FIC: Let Us Compare Mythologies (CWRPS AU, Jared/Jensen, PG-13, 1/2)
Apparently the whole reason I make arbitrary early deadlines for myself (in this case December 31, January 10 and January 12) is so that I can miss them relatively guilt free and write up to the actual deadline. Every time I write lately, it seems like the story ends up way longer than I expected when I started it.
But at long last! This was written for spn_j2_xmas for that_september.
ETA 30oct09: Thanks to too_rational, this is now also available as a pdf here!
ETA 3jan11: And the amazing weimar27 has recorded a podfic of this story, available here!
Let Us Compare Mythologies
Jensen Ackles, award-winning author, is experiencing the longest writing dry spell of his life until he spots a good-looking stranger in a bookstore window and suddenly everything changes.
CWRPS. 17,300 words. PG-13. Jared/Jensen, other minor pairings. AU.
Jensen's coffee was cold and separated, bitter on top with a sweet sludge seeping up from the bottom, but he barely even noticed; he still sipped whenever he stopped typing for more than a few seconds and paid attention only to whether the cup was full or empty. Currently it was closer to empty than full, but it still had a few more paragraphs in it before he needed to refuel.
A page and a half later he reached for the cup and discovered there was nothing but a bit of coffee-flavored syrup, the remains of too much sugar and too little stirring. He finally looked up then, not at the counter to see if there was a line but out the window and across the street, at the man currently arranging books in the window display.
Jensen had only been living in the neighborhood for a week when he discovered the place - discovered both places, really: the coffeeshop where he wrote and the bookstore across the street - and looking back on that first week now he thought it might have been the impulsive decision to get coffee before books that changed everything.
"Bounce quarters off that ass," said Katie, appearing at his shoulder and collecting Jensen's empty cup right out of his hand.
"Hmm?" said Jensen, fixing his eyes on the nearby stop sign and not so much as twitching to acknowledge he knew exactly what she was talking about. "Oh, hey, thanks."
Traffic had apparently always been light on Peter Street, thanks to its perpetual bad repair, so most days Jensen had a clear view right in the front window of the bookstore. When he wasn't writing - which he definitely hadn't been when he'd first come in - he could just sit and people watch through the glass. Or person watch, as was very quickly the case, even if Jensen wasn't quite prepared to own up to it.
"Oh, hey, thanks," she echoed him, rolling her eyes. "You'd better be writing the Great American Novel there, the amount of time you spend with your eyes glued to the screen."
"You ever think I might just be looking at porn?" said Jensen, glancing out the window again.
In the window, the bookstore clerk was bending over to shelve a book. On Jensen's screen Malcolm Moriarty had just bent over to weed his mother's flower garden.
"Anyone who types that much while looking at porn isn't doing it right," she said. "Of course, I know that's what I'd be doing, if I was sitting by this window. Or does he have to be naked for me to call it porn?"
"Who?" said Jensen, like he had no idea. His eyes once again skirted away, focusing determinedly on the pothole in the middle of the street.
He'd never been that person who made friends wherever he went, it just wasn't anything he'd ever been really good at, but from about the third time he'd come into Red Rocket Coffee, Katie'd taken that whole challenge right out of his hands.
"Men," said Katie, in what Jensen had begun to think of as her eye-rolling tone of voice. He didn't need to be looking at her to know what she was doing. "I'll bring you another so you don't have to drag your lazy ass back up to the counter."
Jensen might not have dragged his lazy ass anywhere, but he did finally drag his eyes away from the window when he spotted someone stepping in the door, stamping the dirt off his feet and heading straight for his table. Katie made herself scarce, slipping back behind the counter, and Steve took over the space she vacated, pulling out the chair and making himself at home.
"Writing?" he said.
"Well, I was," said Jensen. He took one last glance across the street, but his mystery bookstore man had taken himself out of the display window. Probably for the best, really.
"If I'm interrupting, I can--" said Steve, jerking his thumb towards the door, but Jensen shook his head.
"No, I'm good," he said. "Ready for a break before my hands cramp up and cripple me for good."
"Not used to it anymore, huh?" said Steve, the comment offhand but striking a nerve all the same.
"Believe me, I'm not complaining," said Jensen quickly, stretching and rubbing his hands, readying for another couple thousand words or so, if he was lucky.
Before about a month ago, before he'd moved into this city, moved in with Steve and found Red Rocket Coffee and Padalecki Books, two thousand words wouldn't just have been lucky, it would've been miraculous.
"So what's it about?" said Steve. "Am I allowed to ask that or are the old rules back in force?"
"It's about a down-on-his-luck writer who moves halfway across the country to share an apartment with his best friend," said Jensen. "He spends a lot of time staring out the window and thinking about better times. It's riveting, I tell you."
"Jensen...." said Steve, then sighed at him. "Fine, don't tell me. If you're still thinking about her, I'm not sure I want to know about it anyway."
"I'm not," said Jensen. "I'm really not. I'm just not sure I'm ready to talk about the new project yet. It's still pretty fragile."
"You could've just said that," said Steve, as Katie reappeared at the table and set down two coffees. "Oh, hey, you didn't have to. I could've come and get something myself once I finished giving Jensen hell."
"Far be it from me to interrupt that kind of noble cause," said Katie. "Any friend of Jensen's is a friend of mine. If you want anything to eat, though, you're on your own. Jensen, I put about a million sugars in yours. I'm not even sure it's drinkable."
"Perfect," he said, and took a deeply satisfying sip.
"You have a friend?" said Steve.
"Shut up," said Jensen, smiling at him and watching as Steve watched Katie all the way back to the counter.
"Didn't you used to always take it black?"
"I'm trying something new," said Jensen, shrugging and sipping again. "It's like coffee and a meal all in one."
"Huh," said Steve. "Well hey, whatever works for you. It is going well, right? You don't have to tell me what it is, but it's going well?"
"It's going well," Jensen confirmed. And considering he'd long ago begun to wonder if he'd ever really write again, it was going better than he had any right to expect. "It's going really well, Steve."
"Well, good," said Steve, and settled down with his coffee and asked no more about it. And if Jensen snuck a few more glances out the window, just in case, he didn't seem to notice.
:::
"Jared, I've got someone named Sylvia Menzel on the phone? Says she needs to speak to you personally?"
Jared sighed, closed his eyes, took a deep and fortifying breath, and called back, "Get her number and tell her I'll call her back as soon as I'm available."
She was probably just calling to tell him that his back order was delayed again but Jared had his zen on right now and he was just going to keep stocking the travel section for the next half hour while letting his assistant manager cover the office for a little while. It wasn't that he was sorry his parents had made him manager of the place when he finished his graduate degree, but at least once a day he liked to remind himself just why he loved the book business in the first place.
Sandy emerged from the back office a few minutes later, joining Jared and pulling a photo book of Tuscany off the shelf, thumbing idly through it.
"You're going to have to tell Professor Morgan his order's going to be another two weeks," she told him, to Jared's dramatic groan.
"What, did they stop delivering mail in Prague or something?" he said. "It's already been over a month. What's the hold up?"
"No idea," said Sandy, "but I'm sure she'll tell you when you call her back after your break. I don't know why you're worried anyway, Professor Morgan will forgive you just about anything. I think he still compares all of his students to you."
"We'll, it's only been a couple years, it's hard to match this kind of brilliance in that short a time," he said with a cocky grin, but he was shaking his head in spite of that. "My mother had some kind of miracle touch with special orders. She never made him wait a month and a half for his books."
"She also didn't write a prize-winning paper comparing the work of Morrison and Ackles to the Latin American magic realists," said Sandy. "So. Did we have another mystery man sighting today?"
Jared chuckled and rearranged the Middle Eastern section to make room for the latest titles. "He was sitting there for about two hours earlier," he said. "Promise you won't tell anyone that I moved the postcard racks to get a clear line of sight from the register?"
"Who am I going to tell?" said Sandy. "Chad? He probably helped you move them."
"I like to look somewhat respectable in front of the staff," he said, glancing around. "Chad already knows I'm a gigantic dork, you can tell him whatever you want."
"I'm going to remember you said that," said Sandy. "So did he do anything interesting? Backflips around the coffee bar? Tore off his skin to reveal a metal endoskeleton? Oh, or maybe he even looked up."
"He smiled," said Jared, giving her a sheepish grin. "Come on, give me a break, it's harmless. I'm allowed to have little bright spots in my day."
"In between calls from distributors and firing dishonest employees? Yeah, I guess you do."
Despite his love of the business, occasionally Jared did still long for the days when his parents were running the place and took care of unpleasant business like employee problems. Especially employees with anger management issues. He did his master's degree in Literature; he was ill-equipped for confrontation.
"Let me know as soon as Brendan gets in, all right?" he said. "I want to get that whole ordeal over with as quickly and painlessly as possible."
"Aye aye captain," she said, as Jared shelved the last of the books and stepped back, satisfied with his work. "So he smiled, huh? At you?"
"Are you kidding?" said Jared. "I was hiding behind our 'Ode to the Inevitable Return to School' window display. I have no idea what he was smiling at, but he has a great smile."
"You should just go introduce yourself," said Sandy, rolling her eyes and finally replacing the book she'd been thumbing through. "It's been a month. Usually it takes you about five minutes."
"Maybe I will," said Jared, rather than pointing out that usually he wasn't stalking someone from across the street. "If only to figure out what it is he does. He's there just about every day."
"I thought you said he worked at the university."
"I said I thought he worked at the university," Jared clarified defensively, "what with the perpetual laptop and books and the proximity and free time in the afternoon."
"So, basically it was just wishful thinking."
"Just my luck that I graduate a couple years too early," said Jared. "I might've had a lecture with him. I might've had a seminar with him."
"I think being his student is about the last thing you want to be, actually," said Sandy, then shoved him in the direction of the office. "Go call Sylvia Menzel already. Your mystery man won't be back till tomorrow now."
"He's not my mystery man," said Jared, "he's just a pleasant distraction. I have a date tonight anyway."
"Yeah?" said Sandy. "That guy from your dad's book club that he introduced you to?"
"You think it's lame," said Jared. "You think it's lame I'm going out with someone from my dad's book club."
"No, I think it's sweet you're going out with a guy from your dad's book club," said Sandy. "I think it's lame that you have a crush on a guy you could be talking to in under two minutes - and that includes the time it takes to cross the street - and instead you're talking about it with me."
"I don't have a crush," said Jared. "I have eye candy."
"Whatever you say," said Sandy, giving him a look he knew from long experience meant she wasn't believing a word out of his mouth. "And you can tell me all about it after you sort out Professor Morgan's order. Go. Now. Before I have to smack your ass in front of all these people."
Jared went, but not without a last look out the window. Just in case.
:::
Jensen wasn't in the habit of taking calls while he was working, but when Chris's name flashed up on his call display he broke tradition and even closed his laptop before answering.
"It's not even noon on a Monday," he said. "Either you've got good news for me, or you accidentally got married in Vegas again."
"That wasn't an accident," said Chris, "it was a very well-considered decision made under the influence of an entire bottle of tequila. But I'm not the bearer of good news this morning; I hear you are."
"Me?" said Jensen. "Where'd you hear that?"
"This is why you should never introduce your friends to your agent," said Chris, "especially not at a party with an open bar. I got an email from Steve this morning telling me you're working on something new."
Jensen groaned and figured he should've known he couldn't keep his fledgling novel under wraps for long. It was a miracle Steve'd held out as long as he had.
"I wasn't going to say anything till I was a little further into it," he said. "There's nothing saying this won't get stalled out before long, Chris."
"First time you've set words to page in this long, you're damn right I want to hear about it," said Chris, "even if it stalls out. It's still more than I've heard about in too long. If you can start something once, you can start it again."
"Yeah, maybe," said Jensen, but he had a better feeling about it now than he had in a long time. "I would've told you eventually."
"I know you would've," said Chris. "Eventually. You didn't tell me about your slump until you were well into it either. Keep me in the loop, Jensen, and I promise you'll be the first to hear about any and all Vegas adventures, marriage or not."
"I'm pretty sure already the first to hear," said Jensen, "and I'm not sure I want to know what you do in Vegas. Though hell, maybe that's what I should write my next book about."
Katie chuckled from nearby and Jensen flashed her an apologetic smile.
"Christian Kane's Adventures in Las Vegas isn't your sort of book," said Chris, "but if you ever want to break into the erotica market, I can hook you up."
"I feel this entire conversation is inappropriate for a business relationship."
"Don't you go getting distracted now," said Chris. "Whatever mojo you've got going on, I don't want you doing anything to mess it up."
"How about I email you later this week with a progress report?" said Jensen, slowly opening the notebook again, one handed. "Don't go jumping the gun, Chris. This might be a false start."
"It's still a start," said Chris. "Send me pages if you can? I've got a teleconference in five minutes, so I've gotta run."
"Yeah, maybe," said Jensen, doing a quick assessment of just what he might be able to send. Even now he was reluctant to break up the whole, like once he did whatever magic was making him write again would be gone. "I'm going to go now and replace Steve's shampoo with Nair. Talk to you later?"
"After seven; I'm in meetings the rest of the day," said Chris with a Monday morning laugh, half groan and half cough, and hung up first.
Jensen almost chuckled himself, staring at the phone for a moment then tucking it away in his coat pocket and picking up where he left off. The circus was coming to town, and Malcolm Moriarty needed to be the first to discover it.
:::
"The bruise is fading," said Sandy, touching the corner of Jared's eye gingerly. "I still can't believe Brendan hit you."
"Apparently the lesson to be learned from this is never to fire someone while they're hung over," said Jared, wincing. The bruise might've been fading but it still stung. "Or when you are. Who knew his reflexes would be that good?"
"Who knew that yours would be so bad?" said Sandy. "Apparently being enormous isn't always an advantage." She prodded his face gently once more before pulling back, apparently finding his condition satisfactory. "Well, at least you look less like some kind of renegade cage fighter than you did yesterday."
"Fantastic," said Jared. Renegade cage fighter was not generally the look he was trying to cultivate. "I decided not to press charges," he added, and held up a hand when she looked like she was going to argue the point again. "They say he's agreed to take some anger management classes. He's not a bad kid, he's just--"
"You're too nice," said Sandy, but she didn't argue this time, just touched his eye again and let it be. "So I saw your guy yesterday while you were downtown."
"Damn it," said Jared, "I knew I would miss him. What was he doing?"
"You mean besides the same thing he does every day?" said Sandy. "He was reading García Márquez."
Jared's grin was broad. "You're not just saying that to make me feel better, right?" he said. "I watch him type for days and you get to see him do something like that. Do you think he's read Asturias or Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o too? Oh God, or do you think it might be his area of research?"
"And I can tell all of that by glancing at him through a window for fifteen seconds," said Sandy. "I'm just that amazing."
"If you're not going to play with me, I'm not going to talk to you anymore," said Jared. Outside there was the familiar grinding sound of someone's car hitting the pothole too fast, and Jared winced as it brought his lingering headache to the forefront again.
"Fine," said Sandy. "Maybe he's a closet Kroetsch fan."
"I could live with that," said Jared after a moment of consideration. Marginal, but acceptable. "Anything else?"
"Nothing that you don't see every other day," said Sandy. "He worked on something for an hour or two, I think. He was there for a while, anyway. I was changing the window display so I got a good view. I call the new one 'What To Do Instead of Studying'."
"Do you think he knows Professor Morgan?" said Jared. He glanced out the window but it was much too early in the day for the guy to be there; he generally didn't show up till after noon. "Can you think of any way I can ask him and not sound like a complete freak?"
"Not really, no," said Sandy. "Not without even knowing his name."
"Hmm," said Jared, chewing on his lip as he glanced outside again. "Maybe I need to do something about that."
"So tell me about your latest date," she said, a clumsy but admittedly successful attempt to distract him. "Knowing you, we probably have just enough time before we open."
"Apparently the 'recently beaten' look isn't as popular as you might think," he said, punching his code into the till and hitting the cash drawer with the heel of his hand to unstick it, like he always had to. "We didn't even make it to dessert. Got someone else's number, though."
"Looking like that?"
"I think he thought he was hooking up with a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Which means I should call him tonight before the bruise fades and the opportunity passes me by."
"Either that or he felt sorry for you," said Sandy. "You look more like you were the one who was beaten on than the one who did the beating."
"I'm too big to get beaten up," said Jared. "All I have to say is 'you should see the other guy' and I'm in."
"You didn't seriously say that, did you?" she said. Jared just grinned at her. "And it worked?"
"If by 'worked' you mean 'got me his phone number' then yes, obviously it worked," said Jared. "If I'm not going to find eternal love with book club guy, then at least I can have one good night with leather guy to make up for it."
"Just one night?" said Sandy. "That's all you're looking for?"
Jared just sighed. "Sometimes you take what you can get," he said. "Do you think I've been trying too hard? I mean, I even let my dad set me up on a date. Maybe I should just try to have fun for one night."
"With a guy who thinks you're hot because you've got a black eye."
"Bruised cheek," said Jared, wincing at another grinding sound from outside. "Are they ever going to fix that thing?"
"Not in our lifetime," said Sandy, "but maybe if you get your children's children on it we might someday have a street without a crater in the middle."
"Yeah, I'll get right on that babymaking," said Jared dryly, then out of habit looked out the window again. "Of course, then we'd have regular traffic again."
"And God forbid you don't have a clear view across the street," said Sandy. Though if Jared knew her, and he did know her, she sounded a lot more fond than annoyed.
:::
It hadn't been in Jensen's original plan, what little original plan there was, but when Jensen was inspired to have Malcolm get in a knock-down drag-out fight with his brother, prompting him to throw a few clothes in a bag and flee the house, the rest of the story suddenly opened up to him. He'd been struggling to make it all come together; now, a couple of days later, he felt like nothing could stop him. Apparently bruising up Malcolm's face and personality a little was exactly what his story needed.
So when Katie sat down with him on her break, for the first time Jensen actually answered when she asked him what he was writing about.
"....so Malcolm's feeling alienated from his family, from his whole life, really, and primed to be looking to experience something new."
"Is it just me, or does Malcolm bear more than a passing resemblance to my future ex-husband?" she said after reading the excerpt Jensen was willing to show her.
"Who?" said Jensen, but got it right away when she tilted her head towards the street.
"Coincidence," he said right away, giving her a little shrug. "I guess your constant observations on his backside seeped into my unconscious."
"My constant observations?" said Katie dubiously. "Besides, I don't see anything about that perfect ass in here, and I'm pretty sure I never once waxed poetic about - what was it?" She glanced at the screen again. "Oh yes, his wide smile or the casual way he's always brushing the hair out of his eyes."
"Maybe I made those parts up," said Jensen, but he knew a losing battle when he fought one. "All right, fine, but he's hard to miss. I have a pretty good view from here."
"One of the perks of the job," said Katie with a grin. "What, do you think it's your sparkling personality that keeps me coming over here?" She gave him a friendly nudge, but Jensen knew that a good view of bookstore guy's considerable assets probably was a selling point.
"Maybe I thought it was my wide smile that kept you coming back," he said, turning the computer back towards himself again.
"Not that you don't have a gorgeous smile when you actually show it," says Katie, "but I love you for your mind, sweetie. So is this the sort of novel that'll be finished one day, or the sort of novel where I find out you're actually a kindergarten teacher who only teaches half days and spends his afternoons here."
"Are the two things mutually exclusive?" said Jensen. "A kindergarten teacher can't publish a novel?"
"Are you a kindergarten teacher?"
Jensen turned his smile on her. "I'm pretty sure I'm not good enough with people to be allowed to teach children." Or want to, for that matter. "No, I actually do this full time. Believe it or not."
"Yeah?" said Katie. "So you make a living writing?"
"Used to, anyway," said Jensen. Enough to carry him through for a while after the writing dried up, at any rate. He figured he still got to call himself a writer.
"Anything I might've read?"
"Probably not," Jensen admitted, not because he thought Katie didn't read but because he knew what he wrote had never exactly been an Oprah pick. "But feel free to look me up in a bookstore any time. Most bigger ones will have a copy or two."
"Maybe I'll do that right now," she said, glancing out the window and across the street. "I'm sure I could find someone to help me. Especially if you happen to be shelved on the lowest shelf. Wouldn't that be handy?"
"Ackles doesn't generally make the bottom shelf," he said, "but hey, I'll cross my fingers for you anyway."
She licked her lips, but a moment later her attention was all on him again. "Well, far be it from me to keep you away from your latest masterpiece," she said, getting up from the seat she'd claimed. "Be sure to get a mention of Malcolm's magnificent ass in there, though. It would be a shame to let that go unremarked."
"I'll keep that in mind," said Jensen, and was still smiling when she walked away.
:::
"I found out who he is," said Sandy, and she didn't just look excited. She looked smug.
"Really?" said Jared, glancing out the window at where he was sitting bent over his laptop, like always. "What's his name?" Sandy paused, and a moment later Jared realized it was meant to be a dramatic one. "What, are you really not going to tell me?"
"That," she said finally, "is Jensen Ackles."
Jared stared at her. "Shut up!" he said finally, loud enough that someone browsing the next aisle shushed him. "Quit it, Sandy. What's his name really?"
"Swear to God, Jared," she said. "Alona had no idea who he was when she gave me his name, she says that other barista, Katie, usually serves him. I even had to ask her to repeat herself, just to make sure."
Jared looked across the street again, but Jensen didn't look like he'd looked up at all, didn't even look like he'd changed position in about half an hour. It shouldn't have been a surprise that Alona had no idea who they'd been serving coffee too. Most people outside of certain literary circles wouldn't peg the name as anything more than something the thought they might've heard once or maybe saw passing mention of in a newspaper. But Jared's family ran a bookstore and Jared had finished his master's degree in literature and Jared knew.
"Okay, now I can never talk to him," Jared pronounced. "Like, ever."
"Whatever," said Sandy. "You could probably talk to the President like he was your long-lost brother if he ever came in here. You can talk to Jensen Ackles."
"No, seriously," said Jared. "I've read Folktales from the Moon, like, fifty times. I can't talk to him, I'd just look like an idiot."
"Should I at least get Alona get him to sign your copy or something?"
Jared just shook his head, staring across the street at Jensen Ackles' profile. "This is better," he said finally. Okay, maybe he wasn't talking to him, maybe he wouldn't have one of his best beloved books signed, but Jensen Ackles lived in his neighborhood, he drank coffee at the Red Rocket and Jared got to watch him write every day. No awkward, fanboy conversation or signature was ever going to be better than what he had already. "Don't say anything, please?
Sandy stared at him for a few moments. "You're an idiot," she said finally. "You know that, right?"
"Just let me have this," pleaded Jared. "And soon as I talk to him it's over, you know? But if he doesn't know I exist, if he just keeps going across the street to write, then...."
"Then everything is still possible," Sandy finished for him.
Jared sighed. "I am an idiot. I know."
"Yeah," agree Sandy. "but you're an idiot I understand. I won't say anything, I promise."
:::
Once every ten years the circus came to Lokivik, rising from the earth somewhere beyond the foothills and marching in to set up in a field just west of the Food Mart. Jensen finished describing the sound of elephants pounding the earth and then sat back, satisfied, to glance out the window onto the street.
He was starting to recognize the other regulars now, the students, the investment bankers, the coffee break crowd. There was one guy he always noticed, Marty, who wandered in many an afternoon. A bit of quiet questioning had established that he squatted in a boarded up apartment building nearby and spent his days cleaning up the local park, a thankless and never-ending task. Jensen knew both Katie and Alona gave him free coffee when they could, and as the weather grew colder gave him a warm place to spend some time.
Jensen was pretty sure Marty was going to make it into the novel at some point because it was too compelling an interaction to let go.
In the meantime, Malcolm Moriarty had developed an affinity for children, based on nothing more than the sight of the bookstore guy helping a pair of twin girls, one holding each of his enormous hands, find the picture book section. Jensen also decided the character was queer, and what he based that on he wasn't admitting even to himself. Both things moved his plot forward so effortlessly that it was like they'd been there all along, just waiting to be brought to the forefront.
"So what is my favorite deadbeat writer working on today?" said Katie, stealing the seat across from him only when Jensen had stopped typing for longer than it took to shake his hands out. He'd never asked it of her; it was apparently just an instinct, maybe self defense against the number of increasingly intense students she also had as regulars.
"His resignation from the human race," said Jensen, shaking his head as he watched he guy squat down and continue to work the children's section. "I'm a hopeless case."
Katie looked at him, then looked out the window, then looked at him. "Oh, thank God," she said. "So you do understand why I feel the need to write odes to that guy's ass."
"I'm not sure about the odes," said Jensen, then let out a soft groan and shook his head again. "I have no idea what I'm doing."
"You're not doing anything," said Katie, smirking at him. "Unless staring counts as doing something."
"He doesn't have hips or breasts," Jensen pointed out, spelling it out without spelling it out. "Seriously. I have no idea what I'm doing."
"Oh God," said Katie. "Seriously? You're sitting here having a gay crisis, right now?" She looked out the window, where the guy was grinning so wide you could see his molars. "For him, I can't say I blame you."
"It's not a crisis," said Jensen, draining the last of his cold coffee sludge in front of her. "And I'm not gay."
"Right," she said, slipping out of the seat again when the door chime sounded and Marty fumbled his way inside. "I'm going to get you a fresh coffee while I let you think about that for a minute. And when I come back with it you're going to tip me really well."
He probably was, she was right. Going to tip her well, that is, not think about it. In fact, he was going to go back to Malcolm and the jugglers and the foothills of Lokivik and not think about bookstore guy at all.
Except the next time he looked the guy was making funny faces, blowing his cheeks out and - Jensen couldn't quite tell at this distance, but he had convinced himself - crossing his eyes at the girls. Guy like that, so good with people, Jensen didn't know what he was doing working in a bookstore of all places.
But he could imagine. Malcolm Moriarty, in that moment, took on the mantle of autodidact. He couldn't afford college thanks to his mother's alcoholism and his brother's criminal activity, but he got himself a job in a bookstore which to him was the next best thing.
Before Jensen knew it he was typing away again, and when a fresh coffee appeared at his elbow he barely gave Katie a nod before reaching for it, still typing with one hand.
And hour later he was still typing when he caught sight of Marty out of the corner of his eye, watched him stumble across the street and disappear up the side street past Padalecki Books.
:::
"You're looking better," Chad noted when Jared walked into the bookstore an hour after opening. Not late - he hadn't scheduled himself to open - but later than he normally arrived. "You look like you got laid."
"You look like you're looking for a new job," said Jared, knocking him on the shoulder on his way by.
"You so got laid," Chad called after him, just loud enough for the nearest customers to hear and stare at him. Then, to add insult to injury, Chad followed him back to the register. "Sandy told me you went to some S&M club last week because some biker daddy wanted you to spank him."
"Sandy told you what?"
"Okay, she might've told me you were looking for your leather jacket for your date," said Chad. "I drew my own conclusions."
"Somehow, I'd already guessed that," said Jared, hanging up his jacket outside the back office and unlocking the door. "You need something, other than to harass me?"
"I'm on Jensen watch this morning, apparently," Chad told him. "I'm here to report that he hasn't shown up at Red Rocket yet."
Jared accidentally dropped his jacket, missing the hook entirely. "You're on what?"
"Hey, don't look at me, it was Sandy's idea," said Chad. "She said you'd never forgive her if he did something noteworthy and no one was around to see it. We both figured I would probably be among the unforgiven too. I did help you move the postcard racks. Those things are heavier than they look."
"One day," said Jared, "I'm going to learn not to hire my college friends."
"I'm not really a college friend if I never graduated, right?" said Chad.
"That's not really a selling point if your goal is to remain employed," Jared reminded him. "I have plenty of applicants with a college degree, you know. It's a harsh world out there."
"Yes, but would they do Jensen watch for you?" said Chad. "I think not."
"They probably would, if I signed their paychecks," said Jared, finally picking up his coat and making his way into his office, "but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want them to."
"Well there you go then," said Chad. "Oh, and your phone messages are by the register. Someone called Sylvia something called? Anyway, whatever. I wrote it down."
Jared groaned and decided this wasn't the best morning he could have hoped for, freshly laid or not; Chad had been right about that, at least.
It wasn't that Jared had bad luck with dates. In fact, Jared had very good luck with dates, most of the time. It was that he never found anyone to connect with, and it was just his luck that that, unlike most of the guys he met, was what he was looking for.
Which didn't mean he said no to sex. Ever.
"If she calls back, just take a message?" said Jared, practically begging him. "I'm pretty sure it's not good news, and I'm just not in any state for it this morning."
"Well fucked and hung over," said Chad. "Good to see you aren't too hung up on this writer guy. I bet he's a douche. Most writers are."
"Yeah, well, it takes one to know one," said Jared.
"I'm not a writer," said Chad.
"Yeah, that's not the part I was talking about," said Jared. "I'll be in my office, all right? I've got some paperwork to catch up on and things seem pretty slow. Call me if--"
"There's a Jensen Watch sighting?" said Chad, which wasn't what Jared was going to say. Well, not in those words, anyway. "Aye aye captain."
"You've been spending too much time with Sandy," said Jared as Chad left, then closed his office door. He'd brought this on himself, and he couldn't even really be that sorry for it.
:::
Bookstore guy showed up on a chilly afternoon in a woolen cap with tiny little cat ears, like you'd see on a six year old, and Jensen couldn't help but immediately write it into Malcolm. It was just too delightfully absurd to pass up, which was exactly how he described it while explaining it to Katie.
"So you really have been writing this whole thing about Ja--"
"Wait, you know his name?" said Jensen, interrupting her before she could speak it. "You've known his name this whole time?"
"Well, of course," she said. "He's worked across the street for as long as I've lived here; of course I know his name."
"Don't tell me, all right?" said Jensen. "Don't... please?"
"Wow," said Katie. "I knew that you writers were a little eccentric, but...."
Jensen gave her a sheepish smile. "At least until I finish the book, all right?" Which at the rate he was going probably wouldn't be all that long. "Right now he is Malcolm Moriarty. Anything you told me would just... confuse things."
Anything she told him would almost certainly distract him from writing, anyway, and as much as a part of Jensen was dying to know who the guy really was, that was something he couldn't afford right now.
"Eccentric," said Katie again, nodding her head firmly. "Sure, I can do that. But I get to be the first person to read it when you're finished."
"My agent will be the first person to read it when I'm finished," said Jensen. "And then Steve. Would you settle for third?"
"Deal," said Katie, offering her hand. "So, what, your entire novel is based on him?"
"Sort of," said Jensen, staring at the words on his screen so he didn't have to meet her eyes. "Let's just say he's been inspiring."
"Yeah, he inspires me to do all kinds of things," said Katie, "but writing's not one of them. You're sure you don't want to actually meet him?"
"I'm not exactly great with people," said Jensen wryly. "Believe me, it's better this way. I get to use him shamelessly and he never has to know about it."
"You're shy, aren't you?" said Katie, grinning at him. "You're shy."
"Totally not the point I'm trying to make," said Jensen, without actually saying that she was wrong. "Maybe I'll meet him when I'm done. It would be ridiculous to try to avoid the nearest bookstore forever."
"Also, ironic," said Katie, "given that you're allegedly a writer."
"Allegedly?" said Jensen.
"Hey, I've never read anything you've written," said Katie. "It's still possible you're a plumber with a laptop."
"I think I preferred kindergarten teacher," said Jensen wryly. "I'm not really great with my hands."
"Not the sort of thing a guy should be admitting," said Katie, getting up when the door jingled and a group of students bustled inside. "It's a good thing you're never going to try to pick me up."
"Not really planning on picking anyone up," said Jensen, but Katie was already out of earshot so he turned back to Malcolm and his knife-throwing adventure, and was at it till the sun started going down.
:::
"Mom, I'm not pressing charges," insisted Jared, holding the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he groped around for the box cutter. "No, I don't care what you-- Mom. I'm fine. Ask Sandy if you don't believe me." Normally he would've gotten Chad back here dealing with the latest shipment, but this wasn't a conversation he wanted to be having in the middle of the store. "No, she would not lie to you. I'm not even bruised anymore."
The problem with skipping Sunday dinner a time or two was that your parents caught wind of your doings from alternative sources and that just never turned out well. But they had known that he was going to have to fire Brendan; as far as he was concerned, the punch was just a detail they didn't need to worry about.
"Mom, it's dealt with," he insisted, moving on to the next box. "You trusted me to do this, so let me do this. I handled it."
It was all well and good to let their baby boy handle the family business, right up until punches were thrown.
"You know we worry," she said, "and there are limits to what you should have to put up with. Are you going to need to replace him?"
"Yeah, I've got Sandy going through resumes," he said with a sigh of relief as she moved on. "One of my other part-timers cut back on her course load and wanted some extra hours this fall, though, so we're not desperate."
"Always better to get things in place before you need them," she said, a lesson Jared had learned long before he even took the smallest place in the family business. "So... any other developments in your life that I ought to know about?"
"Are you trying to ask if I'm dating anyone?" said Jared, inspecting a copy of the latest Chabon for damage. "You know I'm not."
"Well how would I know that?" she said. "All I know is that things didn't work out with Aldis. I haven't seen you in two weeks, Jared, and you know it. You can't spare just one Sunday for you family?"
"This week, I promise," he said. "I went out last weekend, but... well, you know how it goes."
"You haven't brought anyone home since Milo," said his mother with that long-suffering tone that all mothers somehow had. "Are things really that hard out there?"
Jared just laughed and set the book down, moving on again, matching the boxes against his inventory list. "I'm just having fun," he said, because somehow it sounded better than admitting that he could never seem to find what he was looking for. "I'm young, isn't that what we're supposed to do?"
"Well, yes," she admitted. "Still, it would be nice to set another place at Sunday dinner again."
"Believe me, you'll be the first to know," said Jared. "Well, second. Third at worst."
"You'd tell that Chad before you'd tell your own mother?"
"It's not that I tell him things, he somehow just finds out," said Jared. And what Chad didn't find out, he just went ahead and made up. "But there's no one. There's not even... any real possibility on the horizon." Just a pretty face and a lot of forgettable dates, and nothing he really wanted to talk about.
"Well, make sure you're at dinner this weekend," she said. "I don't know what I'll tell your father if you're busy again. You know how he likes the whole family together."
"Yeah, it's Dad who likes the whole family together," said Jared. "I'll call you later this week, all right?"
"Sooner if you have anything to tell me?"
"Of course," Jared promised her, but did not expect that he would. "Love you, Mom."
"You too, JT," she said. "Don't be a stranger."
Part Two
But at long last! This was written for spn_j2_xmas for that_september.
ETA 30oct09: Thanks to too_rational, this is now also available as a pdf here!
ETA 3jan11: And the amazing weimar27 has recorded a podfic of this story, available here!
Let Us Compare Mythologies
Jensen Ackles, award-winning author, is experiencing the longest writing dry spell of his life until he spots a good-looking stranger in a bookstore window and suddenly everything changes.
CWRPS. 17,300 words. PG-13. Jared/Jensen, other minor pairings. AU.
Jensen's coffee was cold and separated, bitter on top with a sweet sludge seeping up from the bottom, but he barely even noticed; he still sipped whenever he stopped typing for more than a few seconds and paid attention only to whether the cup was full or empty. Currently it was closer to empty than full, but it still had a few more paragraphs in it before he needed to refuel.
A page and a half later he reached for the cup and discovered there was nothing but a bit of coffee-flavored syrup, the remains of too much sugar and too little stirring. He finally looked up then, not at the counter to see if there was a line but out the window and across the street, at the man currently arranging books in the window display.
Jensen had only been living in the neighborhood for a week when he discovered the place - discovered both places, really: the coffeeshop where he wrote and the bookstore across the street - and looking back on that first week now he thought it might have been the impulsive decision to get coffee before books that changed everything.
"Bounce quarters off that ass," said Katie, appearing at his shoulder and collecting Jensen's empty cup right out of his hand.
"Hmm?" said Jensen, fixing his eyes on the nearby stop sign and not so much as twitching to acknowledge he knew exactly what she was talking about. "Oh, hey, thanks."
Traffic had apparently always been light on Peter Street, thanks to its perpetual bad repair, so most days Jensen had a clear view right in the front window of the bookstore. When he wasn't writing - which he definitely hadn't been when he'd first come in - he could just sit and people watch through the glass. Or person watch, as was very quickly the case, even if Jensen wasn't quite prepared to own up to it.
"Oh, hey, thanks," she echoed him, rolling her eyes. "You'd better be writing the Great American Novel there, the amount of time you spend with your eyes glued to the screen."
"You ever think I might just be looking at porn?" said Jensen, glancing out the window again.
In the window, the bookstore clerk was bending over to shelve a book. On Jensen's screen Malcolm Moriarty had just bent over to weed his mother's flower garden.
"Anyone who types that much while looking at porn isn't doing it right," she said. "Of course, I know that's what I'd be doing, if I was sitting by this window. Or does he have to be naked for me to call it porn?"
"Who?" said Jensen, like he had no idea. His eyes once again skirted away, focusing determinedly on the pothole in the middle of the street.
He'd never been that person who made friends wherever he went, it just wasn't anything he'd ever been really good at, but from about the third time he'd come into Red Rocket Coffee, Katie'd taken that whole challenge right out of his hands.
"Men," said Katie, in what Jensen had begun to think of as her eye-rolling tone of voice. He didn't need to be looking at her to know what she was doing. "I'll bring you another so you don't have to drag your lazy ass back up to the counter."
Jensen might not have dragged his lazy ass anywhere, but he did finally drag his eyes away from the window when he spotted someone stepping in the door, stamping the dirt off his feet and heading straight for his table. Katie made herself scarce, slipping back behind the counter, and Steve took over the space she vacated, pulling out the chair and making himself at home.
"Writing?" he said.
"Well, I was," said Jensen. He took one last glance across the street, but his mystery bookstore man had taken himself out of the display window. Probably for the best, really.
"If I'm interrupting, I can--" said Steve, jerking his thumb towards the door, but Jensen shook his head.
"No, I'm good," he said. "Ready for a break before my hands cramp up and cripple me for good."
"Not used to it anymore, huh?" said Steve, the comment offhand but striking a nerve all the same.
"Believe me, I'm not complaining," said Jensen quickly, stretching and rubbing his hands, readying for another couple thousand words or so, if he was lucky.
Before about a month ago, before he'd moved into this city, moved in with Steve and found Red Rocket Coffee and Padalecki Books, two thousand words wouldn't just have been lucky, it would've been miraculous.
"So what's it about?" said Steve. "Am I allowed to ask that or are the old rules back in force?"
"It's about a down-on-his-luck writer who moves halfway across the country to share an apartment with his best friend," said Jensen. "He spends a lot of time staring out the window and thinking about better times. It's riveting, I tell you."
"Jensen...." said Steve, then sighed at him. "Fine, don't tell me. If you're still thinking about her, I'm not sure I want to know about it anyway."
"I'm not," said Jensen. "I'm really not. I'm just not sure I'm ready to talk about the new project yet. It's still pretty fragile."
"You could've just said that," said Steve, as Katie reappeared at the table and set down two coffees. "Oh, hey, you didn't have to. I could've come and get something myself once I finished giving Jensen hell."
"Far be it from me to interrupt that kind of noble cause," said Katie. "Any friend of Jensen's is a friend of mine. If you want anything to eat, though, you're on your own. Jensen, I put about a million sugars in yours. I'm not even sure it's drinkable."
"Perfect," he said, and took a deeply satisfying sip.
"You have a friend?" said Steve.
"Shut up," said Jensen, smiling at him and watching as Steve watched Katie all the way back to the counter.
"Didn't you used to always take it black?"
"I'm trying something new," said Jensen, shrugging and sipping again. "It's like coffee and a meal all in one."
"Huh," said Steve. "Well hey, whatever works for you. It is going well, right? You don't have to tell me what it is, but it's going well?"
"It's going well," Jensen confirmed. And considering he'd long ago begun to wonder if he'd ever really write again, it was going better than he had any right to expect. "It's going really well, Steve."
"Well, good," said Steve, and settled down with his coffee and asked no more about it. And if Jensen snuck a few more glances out the window, just in case, he didn't seem to notice.
:::
"Jared, I've got someone named Sylvia Menzel on the phone? Says she needs to speak to you personally?"
Jared sighed, closed his eyes, took a deep and fortifying breath, and called back, "Get her number and tell her I'll call her back as soon as I'm available."
She was probably just calling to tell him that his back order was delayed again but Jared had his zen on right now and he was just going to keep stocking the travel section for the next half hour while letting his assistant manager cover the office for a little while. It wasn't that he was sorry his parents had made him manager of the place when he finished his graduate degree, but at least once a day he liked to remind himself just why he loved the book business in the first place.
Sandy emerged from the back office a few minutes later, joining Jared and pulling a photo book of Tuscany off the shelf, thumbing idly through it.
"You're going to have to tell Professor Morgan his order's going to be another two weeks," she told him, to Jared's dramatic groan.
"What, did they stop delivering mail in Prague or something?" he said. "It's already been over a month. What's the hold up?"
"No idea," said Sandy, "but I'm sure she'll tell you when you call her back after your break. I don't know why you're worried anyway, Professor Morgan will forgive you just about anything. I think he still compares all of his students to you."
"We'll, it's only been a couple years, it's hard to match this kind of brilliance in that short a time," he said with a cocky grin, but he was shaking his head in spite of that. "My mother had some kind of miracle touch with special orders. She never made him wait a month and a half for his books."
"She also didn't write a prize-winning paper comparing the work of Morrison and Ackles to the Latin American magic realists," said Sandy. "So. Did we have another mystery man sighting today?"
Jared chuckled and rearranged the Middle Eastern section to make room for the latest titles. "He was sitting there for about two hours earlier," he said. "Promise you won't tell anyone that I moved the postcard racks to get a clear line of sight from the register?"
"Who am I going to tell?" said Sandy. "Chad? He probably helped you move them."
"I like to look somewhat respectable in front of the staff," he said, glancing around. "Chad already knows I'm a gigantic dork, you can tell him whatever you want."
"I'm going to remember you said that," said Sandy. "So did he do anything interesting? Backflips around the coffee bar? Tore off his skin to reveal a metal endoskeleton? Oh, or maybe he even looked up."
"He smiled," said Jared, giving her a sheepish grin. "Come on, give me a break, it's harmless. I'm allowed to have little bright spots in my day."
"In between calls from distributors and firing dishonest employees? Yeah, I guess you do."
Despite his love of the business, occasionally Jared did still long for the days when his parents were running the place and took care of unpleasant business like employee problems. Especially employees with anger management issues. He did his master's degree in Literature; he was ill-equipped for confrontation.
"Let me know as soon as Brendan gets in, all right?" he said. "I want to get that whole ordeal over with as quickly and painlessly as possible."
"Aye aye captain," she said, as Jared shelved the last of the books and stepped back, satisfied with his work. "So he smiled, huh? At you?"
"Are you kidding?" said Jared. "I was hiding behind our 'Ode to the Inevitable Return to School' window display. I have no idea what he was smiling at, but he has a great smile."
"You should just go introduce yourself," said Sandy, rolling her eyes and finally replacing the book she'd been thumbing through. "It's been a month. Usually it takes you about five minutes."
"Maybe I will," said Jared, rather than pointing out that usually he wasn't stalking someone from across the street. "If only to figure out what it is he does. He's there just about every day."
"I thought you said he worked at the university."
"I said I thought he worked at the university," Jared clarified defensively, "what with the perpetual laptop and books and the proximity and free time in the afternoon."
"So, basically it was just wishful thinking."
"Just my luck that I graduate a couple years too early," said Jared. "I might've had a lecture with him. I might've had a seminar with him."
"I think being his student is about the last thing you want to be, actually," said Sandy, then shoved him in the direction of the office. "Go call Sylvia Menzel already. Your mystery man won't be back till tomorrow now."
"He's not my mystery man," said Jared, "he's just a pleasant distraction. I have a date tonight anyway."
"Yeah?" said Sandy. "That guy from your dad's book club that he introduced you to?"
"You think it's lame," said Jared. "You think it's lame I'm going out with someone from my dad's book club."
"No, I think it's sweet you're going out with a guy from your dad's book club," said Sandy. "I think it's lame that you have a crush on a guy you could be talking to in under two minutes - and that includes the time it takes to cross the street - and instead you're talking about it with me."
"I don't have a crush," said Jared. "I have eye candy."
"Whatever you say," said Sandy, giving him a look he knew from long experience meant she wasn't believing a word out of his mouth. "And you can tell me all about it after you sort out Professor Morgan's order. Go. Now. Before I have to smack your ass in front of all these people."
Jared went, but not without a last look out the window. Just in case.
:::
Jensen wasn't in the habit of taking calls while he was working, but when Chris's name flashed up on his call display he broke tradition and even closed his laptop before answering.
"It's not even noon on a Monday," he said. "Either you've got good news for me, or you accidentally got married in Vegas again."
"That wasn't an accident," said Chris, "it was a very well-considered decision made under the influence of an entire bottle of tequila. But I'm not the bearer of good news this morning; I hear you are."
"Me?" said Jensen. "Where'd you hear that?"
"This is why you should never introduce your friends to your agent," said Chris, "especially not at a party with an open bar. I got an email from Steve this morning telling me you're working on something new."
Jensen groaned and figured he should've known he couldn't keep his fledgling novel under wraps for long. It was a miracle Steve'd held out as long as he had.
"I wasn't going to say anything till I was a little further into it," he said. "There's nothing saying this won't get stalled out before long, Chris."
"First time you've set words to page in this long, you're damn right I want to hear about it," said Chris, "even if it stalls out. It's still more than I've heard about in too long. If you can start something once, you can start it again."
"Yeah, maybe," said Jensen, but he had a better feeling about it now than he had in a long time. "I would've told you eventually."
"I know you would've," said Chris. "Eventually. You didn't tell me about your slump until you were well into it either. Keep me in the loop, Jensen, and I promise you'll be the first to hear about any and all Vegas adventures, marriage or not."
"I'm pretty sure already the first to hear," said Jensen, "and I'm not sure I want to know what you do in Vegas. Though hell, maybe that's what I should write my next book about."
Katie chuckled from nearby and Jensen flashed her an apologetic smile.
"Christian Kane's Adventures in Las Vegas isn't your sort of book," said Chris, "but if you ever want to break into the erotica market, I can hook you up."
"I feel this entire conversation is inappropriate for a business relationship."
"Don't you go getting distracted now," said Chris. "Whatever mojo you've got going on, I don't want you doing anything to mess it up."
"How about I email you later this week with a progress report?" said Jensen, slowly opening the notebook again, one handed. "Don't go jumping the gun, Chris. This might be a false start."
"It's still a start," said Chris. "Send me pages if you can? I've got a teleconference in five minutes, so I've gotta run."
"Yeah, maybe," said Jensen, doing a quick assessment of just what he might be able to send. Even now he was reluctant to break up the whole, like once he did whatever magic was making him write again would be gone. "I'm going to go now and replace Steve's shampoo with Nair. Talk to you later?"
"After seven; I'm in meetings the rest of the day," said Chris with a Monday morning laugh, half groan and half cough, and hung up first.
Jensen almost chuckled himself, staring at the phone for a moment then tucking it away in his coat pocket and picking up where he left off. The circus was coming to town, and Malcolm Moriarty needed to be the first to discover it.
:::
"The bruise is fading," said Sandy, touching the corner of Jared's eye gingerly. "I still can't believe Brendan hit you."
"Apparently the lesson to be learned from this is never to fire someone while they're hung over," said Jared, wincing. The bruise might've been fading but it still stung. "Or when you are. Who knew his reflexes would be that good?"
"Who knew that yours would be so bad?" said Sandy. "Apparently being enormous isn't always an advantage." She prodded his face gently once more before pulling back, apparently finding his condition satisfactory. "Well, at least you look less like some kind of renegade cage fighter than you did yesterday."
"Fantastic," said Jared. Renegade cage fighter was not generally the look he was trying to cultivate. "I decided not to press charges," he added, and held up a hand when she looked like she was going to argue the point again. "They say he's agreed to take some anger management classes. He's not a bad kid, he's just--"
"You're too nice," said Sandy, but she didn't argue this time, just touched his eye again and let it be. "So I saw your guy yesterday while you were downtown."
"Damn it," said Jared, "I knew I would miss him. What was he doing?"
"You mean besides the same thing he does every day?" said Sandy. "He was reading García Márquez."
Jared's grin was broad. "You're not just saying that to make me feel better, right?" he said. "I watch him type for days and you get to see him do something like that. Do you think he's read Asturias or Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o too? Oh God, or do you think it might be his area of research?"
"And I can tell all of that by glancing at him through a window for fifteen seconds," said Sandy. "I'm just that amazing."
"If you're not going to play with me, I'm not going to talk to you anymore," said Jared. Outside there was the familiar grinding sound of someone's car hitting the pothole too fast, and Jared winced as it brought his lingering headache to the forefront again.
"Fine," said Sandy. "Maybe he's a closet Kroetsch fan."
"I could live with that," said Jared after a moment of consideration. Marginal, but acceptable. "Anything else?"
"Nothing that you don't see every other day," said Sandy. "He worked on something for an hour or two, I think. He was there for a while, anyway. I was changing the window display so I got a good view. I call the new one 'What To Do Instead of Studying'."
"Do you think he knows Professor Morgan?" said Jared. He glanced out the window but it was much too early in the day for the guy to be there; he generally didn't show up till after noon. "Can you think of any way I can ask him and not sound like a complete freak?"
"Not really, no," said Sandy. "Not without even knowing his name."
"Hmm," said Jared, chewing on his lip as he glanced outside again. "Maybe I need to do something about that."
"So tell me about your latest date," she said, a clumsy but admittedly successful attempt to distract him. "Knowing you, we probably have just enough time before we open."
"Apparently the 'recently beaten' look isn't as popular as you might think," he said, punching his code into the till and hitting the cash drawer with the heel of his hand to unstick it, like he always had to. "We didn't even make it to dessert. Got someone else's number, though."
"Looking like that?"
"I think he thought he was hooking up with a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Which means I should call him tonight before the bruise fades and the opportunity passes me by."
"Either that or he felt sorry for you," said Sandy. "You look more like you were the one who was beaten on than the one who did the beating."
"I'm too big to get beaten up," said Jared. "All I have to say is 'you should see the other guy' and I'm in."
"You didn't seriously say that, did you?" she said. Jared just grinned at her. "And it worked?"
"If by 'worked' you mean 'got me his phone number' then yes, obviously it worked," said Jared. "If I'm not going to find eternal love with book club guy, then at least I can have one good night with leather guy to make up for it."
"Just one night?" said Sandy. "That's all you're looking for?"
Jared just sighed. "Sometimes you take what you can get," he said. "Do you think I've been trying too hard? I mean, I even let my dad set me up on a date. Maybe I should just try to have fun for one night."
"With a guy who thinks you're hot because you've got a black eye."
"Bruised cheek," said Jared, wincing at another grinding sound from outside. "Are they ever going to fix that thing?"
"Not in our lifetime," said Sandy, "but maybe if you get your children's children on it we might someday have a street without a crater in the middle."
"Yeah, I'll get right on that babymaking," said Jared dryly, then out of habit looked out the window again. "Of course, then we'd have regular traffic again."
"And God forbid you don't have a clear view across the street," said Sandy. Though if Jared knew her, and he did know her, she sounded a lot more fond than annoyed.
:::
It hadn't been in Jensen's original plan, what little original plan there was, but when Jensen was inspired to have Malcolm get in a knock-down drag-out fight with his brother, prompting him to throw a few clothes in a bag and flee the house, the rest of the story suddenly opened up to him. He'd been struggling to make it all come together; now, a couple of days later, he felt like nothing could stop him. Apparently bruising up Malcolm's face and personality a little was exactly what his story needed.
So when Katie sat down with him on her break, for the first time Jensen actually answered when she asked him what he was writing about.
"....so Malcolm's feeling alienated from his family, from his whole life, really, and primed to be looking to experience something new."
"Is it just me, or does Malcolm bear more than a passing resemblance to my future ex-husband?" she said after reading the excerpt Jensen was willing to show her.
"Who?" said Jensen, but got it right away when she tilted her head towards the street.
"Coincidence," he said right away, giving her a little shrug. "I guess your constant observations on his backside seeped into my unconscious."
"My constant observations?" said Katie dubiously. "Besides, I don't see anything about that perfect ass in here, and I'm pretty sure I never once waxed poetic about - what was it?" She glanced at the screen again. "Oh yes, his wide smile or the casual way he's always brushing the hair out of his eyes."
"Maybe I made those parts up," said Jensen, but he knew a losing battle when he fought one. "All right, fine, but he's hard to miss. I have a pretty good view from here."
"One of the perks of the job," said Katie with a grin. "What, do you think it's your sparkling personality that keeps me coming over here?" She gave him a friendly nudge, but Jensen knew that a good view of bookstore guy's considerable assets probably was a selling point.
"Maybe I thought it was my wide smile that kept you coming back," he said, turning the computer back towards himself again.
"Not that you don't have a gorgeous smile when you actually show it," says Katie, "but I love you for your mind, sweetie. So is this the sort of novel that'll be finished one day, or the sort of novel where I find out you're actually a kindergarten teacher who only teaches half days and spends his afternoons here."
"Are the two things mutually exclusive?" said Jensen. "A kindergarten teacher can't publish a novel?"
"Are you a kindergarten teacher?"
Jensen turned his smile on her. "I'm pretty sure I'm not good enough with people to be allowed to teach children." Or want to, for that matter. "No, I actually do this full time. Believe it or not."
"Yeah?" said Katie. "So you make a living writing?"
"Used to, anyway," said Jensen. Enough to carry him through for a while after the writing dried up, at any rate. He figured he still got to call himself a writer.
"Anything I might've read?"
"Probably not," Jensen admitted, not because he thought Katie didn't read but because he knew what he wrote had never exactly been an Oprah pick. "But feel free to look me up in a bookstore any time. Most bigger ones will have a copy or two."
"Maybe I'll do that right now," she said, glancing out the window and across the street. "I'm sure I could find someone to help me. Especially if you happen to be shelved on the lowest shelf. Wouldn't that be handy?"
"Ackles doesn't generally make the bottom shelf," he said, "but hey, I'll cross my fingers for you anyway."
She licked her lips, but a moment later her attention was all on him again. "Well, far be it from me to keep you away from your latest masterpiece," she said, getting up from the seat she'd claimed. "Be sure to get a mention of Malcolm's magnificent ass in there, though. It would be a shame to let that go unremarked."
"I'll keep that in mind," said Jensen, and was still smiling when she walked away.
:::
"I found out who he is," said Sandy, and she didn't just look excited. She looked smug.
"Really?" said Jared, glancing out the window at where he was sitting bent over his laptop, like always. "What's his name?" Sandy paused, and a moment later Jared realized it was meant to be a dramatic one. "What, are you really not going to tell me?"
"That," she said finally, "is Jensen Ackles."
Jared stared at her. "Shut up!" he said finally, loud enough that someone browsing the next aisle shushed him. "Quit it, Sandy. What's his name really?"
"Swear to God, Jared," she said. "Alona had no idea who he was when she gave me his name, she says that other barista, Katie, usually serves him. I even had to ask her to repeat herself, just to make sure."
Jared looked across the street again, but Jensen didn't look like he'd looked up at all, didn't even look like he'd changed position in about half an hour. It shouldn't have been a surprise that Alona had no idea who they'd been serving coffee too. Most people outside of certain literary circles wouldn't peg the name as anything more than something the thought they might've heard once or maybe saw passing mention of in a newspaper. But Jared's family ran a bookstore and Jared had finished his master's degree in literature and Jared knew.
"Okay, now I can never talk to him," Jared pronounced. "Like, ever."
"Whatever," said Sandy. "You could probably talk to the President like he was your long-lost brother if he ever came in here. You can talk to Jensen Ackles."
"No, seriously," said Jared. "I've read Folktales from the Moon, like, fifty times. I can't talk to him, I'd just look like an idiot."
"Should I at least get Alona get him to sign your copy or something?"
Jared just shook his head, staring across the street at Jensen Ackles' profile. "This is better," he said finally. Okay, maybe he wasn't talking to him, maybe he wouldn't have one of his best beloved books signed, but Jensen Ackles lived in his neighborhood, he drank coffee at the Red Rocket and Jared got to watch him write every day. No awkward, fanboy conversation or signature was ever going to be better than what he had already. "Don't say anything, please?
Sandy stared at him for a few moments. "You're an idiot," she said finally. "You know that, right?"
"Just let me have this," pleaded Jared. "And soon as I talk to him it's over, you know? But if he doesn't know I exist, if he just keeps going across the street to write, then...."
"Then everything is still possible," Sandy finished for him.
Jared sighed. "I am an idiot. I know."
"Yeah," agree Sandy. "but you're an idiot I understand. I won't say anything, I promise."
:::
Once every ten years the circus came to Lokivik, rising from the earth somewhere beyond the foothills and marching in to set up in a field just west of the Food Mart. Jensen finished describing the sound of elephants pounding the earth and then sat back, satisfied, to glance out the window onto the street.
He was starting to recognize the other regulars now, the students, the investment bankers, the coffee break crowd. There was one guy he always noticed, Marty, who wandered in many an afternoon. A bit of quiet questioning had established that he squatted in a boarded up apartment building nearby and spent his days cleaning up the local park, a thankless and never-ending task. Jensen knew both Katie and Alona gave him free coffee when they could, and as the weather grew colder gave him a warm place to spend some time.
Jensen was pretty sure Marty was going to make it into the novel at some point because it was too compelling an interaction to let go.
In the meantime, Malcolm Moriarty had developed an affinity for children, based on nothing more than the sight of the bookstore guy helping a pair of twin girls, one holding each of his enormous hands, find the picture book section. Jensen also decided the character was queer, and what he based that on he wasn't admitting even to himself. Both things moved his plot forward so effortlessly that it was like they'd been there all along, just waiting to be brought to the forefront.
"So what is my favorite deadbeat writer working on today?" said Katie, stealing the seat across from him only when Jensen had stopped typing for longer than it took to shake his hands out. He'd never asked it of her; it was apparently just an instinct, maybe self defense against the number of increasingly intense students she also had as regulars.
"His resignation from the human race," said Jensen, shaking his head as he watched he guy squat down and continue to work the children's section. "I'm a hopeless case."
Katie looked at him, then looked out the window, then looked at him. "Oh, thank God," she said. "So you do understand why I feel the need to write odes to that guy's ass."
"I'm not sure about the odes," said Jensen, then let out a soft groan and shook his head again. "I have no idea what I'm doing."
"You're not doing anything," said Katie, smirking at him. "Unless staring counts as doing something."
"He doesn't have hips or breasts," Jensen pointed out, spelling it out without spelling it out. "Seriously. I have no idea what I'm doing."
"Oh God," said Katie. "Seriously? You're sitting here having a gay crisis, right now?" She looked out the window, where the guy was grinning so wide you could see his molars. "For him, I can't say I blame you."
"It's not a crisis," said Jensen, draining the last of his cold coffee sludge in front of her. "And I'm not gay."
"Right," she said, slipping out of the seat again when the door chime sounded and Marty fumbled his way inside. "I'm going to get you a fresh coffee while I let you think about that for a minute. And when I come back with it you're going to tip me really well."
He probably was, she was right. Going to tip her well, that is, not think about it. In fact, he was going to go back to Malcolm and the jugglers and the foothills of Lokivik and not think about bookstore guy at all.
Except the next time he looked the guy was making funny faces, blowing his cheeks out and - Jensen couldn't quite tell at this distance, but he had convinced himself - crossing his eyes at the girls. Guy like that, so good with people, Jensen didn't know what he was doing working in a bookstore of all places.
But he could imagine. Malcolm Moriarty, in that moment, took on the mantle of autodidact. He couldn't afford college thanks to his mother's alcoholism and his brother's criminal activity, but he got himself a job in a bookstore which to him was the next best thing.
Before Jensen knew it he was typing away again, and when a fresh coffee appeared at his elbow he barely gave Katie a nod before reaching for it, still typing with one hand.
And hour later he was still typing when he caught sight of Marty out of the corner of his eye, watched him stumble across the street and disappear up the side street past Padalecki Books.
:::
"You're looking better," Chad noted when Jared walked into the bookstore an hour after opening. Not late - he hadn't scheduled himself to open - but later than he normally arrived. "You look like you got laid."
"You look like you're looking for a new job," said Jared, knocking him on the shoulder on his way by.
"You so got laid," Chad called after him, just loud enough for the nearest customers to hear and stare at him. Then, to add insult to injury, Chad followed him back to the register. "Sandy told me you went to some S&M club last week because some biker daddy wanted you to spank him."
"Sandy told you what?"
"Okay, she might've told me you were looking for your leather jacket for your date," said Chad. "I drew my own conclusions."
"Somehow, I'd already guessed that," said Jared, hanging up his jacket outside the back office and unlocking the door. "You need something, other than to harass me?"
"I'm on Jensen watch this morning, apparently," Chad told him. "I'm here to report that he hasn't shown up at Red Rocket yet."
Jared accidentally dropped his jacket, missing the hook entirely. "You're on what?"
"Hey, don't look at me, it was Sandy's idea," said Chad. "She said you'd never forgive her if he did something noteworthy and no one was around to see it. We both figured I would probably be among the unforgiven too. I did help you move the postcard racks. Those things are heavier than they look."
"One day," said Jared, "I'm going to learn not to hire my college friends."
"I'm not really a college friend if I never graduated, right?" said Chad.
"That's not really a selling point if your goal is to remain employed," Jared reminded him. "I have plenty of applicants with a college degree, you know. It's a harsh world out there."
"Yes, but would they do Jensen watch for you?" said Chad. "I think not."
"They probably would, if I signed their paychecks," said Jared, finally picking up his coat and making his way into his office, "but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want them to."
"Well there you go then," said Chad. "Oh, and your phone messages are by the register. Someone called Sylvia something called? Anyway, whatever. I wrote it down."
Jared groaned and decided this wasn't the best morning he could have hoped for, freshly laid or not; Chad had been right about that, at least.
It wasn't that Jared had bad luck with dates. In fact, Jared had very good luck with dates, most of the time. It was that he never found anyone to connect with, and it was just his luck that that, unlike most of the guys he met, was what he was looking for.
Which didn't mean he said no to sex. Ever.
"If she calls back, just take a message?" said Jared, practically begging him. "I'm pretty sure it's not good news, and I'm just not in any state for it this morning."
"Well fucked and hung over," said Chad. "Good to see you aren't too hung up on this writer guy. I bet he's a douche. Most writers are."
"Yeah, well, it takes one to know one," said Jared.
"I'm not a writer," said Chad.
"Yeah, that's not the part I was talking about," said Jared. "I'll be in my office, all right? I've got some paperwork to catch up on and things seem pretty slow. Call me if--"
"There's a Jensen Watch sighting?" said Chad, which wasn't what Jared was going to say. Well, not in those words, anyway. "Aye aye captain."
"You've been spending too much time with Sandy," said Jared as Chad left, then closed his office door. He'd brought this on himself, and he couldn't even really be that sorry for it.
:::
Bookstore guy showed up on a chilly afternoon in a woolen cap with tiny little cat ears, like you'd see on a six year old, and Jensen couldn't help but immediately write it into Malcolm. It was just too delightfully absurd to pass up, which was exactly how he described it while explaining it to Katie.
"So you really have been writing this whole thing about Ja--"
"Wait, you know his name?" said Jensen, interrupting her before she could speak it. "You've known his name this whole time?"
"Well, of course," she said. "He's worked across the street for as long as I've lived here; of course I know his name."
"Don't tell me, all right?" said Jensen. "Don't... please?"
"Wow," said Katie. "I knew that you writers were a little eccentric, but...."
Jensen gave her a sheepish smile. "At least until I finish the book, all right?" Which at the rate he was going probably wouldn't be all that long. "Right now he is Malcolm Moriarty. Anything you told me would just... confuse things."
Anything she told him would almost certainly distract him from writing, anyway, and as much as a part of Jensen was dying to know who the guy really was, that was something he couldn't afford right now.
"Eccentric," said Katie again, nodding her head firmly. "Sure, I can do that. But I get to be the first person to read it when you're finished."
"My agent will be the first person to read it when I'm finished," said Jensen. "And then Steve. Would you settle for third?"
"Deal," said Katie, offering her hand. "So, what, your entire novel is based on him?"
"Sort of," said Jensen, staring at the words on his screen so he didn't have to meet her eyes. "Let's just say he's been inspiring."
"Yeah, he inspires me to do all kinds of things," said Katie, "but writing's not one of them. You're sure you don't want to actually meet him?"
"I'm not exactly great with people," said Jensen wryly. "Believe me, it's better this way. I get to use him shamelessly and he never has to know about it."
"You're shy, aren't you?" said Katie, grinning at him. "You're shy."
"Totally not the point I'm trying to make," said Jensen, without actually saying that she was wrong. "Maybe I'll meet him when I'm done. It would be ridiculous to try to avoid the nearest bookstore forever."
"Also, ironic," said Katie, "given that you're allegedly a writer."
"Allegedly?" said Jensen.
"Hey, I've never read anything you've written," said Katie. "It's still possible you're a plumber with a laptop."
"I think I preferred kindergarten teacher," said Jensen wryly. "I'm not really great with my hands."
"Not the sort of thing a guy should be admitting," said Katie, getting up when the door jingled and a group of students bustled inside. "It's a good thing you're never going to try to pick me up."
"Not really planning on picking anyone up," said Jensen, but Katie was already out of earshot so he turned back to Malcolm and his knife-throwing adventure, and was at it till the sun started going down.
:::
"Mom, I'm not pressing charges," insisted Jared, holding the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he groped around for the box cutter. "No, I don't care what you-- Mom. I'm fine. Ask Sandy if you don't believe me." Normally he would've gotten Chad back here dealing with the latest shipment, but this wasn't a conversation he wanted to be having in the middle of the store. "No, she would not lie to you. I'm not even bruised anymore."
The problem with skipping Sunday dinner a time or two was that your parents caught wind of your doings from alternative sources and that just never turned out well. But they had known that he was going to have to fire Brendan; as far as he was concerned, the punch was just a detail they didn't need to worry about.
"Mom, it's dealt with," he insisted, moving on to the next box. "You trusted me to do this, so let me do this. I handled it."
It was all well and good to let their baby boy handle the family business, right up until punches were thrown.
"You know we worry," she said, "and there are limits to what you should have to put up with. Are you going to need to replace him?"
"Yeah, I've got Sandy going through resumes," he said with a sigh of relief as she moved on. "One of my other part-timers cut back on her course load and wanted some extra hours this fall, though, so we're not desperate."
"Always better to get things in place before you need them," she said, a lesson Jared had learned long before he even took the smallest place in the family business. "So... any other developments in your life that I ought to know about?"
"Are you trying to ask if I'm dating anyone?" said Jared, inspecting a copy of the latest Chabon for damage. "You know I'm not."
"Well how would I know that?" she said. "All I know is that things didn't work out with Aldis. I haven't seen you in two weeks, Jared, and you know it. You can't spare just one Sunday for you family?"
"This week, I promise," he said. "I went out last weekend, but... well, you know how it goes."
"You haven't brought anyone home since Milo," said his mother with that long-suffering tone that all mothers somehow had. "Are things really that hard out there?"
Jared just laughed and set the book down, moving on again, matching the boxes against his inventory list. "I'm just having fun," he said, because somehow it sounded better than admitting that he could never seem to find what he was looking for. "I'm young, isn't that what we're supposed to do?"
"Well, yes," she admitted. "Still, it would be nice to set another place at Sunday dinner again."
"Believe me, you'll be the first to know," said Jared. "Well, second. Third at worst."
"You'd tell that Chad before you'd tell your own mother?"
"It's not that I tell him things, he somehow just finds out," said Jared. And what Chad didn't find out, he just went ahead and made up. "But there's no one. There's not even... any real possibility on the horizon." Just a pretty face and a lot of forgettable dates, and nothing he really wanted to talk about.
"Well, make sure you're at dinner this weekend," she said. "I don't know what I'll tell your father if you're busy again. You know how he likes the whole family together."
"Yeah, it's Dad who likes the whole family together," said Jared. "I'll call you later this week, all right?"
"Sooner if you have anything to tell me?"
"Of course," Jared promised her, but did not expect that he would. "Love you, Mom."
"You too, JT," she said. "Don't be a stranger."
Part Two