Don't Let It Go To Waste - Part 3
Here I am, two months later, with the final part. *blinks* Don't look at me like that - this bitch is fucking long.
By the way? I love you all.
Title: Don't Let It Go To Waste (Part 3 of 3)
Author: kinkynicky
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Growing up in Texas is hard. Growing up in Texas and realising at the age of 16 that you’re in love with your male best friend? Is harder.
Words: 14,054 (posted in three parts due to length)
Disclaimer: No tiny Jareds or Jensens were hurt in the making of this story. Apart from little Jared. Who broke his arm. But that wasn’t really my fault. Title stolen from a Matt Willis song.
Dedication: keepaofthecheez once again, cause she wins at life. Linds...*sigh* I wuv you.
A/N: I’m not gonna throw excuses at you, I’ve been lousy, it took forever, but here it finally is - the last part. After more than a month of pondering, one major revamp (yes, Lindsay, you are a pain in the ass) and hours spent just staring at my word document, here it is. Hope you enjoy!
Thanks: This has kicked my ass completely. Much love and thanks to jakesdream and estel_willow who looked over this for me a few times and held my hand all month.
[Don't Let It Go To Waste - Part 1]
[Don't Let It Go To Waste - Part 2]
The warm body behind him shifts once again, and that arm so carelessly flung across his waist moves away. Jared hears the creak of bedsprings and feels the cool against his back when the warmth of skin on skin is gone.
The padding of feet across the room and then the bathroom door goes, and Jared sits up, blinking, sitting awkwardly for a minute as the shower turns on, wondering if following is a bad idea.
Making a choice, he grabs the sheet off the bed, wrapping it around his waist and makes his way towards the bathroom. Opening the door and leaning awkwardly against the frame, he coughs quietly for attention.
The shower curtain opens a little, one hand and a head popping out. “Hey. Didn’t know you were awake…”
~.~ ~.~ ~.~ ~.~
“Gay.” Jensen repeated the word. “What do you mean, you’re gay?” Incredulous voice, frown deep and arms flailing just a little, Jensen looked around. “What about all those girls you’ve dated?”
Jared sighed, still shaking, heart already starting to sink at Jensen’s reaction, but it was out there now, least he could do was explain himself. “It’s a lie, Jensen. Trying to fool myself and everyone else that I’m somebody else…but, I can’t not feel how I do, it doesn’t matter how many girls I date. I always come back to…” he sighed quietly, suddenly feeling tired, “to thinking about you, Jen.”
“Me.” Jensen repeated, not a question or a statement, no tone to his voice at all.
“Yeah, you. Cause I think…no, I know, that I love you.” He said it with everything he had, hoping that Jensen would see it in his eyes that it was really there.
Jensen pointed a finger. “Stop saying that.”
“But it’s true!” Jared growled, standing up straight and shaking his head. “And I refuse to apologise for that.”
Jensen’s face had always been a waterfall of expressions, but he couldn’t seem to decide upon a single one as he stared at Jared, mouth opening and closing. The liberation of finally just saying what he’d been thinking for so long was, for now, blocking the panic that maybe he’d ruined everything, so Jared just stood and waited for Jensen to find the words.
“You’re seventeen. How can you know for sure that you’re gay? You’re probably just…I don’t know, curious, and since I’m the closest person to you, you’re imagining these feelin-”
“Fuck you.” Jared snarled, a pang somewhere deep in his chest making him feel sick. “Don’t patronise me. Sixteen months younger than you, Jen. I’m not naïve and I’m not confused. I think about guys, Jensen. I think about you.” Reaching for the piece that had been his final straw, Jared took a step forward. “You kissed me, Jen.”
The waterfall of expressions suddenly stopped, landing on just one, and Jared managed to note the wry amusement on his friend’s face only seconds before Jensen started to laugh.
“That’s what this is about?!” His shout wasn’t nearly as loud as his laughter, but managed to startle Jared none the less. “One stupid, drink-induced kiss, and you think you’re gay?!”
Despite the fire he was spitting, Jensen’s eyes were as cold as Jared had ever seen them, and he wondered for a second why he’d thought it would all be okay if he admitted it. Holding his hands up in surrender, he nodded, trying to keep his face void of expression as he opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. There was nothing to say, so instead he turned and reached for the door.
Jensen’s fingers wrapped around his wrist far too quickly for someone who’d been drinking at all, and he sighed. “Jay…” When Jared managed to meet his best friend’s eyes all the hardness was gone and his face held nothing but apology. “Jay, come on. I’m sorry, okay?”
Despite the apology he still let go awkwardly of Jared’s wrist.
“I don’t know why I reacted like…I’m sorry…” A sheepish smile. “Wanna go somewhere we can talk about this?”
~.~
Having ‘borrowed’ Jeff’s car to get himself to Tom’s, Jared drove, both of them in silence until Jensen pointed to a twenty four hour diner, and proclaimed a need for waffles. The weight of his confession was the only thing that stopped Jared from smiling.
Jensen didn’t even look at him until they were settled, drinking coffee in a corner booth while Jensen waited for his waffles. When he did, Jared’s stomach went crazy, cause, yeah, he really had told Jensen that he loved him.
“You know…” Jensen murmured, reaching across the table to tug on the sleeve of Jared’s coat. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. It’s just…love is a big word, you know? And you kind of launched it at me.”
Jared nodded, glancing down at Jensen’s hand so close to his, before meeting those eyes again, trying to force sincerity to the surface. “I know love is a big word. I know that. I’ve spent the past year knowing that, Jensen. Or longer. I know you maybe feel like this is something I’ve suddenly forced on you, but I’ve been dealing with this for a while.”
Jensen said nothing, pulling his hand away and slumping back in his seat, his expression clueless but still open.
“I didn’t mean for it to come out like word vomit, but it did and I can’t take that back. I just needed you to know. After the other night, with the kissing and whatever? I couldn’t say that meant nothing like you did, cause it didn’t to me.”
Jensen opened his mouth to reply, but whatever he was about to say became lost as the waiter - a young college-looking type with slicked back hair - came over with Jensen’s waffles and a fresh cup of coffee for Jared.
When the guy left, Jensen watched him leave and then turned to Jared with an awkward smile. “What did you think of that guy?”
With a frown, Jared shook his head, blowing his bangs away when they tickled. “What?”
Jensen’s eyes were back on the waiter who was now behind the tiled counter talking to the cook through the utensils. “That guy. I mean, do you think he’s attractive? I’m just curious.”
To humour him, Jared looked over, letting a bored look grow on his features as he studied the guy. There was nothing wrong with him, aside from the fact that he wasn’t Jensen.
“I guess so.” He shrugged, turning back to those green eyes. “Why? Do you?”
He’d meant to shock some sort of response out of Jensen, but he only looked as though he’d been expecting the question, and shook his head. “I’m not gay, Jared.”
And what could he say to that? ‘Are you sure? Cause apparently some part of you has a desire to kiss other guys’ didn’t seem all that appropriate, and so Jared just nodded, hearing the thread of hope he’d been hanging onto snap. “Okay. Well, eat up and then I’ll take you home.”
~.~
Thirty minutes later, sitting in the car outside of Jensen’s house, Jared turned to his best friend and whispered quietly. “Do you hate me?”
Shoving his shoulder just a little with a genuine smile, Jensen shook his head. “No, Jay. I could never hate you.”
~.~
After his confession, Jared spent the next two days willing himself not to call Jensen. Trying to convince himself that it would just take time and a little space for things to get back to normal. It didn’t take long for Jensen to call.
“Jay, me and the guys are going out. You think maybe you can get hold of your fake ID and come with?”
Unable to help the smile and zing of excitement, Jared answered, “Sure, I’ll try.” He’d promised his dad that he wouldn’t even look for the thing, but Jensen inviting him out when really, he’d been kind of positive he’d never see him again? Completely worth getting in trouble for.
He enlisted Megan’s help in finding it, with the promise that he’d provide her with a months worth of those pre-teen magazines she spent her time slobbering over, and half an hour later in their dad’s study she held it up triumphantly.
Texting Jensen that all systems were go, Jared spent the next hour getting ready and was already sitting patiently on the steps of his porch when Tom, Mike and Jensen got there.
~.~
“Want a beer, Jay?” Mike asked once they’d been at the bar for a while. Jared had no idea why Mike hung around with them, being legal and old enough that he probably should have friends his own age, but hey, getting beer all night, he wasn’t going to complain.
Except for the part where Tommy offered to give him a hand, and that left Jensen and Jared at their table alone. Despite the music and roaring crowd inside the bar, the silence between them had never been so loud.
He was never more thankful than when Jensen cracked that little smile, shaking his head and leaning forwards to shout above the noise, “This is ridiculous. Look at us.”
Jared nodded, and found himself mouthing an apology with a shrug, to which Jensen shook his head even more and smiled a little wider. “Don’t you dare, Jay. It’s all good.”
Jared was about to reply when Mikey cut in with a “What’s all good?” and set four beers down in the middle of the table. Jared wondered for only a second how Mike had gotten served so quickly, and then remembered the size of the guy’s mouth.
“Everything.” Jensen nodded in reply to Mike, but his eyes never left Jared’s.
And he found himself thinking that yeah, maybe everything would be okay.
~.~
Until it happened again. The kissing thing.
It was maybe a bad idea, Jared decided, for the two of them to keep walking home alone after drinking so much, because somehow he kept ending up with Jensen’s tongue in his mouth.
Not that he complained, ever, about the kissing part of it, but Jared felt that burn in his chest weeks after Jensen woke up the next day with denials and excuses for what had happened the night before.
He started to think that maybe he wasn’t the only one dealing with sexuality issues, no matter how straight Jensen claimed to be.
And he tried to ignore it, he really did. Tried to put it down to false hope on his part, but the beer-fuelled fumbling and kissing started to happen on a more frequent basis, and a couple of times Jared found himself doubting that Jensen was a drunk as he claimed to be. It made everything a little harder to ignore.
It made the excuses a little harder to take.
~.~
“Do you think maybe I have a drink problem?” Jensen asked him one morning as they sat opposite each other in his kitchen sipping coffee and trying to talk away the tension. “Cause I keep doing out of character things after I’ve been out, and I think maybe I have a problem.”
Shaking his head, Jared stood up and poured his coffee into the sink, walking into the hallway to grab his coat, before coming back to stand in front of his friend.
“I think you have a problem, Jensen.” He let the anger seep into his expression, shaking his head a little with something akin to pity as Jensen stared up at him. “But it has nothing to do with drinking.”
And as he left the house, his head heavy with hangover and his heart heavy with something else, Jared swore to himself that he’d never kiss Jensen ever again.
~.~
And he really tried this time. He did. But then, without any encouragement on his part, it went a little too far.
Being good was hard. Being good was very hard. Especially when, as designated driver, he’d dropped Mikey off at home one night only to have Jensen climb into the front seat.
His idea that taking the car instead of walking, and dropping Jensen at his own house instead of letting him stay the night, proved to be as useful as a pile of pissed-in snow when Jensen reached across the seat and laid his warm hand right on the inside of Jared’s thigh.
Pulling the car back into the right lane - after swerving suddenly at the feel of Jen’s hand - Jared tried to smile, thinking in terms of friendship and trying to remember his own rules. Only his rules hadn’t considered this. Kissing was one thing, but making advances on his crotch was definitely another.
Patting Jensen’s hand in his most ‘straight’ and friendly of gestures, Jared nodded. “Yeah. Some…some party, huh, Jen?” Before taking hold of his friend’s hand and moving it away from himself.
“Y’ever jerked off with a guy, Jared?” Jensen slurred, hands remaining on his side of the car for the moment, his eyes boring, intense and hot into the side of Jared’s face. He could almost physically feel the burn, and turning to see that look in Jensen’s eyes, he suddenly felt like he preferred the hand-on-thigh thing.
Looking back to the road and blinking, Jared wondered what was the right thing to do in this situation, with his supposedly straight friend, asking him very gay questions.
“Answer’me.” Jensen whined a little from the passenger seat, and Jared started to find it difficult to concentrate on the road.
“No, Jensen. I have never jerked off with a guy.” He answered slowly, like he was talking to a child, and jumped again when Jensen’s hand snaked back into his thigh, a little higher this time.
“Think you want to?” Jensen asked, just as Jared pulled - too fast - with a sigh of relief, onto Jensen’s street, managing to ignore the massaging motion against his inseam and the hardening of his dick as he pulled almost into the driveway and shut of the car with a deep breath.
“Get out of the car Jensen.” He rushed the words out, using all his resolve and trying to conjure up all the excuses he’d been fed over the past month. Turning to see Jensen’s empty expression, he nodded. “Now.”
Jensen sat for a moment, staring with glazed eyes, before finally rolling them and fighting his way out of the car. He was barely out of the door before Jared reversed out, speeding off to his own house where Jeff was waiting, ready to beat his ass for taking the car again.
~.~
That night, he didn’t feel half as guilty as he should when he took himself in hand and stroked himself to hardness, almost feeling Jensen’s hand on his thigh again, warm and insistent, intent on causing him pleasure, but by the next morning all he had to show for the night before was more confusion.
Leaving Jeff his car - guy moaned about the damn thing every time Jared so much as looked at it these days - Jared walked, the next morning, to Jensen’s house. It was early, so instead of waking up the family he just called Jensen on his mobile phone asking him to come and open the door.
Jensen didn’t say anything, just hung up the phone, and Jared had started to think he’d just rolled over and gone back to sleep when the door opened to reveal Jensen there, sweatpants and messy hair, matched with the tired eyes of someone who was suffering from a pretty decent hangover.
Neither of them said anything as they stood there. Jared had been positive that Jensen was going to complain about how early it was, just basically ignore the issue of what had happened the night before, but instead all he got was silence.
“So come on, give me it.” He motioned with his hands for Jensen to move out onto the porch a little more, out of the house, out of hearing distance so as not to wake anybody inside.
Jensen’s voice was a little odd, worried maybe, when he asked “Give you what?” and Jared laughed a little, bitterly.
“Your excuse, Jensen. I know you have something wonderful to tell me that’ll explain you mauling my thigh last night in the car. So why don’t you save us dancing around each other and just tell me now.”
Standing at full height, Jared watched as his best friend blinked, his expression attempting void confusion and instead landing on guilt ridden. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
With his long legs it took Jared less than five seconds to be out of Jensen’s path and on his way back down the street. Only Jensen ran track now and it only took the same amount of time for him to be in front of Jared, middle of the road in nothing but sweatpants - bare feet, tired eyes tinged with panic and never looking more attractive to Jared.
“Wait, Jay, wait…”
Ignoring Jensen’s outstretched hands, Jared side-stepped and carried on walking, growling in an almost inhuman way when Jensen grabbed his arm and spun him around, already halfway through a tonne of excuses that he just didn’t want to hear. When he exploded, his voice was so loud and angry that he even shocked himself.
“I can’t keep doing this with you, Jensen!” The volume penetrated Jensen’s stream of reasons before the actual words did, and the frown that appeared took a second or two to really form.
“What?”
Threading his fingers through his hair, Jared shook his head, desperation and bruised hope rising to the surface like a love bite, open for Jensen to see if he looked in the right place. “This! I can’t keep doing this. You’re fucking everything up, Jen! You don’t see what you’re doing to us? To me? I mean it when I say that I love you. I mean it.”
“So what, just because you love me I’m supposed to be gay now? Just cause you are? I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work that way, Jared.”
Nodding, Jared felt himself boiling over and took a second to breathe, hanging his head and resting his hands on his hips. “And leading me on?” Jared raised his eyes to Jensen’s. “Leading me on is how it works?”
Jensen opened his mouth, made his attempt at defending himself but it was half-hearted and filled with the guilt was trying to deny. No words came.
“You let me in and then you push me away.” Jared continued, quieter this time, aware now, that they were in the middle of the road in Jensen’s street. “So I figure that either you’re not as straight as you think you are, or you’re just using me for…for whatever.” He felt sick, like he should cry but couldn’t find the tears. “There’s a lot of shit that I’ll take for you Jen…but I’m not letting you use me anymore.”
Jensen wiped a hand down his face, shaking his head, reaching out a little but then pulling his hand away. “I’m not gay, Jared. I’m not. It’s just you…you come over here looking the way you do with your stupid hair and your stupid huge eyes, and I can’t help but…” he stopped, shaking his head and closing his eyes. “You get so close to me, Jared.”
The broken whispers weren’t shame, but something else, confusion probably, and Jared couldn’t find it in him to shout anymore. “Yeah. Cause you let me.”
Both standing out in the road, staring at each other, breath coming hard, Jared made the decision for both of them, his chest hurting and constricting just from the thought of the words, but he managed to get them out, managed to say them right into those green eyes.
“See you around, Jensen.”
If he’d thought they were on the same wavelength he’d be mistaken, catching the way Jensen’s face fell right before Jared turned away.
Part One I Part Two l Part Three A I Part Three B I Epilogue