I am a rock; I am an IIIIIIIIIIISLAND
Title Reconsider my Foolish Notions
By weekend_exile
Fandom Supernatural RPS
Rating PG 13
Pairing Jensen/Jared
Summary Jensen thinks he can't act anymore, and Jared helps him get better. A story about superstition and good luck. Non AU.
Notes title taken from Faith, b George Michael. Inspired by this quote: "Whenever I drive under a yellow light, I always kiss my finger and tap it on the roof of the car. And I do that when I get onto a plane as well!"-Jared Padalecki
And then there's this thing where it hits Jensen that he can't act anymore.
He's not doing anything to actively trigger this epiphany; it's a beautiful day in the middle of April, and the house is designed just so that it's entirely overwhelmed by sunlight streaming in like a group of boisterous relatives. He's reading last week's newspaper. Jared's out back, tossing a frisbee to the dogs. Sounds of laughter and excited yapping waft in through the open doors and windows, and yeah, it's a good day to be alive.
He stands up and goes to the window. In his head, everything's perfectly still. Lost it, he thinks, and the words sound dull and matter-of-fact. It's not any one thing, or the sum of a chain of events, either. It's just how it is; he can't act anymore, not from this second onward.
No rush of relief or anger; his reaction is one of absolute calm. Here it is, the plot twist in this charmed life of his. Oh, he thinks. Sera's gonna pop a blood vessel, he thinks.
He considers -vaguely, in the haziest of terms- calling his agent and calling the press, raising hell because he can get away with it, and then some. As far as he's aware, it's not everyday an actor sits in the middle of his kitchen and decides he can't act anymore. Singer was going to be so pissed; the season had been shaping up nicely like a docile and precocious child.
His hand traces the sleek, smooth shape of the phone in his pocket, fiddling with it absent-mindedly. In the end, he goes to the garden and watches the frisbee fly, joyful and red, across the sky instead.
*
Jared grins broadly when he tells him. "Losing your touch, old man?"
He's eating Cheerios out of the box; they're out of clean plates and milk, and it doesn't occur to them to buy more until their housekeeper points it out.
Jensen shoves him morosely, causing some Cheerios to sprinkle at their feet like snow. "Fucker. This is serious shit, man."
Jared makes one resounding crunching noise, and looks him straight in the eye. "What makes you think you can't act anymore, Jen? I saw you last week, you didn't suck any more than usual." he cringes pre-emptively, anticipating Jensen's punch before Jensen can even twitch a muscle. Jared's kinda like a ninja like that. "No, dude, what I'm saying is, it isn't showing."
Jensen fiddles with a bit of cereal. "Yeah, well, I think it's pretty new. As in, I only found out about it this morning."
Jared looks at him steadily. "You sure it isn't just a thing?"
Jensen glares, and Jared holds his hands up defensively. He isn't grinning anymore, which Jensen supposes is a good thing. "Hey, I gotta ask. It's not like I've dealt with this before. Do you..." And Jared bites his lip, looks at Jensen through his bangs. "Do you feel any different?"
Jensen sighs and shakes his head. "I'm fine, man. Just peachy. I just have this nagging feeling I can't act anymore."
"Define nagging feeling."
Jensen shrugs a little exasperatedly. "A hunch. An ungrounded belief. Whatever."
Jared doesn't let him cut his eyes away, holding them with his own, magnetic and sharp. "Jen, that could be serious."
Jensen rubs the back of his neck, uncomfortable. This whole situation is fucked up on all levels, he thinks a little hysterically. These Sunday morning epiphanies and images of frisbees flying across blue skies, and Jared looking at him like that.
"That's why I'm telling you," Jensen tells Jared, and there, that's not a lie. Isn't that supposed to be a good thing?
Jared looks slightly mollified, but he's still mostly worried. There's a tense line above his eyebrows, fine as a pencil drawing. Jensen is suddenly struck with the thought that even when Jared smiles, that line won't go away entirely. Jared lights up like a sparkler when he's happy; back then, his fog light-through-the-mist grin used to erase all the lines on his face and make him look about sixteen years old. It hits Jensen that he's seen Jared age; he's seen the bright-eyed kid and he's seeing the content adult. Years and years and years of Jared Padalecki, and somehow, that makes Jensen feel blessed.
"Promise me you'll get help if it doesn't get better?" Jared says carefully. He knows how Jensen feels about shrinks. He knows how Jensen feels, period, his entire fucking behavioral pattern laid bare on Jared Padalecki's broad palm.
Jensen nods, faint but definite. "'Kay."
~*~
When Jared was ten, he saw a ghost.
Sixteen years later, his best friend will laugh his head off when Jared tells him over Pop Tarts, but the fact remains; he saw a ghost.
Jared goes on to explain that it was nothing like the kind they have on the show; this ghost was almost kind, a co-conspirator when Meg was too young and Jeff was too old, telling Jared where his Momma had hidden the cookies, or the presents before Christmas.
To Jensen, this makes perfect sense. Of course of all the vicious, savage bloodthirsty spirits in the world, the one who went after Jared would be a friendly one.
Jensen asks what happened to Casper. Jared says he doesn't remember, that he was just gone one morning. Looking at Jared's big brown eyes, Jensen sort of wants to believe it all.
~*~
Things don't change much after Jensen's big revelation.
Jared makes everyone back off, and as a result, filming cools down a little. Jensen begins to really wonder whether Jared would one day be able to talk himself into dictatorship.
Instead, they sit around in Jensen's trailer and play stupid card games Jensen's big brother Jason invented.
They trade stories; Jensen tells him about his first rust bucket of a car, going on a date in it with that girl from his English class -shit, what was her name?- and getting stranded in the middle of nowhere and having to call Jason. His big brother's still laughing over that one.
In turn, Jared tells him about the car crash when he was seventeen, how the tires skidded on the snow like a symphony, the heavy clang of a bass drum as the car hit a tree. His best friend at the time riding shotgun, both of them escaping with minor cuts and bruises. The doctors kept saying how much worse it could have been considering how fast they were going and how big the tree was, how it was a miracle. His Momma kept crying and hugging them both, swearing never to let him drive ever again.
"I'm just lucky that way, I guess," Jared says thoughtfully.
He's offended when Jensen bursts out laughing, demanding to know why. Jensen can only wheeze, ruffling his hair and saying, "Lucky, huh? How'd you figure?"
*
They're driving, and it's the middle of the night.
Jared says that it doesn't matter, that candy cravings have no time or place and aren't to be taken lightly; Jensen's just buzzed enough to go with it.
The light blinks yellow and Jared kisses the tips of his fingers and touches them to the roof of the car. Jensen doesn't roll his eyes anymore, but he wants to. Jared's got all these superstitions, no better than a six-year-old knocking on wood and a tooth under his pillow. Jensen sees him do that kiss-touch trick in planes, too; his hand waving midair, unable to reach the roof. He probably doesn't even know he's doing it anymore.
Once, Jensen asked him about it. Jared had come out with the craziest, most roundabout of theories, something with actual statistics, and how he's never gotten a ticket after he's done his trick, his protest that it was for good luck, Jen, for the road. His faith was unshakable; it was his good luck charm and he was sticking to it. Jensen doesn't really try to dissuade him, anyway. Not really.
Jared pulls into a parking lot of a all-night supermarket and disappears into the neon lights. Jensen stays in the car, counting his heartbeats and the blinking of the stars.
They're on their way back from some charity event with lots of talking and gin as dry as a desert. Misha had snuck in a bottle of absinthe (Jensen doesn't ask anymore) and they'd gotten smashed at the back of the hall. Jared had kept leaning into him, running his hands absently through Jensen's hair, stroking his cheekbones as he spoke. It had been nice.
Jared appears in the exit from the store, holding his loot up above his head triumphantly. Some of it drops out of the bag at the precarious angle, and Jared scrambles to pick them up as Jensen snickers.
Jared's already snapped a bar of chocolate in half as he gets in the car, and Jensen nibbles on his all the way back home.
The streets are empty and still, and it feels like they're the only people alive. Jensen keeps very quiet as he gets out of the car, and he sees Jared all but tiptoe across the gravel path. Jared's got a fine sense of the magical, too; he's good at pretend.
They go into the house, nearly tripping over each other and giggling into their fists. Jensen goes into the kitchen and picks up a glass standing upside-down on the counter, pours water from the tap. He downs the whole thing, refills and passes it to Jared. "Drink up, or you'll hate yourself in the morning."
Jared drinks obediently, holding the glass very carefully with both hands. He looks all of seven years old when he does that; innocent and utterly precious.
They head upstairs together, childish insults and meandering stories like they're on a roadtrip. Jared likes to tell long rambling stories that have no end; Jensen likes the thought of so much history hanging in the air, with no necessity for endings.
Jensen leans against his door and looks up at Jared. Jared's smiling fondly down at him, a little wistful like he always is when he's drunk.
"Good night, then." Jared says, and turns towards his room. He turns around almost immediately, so that it looks like he's dancing with an invisible partner. "Listen, Jen, we'll fix this, whatever that's gone wrong. We'll make you act again." Jared strikes a pose. "We'll make you a real boy somehow, Pinocchio."
"Fucker," Jensen says good-naturedly. "G'night, love."
His eyes are drooping shut as he speaks, but Jared freezes in his tracks, stops dead. Jensen instantly replays what he just said.
Oh. Oh. Fuck.
Jared's staring at him with very wide eyes and all Jensen can think is, take it back, do it over.
He opens his mouth, gotta set this right, nownownow, but nothing comes out. His mouth goes dry, and all the words in the world dance maddeningly out of his reach.
And then it's too late entirely: Jared's shoulders slump, and he's turning away, fucking fleeing, and still, the best Jensen can come up with is wasn't supposed to be this way.
~*~
It's been one month and twenty-seven days since Jared told Jensen that he loved him.
Oh yeah, Jensen's counting. His best friend tells him he's in love with him, of fucking course that's gonna be a milestone.
Nearly two months since Jensen stammered his half-formed apologies as Jared looked down at him with that expression on his face, like Jensen was breaking his heart but he was going to let him do it. Jared's just stupidly chivalrous that way, stupidly noble, just plain stupid, wearing his heart on his sleeve like that.
Jensen couldn't breathe properly for a week afterward.
It was a testament to how long they'd been friends that it hadn't ended then and there; they were far too good at reading each other. Jared had stayed out of his way until Jensen got his bearings again; Jensen began picking up the lame romcoms that Jared adored from the DVD rental downtown. Adjusting with baby steps, until they were cool again.
And then Jensen goes and does...this.
~*~
Jared's not like any other person Jensen's ever known, but he hasn't known anyone as well as he knows Jared.
He knows Jared's preferred brand of beer; he knows about his penchant for buying candles that smell like cookies in the winter and lighting them around the house. He knows about the store of superstitions Jared has, the ones he collects; some people collect stamps, some collect stubs of movie tickets, and Jared Padalecki collects sketchy little stories and beliefs, piling them up carefully in a meticulous corner of his mind.
He knows about some stuff that even Jared doesn't know about himself, like the way he can never sleep through the night on a full moon and his attraction to blue neon. Jensen knows about his recurring nightmare, the one with the frozen-over lake and crashing through the ice when he was five.
There's this vast backlog of stuff Jensen knows about Jared, useless little bits and pieces like a jigsaw puzzle lying across the floor, colorful and bright. Jensen doesn't think there's a single hitch of Jared's breath that's gone undocumented in Jensen's brain.
Even so, Jared manages to surprise him, every single day.
*
Jared doesn't appear at breakfast; once Jensen gathers the courage to go and check his room, he doesn't know whether he's relieved or not when he sees that it's empty.
The dogs are still here, so Jensen makes a fuckton of bacon and ends up feeding the whole lot to Sadie and Harley.
At noon, he has an appointment with a psychiatrist Sera recommended. The shrink's name is Amy, and she tells him everything he already knows; that it's all in his head, that if he starts believing in himself again, maybe it would come back to him.
Jensen leaves feeling obscurely sorry for Amy.
~*~
The day Sera screams at them both for fucking up the dynamics of the show by being a couple of teenage girls, Jensen goes home and texts Jared.
Where are you? Come home.
The reply takes fifteen minutes.
Ok.
Jensen's sitting on the stairs when Jared's tires finally pull up on the driveway. The dogs raise their heads and bark joyfully. Jensen smiles: "I know."
Jared comes in and is immediately pounced on by Harley. He manages to calm both dogs down singlehandedly, reaching in his pockets for treats.
Jensen watches from his perch, biting his lower lip a little. Once the dogs leave, appeased, Jared looks at Jensen warily.
They stare at each other a while.
"I, uh," Jared begins, the same time Jensen asks, "Are you gay?"
Jared begins coughing and spluttering, and Jensen waits him out, a little flushed.
"No." Jared even sounds a little incredulous, like Jensen's slow for not figuring this one out. Maybe he is. "Of course not."
Jensen nods, swallows. "But you want to-" he gestures awkwardly between them.
Jared laughs a little, but it's got no humor in it. "Yeah, Jensen."
He sounds tired, worn out in a way Jensen's only ever seen after a fourteen-hour shoot before.
He stands up. His feet wobble a little, so he waits until he's steady again.
"That's good." he says, his eyes somewhere left of Jared's shoulder. "'Cause I'm not gay, either."
Jared's eyes are dark, black holes dragging Jensen's in. "What does that mean?" Bite in his voice. Jensen sometimes forgets that just because Jared seems perfect a lot of the time, that doesn't make him bulletproof.
He takes a long, deep breath, takes a step forward. "Means that I'm missing something, Jay. It's taking my acting away, it's." He swallows, takes another step. Jared's eyes are wary and dark dark dark. "I think it's you."
Jared's less than three inches away, but his posture's all wrong; angled subtly away. "Not good enough," he says, and he sounds defeated. "You don't get to say stuff like that, Jen, you-"
Jensen reaches out, and tilts his head towards him. Jared flliches a little at the contact, and when he meets Jensen's eyes, he still looks parts sad, angry and confused.
"What-" he begins, and Jensen smiles a little, tentative but hopeful.
"We could try." he says, touching his thumb to the corner of Jared's mouth, trying to get it to smile. "No guarantees that it'll work out, but I-" he smiles a bit more, hoping it hides how absolutely fucking terrified he is. "I want to try. Don't...don't you?"
Fucking amateur; he can't help the quiver in his voice, the slight tremble of the jaw. Jared was always the better actor, after all.
But then Jared's smiling and there's nothing fake about that; big and wide and joyful like Jensen just hung the moon. His hands come up around Jensen's face, cradling it almost reverently. There's a fine line between being a girl and being romantic and Jared's about to cross it, God help them both.
Jared kisses him like fire then, nothing soft, not to begin with. A hint of teeth nippping against his lower lip, and Jensen whines, opens wider. A kiss that says, took you long enough, stupid fucker and something like I'm right where I've always wanted to be.
Stupid stuff like that. Jensen's not so big on complicated, anyway.
*
Jared's got faith in bucketfuls, and insane good luck trails him like a faithful puppy.
Elevators magically start working the very weekend he's supposed to stay at hotels; citywide power cuts make an exception to their house, and he keeps winning free shit wherever he goes.
Monday morning, Sera raises one bemused eyebrow at them when they tumble out of Jensen's trailer with reddened lips and untucked shirts, a hickey clearly visible on Jared's collarbone. She asks them dryly whether everything's alright.
Jared looks at Jensen then, hope and promise and a whole lot of other things Jensen never dared to hope for while sober shining clear in his eyes.
Jared kisses his fingertips in a familiar gesture, and softly touches Jensen's forehead. "We will be."
Jensen's heart flies like a kite, streamers red and green and yellow, as perfect as he believes the world can be.
-THE END
By weekend_exile
Fandom Supernatural RPS
Rating PG 13
Pairing Jensen/Jared
Summary Jensen thinks he can't act anymore, and Jared helps him get better. A story about superstition and good luck. Non AU.
Notes title taken from Faith, b George Michael. Inspired by this quote: "Whenever I drive under a yellow light, I always kiss my finger and tap it on the roof of the car. And I do that when I get onto a plane as well!"-Jared Padalecki
And then there's this thing where it hits Jensen that he can't act anymore.
He's not doing anything to actively trigger this epiphany; it's a beautiful day in the middle of April, and the house is designed just so that it's entirely overwhelmed by sunlight streaming in like a group of boisterous relatives. He's reading last week's newspaper. Jared's out back, tossing a frisbee to the dogs. Sounds of laughter and excited yapping waft in through the open doors and windows, and yeah, it's a good day to be alive.
He stands up and goes to the window. In his head, everything's perfectly still. Lost it, he thinks, and the words sound dull and matter-of-fact. It's not any one thing, or the sum of a chain of events, either. It's just how it is; he can't act anymore, not from this second onward.
No rush of relief or anger; his reaction is one of absolute calm. Here it is, the plot twist in this charmed life of his. Oh, he thinks. Sera's gonna pop a blood vessel, he thinks.
He considers -vaguely, in the haziest of terms- calling his agent and calling the press, raising hell because he can get away with it, and then some. As far as he's aware, it's not everyday an actor sits in the middle of his kitchen and decides he can't act anymore. Singer was going to be so pissed; the season had been shaping up nicely like a docile and precocious child.
His hand traces the sleek, smooth shape of the phone in his pocket, fiddling with it absent-mindedly. In the end, he goes to the garden and watches the frisbee fly, joyful and red, across the sky instead.
*
Jared grins broadly when he tells him. "Losing your touch, old man?"
He's eating Cheerios out of the box; they're out of clean plates and milk, and it doesn't occur to them to buy more until their housekeeper points it out.
Jensen shoves him morosely, causing some Cheerios to sprinkle at their feet like snow. "Fucker. This is serious shit, man."
Jared makes one resounding crunching noise, and looks him straight in the eye. "What makes you think you can't act anymore, Jen? I saw you last week, you didn't suck any more than usual." he cringes pre-emptively, anticipating Jensen's punch before Jensen can even twitch a muscle. Jared's kinda like a ninja like that. "No, dude, what I'm saying is, it isn't showing."
Jensen fiddles with a bit of cereal. "Yeah, well, I think it's pretty new. As in, I only found out about it this morning."
Jared looks at him steadily. "You sure it isn't just a thing?"
Jensen glares, and Jared holds his hands up defensively. He isn't grinning anymore, which Jensen supposes is a good thing. "Hey, I gotta ask. It's not like I've dealt with this before. Do you..." And Jared bites his lip, looks at Jensen through his bangs. "Do you feel any different?"
Jensen sighs and shakes his head. "I'm fine, man. Just peachy. I just have this nagging feeling I can't act anymore."
"Define nagging feeling."
Jensen shrugs a little exasperatedly. "A hunch. An ungrounded belief. Whatever."
Jared doesn't let him cut his eyes away, holding them with his own, magnetic and sharp. "Jen, that could be serious."
Jensen rubs the back of his neck, uncomfortable. This whole situation is fucked up on all levels, he thinks a little hysterically. These Sunday morning epiphanies and images of frisbees flying across blue skies, and Jared looking at him like that.
"That's why I'm telling you," Jensen tells Jared, and there, that's not a lie. Isn't that supposed to be a good thing?
Jared looks slightly mollified, but he's still mostly worried. There's a tense line above his eyebrows, fine as a pencil drawing. Jensen is suddenly struck with the thought that even when Jared smiles, that line won't go away entirely. Jared lights up like a sparkler when he's happy; back then, his fog light-through-the-mist grin used to erase all the lines on his face and make him look about sixteen years old. It hits Jensen that he's seen Jared age; he's seen the bright-eyed kid and he's seeing the content adult. Years and years and years of Jared Padalecki, and somehow, that makes Jensen feel blessed.
"Promise me you'll get help if it doesn't get better?" Jared says carefully. He knows how Jensen feels about shrinks. He knows how Jensen feels, period, his entire fucking behavioral pattern laid bare on Jared Padalecki's broad palm.
Jensen nods, faint but definite. "'Kay."
~*~
When Jared was ten, he saw a ghost.
Sixteen years later, his best friend will laugh his head off when Jared tells him over Pop Tarts, but the fact remains; he saw a ghost.
Jared goes on to explain that it was nothing like the kind they have on the show; this ghost was almost kind, a co-conspirator when Meg was too young and Jeff was too old, telling Jared where his Momma had hidden the cookies, or the presents before Christmas.
To Jensen, this makes perfect sense. Of course of all the vicious, savage bloodthirsty spirits in the world, the one who went after Jared would be a friendly one.
Jensen asks what happened to Casper. Jared says he doesn't remember, that he was just gone one morning. Looking at Jared's big brown eyes, Jensen sort of wants to believe it all.
~*~
Things don't change much after Jensen's big revelation.
Jared makes everyone back off, and as a result, filming cools down a little. Jensen begins to really wonder whether Jared would one day be able to talk himself into dictatorship.
Instead, they sit around in Jensen's trailer and play stupid card games Jensen's big brother Jason invented.
They trade stories; Jensen tells him about his first rust bucket of a car, going on a date in it with that girl from his English class -shit, what was her name?- and getting stranded in the middle of nowhere and having to call Jason. His big brother's still laughing over that one.
In turn, Jared tells him about the car crash when he was seventeen, how the tires skidded on the snow like a symphony, the heavy clang of a bass drum as the car hit a tree. His best friend at the time riding shotgun, both of them escaping with minor cuts and bruises. The doctors kept saying how much worse it could have been considering how fast they were going and how big the tree was, how it was a miracle. His Momma kept crying and hugging them both, swearing never to let him drive ever again.
"I'm just lucky that way, I guess," Jared says thoughtfully.
He's offended when Jensen bursts out laughing, demanding to know why. Jensen can only wheeze, ruffling his hair and saying, "Lucky, huh? How'd you figure?"
*
They're driving, and it's the middle of the night.
Jared says that it doesn't matter, that candy cravings have no time or place and aren't to be taken lightly; Jensen's just buzzed enough to go with it.
The light blinks yellow and Jared kisses the tips of his fingers and touches them to the roof of the car. Jensen doesn't roll his eyes anymore, but he wants to. Jared's got all these superstitions, no better than a six-year-old knocking on wood and a tooth under his pillow. Jensen sees him do that kiss-touch trick in planes, too; his hand waving midair, unable to reach the roof. He probably doesn't even know he's doing it anymore.
Once, Jensen asked him about it. Jared had come out with the craziest, most roundabout of theories, something with actual statistics, and how he's never gotten a ticket after he's done his trick, his protest that it was for good luck, Jen, for the road. His faith was unshakable; it was his good luck charm and he was sticking to it. Jensen doesn't really try to dissuade him, anyway. Not really.
Jared pulls into a parking lot of a all-night supermarket and disappears into the neon lights. Jensen stays in the car, counting his heartbeats and the blinking of the stars.
They're on their way back from some charity event with lots of talking and gin as dry as a desert. Misha had snuck in a bottle of absinthe (Jensen doesn't ask anymore) and they'd gotten smashed at the back of the hall. Jared had kept leaning into him, running his hands absently through Jensen's hair, stroking his cheekbones as he spoke. It had been nice.
Jared appears in the exit from the store, holding his loot up above his head triumphantly. Some of it drops out of the bag at the precarious angle, and Jared scrambles to pick them up as Jensen snickers.
Jared's already snapped a bar of chocolate in half as he gets in the car, and Jensen nibbles on his all the way back home.
The streets are empty and still, and it feels like they're the only people alive. Jensen keeps very quiet as he gets out of the car, and he sees Jared all but tiptoe across the gravel path. Jared's got a fine sense of the magical, too; he's good at pretend.
They go into the house, nearly tripping over each other and giggling into their fists. Jensen goes into the kitchen and picks up a glass standing upside-down on the counter, pours water from the tap. He downs the whole thing, refills and passes it to Jared. "Drink up, or you'll hate yourself in the morning."
Jared drinks obediently, holding the glass very carefully with both hands. He looks all of seven years old when he does that; innocent and utterly precious.
They head upstairs together, childish insults and meandering stories like they're on a roadtrip. Jared likes to tell long rambling stories that have no end; Jensen likes the thought of so much history hanging in the air, with no necessity for endings.
Jensen leans against his door and looks up at Jared. Jared's smiling fondly down at him, a little wistful like he always is when he's drunk.
"Good night, then." Jared says, and turns towards his room. He turns around almost immediately, so that it looks like he's dancing with an invisible partner. "Listen, Jen, we'll fix this, whatever that's gone wrong. We'll make you act again." Jared strikes a pose. "We'll make you a real boy somehow, Pinocchio."
"Fucker," Jensen says good-naturedly. "G'night, love."
His eyes are drooping shut as he speaks, but Jared freezes in his tracks, stops dead. Jensen instantly replays what he just said.
Oh. Oh. Fuck.
Jared's staring at him with very wide eyes and all Jensen can think is, take it back, do it over.
He opens his mouth, gotta set this right, nownownow, but nothing comes out. His mouth goes dry, and all the words in the world dance maddeningly out of his reach.
And then it's too late entirely: Jared's shoulders slump, and he's turning away, fucking fleeing, and still, the best Jensen can come up with is wasn't supposed to be this way.
~*~
It's been one month and twenty-seven days since Jared told Jensen that he loved him.
Oh yeah, Jensen's counting. His best friend tells him he's in love with him, of fucking course that's gonna be a milestone.
Nearly two months since Jensen stammered his half-formed apologies as Jared looked down at him with that expression on his face, like Jensen was breaking his heart but he was going to let him do it. Jared's just stupidly chivalrous that way, stupidly noble, just plain stupid, wearing his heart on his sleeve like that.
Jensen couldn't breathe properly for a week afterward.
It was a testament to how long they'd been friends that it hadn't ended then and there; they were far too good at reading each other. Jared had stayed out of his way until Jensen got his bearings again; Jensen began picking up the lame romcoms that Jared adored from the DVD rental downtown. Adjusting with baby steps, until they were cool again.
And then Jensen goes and does...this.
~*~
Jared's not like any other person Jensen's ever known, but he hasn't known anyone as well as he knows Jared.
He knows Jared's preferred brand of beer; he knows about his penchant for buying candles that smell like cookies in the winter and lighting them around the house. He knows about the store of superstitions Jared has, the ones he collects; some people collect stamps, some collect stubs of movie tickets, and Jared Padalecki collects sketchy little stories and beliefs, piling them up carefully in a meticulous corner of his mind.
He knows about some stuff that even Jared doesn't know about himself, like the way he can never sleep through the night on a full moon and his attraction to blue neon. Jensen knows about his recurring nightmare, the one with the frozen-over lake and crashing through the ice when he was five.
There's this vast backlog of stuff Jensen knows about Jared, useless little bits and pieces like a jigsaw puzzle lying across the floor, colorful and bright. Jensen doesn't think there's a single hitch of Jared's breath that's gone undocumented in Jensen's brain.
Even so, Jared manages to surprise him, every single day.
*
Jared doesn't appear at breakfast; once Jensen gathers the courage to go and check his room, he doesn't know whether he's relieved or not when he sees that it's empty.
The dogs are still here, so Jensen makes a fuckton of bacon and ends up feeding the whole lot to Sadie and Harley.
At noon, he has an appointment with a psychiatrist Sera recommended. The shrink's name is Amy, and she tells him everything he already knows; that it's all in his head, that if he starts believing in himself again, maybe it would come back to him.
Jensen leaves feeling obscurely sorry for Amy.
~*~
The day Sera screams at them both for fucking up the dynamics of the show by being a couple of teenage girls, Jensen goes home and texts Jared.
Where are you? Come home.
The reply takes fifteen minutes.
Ok.
Jensen's sitting on the stairs when Jared's tires finally pull up on the driveway. The dogs raise their heads and bark joyfully. Jensen smiles: "I know."
Jared comes in and is immediately pounced on by Harley. He manages to calm both dogs down singlehandedly, reaching in his pockets for treats.
Jensen watches from his perch, biting his lower lip a little. Once the dogs leave, appeased, Jared looks at Jensen warily.
They stare at each other a while.
"I, uh," Jared begins, the same time Jensen asks, "Are you gay?"
Jared begins coughing and spluttering, and Jensen waits him out, a little flushed.
"No." Jared even sounds a little incredulous, like Jensen's slow for not figuring this one out. Maybe he is. "Of course not."
Jensen nods, swallows. "But you want to-" he gestures awkwardly between them.
Jared laughs a little, but it's got no humor in it. "Yeah, Jensen."
He sounds tired, worn out in a way Jensen's only ever seen after a fourteen-hour shoot before.
He stands up. His feet wobble a little, so he waits until he's steady again.
"That's good." he says, his eyes somewhere left of Jared's shoulder. "'Cause I'm not gay, either."
Jared's eyes are dark, black holes dragging Jensen's in. "What does that mean?" Bite in his voice. Jensen sometimes forgets that just because Jared seems perfect a lot of the time, that doesn't make him bulletproof.
He takes a long, deep breath, takes a step forward. "Means that I'm missing something, Jay. It's taking my acting away, it's." He swallows, takes another step. Jared's eyes are wary and dark dark dark. "I think it's you."
Jared's less than three inches away, but his posture's all wrong; angled subtly away. "Not good enough," he says, and he sounds defeated. "You don't get to say stuff like that, Jen, you-"
Jensen reaches out, and tilts his head towards him. Jared flliches a little at the contact, and when he meets Jensen's eyes, he still looks parts sad, angry and confused.
"What-" he begins, and Jensen smiles a little, tentative but hopeful.
"We could try." he says, touching his thumb to the corner of Jared's mouth, trying to get it to smile. "No guarantees that it'll work out, but I-" he smiles a bit more, hoping it hides how absolutely fucking terrified he is. "I want to try. Don't...don't you?"
Fucking amateur; he can't help the quiver in his voice, the slight tremble of the jaw. Jared was always the better actor, after all.
But then Jared's smiling and there's nothing fake about that; big and wide and joyful like Jensen just hung the moon. His hands come up around Jensen's face, cradling it almost reverently. There's a fine line between being a girl and being romantic and Jared's about to cross it, God help them both.
Jared kisses him like fire then, nothing soft, not to begin with. A hint of teeth nippping against his lower lip, and Jensen whines, opens wider. A kiss that says, took you long enough, stupid fucker and something like I'm right where I've always wanted to be.
Stupid stuff like that. Jensen's not so big on complicated, anyway.
*
Jared's got faith in bucketfuls, and insane good luck trails him like a faithful puppy.
Elevators magically start working the very weekend he's supposed to stay at hotels; citywide power cuts make an exception to their house, and he keeps winning free shit wherever he goes.
Monday morning, Sera raises one bemused eyebrow at them when they tumble out of Jensen's trailer with reddened lips and untucked shirts, a hickey clearly visible on Jared's collarbone. She asks them dryly whether everything's alright.
Jared looks at Jensen then, hope and promise and a whole lot of other things Jensen never dared to hope for while sober shining clear in his eyes.
Jared kisses his fingertips in a familiar gesture, and softly touches Jensen's forehead. "We will be."
Jensen's heart flies like a kite, streamers red and green and yellow, as perfect as he believes the world can be.
-THE END