Take me off this ship (J2, pg-13, 4600 words)
Oh my god, it's fic. Non-au J2 angst-schmoop.
Take me off this ship that is sinking
(J2, pg-13, 4600 words)
Jensen has moved out. Jared is sad.
I'm really grateful to chash and giandujakiss for making this postable. ♥ ♥ ♥ All remaining mistakes are my own.
It was the little things, like only having one toothbrush in the glass on the shelf in the bathroom, and putting just one plate in the dishwasher and just one beer bottle in the garbage.
Jared tried bringing a few boxes in from the garage and putting them in Jensen's old room, but the room didn't become storage space, and Jared ended up taking the boxes back out to the garage.
The bathroom never smelled of Jensen's shampoo anymore. It might not have been shampoo it used to smell of; it could have been Jensen's body-wash or moisturizer or any of the other stupid bottles of crap he used to clutter up the place with. Maybe Jared should have paid closer attention to what Jensen used to do in front of the mirror while Jared was brushing his teeth, because now the smell was gone and so were the bottles, and Jared didn't know what to buy in the store to bring the Jensen-smell back.
It was a hundred little things that caught Jared at odd moments and somehow made the whole house strange and different.
It was also the big thing: the hugeness of Jensen not being there.
:::
The afternoon was so grimly dark it felt like evening already.
Jared sat in his trailer with the lights off and played GTA4 on his PS3. For the second time this week, he wasn't needed on set. It was a Dean and Castiel scene, and Sam was some unspecified where else.
The flashing glow of the game splashed back, white and violet, onto Jared's face and the trailer's walls. His fingers clicked quietly and quickly at the controller. Outside, the rain was a steady throb against the roof of the trailer. Voices were raised and Jared guessed the crew was finally surrendering to the weather.
Jared's attention drifted from the game as he listened for approaching footsteps, tried to pick Jensen's voice out of the others.
Maybe Jensen was going to go back to Misha's trailer to run lines.
On screen, Jared's car slammed off the road and into the reservoir. 'Retry mission?', the game queried in a repeated flash. The steps outside rattled and Jared threw down the controller.
Jensen was still all Deaned-up and his hair was wet and dark. Up close, his skin shone with rainwater on make-up, giving him a slick, unreal look. He dropped heavily onto the couch and nudged Jared's knee with the tip of his boot.
"Hey, little brother," he drawled. His gaze fell on the screen and he tsked. "You're gonna burn your eyes out playing this thing all day."
"Not much else for me to do," Jared said, clambering onto the couch beside him.
Jensen raised an eyebrow. He still hadn't quite shaken Dean off but Jared was used to it, used to Dean hanging around for a while after Jensen had been filming. "Well there's this thing actors do when they're not actually on set, which is called 'learning your damn lines', so that when you do make it on to the set you don't have to resort to improv."
Jared's script was shoved down the side of the couch. He'd gotten pretty sick of reading page after page of 'Castiel and Dean'. Used to be 'Sam and Dean', and Jared had liked it better then.
He wanted to say something to Jensen, to vent a little, but he couldn't think of a way to put it that didn't sound pathetic or diva-ish or like he was bitching about Misha.
Jared appreciated most things that stretched the burden of carrying the show further than him and Jensen, and Misha was a pretty okay guy.
Jared didn't dislike Misha; he disliked seeing Misha's marks on set next to Jensen's where his own used to go. 'Dean and Castiel' meant 'Jensen and Misha', Jensen and Misha eating lunch together and running lines together, and just not being 'Jared and Jensen' anymore.
"I'll learn 'em later," he said. "I'll have plenty of time while you and Misha are filming."
There was a pause and, as it stretched on, Jared finally had to turn to look at Jensen. All traces of Dean gone, Jensen was watching him. Turning away from the scrutiny, Jared flushed and his jaw tightened.
"I could say something to Eric, y'know," Jensen said, carefully casual. "'Bout these long hours I'm having to work and how I don't get time to goof off in my trailer like some people."
Jared shook his head.
Jensen bumped their knees together, leaning in slightly. "It's just story-arc, man. It's just 'cause Misha seduced the fans. It doesn't really mean anything."
It only took the soft concern in Jensen's voice to start Jared's irritation unwinding. "What, can't I be a little bit possessive of Dean?" he said.
Nudging Jensen's shoulder to make room for himself, Jared pressed in against his side. Obligingly and without comment, Jensen stretched his arm out along the back of the couch, and it was so comfortable leaning in against Jensen that Jared wondered why they didn't do it more often, and whether it was really as weird as it seemed being comfortable like this.
"Now that's the stupidest thing I ever heard. You should know you don't stand a chance with Dean. Nobody does but Sam. It was Sam at the beginning and it'll be Sam the day Dean dies, again."
"Feels like they're drifting," Jared said.
Jensen shrugged. "Maybe they are, but, c'mon, how far can you drift from your other half?"
There was a moment where they both seemed to register how close their bodies were, the multiple points of contact between them. It was more than comfortable, and Jared had a reckless, defiant impulse to not care. If he looked at Jensen, if they looked at each other, it wouldn't be comfortable anymore; it would be intimate. So Jared stared at the screen, still flashing 'Retry mission?' at him, and didn't move until Jensen cleared his throat and shifted away.
"Guess you'd better get back on set soon, huh?" Jared said.
"Yeah," Jensen said. "Yeah. I'll see you later."
They didn't see much of each other for the rest of the day and, after Jensen had been dropped at his new place and they were on their way to Jared's, Jared wondered how it was possible to miss someone you worked sixteen-hour days with.
:::
Before, when Jared wanted to talk to Jensen, he just had to turn his head a little to the side or raise his voice or, at most, wander into the kitchen or the backyard or upstairs.
Now, he had to pick up the phone and call, and whereas it had been okay for Jared to fetch Jensen from the other room, Jared hesitated at actually calling him up to tell him about this guy who was on TV right now who looked like Jared's eighth grade English teacher.
A few pointless phone calls were fine, part of being friends, but Jared had just too many little thoughts during the day that he wanted to pass on to Jensen, thoughts that seemed stupid and unworthy of making the effort when he actually went to dial Jensen's number. Worse, he was running out of legitimate reasons to call.
And then there was the thing he hated most: getting voicemail, which meant not only did Jared not get Jensen, but he had to wonder where Jensen was, what he was doing and whether he was okay.
"Uh, hi," said Jared. "It's me, again. You're probably busy so, uh, I was just calling 'cause, uh, I can't find the pizza cutter, and I thought maybe you might know where it is, seeing as you brainwashed my kitchen so it only answers to you now, which makes you moving out kind of a dick move, and I'm probably gonna have to have the Divorce Talk with the kitchen so it knows we both still love it and it doesn't start harboring resentment issues at me as it gets older."
He took a breath. "But you're probably busy so… Okay, bye. I'll see you tomorrow."
Jared hung up.
Under his bed, Jared kept hidden the season two DVD boxset of Dark Angel. He'd bought it in order to properly do his homework on the embarrassingly twinky stage of Jensen's career.
After watching the show, and more precisely Alec, Jared had mocked Jensen mercilessly, right up until it had suddenly occurred to him that maybe something that essentially came down to, 'Haha, you were fucking beautiful back then and you still are now,' wasn't a very good taunt. It was an accurate one, but not particularly stinging.
As Alec, Jensen had been pretty in a girly kind of way; now he was just pretty, and Jared didn't think it was a good idea for him to be spending so much of his time telling Jensen so. Anyway, outsiders didn't seem to get that it was intended to irritate Jensen, and Jared often ended up having to explain the joke to them, which sucked 'cause generally they just ended up smiling and nodding and exchanging weird looks.
But Dark Angel had stayed under the bed, and now Jared took out The Berrisford Agenda and put it on. Then he wandered out of the room, leaving the door just cracked open and went downstairs. He got himself a beer, found a football game to watch, and pretended that Jensen was just upstairs.
Catching Alec's voice in the moments of quiet on TV didn't make it feel like Jensen was still in the house. In fact, it sounded pathetic and maybe a little bit creepy, and Jared was pretty sure the look Sadie was giving him was a worried one.
"Okay," he said. "Fine. Jensen's not here and he's not answering his phone. It's not like any of this is TMZ material."
The DVD was still playing when Jared to take his shower. Jared kind of wished he'd turned the damn thing off because he could hear Alec even more clearly in here, which made jerking off an awkward experience. Not that Jared had never jerked off within earshot of Jensen before; they'd lived together, after all, and as both of them had had girlfriends visit, it wasn't like jerking off was all they'd ever heard.
But in Jared's current unsettled and frustrated headspace, putting Alec on as background noise and then jerking off felt less like two unconnected incidents and more like cause and effect. Jared's dick was in his fist and Alec was talking in the next room - Alec, who it was acceptable and understandable for Jared to get hard for, because he wasn't actually Jensen or even Dean.
Fuck, Alec was pretty. That mouth, those freckles and stubble, and those fucking eyes, and didn't he wear glasses in that Berrisford episode? And wasn't it a goddamn shame that Jensen had had that LASIK-crap done?
And Jared came with his head stuck somewhere between wanting to bend Alec over and pound into his tight little ass, and fiercely missing Jensen.
Later, while Jared was wondering whether what the vet had said about the flaky skin on Harley's back legs was too trivial to call Jensen about, he noticed a new voicemail message on his phone.
"Hi," said Jensen. "Sorry I missed your call, was trying to cram some boxes in the loft. You know how much useless crap I seem to have accumulated while I was living with you? I have an avocado slicer. When the hell did I buy an avocado slicer?"
Jensen paused, then said, "Uh, your pizza cutter's probably in the drawer with the ice cream scoop and the broken bottle opener we stole from that bar in Fort Worth. Look right in the back. You want me to come help you look? Oh, no, that won't work 'cause I guess your pizza'll be stone fucking cold by now, right? Right. Okay, so, I'll see you tomorrow. Oh, and let me know how Harley's vet appointment went."
Jensen'd called while Jared was in the shower, his hand on his cock while Alec talked him through it from the next room.
:::
All show-related issues aside, Jared liked Misha. Misha was a nice guy, smart and funny and thoughtful. When that photo of Jensen and Jared dancing was leaked, in a pose that was open to entirely the wrong interpretation, Misha had obligingly done his best to distract the fans by posting a series of pictures on Twitter in which he made out with kitchen appliances.
They'd just finished shooting one of the first ever 'Sam and Castiel' scenes - the existence of which Jensen swore up and down he'd had nothing to do with, which was a lie if ever Jared heard one - when Misha ambled over and said, "We're going out for a drink tonight. I think you should come."
Jared frowned slightly. "Who's we?"
Having been divested of Castiel's trenchcoat by Wardrobe, Misha fell in alongside Jared on the way to catering. "Currently? Just you and me. Which is why I think you should come."
There was something unexpectedly hopeful in the way Misha was looking at him, and Jared wondered how obvious his vague resentment had been and instantly felt horrible about it.
"Well, I guess I can't let you drink alone," he said. "That'd be kind of pathetic, maybe even to the degree that it'd affect the show's rep."
"It might also be a warning sign for alcohol dependence."
"Oh that comes with the job," Jared assured him.
By the time Jensen joined them, most of the awkwardness between Jared and Misha had been smoothed over. Whatever issues he had with Castiel, Jared was an adult and didn't have to let them impact his relationship with Misha. Besides, it always helped to be on good terms with a guy who had an army of crazy fangirl-minions on his side.
"Gonna come out for a drink tonight?" Misha asked Jensen, as Jensen took a seat next to Jared, eyed his plate and then began picking through his salad.
Jensen wrinkled his nose. "I don't know. I'm kinda beat and I've still got a shitload of stuff to do in the new house."
"Jared's coming," said Misha.
Jensen cast a quick glance at Jared, then back at Misha. He smiled that slow, somehow still faintly shy grin and shrugged. "Oh, well, I guess… I guess that stuff can wait 'til later this weekend?" He glanced back at Jared and grinned a little more certainly. "Yeah, sure, why not?"
:::
They didn't go to the usual bar, the one the crew usually went to. Instead, because he was feeling good-natured towards Misha and still a little guilty, Jared took them to the bar that he and Jensen had discovered in their first week in Vancouver, the one that always played the cheesiest eighties rock known to mankind and had fabulously horrible flocked wallpaper.
However tired he'd been earlier, Jensen unwound pretty quickly once Jared got a few beers in him.
"And the drawers in the island in the kitchen, when I open them, the drawers kind of… they kind of… twirl," he said, and he illustrated with a pirouetting gesture with one finger. "Like, I know they're just unfolding, but they do it in a really twirly way."
Jared propped his chin up on his hand and watched Jensen talk, enjoying not so much the twirling drawers as the obvious contentment in Jensen's voice.
"You should have a housewarming party," said Misha. "And give us all the grand tour."
Jensen mouthed thoughtfully at the neck of his beer bottle. Then he shook his head. "It'd be a pretty boring tour, and over really quickly. I could just stand in the living room and point: kitchen, bathroom, my room, Jared's room-"
"Wait, back up a second. Jared's room?" Misha flicked a glance in Jared's direction. "You've allocated Jared a room?"
"Well, yeah, I mean it's the guest room, I just - Y'know, I just think of it as…" Jensen's face had that lost, slightly irritable look it always got when he was feeling uncomfortable.
"Your old room in my house is still your room," Jared said. "I ever have guests, they're gonna have to sleep on the couch."
It forced a little huff of laughter from Jensen and their eyes caught for just a second, the look between them expressing a shared awareness that Misha was almost Rosenbaum-bizarre at times with his weird questions, and they just had to wait for him to make sense again. Jared smiled and the last of Jensen's awkward expression smoothed out.
"Huh," said Misha. He was watching them both, fascinated, and beside him, Jared felt Jensen tensing up again.
Jared's tolerance was starting to run a little thin. "Is there something weird about that?" he said, and the vaguely hostile note that crept in didn’t go unnoticed.
"No, makes perfect sense to me," said Misha easily. "The real question is, do you think it's weird that you guys live less than five minutes apart and still have rooms allocated for each other in your houses?"
Jared and Jensen didn't look at each other. Misha calmly went back to drinking his beer.
"Screw this," said Jensen. "I need more alcohol."
:::
Later, Jared gave Jensen a lift home. In the patchy orange glare of the streetlights, Jensen stumbled up the drive to the front door. Jared sat in his car and watched him and thought about how unnatural it felt.
"You don’t have to watch me all the way to the door," Jensen called out. "I'm perfectly safe."
There was just an empty house waiting for Jared. Dogs and messages on the answering machine and still inescapably empty.
"Hey," he said, climbing out of the car. Bleary-eyed, Jensen looked back at him, waited for Jared to catch up to him at the door. "Hey, can I come in?"
Dimly, Jared thought that maybe, while Jensen was drunk and looking at him the way he was, nakedly appraising, Jared shouldn't be asking to come in.
"For coffee?" Jensen asked, and the way he drew the word out gave it layers of meaning.
"I wanna see my room," he said.
Jensen went on studying him, bright-eyed and a couple of steps removed from the quiet and sharp guy Jared normally worked with. Jared didn't look away from him. Then Jensen smiled slightly and nodded, turned and fumbled the door open.
There were still packing crates and boxes through the house, but none in Jared's room. Jensen flicked the light on and wandered into the room, sat down on the made bed and looked up at Jared.
"This is yours," he said to Jared.
Jared's skin shivered in an unexpected hot flutter and he carefully circled the bed, pretending to look at the room while all the time he was conscious of Jensen on the bed that was his. It wasn't as though he'd drunk that much beer but he felt loose and unpredictable.
Him in a room with Jensen and a bed seemed dangerous in a way it never would have been if he'd been sober.
And then, because it seemed to be the only way left to go, Jared sat down on the bed beside Jensen. Jensen was right there, unmistakably present at last, and it was awesome and it made Jared happy. They smiled sleepily at each other.
It wasn't until the next morning that Jared started to feel that, somehow, even sitting thigh to thigh and shoulder to shoulder with Jensen, on the bed that was Jared's in the house that was Jensen's, it hadn't been close enough.
:::
Nobody on set was anything less than completely bone-tired. By the time he made it back to his trailer, Jared was in that strange, contradictory state of hyper-alert exhaustion as his brain used his mental balance as fuel reserves. Unblinking and working on automatic, Jared showered and changed, then headed off to find Jensen.
Obviously Jensen himself had made it as far as the shower and no further, because Jared found him sleepy and still wet on his couch. Jared dropped to a crouch beside him and cocked his head to get a better look at his face. Jensen's lips were slightly parted, and his skin was flushed and shining from the shower.
"I wanna take you home with me," said Jared. He drew in a small breath at how it sounded, not because it wasn't true but because it was. Then he put his hand on Jensen's shoulder, shaking him gently as he said in a louder voice, "C'mon, man, time to get you home."
Jensen mumbled something unfriendly and filthy at Jared, which completely dispelled the image of an angelically slumbering prettyboy. Laughing, Jared hauled him to his feet, put his jacket on him, and dragged him out to where Clif was waiting with the car. It was unlikely Jensen was more than half-awake the whole way and, once he was settled in the back of the car next to Jared, Jensen drifted back towards full unconsciousness.
After a few moments, Jensen's damp hair began to stroke Jared's cheek as his head lolled towards Jared's shoulder.
"We should set up a playdate," Jared said to the top of Jensen's head. "For the dogs. Y'know, take 'em out somewhere, play ball, let 'em run around."
He glanced down a little farther but in the shadows and at this angle he could only see slivers of Jensen's face and the dark featheriness of his eyelashes.
"'Cause I think they miss Icarus," Jared continued. "I mean, yeah, he's a tiny, ridiculous-looking thing, with a really bad attitude which I can only blame on poor parenting by you and Danneel, but he's, like, part of their pack. And they miss him."
Jensen didn't answer and when they pulled in outside his place, he was fast asleep, tucked in under Jared's chin and his shoulder wedged into Jared's chest. It wasn't a particularly comfortable position for Jared but it seemed to be working for Jensen.
Clif caught Jared's eye in the rear view mirror. "You want me to go around again?" he said.
"Yeah," said Jared, "Thanks," and he shifted to get as comfortable as he could without waking Jensen.
:::
In the middle of the night, Jared picked up his phone, called Jensen, and said, "Why did you move out?"
There was a noise like Jensen properly waking up, a breathy unf, and then the wet sound of Jensen licking his lips. "Jared. Jared, god… what time is it?"
"Uh…" Jared glanced at his clock. "A little after three. Why did you move out?"
"You called me at three in the fucking morning to ask me why I moved out? Jared… I don't…"
"It's a simple question," Jared said. "Why did you move out?"
Quiet again. Jared clutched the phone to his ear and watched the red LEDs flash on his bedside clock as the seconds ticked by. It was easy to imagine Jensen, just five minutes away, disheveled and scruffy in his bed, probably sleeping in his blue He-Man t-shirt, which had been washed and washed to flimsy softness.
"I thought you… it'd been a year. I thought maybe you wanted your own space," Jensen said finally.
"That's stupid," Jared told him. "Pack a bag, Imma come over and pick you up, bring you home."
The argument he was expecting never came. Jensen just said, "Okay," and was waiting on the doorstep of his house when Jared pulled up outside. When Jensen climbed into the car, his jacket fell open just enough for Jared to catch a glimpse of his He-Man t-shirt underneath, and he grinned.
:::
Spontaneity was great but it didn't leave time for smoothing out all the details, so when Jared got Jensen home, it only then occurred to him that there was no bed in Jensen's room anymore. He frowned at the big, dark emptiness of Jensen's old room, Jensen behind him in the doorway, struggling to stay on his feet as the dogs frolicked enthusiastically around him.
"I'll sleep on the couch," Jensen said. "It's no big deal." He dropped his bag on the floor and started kicking off his boots.
"Dude, no! I didn't drag you out of bed so you could sleep on a couch! Hey, you could…" Jared cut off and bit his lip. His stomach tightened as Jensen turned to look at him, one eyebrow raised. He shrugged lamely. "My bed's real big."
A faint pinkness crept along Jensen's cheekbones, and his lips slipped parted for a moment before he put a sentence together. "You saying I should sleep in your bed, Jared?" His tone held a good deal of mockery but Jared paid it no attention.
"It's a big bed," he said more firmly. "If you wanna be pathetic and sleep on the couch, be my guest. But… it's a big bed."
With that, he headed upstairs and got into bed. He stared at the ceiling and reminded himself to breathe.
It took a few minutes, long enough that Jared was feeling desperate and twitchy, and then the stairs creaked again, the door opened and Jensen's shape moved through the darkness.
Jensen patted blindly at the bed and Jared considerately rolled over onto one side. Then the bed dipped as Jensen laid down beside him. In the darkness, Jared could hear him breathing. Even with the space between them, he was acutely conscious of the warmth of Jensen's body next to him. Jensen sighed and the bed shivered again as he relaxed.
Jensen drew in breath and Jared waited for the snarky remark about keeping his hands to himself or not snoring, farting, humping, whatever. Something to maintain the expected limits between them.
"G'night, Jared," Jensen said.
"G'night, Jensen," Jared said.
:::
Everything was how it used to be in the morning. Jared got up first, took the dogs out for a run, came home and made breakfast while Jensen slept late. The only difference was that Jensen was sleeping in Jared's bed instead of his own. And, sure, Jared never used to get a kick out of just watching Jensen sleep. That was different too.
At a quarter after eleven, Jensen stumbled into the kitchen and Jared wordlessly pressed a cup of strong black coffee into his hands. Jensen groaned, took a long gulp, and then groaned again. Jared watched, and thought.
Jensen was at home again. Jensen had slept in his bed last night, just inches away from Jared, right there all night. And it wasn't close enough.
Jared put down his own coffee and approached Jensen. "Hold still," he said, wresting Jensen's coffee away from him. "I wanna try something."
He put his hands on Jensen's hips, and Jensen looked down at them in sleepy bewilderment. Then he looked back up at Jared, just in time for Jared to catch his mouth in a kiss. Jensen's lips were dry and his mouth tasted of coffee and sleep. Jared gave a small grunt and pushed in closer, licking Jensen's lips open for him, until Jensen tilted his face up to Jared and gave his mouth up to him. There was a stroke of Jensen's fingertips at the back of Jared's neck - a nothing touch that made Jared's spine twitch - and then a hand settling more certainly on Jared's shoulder.
It was a long, thoughtful kiss, and when Jensen finally pulled away to look at Jared, his mouth was soft and dark, and Jared wanted to kiss it again, because he'd already thought of some new ways to try it.
"Hey," Jensen said, his voice low and shaky. "What just happened?"
"You're here," said Jared. "Are you gonna stay? I want you to."
"Yeah," said Jensen. "I'm staying."
Jared nodded and kissed him again, just to make sure.
~end
Take me off this ship that is sinking
(J2, pg-13, 4600 words)
Jensen has moved out. Jared is sad.
I'm really grateful to chash and giandujakiss for making this postable. ♥ ♥ ♥ All remaining mistakes are my own.
It was the little things, like only having one toothbrush in the glass on the shelf in the bathroom, and putting just one plate in the dishwasher and just one beer bottle in the garbage.
Jared tried bringing a few boxes in from the garage and putting them in Jensen's old room, but the room didn't become storage space, and Jared ended up taking the boxes back out to the garage.
The bathroom never smelled of Jensen's shampoo anymore. It might not have been shampoo it used to smell of; it could have been Jensen's body-wash or moisturizer or any of the other stupid bottles of crap he used to clutter up the place with. Maybe Jared should have paid closer attention to what Jensen used to do in front of the mirror while Jared was brushing his teeth, because now the smell was gone and so were the bottles, and Jared didn't know what to buy in the store to bring the Jensen-smell back.
It was a hundred little things that caught Jared at odd moments and somehow made the whole house strange and different.
It was also the big thing: the hugeness of Jensen not being there.
:::
The afternoon was so grimly dark it felt like evening already.
Jared sat in his trailer with the lights off and played GTA4 on his PS3. For the second time this week, he wasn't needed on set. It was a Dean and Castiel scene, and Sam was some unspecified where else.
The flashing glow of the game splashed back, white and violet, onto Jared's face and the trailer's walls. His fingers clicked quietly and quickly at the controller. Outside, the rain was a steady throb against the roof of the trailer. Voices were raised and Jared guessed the crew was finally surrendering to the weather.
Jared's attention drifted from the game as he listened for approaching footsteps, tried to pick Jensen's voice out of the others.
Maybe Jensen was going to go back to Misha's trailer to run lines.
On screen, Jared's car slammed off the road and into the reservoir. 'Retry mission?', the game queried in a repeated flash. The steps outside rattled and Jared threw down the controller.
Jensen was still all Deaned-up and his hair was wet and dark. Up close, his skin shone with rainwater on make-up, giving him a slick, unreal look. He dropped heavily onto the couch and nudged Jared's knee with the tip of his boot.
"Hey, little brother," he drawled. His gaze fell on the screen and he tsked. "You're gonna burn your eyes out playing this thing all day."
"Not much else for me to do," Jared said, clambering onto the couch beside him.
Jensen raised an eyebrow. He still hadn't quite shaken Dean off but Jared was used to it, used to Dean hanging around for a while after Jensen had been filming. "Well there's this thing actors do when they're not actually on set, which is called 'learning your damn lines', so that when you do make it on to the set you don't have to resort to improv."
Jared's script was shoved down the side of the couch. He'd gotten pretty sick of reading page after page of 'Castiel and Dean'. Used to be 'Sam and Dean', and Jared had liked it better then.
He wanted to say something to Jensen, to vent a little, but he couldn't think of a way to put it that didn't sound pathetic or diva-ish or like he was bitching about Misha.
Jared appreciated most things that stretched the burden of carrying the show further than him and Jensen, and Misha was a pretty okay guy.
Jared didn't dislike Misha; he disliked seeing Misha's marks on set next to Jensen's where his own used to go. 'Dean and Castiel' meant 'Jensen and Misha', Jensen and Misha eating lunch together and running lines together, and just not being 'Jared and Jensen' anymore.
"I'll learn 'em later," he said. "I'll have plenty of time while you and Misha are filming."
There was a pause and, as it stretched on, Jared finally had to turn to look at Jensen. All traces of Dean gone, Jensen was watching him. Turning away from the scrutiny, Jared flushed and his jaw tightened.
"I could say something to Eric, y'know," Jensen said, carefully casual. "'Bout these long hours I'm having to work and how I don't get time to goof off in my trailer like some people."
Jared shook his head.
Jensen bumped their knees together, leaning in slightly. "It's just story-arc, man. It's just 'cause Misha seduced the fans. It doesn't really mean anything."
It only took the soft concern in Jensen's voice to start Jared's irritation unwinding. "What, can't I be a little bit possessive of Dean?" he said.
Nudging Jensen's shoulder to make room for himself, Jared pressed in against his side. Obligingly and without comment, Jensen stretched his arm out along the back of the couch, and it was so comfortable leaning in against Jensen that Jared wondered why they didn't do it more often, and whether it was really as weird as it seemed being comfortable like this.
"Now that's the stupidest thing I ever heard. You should know you don't stand a chance with Dean. Nobody does but Sam. It was Sam at the beginning and it'll be Sam the day Dean dies, again."
"Feels like they're drifting," Jared said.
Jensen shrugged. "Maybe they are, but, c'mon, how far can you drift from your other half?"
There was a moment where they both seemed to register how close their bodies were, the multiple points of contact between them. It was more than comfortable, and Jared had a reckless, defiant impulse to not care. If he looked at Jensen, if they looked at each other, it wouldn't be comfortable anymore; it would be intimate. So Jared stared at the screen, still flashing 'Retry mission?' at him, and didn't move until Jensen cleared his throat and shifted away.
"Guess you'd better get back on set soon, huh?" Jared said.
"Yeah," Jensen said. "Yeah. I'll see you later."
They didn't see much of each other for the rest of the day and, after Jensen had been dropped at his new place and they were on their way to Jared's, Jared wondered how it was possible to miss someone you worked sixteen-hour days with.
:::
Before, when Jared wanted to talk to Jensen, he just had to turn his head a little to the side or raise his voice or, at most, wander into the kitchen or the backyard or upstairs.
Now, he had to pick up the phone and call, and whereas it had been okay for Jared to fetch Jensen from the other room, Jared hesitated at actually calling him up to tell him about this guy who was on TV right now who looked like Jared's eighth grade English teacher.
A few pointless phone calls were fine, part of being friends, but Jared had just too many little thoughts during the day that he wanted to pass on to Jensen, thoughts that seemed stupid and unworthy of making the effort when he actually went to dial Jensen's number. Worse, he was running out of legitimate reasons to call.
And then there was the thing he hated most: getting voicemail, which meant not only did Jared not get Jensen, but he had to wonder where Jensen was, what he was doing and whether he was okay.
"Uh, hi," said Jared. "It's me, again. You're probably busy so, uh, I was just calling 'cause, uh, I can't find the pizza cutter, and I thought maybe you might know where it is, seeing as you brainwashed my kitchen so it only answers to you now, which makes you moving out kind of a dick move, and I'm probably gonna have to have the Divorce Talk with the kitchen so it knows we both still love it and it doesn't start harboring resentment issues at me as it gets older."
He took a breath. "But you're probably busy so… Okay, bye. I'll see you tomorrow."
Jared hung up.
Under his bed, Jared kept hidden the season two DVD boxset of Dark Angel. He'd bought it in order to properly do his homework on the embarrassingly twinky stage of Jensen's career.
After watching the show, and more precisely Alec, Jared had mocked Jensen mercilessly, right up until it had suddenly occurred to him that maybe something that essentially came down to, 'Haha, you were fucking beautiful back then and you still are now,' wasn't a very good taunt. It was an accurate one, but not particularly stinging.
As Alec, Jensen had been pretty in a girly kind of way; now he was just pretty, and Jared didn't think it was a good idea for him to be spending so much of his time telling Jensen so. Anyway, outsiders didn't seem to get that it was intended to irritate Jensen, and Jared often ended up having to explain the joke to them, which sucked 'cause generally they just ended up smiling and nodding and exchanging weird looks.
But Dark Angel had stayed under the bed, and now Jared took out The Berrisford Agenda and put it on. Then he wandered out of the room, leaving the door just cracked open and went downstairs. He got himself a beer, found a football game to watch, and pretended that Jensen was just upstairs.
Catching Alec's voice in the moments of quiet on TV didn't make it feel like Jensen was still in the house. In fact, it sounded pathetic and maybe a little bit creepy, and Jared was pretty sure the look Sadie was giving him was a worried one.
"Okay," he said. "Fine. Jensen's not here and he's not answering his phone. It's not like any of this is TMZ material."
The DVD was still playing when Jared to take his shower. Jared kind of wished he'd turned the damn thing off because he could hear Alec even more clearly in here, which made jerking off an awkward experience. Not that Jared had never jerked off within earshot of Jensen before; they'd lived together, after all, and as both of them had had girlfriends visit, it wasn't like jerking off was all they'd ever heard.
But in Jared's current unsettled and frustrated headspace, putting Alec on as background noise and then jerking off felt less like two unconnected incidents and more like cause and effect. Jared's dick was in his fist and Alec was talking in the next room - Alec, who it was acceptable and understandable for Jared to get hard for, because he wasn't actually Jensen or even Dean.
Fuck, Alec was pretty. That mouth, those freckles and stubble, and those fucking eyes, and didn't he wear glasses in that Berrisford episode? And wasn't it a goddamn shame that Jensen had had that LASIK-crap done?
And Jared came with his head stuck somewhere between wanting to bend Alec over and pound into his tight little ass, and fiercely missing Jensen.
Later, while Jared was wondering whether what the vet had said about the flaky skin on Harley's back legs was too trivial to call Jensen about, he noticed a new voicemail message on his phone.
"Hi," said Jensen. "Sorry I missed your call, was trying to cram some boxes in the loft. You know how much useless crap I seem to have accumulated while I was living with you? I have an avocado slicer. When the hell did I buy an avocado slicer?"
Jensen paused, then said, "Uh, your pizza cutter's probably in the drawer with the ice cream scoop and the broken bottle opener we stole from that bar in Fort Worth. Look right in the back. You want me to come help you look? Oh, no, that won't work 'cause I guess your pizza'll be stone fucking cold by now, right? Right. Okay, so, I'll see you tomorrow. Oh, and let me know how Harley's vet appointment went."
Jensen'd called while Jared was in the shower, his hand on his cock while Alec talked him through it from the next room.
:::
All show-related issues aside, Jared liked Misha. Misha was a nice guy, smart and funny and thoughtful. When that photo of Jensen and Jared dancing was leaked, in a pose that was open to entirely the wrong interpretation, Misha had obligingly done his best to distract the fans by posting a series of pictures on Twitter in which he made out with kitchen appliances.
They'd just finished shooting one of the first ever 'Sam and Castiel' scenes - the existence of which Jensen swore up and down he'd had nothing to do with, which was a lie if ever Jared heard one - when Misha ambled over and said, "We're going out for a drink tonight. I think you should come."
Jared frowned slightly. "Who's we?"
Having been divested of Castiel's trenchcoat by Wardrobe, Misha fell in alongside Jared on the way to catering. "Currently? Just you and me. Which is why I think you should come."
There was something unexpectedly hopeful in the way Misha was looking at him, and Jared wondered how obvious his vague resentment had been and instantly felt horrible about it.
"Well, I guess I can't let you drink alone," he said. "That'd be kind of pathetic, maybe even to the degree that it'd affect the show's rep."
"It might also be a warning sign for alcohol dependence."
"Oh that comes with the job," Jared assured him.
By the time Jensen joined them, most of the awkwardness between Jared and Misha had been smoothed over. Whatever issues he had with Castiel, Jared was an adult and didn't have to let them impact his relationship with Misha. Besides, it always helped to be on good terms with a guy who had an army of crazy fangirl-minions on his side.
"Gonna come out for a drink tonight?" Misha asked Jensen, as Jensen took a seat next to Jared, eyed his plate and then began picking through his salad.
Jensen wrinkled his nose. "I don't know. I'm kinda beat and I've still got a shitload of stuff to do in the new house."
"Jared's coming," said Misha.
Jensen cast a quick glance at Jared, then back at Misha. He smiled that slow, somehow still faintly shy grin and shrugged. "Oh, well, I guess… I guess that stuff can wait 'til later this weekend?" He glanced back at Jared and grinned a little more certainly. "Yeah, sure, why not?"
:::
They didn't go to the usual bar, the one the crew usually went to. Instead, because he was feeling good-natured towards Misha and still a little guilty, Jared took them to the bar that he and Jensen had discovered in their first week in Vancouver, the one that always played the cheesiest eighties rock known to mankind and had fabulously horrible flocked wallpaper.
However tired he'd been earlier, Jensen unwound pretty quickly once Jared got a few beers in him.
"And the drawers in the island in the kitchen, when I open them, the drawers kind of… they kind of… twirl," he said, and he illustrated with a pirouetting gesture with one finger. "Like, I know they're just unfolding, but they do it in a really twirly way."
Jared propped his chin up on his hand and watched Jensen talk, enjoying not so much the twirling drawers as the obvious contentment in Jensen's voice.
"You should have a housewarming party," said Misha. "And give us all the grand tour."
Jensen mouthed thoughtfully at the neck of his beer bottle. Then he shook his head. "It'd be a pretty boring tour, and over really quickly. I could just stand in the living room and point: kitchen, bathroom, my room, Jared's room-"
"Wait, back up a second. Jared's room?" Misha flicked a glance in Jared's direction. "You've allocated Jared a room?"
"Well, yeah, I mean it's the guest room, I just - Y'know, I just think of it as…" Jensen's face had that lost, slightly irritable look it always got when he was feeling uncomfortable.
"Your old room in my house is still your room," Jared said. "I ever have guests, they're gonna have to sleep on the couch."
It forced a little huff of laughter from Jensen and their eyes caught for just a second, the look between them expressing a shared awareness that Misha was almost Rosenbaum-bizarre at times with his weird questions, and they just had to wait for him to make sense again. Jared smiled and the last of Jensen's awkward expression smoothed out.
"Huh," said Misha. He was watching them both, fascinated, and beside him, Jared felt Jensen tensing up again.
Jared's tolerance was starting to run a little thin. "Is there something weird about that?" he said, and the vaguely hostile note that crept in didn’t go unnoticed.
"No, makes perfect sense to me," said Misha easily. "The real question is, do you think it's weird that you guys live less than five minutes apart and still have rooms allocated for each other in your houses?"
Jared and Jensen didn't look at each other. Misha calmly went back to drinking his beer.
"Screw this," said Jensen. "I need more alcohol."
:::
Later, Jared gave Jensen a lift home. In the patchy orange glare of the streetlights, Jensen stumbled up the drive to the front door. Jared sat in his car and watched him and thought about how unnatural it felt.
"You don’t have to watch me all the way to the door," Jensen called out. "I'm perfectly safe."
There was just an empty house waiting for Jared. Dogs and messages on the answering machine and still inescapably empty.
"Hey," he said, climbing out of the car. Bleary-eyed, Jensen looked back at him, waited for Jared to catch up to him at the door. "Hey, can I come in?"
Dimly, Jared thought that maybe, while Jensen was drunk and looking at him the way he was, nakedly appraising, Jared shouldn't be asking to come in.
"For coffee?" Jensen asked, and the way he drew the word out gave it layers of meaning.
"I wanna see my room," he said.
Jensen went on studying him, bright-eyed and a couple of steps removed from the quiet and sharp guy Jared normally worked with. Jared didn't look away from him. Then Jensen smiled slightly and nodded, turned and fumbled the door open.
There were still packing crates and boxes through the house, but none in Jared's room. Jensen flicked the light on and wandered into the room, sat down on the made bed and looked up at Jared.
"This is yours," he said to Jared.
Jared's skin shivered in an unexpected hot flutter and he carefully circled the bed, pretending to look at the room while all the time he was conscious of Jensen on the bed that was his. It wasn't as though he'd drunk that much beer but he felt loose and unpredictable.
Him in a room with Jensen and a bed seemed dangerous in a way it never would have been if he'd been sober.
And then, because it seemed to be the only way left to go, Jared sat down on the bed beside Jensen. Jensen was right there, unmistakably present at last, and it was awesome and it made Jared happy. They smiled sleepily at each other.
It wasn't until the next morning that Jared started to feel that, somehow, even sitting thigh to thigh and shoulder to shoulder with Jensen, on the bed that was Jared's in the house that was Jensen's, it hadn't been close enough.
:::
Nobody on set was anything less than completely bone-tired. By the time he made it back to his trailer, Jared was in that strange, contradictory state of hyper-alert exhaustion as his brain used his mental balance as fuel reserves. Unblinking and working on automatic, Jared showered and changed, then headed off to find Jensen.
Obviously Jensen himself had made it as far as the shower and no further, because Jared found him sleepy and still wet on his couch. Jared dropped to a crouch beside him and cocked his head to get a better look at his face. Jensen's lips were slightly parted, and his skin was flushed and shining from the shower.
"I wanna take you home with me," said Jared. He drew in a small breath at how it sounded, not because it wasn't true but because it was. Then he put his hand on Jensen's shoulder, shaking him gently as he said in a louder voice, "C'mon, man, time to get you home."
Jensen mumbled something unfriendly and filthy at Jared, which completely dispelled the image of an angelically slumbering prettyboy. Laughing, Jared hauled him to his feet, put his jacket on him, and dragged him out to where Clif was waiting with the car. It was unlikely Jensen was more than half-awake the whole way and, once he was settled in the back of the car next to Jared, Jensen drifted back towards full unconsciousness.
After a few moments, Jensen's damp hair began to stroke Jared's cheek as his head lolled towards Jared's shoulder.
"We should set up a playdate," Jared said to the top of Jensen's head. "For the dogs. Y'know, take 'em out somewhere, play ball, let 'em run around."
He glanced down a little farther but in the shadows and at this angle he could only see slivers of Jensen's face and the dark featheriness of his eyelashes.
"'Cause I think they miss Icarus," Jared continued. "I mean, yeah, he's a tiny, ridiculous-looking thing, with a really bad attitude which I can only blame on poor parenting by you and Danneel, but he's, like, part of their pack. And they miss him."
Jensen didn't answer and when they pulled in outside his place, he was fast asleep, tucked in under Jared's chin and his shoulder wedged into Jared's chest. It wasn't a particularly comfortable position for Jared but it seemed to be working for Jensen.
Clif caught Jared's eye in the rear view mirror. "You want me to go around again?" he said.
"Yeah," said Jared, "Thanks," and he shifted to get as comfortable as he could without waking Jensen.
:::
In the middle of the night, Jared picked up his phone, called Jensen, and said, "Why did you move out?"
There was a noise like Jensen properly waking up, a breathy unf, and then the wet sound of Jensen licking his lips. "Jared. Jared, god… what time is it?"
"Uh…" Jared glanced at his clock. "A little after three. Why did you move out?"
"You called me at three in the fucking morning to ask me why I moved out? Jared… I don't…"
"It's a simple question," Jared said. "Why did you move out?"
Quiet again. Jared clutched the phone to his ear and watched the red LEDs flash on his bedside clock as the seconds ticked by. It was easy to imagine Jensen, just five minutes away, disheveled and scruffy in his bed, probably sleeping in his blue He-Man t-shirt, which had been washed and washed to flimsy softness.
"I thought you… it'd been a year. I thought maybe you wanted your own space," Jensen said finally.
"That's stupid," Jared told him. "Pack a bag, Imma come over and pick you up, bring you home."
The argument he was expecting never came. Jensen just said, "Okay," and was waiting on the doorstep of his house when Jared pulled up outside. When Jensen climbed into the car, his jacket fell open just enough for Jared to catch a glimpse of his He-Man t-shirt underneath, and he grinned.
:::
Spontaneity was great but it didn't leave time for smoothing out all the details, so when Jared got Jensen home, it only then occurred to him that there was no bed in Jensen's room anymore. He frowned at the big, dark emptiness of Jensen's old room, Jensen behind him in the doorway, struggling to stay on his feet as the dogs frolicked enthusiastically around him.
"I'll sleep on the couch," Jensen said. "It's no big deal." He dropped his bag on the floor and started kicking off his boots.
"Dude, no! I didn't drag you out of bed so you could sleep on a couch! Hey, you could…" Jared cut off and bit his lip. His stomach tightened as Jensen turned to look at him, one eyebrow raised. He shrugged lamely. "My bed's real big."
A faint pinkness crept along Jensen's cheekbones, and his lips slipped parted for a moment before he put a sentence together. "You saying I should sleep in your bed, Jared?" His tone held a good deal of mockery but Jared paid it no attention.
"It's a big bed," he said more firmly. "If you wanna be pathetic and sleep on the couch, be my guest. But… it's a big bed."
With that, he headed upstairs and got into bed. He stared at the ceiling and reminded himself to breathe.
It took a few minutes, long enough that Jared was feeling desperate and twitchy, and then the stairs creaked again, the door opened and Jensen's shape moved through the darkness.
Jensen patted blindly at the bed and Jared considerately rolled over onto one side. Then the bed dipped as Jensen laid down beside him. In the darkness, Jared could hear him breathing. Even with the space between them, he was acutely conscious of the warmth of Jensen's body next to him. Jensen sighed and the bed shivered again as he relaxed.
Jensen drew in breath and Jared waited for the snarky remark about keeping his hands to himself or not snoring, farting, humping, whatever. Something to maintain the expected limits between them.
"G'night, Jared," Jensen said.
"G'night, Jensen," Jared said.
:::
Everything was how it used to be in the morning. Jared got up first, took the dogs out for a run, came home and made breakfast while Jensen slept late. The only difference was that Jensen was sleeping in Jared's bed instead of his own. And, sure, Jared never used to get a kick out of just watching Jensen sleep. That was different too.
At a quarter after eleven, Jensen stumbled into the kitchen and Jared wordlessly pressed a cup of strong black coffee into his hands. Jensen groaned, took a long gulp, and then groaned again. Jared watched, and thought.
Jensen was at home again. Jensen had slept in his bed last night, just inches away from Jared, right there all night. And it wasn't close enough.
Jared put down his own coffee and approached Jensen. "Hold still," he said, wresting Jensen's coffee away from him. "I wanna try something."
He put his hands on Jensen's hips, and Jensen looked down at them in sleepy bewilderment. Then he looked back up at Jared, just in time for Jared to catch his mouth in a kiss. Jensen's lips were dry and his mouth tasted of coffee and sleep. Jared gave a small grunt and pushed in closer, licking Jensen's lips open for him, until Jensen tilted his face up to Jared and gave his mouth up to him. There was a stroke of Jensen's fingertips at the back of Jared's neck - a nothing touch that made Jared's spine twitch - and then a hand settling more certainly on Jared's shoulder.
It was a long, thoughtful kiss, and when Jensen finally pulled away to look at Jared, his mouth was soft and dark, and Jared wanted to kiss it again, because he'd already thought of some new ways to try it.
"Hey," Jensen said, his voice low and shaky. "What just happened?"
"You're here," said Jared. "Are you gonna stay? I want you to."
"Yeah," said Jensen. "I'm staying."
Jared nodded and kissed him again, just to make sure.
~end