after Francis Hines wrapped it in polyester, so he could argue its merits with the sculptor in the studio space across from his.
"New York."
"Sometimes."
It's very strange to be back, walking the streets he knew as a twenty-something punkass, when he was younger than his daughter is now. No one he knew back then is still around, at least not as far as he knows. He's lost touch with a lot of people. When JJ suggested he look them up on Facebook, he laughed, but maybe it's not such a bad idea.
"You could start with Jared," she'd said.
But after all this time, what would he say?
JJ's phone pings twice. She fishes it out of her jacket pocket, squints at it, and answers whoever texted her.
"Good news, bad news?" Jensen asks. "Is that your mother?" Danneel knows JJ got him to come back to the city, and Jensen knows she'll want an update.
"No," JJ says. "Let's walk through the park."
As they pass the arch, and Jensen imagines it covered in ghostly white polyester again, someone calls his name. He looks around, hears it again, and -
"JJ," he says, surprise and warning both in his voice. "What did you do?"
She just beams at him.
Because coming up on Jensen's left, wider and older and unmistakable, is Jared.
"I've been waiting for an hour!" Jared exclaims, and before Jensen can think of something to say, before he can even engage his brain enough to say hello, Jared has him in a crushing hug and he can't breathe.
He can see JJ over Jared's shoulder, grinning fit to split her face, looking so fucking pleased with herself that he can't help but give in and hug Jared back.
When Jared finally lets him go, Jensen stares at his daughter, who's laughing now.
"You should see your face," she says to him. "You want to kill me and kiss me at the same time." She gives him a kiss on the cheek and says, "Go have fun. Get reacquainted." And with a cheery wave she bounces off towards the edge of the park and away.
"I guess she didn't tell you that she found me on Facebook," Jared says.
"No," Jensen says, "she didn't." He looks Jared up and down, taking in the jeans, the dark green button-down over a plain t-shirt, the black jacket, the windblown hair, the laugh lines around Jared's green eyes, the tiny hoop in his ear.
"Remember when Danny pierced your ear?" Jensen asks, surprising himself, and Jared laughs.
"I watched her do yours," he says, "begged her to do mine, and whined for the rest of day about how much it hurt."
Jensen fingers his own earlobe, where there are still the two holes that Danneel stabbed into his ear with a safety pin in the most cliched punk-rock way imaginable. Usually he just wears one little hoop in the bottom one, like Jared has now, but he didn’t today.
He realizes they're just standing there, in the middle of Washington Square Park, on a beautiful spring day, in the beautiful city that New York has become. They should go somewhere.
"Are you hungry?" Jared asks. "I'm starving."
And now it's Jensen's turn to laugh, because he remembers that too.
"Where do you want to go?" he asks, and when Jared shrugs, Jensen starts walking towards the far corner of the park, because he knows there will be restaurants that way. Maybe the coffeehouse that Danneel loved is still there.
He stops right in front of the storefront that used to be Bleeker Bob's, does an about-face, and heads back to the park. Anywhere they go, he'll be reminded of something or someone he knew that's gone. They'll have to go uptown to escape it, and that's not why he's here.
He's here, apparently, to reconnect with his long-ago ex, because his daughter seems to think he should.
They stop at the corner of Broadway and 4th, waiting for the light so they can cross, and Jared points to the wall of glass around the building behind them. "What did this used to be? It was something else."
"Tower Records," Jensen says.
"Huh. The Krays did a signing here for Left at the End of the Line."
"I remember."
"You didn't come, did you?"
"No."
The light changes and they cross. Jensen doesn't have anything to say about the two albums the Krays released after Jared left him. He stopped trying so hard to avoid them, but he was never interested in listening to them either.
"You think this is weird," Jared says. "You're right. It is." He stops and pulls Jensen to the side, against a building so they're out of the way of the sidewalk traffic. "Let's get it out of the way - I was a dick to you, and I'm sorry. I thought about you a lot and wondered what you were doing, but I never tried to find you because I didn't think you wanted anything to do with me. And then everything fell out of my control and it was too late." He looks hurt, and sincere, and Jensen can see the seventeen-year-old boy in Jared's fifty-three-year-old face, and he realizes he forgave and forgot a long time ago.
And suddenly it's easy to be here with him, because in the middle of this barely-recognizable place, Jensen sees a face he knows, older but oddly unchanged.
"I'm sorry," Jared says again. "I want to get to know you again. I want to know what you've been doing the past thirty years. I want you to want to know about me."
"I do," Jensen says. "I don't hold it against you anymore. It's been a long time. What time is it? Maybe we should get a beer, sit and talk like old friends."
"We are old friends." Jared grins. "I quit drinking, but if you want a beer I'm sure we can find a bar."
"Nah, it's okay. But I can eat."
They find a barbecue place not far from Cooper Union, and sit and eat and talk. The longer they chat, the easier it gets, and if it weren't for the fact that neither of them knows anything of the other's life, Jensen can almost believe they've actually kept in touch over the years.
He learns that Jared lost his mind after the Krays broke up, that he went to rehab and disappeared from public view, that he met a woman with two sons and a ranch, that he eventually resurfaced in Austin and opened a little club to champion local bands because he missed the visceral thrill of live music.
"I started writing when I was at the ranch," Jared says. "I'd stopped for a while - my head was a mess, my life was a mess, everything was so fucked up - but Gen was really good for me, and she got me working again. I've seen Chad a few times and we've almost got enough good songs for a new album."
"Are you making a comeback?"
"I don't know. It's been a long time. I don't know how to do it anymore."
"What, be a star?" Jensen can't help but grin, and Jared grins back.
"Maybe. Now it's your turn. What did I miss in your life?"
Everything, Jensen thinks, and he tells Jared about starting a business with Misha, about leaving New York for San Francisco when JJ was five, about divorcing Danneel but staying close, emotionally and geographically, until JJ went off to college. He tells Jared that he lives in Chicago now, that he's a freelance graphic designer but also teaches at the School of the Art Institute, that his favorite thing to design is still album covers, that he shares a printing studio with four other artists, that most of the time he feels too old to go to clubs and see bands, that he misses it.
"And I quit smoking," he adds. "I don't miss that."
"So if I were to kiss you, you wouldn't taste like an ashtray?"
"Are you saying you want to kiss me?" It's a measure of how comfortable Jensen feels that his tone is light and joking, and if Jared were to actually kiss him, he would probably kiss back.
"We should let them have the table," Jared says, conveniently changing the subject.
So they walk some more and talk some more and meander down the Bowery to the high-end men's boutique that used to be CBGB's.
Joey's probably spinning in his grave, Jensen thinks, looking around at the rolling racks of jackets and shirts, the boots and shoes lined up on the stage, the guitars under glass, the chandelier, the graffiti. He can't tell where the bar used to be, or where the tables were. He can't remember where he left his own graffiti among the crazed scrawl. If he'd had the money and been a different person, he might have been convinced to wear these clothes when he was young and skinny, but all the same, he feels distinctly out of his element.
"I found you a t-shirt," Jared says, holding it up and grinning. The shirt is gray, no doubt washed repeatedly so it looks vintage, and it says "Let go and give in to the music" across the front.
At least the text is appropriate. But not for $68.
They can spend an hour and a half sitting at a barbecue restaurant catching up, but it only takes five minutes in this designer place before Jensen's had enough.
It's easier for him to walk around with Jared than it was for him to show JJ his old stomping grounds. The cognitive dissonance is still strong, and Jensen is sharply aware of how much he and Jared have both changed, but at the same time, he's walking the streets he used to know with someone he used to love, and there's something familiar about that.
They wander through the Lower East Side and back up to the Village. They take the subway down to the site of the old World Trade Center, because Jared wants to see it, and they walk around the memorial in silence. Jensen was in the Bay Area when the towers came down, and because he didn't know anyone in New York to check on, he called Chris.
"JJ was in college," he tells Jared once they're back on the subway. "She called me as soon as she heard. She woke me up."
"You were the first person I thought of," Jared says. "My sister called me in a panic." He chuckles. "Gen and I had split, but we were still friends. I went to stay with her for a month." Now he smiles, a private, affectionate smile. "She always could keep me sane."
"Do you still talk to her?"
"Sometimes, yeah. The ranch keeps her busy. Her kids help out and she's got a husband now, but it's a bigger operation than it was when I was there, and it takes a lot of her time. It's okay. She loves it. She's really happy. I've got a pretty good life that keeps me busy too."
They find a little coffeehouse near NYU to talk some more and rest up before their next excursion, and Jensen is in the middle of a sentence when Jared holds out a hand and tells him to shush.
"I'm sorry?" Jensen says, offended. He's too old to be shushed.
"Listen." Jared points to the ceiling, indicating the song playing in the coffeehouse, and Jensen closes his mouth and listens. He doesn't think he knows it, but there's something vaguely familiar about the music anyway.
"'The Ghost in the Chelsea'," Jared says after a minute. "From our third album."
And Jensen suddenly remembers being in Tower Records with the Krays' new album playing on the sound system, his attention catching on the chorus of this song and his anger taking him out of the store.
"That was about me, wasn't it," Jensen says. "It was about us."
"Yeah, it was. Chad knew, but no one else had any idea. Even Gabe thought it was just a song, and he knew that you and I were a couple. He knew I broke up with you."
Jensen can remember how angry he was at Jared breaking up with him and then having the balls to write a melancholy song about him, but it's like remembering the numbers on an invoice. There's no emotional attachment to it at all. He's relieved.
"It was a B-side but it never got a lot of airplay," Jared goes on. "I was always disappointed by that. I thought it was a good song."
Something else is playing in the coffeehouse now, which Jensen doesn't recognize.
"Is this the Krays too?" he asks.
Jared cocks his head, listening, then shakes his head no. And Jensen is relieved about that too. He dredged up enough of the past. He just wants to go forward.
"I didn't tell you I tried to find everyone," Jared says, blessedly changing the subject. "After JJ found me and told me I should get back in touch with you, I went on a spree. I couldn't find Rachel, but Adrianne's an adjunct professor of anthropology in New Mexico. Alona lives on a dairy farm and writes about cheese and bees and music soothing the placid milk-producing beast. She posts a lot on Instagram. You should check her out. Rob has fallen off the face of the earth, but Rich is in Seattle, giving guitar lessons and running a recording studio out of his garage. I think he's on his second wife. Steve is in Baltimore - he's a public school math teacher. Can you believe that? I always thought he and Chris would be working together forever."
"He ran a record store with the Pits' drummer," Jensen says. "It must have closed. He and Chris don't talk that much. I think he was pissed when Chris quit music to go into the restaurant biz."
"Chris is a chef?"
"He's got a restaurant in Boulder - The Red House - if you're ever out that way and have a craving for a good steak. We don't see each other as much as we'd like, but we talk a lot. He's really happy."
"I'm glad. I always liked him. I even found Hayley! She has a husband and three kids and a dog and a clothing boutique in Brighton, an hour south of London. You probably know what Felicia's up to - "
"Of course. She and Danny kept in touch. I'm sure you found her. She's all over the internet."
Felicia is still drawing comics, but now she also offers the middle-aged nerd perspective on a geek podcast, and she's very dedicated to making comics more welcoming for girls.
"I even listened to her podcast," Jared says. He grins. "I know you don't need me to tell you what Danneel's been doing."
Of course Jensen knows what happened to Danneel, that she moved to New Orleans and started making clothes full-time and resurrected Doom Pastry as an online zine, and she's still painting and still his best friend who isn't Chris.
Jensen's phone buzzes with a text from JJ. Are you having fun? it says. Wasn't this a good idea? ;)
Yes, Jensen texts back.
"JJ?" Jared asks him. Jensen nods. "Tell her I say hi and 'Thank you'."
Jared says thank you, he texts obediently. We're going out for dinner now.
"We should go eat real food," he says.
Dinner is a random French bistro near 7th Avenue. Jensen has a glass of wine. Jared toasts him with his water glass - "To old friends" - and then eats all of the dessert Jensen thought they ordered to share.
"Where to now?" Jared asks after they pay and head out. It's cooler, but still pleasant. Jensen doesn't want to leave him but doesn't have any ideas. All he knows is that he's tired of walking. "There's an all-hours bookstore near here, I think. Or we could go back to my hotel." For the first time all day he sounds unsure, and Jensen can clearly hear Jared's much younger self in that uncertainty. "Unless you want to walk around some more, but I think we've seen everything that's still left."
"Where are you staying?"
"The Park Lane. I wanted to be able to go running in Central Park in the morning." He looks Jensen up and down. "I don't think you'll be able to come with me tomorrow."
"Why not?"
"Those aren't running clothes." Jared's grin is sudden and wide and blinding.
Jensen pulls out his phone. Don't wait up, he texts his daughter. I'll see you in the morning.
Jared's room at the hotel overlooks the park. The city was always prettier at night, especially from above, and Jensen takes a minute to just enjoy the view.
"It's been so long," Jared says, coming up behind him, "that this will be like we're getting to know each other all over again."
It's already much different from the first time they slept together, or even the last - they're both sober, the bed is big and comfortable, the mattress is sitting on a box spring on an actual frame, and there's no noise from the neighbors. Jared kisses the back of Jensen's neck, and then Jensen turns around so Jared can kiss his mouth.
They were just kids when they met. Jensen liked to think himself worldly and experienced, but the fact was, he hadn't even graduated from art school yet. He had his whole life ahead of him and so many more things to learn.
He still has things to learn, chief among them what turns Jared on, and if it's the same things that worked thirty-five years ago.
It turns out that some things haven't changed after all.
And some things have - Jared is a much better kisser than Jensen remembers, and they're both much more patient than they used to be. They take their time with each other, trying to learn each other's bodies all over again, what they like, what they don't. Jared is still talkative, still loud, still eager to suck Jensen's cock. He's in good shape, and he still gets Jensen hard. And Jensen, for his part, is pleased to see that Jared is still aroused by the touch of his hands and the rasp of his tongue and the heat of his body.
Jensen can't help but laugh when Jared pauses long enough to retrieve a condom and some lube from where he has apparently stashed them in the nightstand.
"I came prepared," Jared says, breathless and pleased with himself.
"I can tell."
He breathes out when Jared enters him, a long sigh of pleasure and something that might be relief. Jared takes his time with this as he has with everything else since he kissed Jensen in front of the window. Jensen doesn't want to rush either.
"What's next?" Jared asks him later, after Jensen has borrowed something to sleep in and they've arranged themselves under the blankets.
"What do you mean? We're going to sleep, and in the morning we'll have wake-up sex, you'll go for a run, I'll take a shower, we'll have breakfast."
"After that. I just got you back, I don't want to let you go again."
Jensen sits up. "Do you really want to get involved with me now? After one day together, after thirty years? How do you know I'm not already seeing someone?"
"Would you have slept with me if you did?" Jared pauses as if to make his point. "JJ told me. Look - I want to get to know you again. I just spent most of a day and all night trying to do that. I want to keep doing it. So yeah, I want to commit."
Jensen flops back down on the bed and rubs his eyes with both hands. "I don't know if I can. I really enjoyed being with you today, once it wasn't weird anymore. I still love to kiss you, I still love it when you fuck me. I'm not a one-night-stand kind of guy, but I don't want a long-distance relationship."
Jared pulls Jensen's hands away from his face and kisses him lightly on the mouth. "What if I moved to Chicago?"
"I couldn't ask you to do that."
"You're not asking, I'm offering. You don't have to answer me now, but think about it. We can talk about it more in the morning."
But "talk about it more in the morning" turns out to mean that Jared will roll Jensen onto his stomach and fuck him slow and shallow, and when Jensen has had enough, he'll push Jared off him and Jared will suck his cock until he gasps out his climax and comes down Jared's throat.
Then he'll return the favor, and after Jared has caught his breath he'll whisper, "What if I open a club in Chicago?" in Jensen's ear. "I'll spend half the year there and half the year in Austin. Maybe you can find a job teaching at UT and split your time too. We can do it, Jensen. We can make it work."
Maybe they can. Maybe they just both had to grow up before they could really be together.
Jensen wonders if subconsciously he wanted this all along - not just to see Jared again, but to get back together with him. Not to relive his twenties, but in the hope that they're still compatible as adults.
Jensen's daughter made him come back to New York because she wanted to see where he came from, because she wanted to revisit his past with him, and because she wanted to give him this key to his future. He doesn't know what kind of future he and Jared have. He doesn't know what exactly that key will unlock. But he wants to find out.
"Okay," he concedes. "I still can't ask you to move, and I don't think I want to split my time anywhere, but I'll try being long-distance. You can put 'In a relationship' on your Facebook page."
"Jensen? Did you look me up on Facebook?" Jared's voice is teasing, as if he already knows the answer.
"I might have. JJ made me tell her all about you, and after that I was curious." He'd read just enough to learn that Jared seemed to be happy. At the time, he didn't need to know more.
Jared grins wide enough to split his face - Just like JJ, Jensen thinks - and grabs Jensen's face and kisses him.
"I promise I won't abandon you for my career this time," he says.
"I won't let you, either."
Jensen knows before he leaves the hotel that the city will look different this morning. It will feel different. It's not the city he knew, but that's okay. He's not the same either.
He and Jared go back to the Village and find a diner for breakfast, and Jensen can't help but remember where they went the day after their first night together, the diner where they ate pancakes for lunch and talked about being someone's first. The 10,000 Maniacs cover of Patti Smith's "Because the Night" is playing over the sound system now as the hostess leads them to a booth.
How fitting. Patti was one of the things that brought him to New York when he was eighteen, and here are her words, sung by a different voice. Jensen won't ever live here again, but he can walk the streets with fond nostalgia at what he remembers rather than despair at what has changed.
Change isn't all bad. He changed. Jared changed. This time they might even be able to make a relationship that will last.
And maybe he has New York to thank for that. It brought so many good things into his life the first time, it makes sense that it would bring at least one of those things back now.
Author's Note | Extras
NC-17
Part 6 of 6
Master post
Art
Now
Jensen doesn't know how his daughter managed to convince him to take her to New York and show her his old stomping grounds, but here they are, traipsing around the Lower East Side and the East Village while he tries to lay his old memories over new sights and she provides a running commentary of what she thinks he might have done.
"This is where Dad held Mom's hair while she puked. This is where Mom rubbed Dad's back while he puked. This is where Dad drew all over his bedroom walls because it was a cheap-ass apartment and there was no security deposit. This is where Dad - "
"JJ, stop." He's embarrassed at her not-entirely-inaccurate replay of his wild youth.
"You don't want to take me on the nostalgia tour?" She grins.
"Not really, no."
"I thought that's why we were here. I bet New York looks a lot different now."
"That's an understatement."
The parts of the city he knew are almost unrecognizable. Alphabet City is overrun with cute little stores and hip little restaurants and expensive little apartments. CBGB's is a John Varvatos boutique, for Christ's sake.
The Judson Health Center is still on Spring Street, where Danneel went for prenatal care and Chad once hit on a nurse right before she told him he had walking pneumonia. But St Vincent's, where JJ was born, is completely gone. Jensen doesn't know how an entire hospital can vanish, how a place like St Vincent's can go bankrupt, but it did.
He does manage to find the building where he lived first with Chris and Alona, then with Chris and Jared, and finally with Jared alone. JJ has seen photos of the bathtub in the kitchen and Jensen sitting on the fire escape, and she comments that it's a lot cleaner than it was in the pictures. Well, of course it is. The entire city is cleaner than it used to be. The guys selling shit off blankets on East Village sidewalks have all been swept away. The subways are shockingly nice and Times Square feels like the city by way of Disneyland.
Jensen talks his way into the Foundation Building at Cooper Union and shows JJ the printmaking shop and the painting office and the galleries and the studio spaces where he and Danneel worked on projects and hated their art and produced the pieces for their senior shows that would demonstrate what they'd learned and what styles and points of view they'd developed.
Even the school looks different - there are dorms now - and Jensen hadn't thought it would ever change.
"Do you miss it?" JJ asks, as they walk down 8th Street towards Washington Square Park.
"Do I miss what?" Jensen asks, his mind thirty-five years away. He remembers making a point to see the Washington Square Arch after Francis Hines wrapped it in polyester, so he could argue its merits with the sculptor in the studio space across from his.
"New York."
"Sometimes."
It's very strange to be back, walking the streets he knew as a twenty-something punkass, when he was younger than his daughter is now. No one he knew back then is still around, at least not as far as he knows. He's lost touch with a lot of people. When JJ suggested he look them up on Facebook, he laughed, but maybe it's not such a bad idea.
"You could start with Jared," she'd said.
But after all this time, what would he say?
JJ's phone pings twice. She fishes it out of her jacket pocket, squints at it, and answers whoever texted her.
"Good news, bad news?" Jensen asks. "Is that your mother?" Danneel knows JJ got him to come back to the city, and Jensen knows she'll want an update.
"No," JJ says. "Let's walk through the park."
As they pass the arch, and Jensen imagines it covered in ghostly white polyester again, someone calls his name. He looks around, hears it again, and -
"JJ," he says, surprise and warning both in his voice. "What did you do?"
She just beams at him.
Because coming up on Jensen's left, wider and older and unmistakable, is Jared.
"I've been waiting for an hour!" Jared exclaims, and before Jensen can think of something to say, before he can even engage his brain enough to say hello, Jared has him in a crushing hug and he can't breathe.
He can see JJ over Jared's shoulder, grinning fit to split her face, looking so fucking pleased with herself that he can't help but give in and hug Jared back.
When Jared finally lets him go, Jensen stares at his daughter, who's laughing now.
"You should see your face," she says to him. "You want to kill me and kiss me at the same time." She gives him a kiss on the cheek and says, "Go have fun. Get reacquainted." And with a cheery wave she bounces off towards the edge of the park and away.
"I guess she didn't tell you that she found me on Facebook," Jared says.
"No," Jensen says, "she didn't." He looks Jared up and down, taking in the jeans, the dark green button-down over a plain t-shirt, the black jacket, the windblown hair, the laugh lines around Jared's green eyes, the tiny hoop in his ear.
"Remember when Danny pierced your ear?" Jensen asks, surprising himself, and Jared laughs.
"I watched her do yours," he says, "begged her to do mine, and whined for the rest of day about how much it hurt."
Jensen fingers his own earlobe, where there are still the two holes that Danneel stabbed into his ear with a safety pin in the most cliched punk-rock way imaginable. Usually he just wears one little hoop in the bottom one, like Jared has now, but he didn’t today.
He realizes they're just standing there, in the middle of Washington Square Park, on a beautiful spring day, in the beautiful city that New York has become. They should go somewhere.
"Are you hungry?" Jared asks. "I'm starving."
And now it's Jensen's turn to laugh, because he remembers that too.
"Where do you want to go?" he asks, and when Jared shrugs, Jensen starts walking towards the far corner of the park, because he knows there will be restaurants that way. Maybe the coffeehouse that Danneel loved is still there.
He stops right in front of the storefront that used to be Bleeker Bob's, does an about-face, and heads back to the park. Anywhere they go, he'll be reminded of something or someone he knew that's gone. They'll have to go uptown to escape it, and that's not why he's here.
He's here, apparently, to reconnect with his long-ago ex, because his daughter seems to think he should.
They stop at the corner of Broadway and 4th, waiting for the light so they can cross, and Jared points to the wall of glass around the building behind them. "What did this used to be? It was something else."
"Tower Records," Jensen says.
"Huh. The Krays did a signing here for Left at the End of the Line."
"I remember."
"You didn't come, did you?"
"No."
The light changes and they cross. Jensen doesn't have anything to say about the two albums the Krays released after Jared left him. He stopped trying so hard to avoid them, but he was never interested in listening to them either.
"You think this is weird," Jared says. "You're right. It is." He stops and pulls Jensen to the side, against a building so they're out of the way of the sidewalk traffic. "Let's get it out of the way - I was a dick to you, and I'm sorry. I thought about you a lot and wondered what you were doing, but I never tried to find you because I didn't think you wanted anything to do with me. And then everything fell out of my control and it was too late." He looks hurt, and sincere, and Jensen can see the seventeen-year-old boy in Jared's fifty-three-year-old face, and he realizes he forgave and forgot a long time ago.
And suddenly it's easy to be here with him, because in the middle of this barely-recognizable place, Jensen sees a face he knows, older but oddly unchanged.
"I'm sorry," Jared says again. "I want to get to know you again. I want to know what you've been doing the past thirty years. I want you to want to know about me."
"I do," Jensen says. "I don't hold it against you anymore. It's been a long time. What time is it? Maybe we should get a beer, sit and talk like old friends."
"We are old friends." Jared grins. "I quit drinking, but if you want a beer I'm sure we can find a bar."
"Nah, it's okay. But I can eat."
They find a barbecue place not far from Cooper Union, and sit and eat and talk. The longer they chat, the easier it gets, and if it weren't for the fact that neither of them knows anything of the other's life, Jensen can almost believe they've actually kept in touch over the years.
He learns that Jared lost his mind after the Krays broke up, that he went to rehab and disappeared from public view, that he met a woman with two sons and a ranch, that he eventually resurfaced in Austin and opened a little club to champion local bands because he missed the visceral thrill of live music.
"I started writing when I was at the ranch," Jared says. "I'd stopped for a while - my head was a mess, my life was a mess, everything was so fucked up - but Gen was really good for me, and she got me working again. I've seen Chad a few times and we've almost got enough good songs for a new album."
"Are you making a comeback?"
"I don't know. It's been a long time. I don't know how to do it anymore."
"What, be a star?" Jensen can't help but grin, and Jared grins back.
"Maybe. Now it's your turn. What did I miss in your life?"
Everything, Jensen thinks, and he tells Jared about starting a business with Misha, about leaving New York for San Francisco when JJ was five, about divorcing Danneel but staying close, emotionally and geographically, until JJ went off to college. He tells Jared that he lives in Chicago now, that he's a freelance graphic designer but also teaches at the School of the Art Institute, that his favorite thing to design is still album covers, that he shares a printing studio with four other artists, that most of the time he feels too old to go to clubs and see bands, that he misses it.
"And I quit smoking," he adds. "I don't miss that."
"So if I were to kiss you, you wouldn't taste like an ashtray?"
"Are you saying you want to kiss me?" It's a measure of how comfortable Jensen feels that his tone is light and joking, and if Jared were to actually kiss him, he would probably kiss back.
"We should let them have the table," Jared says, conveniently changing the subject.
So they walk some more and talk some more and meander down the Bowery to the high-end men's boutique that used to be CBGB's.
Joey's probably spinning in his grave, Jensen thinks, looking around at the rolling racks of jackets and shirts, the boots and shoes lined up on the stage, the guitars under glass, the chandelier, the graffiti. He can't tell where the bar used to be, or where the tables were. He can't remember where he left his own graffiti among the crazed scrawl. If he'd had the money and been a different person, he might have been convinced to wear these clothes when he was young and skinny, but all the same, he feels distinctly out of his element.
"I found you a t-shirt," Jared says, holding it up and grinning. The shirt is gray, no doubt washed repeatedly so it looks vintage, and it says "Let go and give in to the music" across the front.
At least the text is appropriate. But not for $68.
They can spend an hour and a half sitting at a barbecue restaurant catching up, but it only takes five minutes in this designer place before Jensen's had enough.
It's easier for him to walk around with Jared than it was for him to show JJ his old stomping grounds. The cognitive dissonance is still strong, and Jensen is sharply aware of how much he and Jared have both changed, but at the same time, he's walking the streets he used to know with someone he used to love, and there's something familiar about that.
They wander through the Lower East Side and back up to the Village. They take the subway down to the site of the old World Trade Center, because Jared wants to see it, and they walk around the memorial in silence. Jensen was in the Bay Area when the towers came down, and because he didn't know anyone in New York to check on, he called Chris.
"JJ was in college," he tells Jared once they're back on the subway. "She called me as soon as she heard. She woke me up."
"You were the first person I thought of," Jared says. "My sister called me in a panic." He chuckles. "Gen and I had split, but we were still friends. I went to stay with her for a month." Now he smiles, a private, affectionate smile. "She always could keep me sane."
"Do you still talk to her?"
"Sometimes, yeah. The ranch keeps her busy. Her kids help out and she's got a husband now, but it's a bigger operation than it was when I was there, and it takes a lot of her time. It's okay. She loves it. She's really happy. I've got a pretty good life that keeps me busy too."
They find a little coffeehouse near NYU to talk some more and rest up before their next excursion, and Jensen is in the middle of a sentence when Jared holds out a hand and tells him to shush.
"I'm sorry?" Jensen says, offended. He's too old to be shushed.
"Listen." Jared points to the ceiling, indicating the song playing in the coffeehouse, and Jensen closes his mouth and listens. He doesn't think he knows it, but there's something vaguely familiar about the music anyway.
"'The Ghost in the Chelsea'," Jared says after a minute. "From our third album."
And Jensen suddenly remembers being in Tower Records with the Krays' new album playing on the sound system, his attention catching on the chorus of this song and his anger taking him out of the store.
"That was about me, wasn't it," Jensen says. "It was about us."
"Yeah, it was. Chad knew, but no one else had any idea. Even Gabe thought it was just a song, and he knew that you and I were a couple. He knew I broke up with you."
Jensen can remember how angry he was at Jared breaking up with him and then having the balls to write a melancholy song about him, but it's like remembering the numbers on an invoice. There's no emotional attachment to it at all. He's relieved.
"It was a B-side but it never got a lot of airplay," Jared goes on. "I was always disappointed by that. I thought it was a good song."
Something else is playing in the coffeehouse now, which Jensen doesn't recognize.
"Is this the Krays too?" he asks.
Jared cocks his head, listening, then shakes his head no. And Jensen is relieved about that too. He dredged up enough of the past. He just wants to go forward.
"I didn't tell you I tried to find everyone," Jared says, blessedly changing the subject. "After JJ found me and told me I should get back in touch with you, I went on a spree. I couldn't find Rachel, but Adrianne's an adjunct professor of anthropology in New Mexico. Alona lives on a dairy farm and writes about cheese and bees and music soothing the placid milk-producing beast. She posts a lot on Instagram. You should check her out. Rob has fallen off the face of the earth, but Rich is in Seattle, giving guitar lessons and running a recording studio out of his garage. I think he's on his second wife. Steve is in Baltimore - he's a public school math teacher. Can you believe that? I always thought he and Chris would be working together forever."
"He ran a record store with the Pits' drummer," Jensen says. "It must have closed. He and Chris don't talk that much. I think he was pissed when Chris quit music to go into the restaurant biz."
"Chris is a chef?"
"He's got a restaurant in Boulder - The Red House - if you're ever out that way and have a craving for a good steak. We don't see each other as much as we'd like, but we talk a lot. He's really happy."
"I'm glad. I always liked him. I even found Hayley! She has a husband and three kids and a dog and a clothing boutique in Brighton, an hour south of London. You probably know what Felicia's up to - "
"Of course. She and Danny kept in touch. I'm sure you found her. She's all over the internet."
Felicia is still drawing comics, but now she also offers the middle-aged nerd perspective on a geek podcast, and she's very dedicated to making comics more welcoming for girls.
"I even listened to her podcast," Jared says. He grins. "I know you don't need me to tell you what Danneel's been doing."
Of course Jensen knows what happened to Danneel, that she moved to New Orleans and started making clothes full-time and resurrected Doom Pastry as an online zine, and she's still painting and still his best friend who isn't Chris.
Jensen's phone buzzes with a text from JJ. Are you having fun? it says. Wasn't this a good idea? ;)
Yes, Jensen texts back.
"JJ?" Jared asks him. Jensen nods. "Tell her I say hi and 'Thank you'."
Jared says thank you, he texts obediently. We're going out for dinner now.
"We should go eat real food," he says.
Dinner is a random French bistro near 7th Avenue. Jensen has a glass of wine. Jared toasts him with his water glass - "To old friends" - and then eats all of the dessert Jensen thought they ordered to share.
"Where to now?" Jared asks after they pay and head out. It's cooler, but still pleasant. Jensen doesn't want to leave him but doesn't have any ideas. All he knows is that he's tired of walking. "There's an all-hours bookstore near here, I think. Or we could go back to my hotel." For the first time all day he sounds unsure, and Jensen can clearly hear Jared's much younger self in that uncertainty. "Unless you want to walk around some more, but I think we've seen everything that's still left."
"Where are you staying?"
"The Park Lane. I wanted to be able to go running in Central Park in the morning." He looks Jensen up and down. "I don't think you'll be able to come with me tomorrow."
"Why not?"
"Those aren't running clothes." Jared's grin is sudden and wide and blinding.
Jensen pulls out his phone. Don't wait up, he texts his daughter. I'll see you in the morning.
Jared's room at the hotel overlooks the park. The city was always prettier at night, especially from above, and Jensen takes a minute to just enjoy the view.
"It's been so long," Jared says, coming up behind him, "that this will be like we're getting to know each other all over again."
It's already much different from the first time they slept together, or even the last - they're both sober, the bed is big and comfortable, the mattress is sitting on a box spring on an actual frame, and there's no noise from the neighbors. Jared kisses the back of Jensen's neck, and then Jensen turns around so Jared can kiss his mouth.
They were just kids when they met. Jensen liked to think himself worldly and experienced, but the fact was, he hadn't even graduated from art school yet. He had his whole life ahead of him and so many more things to learn.
He still has things to learn, chief among them what turns Jared on, and if it's the same things that worked thirty-five years ago.
It turns out that some things haven't changed after all.
And some things have - Jared is a much better kisser than Jensen remembers, and they're both much more patient than they used to be. They take their time with each other, trying to learn each other's bodies all over again, what they like, what they don't. Jared is still talkative, still loud, still eager to suck Jensen's cock. He's in good shape, and he still gets Jensen hard. And Jensen, for his part, is pleased to see that Jared is still aroused by the touch of his hands and the rasp of his tongue and the heat of his body.
Jensen can't help but laugh when Jared pauses long enough to retrieve a condom and some lube from where he has apparently stashed them in the nightstand.
"I came prepared," Jared says, breathless and pleased with himself.
"I can tell."
He breathes out when Jared enters him, a long sigh of pleasure and something that might be relief. Jared takes his time with this as he has with everything else since he kissed Jensen in front of the window. Jensen doesn't want to rush either.
"What's next?" Jared asks him later, after Jensen has borrowed something to sleep in and they've arranged themselves under the blankets.
"What do you mean? We're going to sleep, and in the morning we'll have wake-up sex, you'll go for a run, I'll take a shower, we'll have breakfast."
"After that. I just got you back, I don't want to let you go again."
Jensen sits up. "Do you really want to get involved with me now? After one day together, after thirty years? How do you know I'm not already seeing someone?"
"Would you have slept with me if you did?" Jared pauses as if to make his point. "JJ told me. Look - I want to get to know you again. I just spent most of a day and all night trying to do that. I want to keep doing it. So yeah, I want to commit."
Jensen flops back down on the bed and rubs his eyes with both hands. "I don't know if I can. I really enjoyed being with you today, once it wasn't weird anymore. I still love to kiss you, I still love it when you fuck me. I'm not a one-night-stand kind of guy, but I don't want a long-distance relationship."
Jared pulls Jensen's hands away from his face and kisses him lightly on the mouth. "What if I moved to Chicago?"
"I couldn't ask you to do that."
"You're not asking, I'm offering. You don't have to answer me now, but think about it. We can talk about it more in the morning."
But "talk about it more in the morning" turns out to mean that Jared will roll Jensen onto his stomach and fuck him slow and shallow, and when Jensen has had enough, he'll push Jared off him and Jared will suck his cock until he gasps out his climax and comes down Jared's throat.
Then he'll return the favor, and after Jared has caught his breath he'll whisper, "What if I open a club in Chicago?" in Jensen's ear. "I'll spend half the year there and half the year in Austin. Maybe you can find a job teaching at UT and split your time too. We can do it, Jensen. We can make it work."
Maybe they can. Maybe they just both had to grow up before they could really be together.
Jensen wonders if subconsciously he wanted this all along - not just to see Jared again, but to get back together with him. Not to relive his twenties, but in the hope that they're still compatible as adults.
Jensen's daughter made him come back to New York because she wanted to see where he came from, because she wanted to revisit his past with him, and because she wanted to give him this key to his future. He doesn't know what kind of future he and Jared have. He doesn't know what exactly that key will unlock. But he wants to find out.
"Okay," he concedes. "I still can't ask you to move, and I don't think I want to split my time anywhere, but I'll try being long-distance. You can put 'In a relationship' on your Facebook page."
"Jensen? Did you look me up on Facebook?" Jared's voice is teasing, as if he already knows the answer.
"I might have. JJ made me tell her all about you, and after that I was curious." He'd read just enough to learn that Jared seemed to be happy. At the time, he didn't need to know more.
Jared grins wide enough to split his face - Just like JJ, Jensen thinks - and grabs Jensen's face and kisses him.
"I promise I won't abandon you for my career this time," he says.
"I won't let you, either."
Jensen knows before he leaves the hotel that the city will look different this morning. It will feel different. It's not the city he knew, but that's okay. He's not the same either.
He and Jared go back to the Village and find a diner for breakfast, and Jensen can't help but remember where they went the day after their first night together, the diner where they ate pancakes for lunch and talked about being someone's first. The 10,000 Maniacs cover of Patti Smith's "Because the Night" is playing over the sound system now as the hostess leads them to a booth.
How fitting. Patti was one of the things that brought him to New York when he was eighteen, and here are her words, sung by a different voice. Jensen won't ever live here again, but he can walk the streets with fond nostalgia at what he remembers rather than despair at what has changed.
Change isn't all bad. He changed. Jared changed. This time they might even be able to make a relationship that will last.
And maybe he has New York to thank for that. It brought so many good things into his life the first time, it makes sense that it would bring at least one of those things back now.
Author's Note | Extras