Two Turtledoves (and a Partridge in a Pear Tree)
title: Two Turtledoves (and a Partridge in a Pear Tree)
rating: PG-13ish
wordcount: 8210
summary: J2 non-AU, for ladyrhyanne for spn_j2_xmas. This is a modified version of her prompt for J2 kidfic and Christmas. Jared is surprised to figure out that Jensen is just as excited to prepare for Christmas (buying the tree, gift shopping, decorating the house, etc) as their kid is for Christmas morning. So sorry this took so long, ladyrhyanne! Hope you like it all right! ♥
warnings: kidfic, if that wasn't clear; dangerous levels of fluff.
disclaimer: One hundred percent fictional! This in no way represents the actual lives of Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki.
notes: Thanks must go to gypsy_sunday for her lovely continued encouragement and betweenthebliss for basically talking me off the cliff with this one and helping me fix it. ♥ Thank you SO MUCH, y'all have no idea.
-
When Jared wakes up, it's to an elbow in his face and a knee digging into his stomach. Somewhere above him, someone is singing his last name loud enough to wake the neighbors while drumming gently on his head.
Jared feels a mutinous groan bubbling up in his throat at the thought of opening his eyes. It's early. It's too early. He can just tell. Birds aren't even singing outside yet, he'll bet; the sun can't be up. And even if it is, his body feels like it's made of aches, and getting up does not seem worth it. He just wants to go back to sleep for oh, about ten more hours, then wake up at a leisurely pace with a cup of coffee and maybe a blowjob. That would be his idea of an awesome morning.
But things like that just don't happen that often in Jared's world anymore, and the reason why is sitting on his chest. Blindly, he reaches out a hand and pulls her down beside him.
"Maggie Padalecki," he says into the top of her head, "what did I say about waking me up like that?"
He opens his eyes and leans back a little to get a good look at her. She's dressed already in her pink sheep shirt and jeans, her curly blonde hair wrestled by clever fingers into two French braids on either side of her head. Her brown eyes are sparkling, which Jared never thought was actually possible until he started hanging out with children. She's practically the dictionary definition of mischievous.
"You told me not to!" she says, cheerful and bright and way too awake. "But Dad said wake you up, cuz we're gonna go get the Christmas tree!"
Jared paws through his memory and comes up with a vague string of something Jensen said last night about trees. Thinking about it farther than that, he's got nothing, so he gives up. He squints over at the clock and doesn't try to hold back the groan when he sees the readout: eight AM. His first day off and he's waking up at eight AM. If there is a God, he obviously enjoys laughing at Jared.
"Daddy," says Maggie, nudging him with her feet. "C'mon!"
"All right, sweetheart, I'll be down in a few minutes," he manages through a yawn, smoothing a piece of hair behind her ear absently. "Gimme a sec."
"Hurry up, slowpoke," she says, and plants a wet kiss on his cheek before bounding out of the room. He hears her go down the stairs like a herd of elephants, and shakes his head, wondering absently how a four-and-a-half-year-old can make so much noise.
He stretches, wincing. He flew in from Chicago late last night, and he's definitely feeling it this morning. Normally he doesn't even sleep past seven, but it just figures that the one morning he wants to recover from a late wrap party and a later flight, he has to wake up. He delays as long as he can, then sighs and heaves himself up out of bed. He takes the stairs slowly, and pads into the kitchen, thinking of coffee. When he gets there, some more awake part of his brain is surprised to see Jensen already at the coffee pot, alert and upright and dressed instead of zombie-like.
"You're actually awake?" he asks, muzzily. He yawns and bumps his shoulder into Jensen's, too tired for much more. "The Prince of Uncaffeinated Grumpiness himself, really awake before me?"
"Surprise."
"It's a Christmas miracle," Jared agrees. He leans back against the counters and closes his eyes. "Seriously, what? In the fourteen years we've known each other, this has happened like, twice. Three times, maybe."
"Ha, ha," Jensen says dryly, and knocks something cool and hard against Jared's hands. "Here, butthead."
"You're a butthead," Jared mutters, and takes the cup of coffee. Their insults have degraded since they got Maggie--dickface and asshole aren't exactly words they want her repeating to her grandma on the phone, after all. Chad gives Jared shit for it, but then Chad's doing the sixth season of My Brother's Keeper, so Jared's pretty sure he doesn't have a leg to stand on. The only people who watch My Brother's Keeper are thirteen-year-old girls and eighty-year-old cat ladies.
"We're gonna get the tree today," Jensen says, derailing Jared's inner Chad mockery.
"I heard," Jared says. His sip of coffee brings him a little closer to the land of the living, so he has enough brain to add, "What I'm wondering is why exactly we need to get it today. At eight AM, no less. Day after I flew in."
Jensen snorts so scornfully that Jared opens his eyes. Jared can read "eyeroll" in every line of his body.
"Dude, it's already the seventh," he says. "We've gotta hurry if we wanna get a good tree, man."
Jared stares, uncomprehending. "Jensen," he says, carefully, "it's the seventh."
"'S what I said, yeah--"
"Dude, nobody's going to get their Christmas tree for at least another week, Jensen. People are just not that organized, man. We could wait a few days and be fine, y'know," Jared says.
Jensen scoffs. "Yeah, if we wanna end up with an ugly lopsided one, sure." He shakes his head and turns to Jared. "You wanna get a good tree, you gotta go early. Isn't that right, Maggie?" he asks her as she comes into the kitchen, her hat slung on. "The early bird gets the--"
"--Christmas tree!" she cheers, and leaps into Jensen's open arms. He swings her up easily, grins, and kisses her cheek.
"That's my girl," he tells her, smiling wider when she giggles.
Jared shakes his head, biting back a smile. "Surrounded by freaks," he stage-whispers to his coffee.
"Says the guy talking into a mug," says Jensen, coming close. He kisses Jared, soft and quick and familiar, and smiles up at him. "Good morning, Jared. Go get dressed so we can go get the tree."
"Yeah, Daddy."
"Still think it's too early, you crazy people," Jared mutters as he leaves, but he knows Jensen catches the grin he can't keep down.
He takes the stairs slowly, two at a time, touching the pictures on the wall like he always does. The coffee's kicking in now; he can take things in again, and he's registering that feeling of home for the first time in months, setting his body humming with content. He loved the set of Il Destino, and he made some awesome new friends, yeah, but there's just nothing like being back here, in the house he and Jensen bought. Like he moves more smoothly, here; like his bones know it. Like it's right. Christmas here will be good, he thinks, and feels the certainty of it.
It's not their first Christmas with Maggie, of course. They got her in January three years ago--well, almost three, Jared amends--so this will be their third one. But the other two have been pretty rushed, one in L.A. because Jared couldn't back out of a Christmas premiere and one in Texas where everyone got bizarrely sick. Jared's not sure Maggie even remembers that, so in a way, this is their first real Christmas.
He dresses quickly and heads downstairs, where Jensen's got Maggie bundled up. They head out in their truck, with Jackson driving. Jackson's been their bodyguard for just about as long as they've had Maggie, and she loves him to pieces, so any time she gets to drive with him is awesome, as far as she's concerned. She makes him put on radio Disney and sing along. Jared's glad it's not him this time.
Jensen spends the time catching Jared up on stupid little neighborhood gossipy things, his foot pressed lightly against Jared's. Jared spends the time listening to the cadence of Jensen's voice and pressing his foot back; brushing his fingers over Jensen's knee until Jensen catches them and laces their fingers together, rolling his eyes a little at Jared. Jared just grins, unrepentant, and drapes himself as far over Jensen as he can get in reply to the eyeroll. Jensen rolls his eyes again, adding in a dramatic head toss, but doesn't move, though. He's warm and solid underneath Jared, and he pulls a hand up around Jared's waist; that's enough answer, as far as Jared's concerned. He curls closer and lets Jensen's words wash over him for the rest of the ride.
The tree lot is full of trees when they get there. Jared raises his eyebrows at Jensen. "See? We woulda been fine waiting a couple days," he murmurs, squeezing Jensen's hand. "You're so paranoid." Jensen pays him no mind, though; he's hurrying up to the front seat to help Maggie out of the car. Jared watches, shaking his head a little in confusion, as Jensen sets Maggie down on the ground and kneels, hands cupped over her shoulders.
"Okay, Maggie," he tells her. "We gotta get a good tree, right? A real pretty one, with a lot of branches." Maggie nods solemnly, braids bouncing, and Jensen claps her lightly on the back. "I think you oughta pick. You're the only one I can trust with a job this important," he adds, seriously. Jared bites back a grin with huge effort.
Maggie's eyes go wide. "I get to pick?"
"You get to pick," Jensen affirms. "Let's take a look at the trees, and you can tell me which one you think is a good one, okay?"
"Okay," Maggie says, breathlessly.
Jensen leads her by the mittened hand through a little copse of thick, lush trees. They all look pretty much the same to Jared, but Jensen and Maggie debate a series of them, knocking down possibilities as "too fat," "too short," and "too ugly" while Jared watches, bemused. When they've looked at them all, Maggie marches up and down the line again, face twisted in a fierce frown of indecision.
"Why don't we get one of those?" Jared murmurs as she inspects one, motioning to a stand of trees with thinner branches. "Think they're a bit cheaper, dude."
Jensen makes a face. "The branches won't hold any ornaments, they're too thin. Everything we put on the tree's just gonna fall off."
"If you say so, Mr. I'm-Suddenly-A-Tree-Afficionado," Jared says, grinning.
"I do," Jensen says. Jared snorts, but Maggie's running up to tug on their hands, pointing and yelling that she's found their tree, so he doesn't get a chance to retort.
They manage to get the tree home with a minimum of fuss. He and Jensen waffle over how to stick the damn thing in the tree stand for--no joke--an hour, while Maggie cons Jackson into coloring and then watching princess movies with her.
"You'd think this would be easy for two strong guys," Jared grunts, heaving the tree to the left at Jensen's direction.
"You'd think, except we're also really dumb," Jensen mutters. "Okay! Now!"
They finally get it done, after spending another fifteen minutes straightening it out in the stand. Jared flops down on the couch and lets out a long groan, then, digging his palms into his eyes. "Can we do the actual decorating tomorrow?" he asks, squinting up at Jensen. "I'm gonna die if I have to do anything else concentratey."
"Wimp," Jensen scoffs, shaking his head. He looks bizarrely full of energy, as if they haven't been out for hours. "We gotta do the lights and the star, at least."
"You are a cruel taskmaster," Jared mutters, dragging his fingers down his face.
"Darn straight," Jensen says, grinning and kicking Jared's foot. "Up, lazy. Lights."
Jared heaves a sigh and follows orders. They manage to string the colored lights around the tree with a minimum of fuss, miraculously. Jensen frees Jackson from the prison of princesses, and brings out a special box Jared hasn't seen before, Maggie perched on his hip.
"The star I got just came the other day," he says, kissing Jared's jaw lightly, absently. "Wanna open it?"
Jared obliges, revealing a shiny silver star almost as big as Maggie's face. He's about to hand it to her--because the youngest kid always gets to place the star, that's the rule--when he notices something written on the surface. Frowning, he tilts it further into the light, and doesn't know whether to laugh or think it's awesome. "Jensen," he asks, "Does this says 'Texas' on it?"
Jensen's grinning when Jared catches his eye. "'Course it does. We need a little touch of the States to keep our sanity, don't we? And Maggie, what's the greatest state in the whole wide world?"
"Texas!" she yells.
"Atta girl," says Jensen, and kisses the top of her head. "See?"
Jared feels a grin of his own dimpling his cheeks. The two of them look like a goddamn stock photo, Maggie beaming and this little smile of delight and wonder making Jensen's eyes soft around the edges, the two of them bathed in the glow of Christmas tree lights.
Okay, he thinks, maybe getting the tree this early wasn't such a bad idea after all.
-
The next few days are filled with stuff like that. They finish decorating the tree; they get a bunch of pine branches and holly to decorate the house; they put a wreath on the front door. They buy candy canes at the store, and a bunch of advent calendars, which Maggie delights in opening. They watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, and then Jensen starts bringing home all the other Christmas specials he can find, because Maggie loved it so much.
Jared's a little surprised, because Jensen's never done this much for Christmas--before Maggie, they pretty much spent Christmas in San Antonio and New Years in Richardson, and Jensen went with the flow. But whatever, Jared's having a good time, so he's not gonna question it. Besides, the rest of the world is going to catch up with them pretty quick, if their across-the-street-neighbors Pam and Larry are anything to go by.
Pam is like Martha Stewart, if Martha Stewart were Canadian. She always decorates her house like a magazine, come holiday time--except a cheesy, stupid magazine. At Halloween she carved about fifty pumpkins for her front yard with her fancy pumpkin-carving kit, but they were all smiling dopily, and her kid went as a tooth for Halloween. A lovingly crafted papier-mache tooth with sparkly white glitter and a matching toothpaste bag for collecting candy, but still, a tooth. At Easter, her yard was overrun with blow-up bunnies, and at Canadian Thanksgiving she covered her door in maple leaf decals. Pretty much any excuse to be tacky, Pam takes. Really, Jared should have expected nothing less than a crazy Christmas light display from her. Still, it's a surprise when he walks into the kitchen and is nearly blinded at seven in the morning. He always thought Christmas lights were meant to be lit at nighttime.
He blinks and takes it all in. Wildly blinking snowflakes, check. Set of glowing lawn reindeer, check. Blisteringly red Santa Claus, check. Total horror show, check, check, and check. Jared is forcibly reminded of that couple from the Supernatural Christmas episode, and shakes his head.
Jensen's at the kitchen counter making Maggie a snack for their trip to the mall (See the Real Santa, Photos Included! Saturday and Sunday This Month!). Jared pads over for his second cup of coffee, hooking his chin over Jensen's shoulder to further observe the mess out the window.
"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, huh," Jensen mutters.
Jared nods into his shoulder. "That," he tells Jensen, "is a challenge."
Jensen snorts. "Is it now?" he asks, slicing into an apple.
"'Course it is!" Jared says. He waves his mug at the blur of brightness. "Dude, look at that. She's practically asking for it. She might as well have written BRING IT ON in sparkly bling lights. I gotta think of something good to retaliate," he murmurs into the skin of Jensen's neck before pressing a kiss there.
"Jared," says Jensen, shaking his head so the edges of his hat hit Jared's cheeks. "You remember the last time you tried to put up actual lights?"
Jared winces, remembering the awful bruise he got. "I was young," he says, trying a few more kisses, "impetuous!--I'd do so much better this time. So much better."
"Uh-huh," Jensen says. "Yeah, no lights on the roof. I'm vetoing lights on the roof."
"Jensen, assault to our manhood!" Jared protests, eyeing at the blinking reindeer in the yard across the street. "C'mon! Think of how tacky we could be," he wheedles.
"I see those sugarplum lights dancing in your head and hit you with a no," says Jensen, nudging Jared's shin with his heel. "Seriously, Jared, broken necks. No fun."
"Your mom is no fun," Jared grumbles, but maybe he's secretly a little glad. It's not that he actually wants to get up on the roof. Just that he feels like he should, because it's Pam and Larry, and they suck.
"Your face is no fun," says Jensen. His reflection makes a ridiculous expression at Jared in the dark window, eyebrows going everywhere and mouth twisted up like a gargoyle's. It flashes Jared back through a million other of Jensen's ridiculous faces, and he wants to turn him around and press him into the counter for a real kiss or ten, for all the ones he didn't take, then.
Maggie barrels into his legs out of nowhere and kills that idea.
"Oof," Jared says, reaching a hand back to steady her, silently mourning the loss of potential making out. "Mags, no running in here," he adds. He twists and kneels to face her.
"'Kay. Daddy," she says, peering up at him, "When are we getting snow?"
Jared tries to check his immediate reflex to wince. He's pretty sure it's Jensen's fault Maggie ever got hold of the idea of a white Christmas, the way Jensen's been talking and playing Christmas carols all over the place. It sucks she even knows what it is at all, because it never really snows in Vancouver, and Jared doesn't really know how to break it to her. He thinks help me at Jensen, but Jensen is annoyingly silent, the jerk, concentrating on the apple. After floundering for a second, Jared goes for a Christmas classic: "I dunno, maybe Santa will bring you some for Christmas if you're good, pumpkin." He mentally crosses his fingers and hopes she won't question it.
She scrunches up her face. "'Kay. I'm not a pumpkin, Daddy," she says in an exasperated voice, then skips off to God only knows where before Jared can reply, singing, "snow, snow snow." He stares after her.
"Yeah, sometimes I wonder if we adopted an alien," he says to Jensen, complacently. "And that snow thing? Totally your fault, man."
"She's just waiting until we're older to harvest our brains," agrees Jensen, clapping him on the back. "And snow is awesome. Now c'mon, mall or bust."
Jared flips his hood up. "Once more unto the breach," he mutters, and strikes a pose. "Seriously, braving commercial Christmas for you? That's love."
"Shut up, you dork," says Jensen, but Jared can hear all the fondness of years pressed into the syllables, and he grins as he follows Jensen out of the room.
-
He's not grinning two hours later--or, he is, but it's more of a fixed rictus than a cheerful smile. He's pretty sure it's glued on his face, and his mouth is a little strained with the effort.
The loudspeakers are blasting what's got to be the worst compilation CD in the world, jazz and pop remixes of Christmas songs Jared's already heard way too many times on the radio. Everywhere he looks, there's tinsel and nutcracker statues and eerily grinning reindeer. The line to see Santa is really long, and they've seen three kids have meltdowns so far--crying, screaming tantrums. Jared's betting on at least two more before they reach the front of the line. Maggie's getting restless, too, so she and Jensen are playing Twenty Questions, but Jared can see the way she's getting tired and droopy. He hopes they get this over with soon, because otherwise they might be dealing with a sobbing kid of their own. Wouldn't that be great, leaving after having stood here for almost an hour?
And for the cherry on the cake of stress, somehow Pam and Larry are there.
They spot Jared--Jensen's on a bathroom break, perfect timing--maybe ten feet from the end of the line. Given that said line is moving with glacial slowness, this gives Pam plenty of time to come back to talk with Jared, leaving their son Stephen with Larry standing a few people ahead. She starts off the conversation with the question Jared hates most in the world: "So how are you and Jensen?" She has this special way of saying it, all nasal and nosy and soccermom-y, and it just makes Jared feel tiny and horrible. Like no matter what his mistakes in parenting are, Pam is there watching him fuck up and shaking her head, making tsking noises from her perfectly clean house.
He flounders through a conversation with her, and is just running out of things to say besides "so, how 'bout that crazy lights display?" when Jensen rescues him. Jensen totally has some sort of Jared's-About-To-Be-Stupid spidey sense; he comes up and slides his arm around Jared's waist, taking over the conversation seamlessly. His thumb, stroking above the waist of Jared's jeans, is just the right amount of distracting to keep Jared occupied until they reach the front of the line and Maggie has her turn.
Jared's just glad she made it that far. When they finally emerge from the mall, she's a tired lump in Jensen's arms, and she's out for the count the minute she hits the carseat. Jared wishes he could do the same, because he's now officially exhausted from Christmas.
"I hate other parents," he moans to Jensen when he's sure Maggie's asleep in the backseat.
"Me too," says Jensen, shaking his head. "It was totally worth it, though."
"Yeah, okay, it was," Jared admits. Maggie was so excited when she got to the front of the line that she barely took a breath, and Jensen took about ten thousand pictures, with this little grin on his face that set something warm and happy buzzing in Jared's stomach. The two of them together pretty much melted away any tension the past few hours had pressed into him. Like they always do, Jared thinks, smiling. "I still hate other parents," he grumbles on principle. "But thanks for not letting me kill her."
"It was in my best interests," Jensen tells him, raising a teasing eyebrow. "Maggie wouldn't have gotten to see Santa. Besides, you would have bled all over the marble floor, and it would've been a pain in the ass to clean that up."
"Here lies Jared Padalecki: death by Christmas," Jared sighs. "It was all too much for him." He rolls his neck and groans at the tiredness hanging like lead in his body.
"C'mon, not giving up yet, are ya?" Jensen asks, elbowing him. His grin widens, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening. "We didn't even get to the mistletoe yet, dude. Where's your Christmas spirit?"
Jared heaves a dramatic sigh and puts a hand on his forehead. "I don't think I'm gonna make it to the mistletoe. You should kiss me now, just in case."
Jensen snorts and shakes his head, but slides his hand around the back of Jared's neck and pulls him close, brushing his lips over Jared's and making something hot curl in Jared's stomach. "You are such a horndog," he murmurs into Jared's mouth.
"Takes one to know one," Jared says back. And if they don't leave the parking lot for another five minutes because they're making out--well, no one's counting.
-
Trust Chad to be the one to tip Jared over from enjoying the confusing amount of Christmas preparations into paranoid concern, completely accidentally.
He calls Jared from a party on Thursday night and immediately launches into a monologue about how awesome Canada is. The reasons seem to have something to do with liquor, but Chad's voice is so slurred Jared has a hard time guessing. The discussion includes references to powerpoint slides Jared is not viewing, and he has a hard time keeping from cracking up too loudly, because Jensen's on the phone himself in the other room.
"In conclusion, tequila, motherfuckaaaaa!" Chad shouts into the phone.
Jared manages to hold in his laughter till he can get out onto the porch. "God, you are so drunk," he says between breaths.
"Oh, yes," says Chad, "yes, my friend, yes. Alcohol is officially my bitch." He goes on before Jared can say anything else, adding, "Dude, come have a drink. Patron misses you."
"Can't," Jared says without thinking, still grinning. "Jensen and I are supposed to read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas to Maggie tonight."
He realizes how weird that sounds the minute it's out of his mouth, and winces a little. From the silence on the other end of the line, Chad gets that, too.
"Isn't that supposed to happen, y'know--the night before Christmas?" he asks Jared.
Jared shrugs, then realizes Chad can't see him. "Jensen thought maybe we could do it two times--once now, and then once the night before, so she'll be able to read along the second time."
Chad doesn't hesitate. "Dude, that's weird. What's wrong with him?"
Jared reels back a little. "Nothing's wrong with him," he says. "He's just--" he flounders-- "uh, he's really into Christmas this year. We've uh, been doing a lot of stuff like that."
"You have?"
"Yeah? You know, advent calendars, mall Santa--um, got our tree, blah blah, done everything except put a million lights on the roof, pretty much, and that's cuz Jensen won't let me."
"Whoa," Chad says. "Overcompensating much?"
Jared blinks. "What?"
Chad makes a worried noise. "I mean why does Jensen wanna go all this, this crazy stuff?" he asks, with the intense concern of a very drunk person. "Why now?"
"Um," Jared says, "I dunno, I hadn't really thought about it."
"Is this some thing about how you guys don't love her enough? That's dumb," says Chad, oddly gentle. "Going overboard at holidays is never a good idea, Jay. Are you guys okay? Do you need me to come fix your marriage?"
Jared feels like he got lost somewhere a few sentences ago, unsure if he should laugh. "No?" he tries. "No. But thank you, Chad. It's good to know I have a friend in you?"
"Man, the best," Chad said. "Okay. But let me know if Jensen's like, sick or in trouble or something, dude, I can hook you up to fix that."
"All righty," says Jared, shaking his head and frowning.
They chat for a few more minutes, and then someone challenges Chad to beer pong, so he hangs up. Jared heads back inside and stands in the kitchen for a few minutes after, phone earpiece held in his fingers. Something about what Chad said is kind of getting to him. He wrinkles his nose. Jensen's not--it's not really weird, is it--
Okay, it is a little weird. Jensen's never done anything to this level, before. But that doesn't mean something's wrong with him, Jared tells himself, jiggling the earpiece absently. It doesn't mean--whatever Chad said, that he's overcompensating or stressed or sick, or anything else he's not telling Jensen. Jared knows Jensen. Just because they've been apart for a few months more than usual, and farther away than usual, doesn't mean that's changed. Doesn't mean Jared's lost all ability to read him.
Right?
Right.
He wanders into the living room restlessly, no goal in mind, and stops in the doorjamb. Maggie's curled up on Jensen's lap, swinging her feet, and Jensen's just hanging up the phone, a satisfied look on his face.
"You wanna go caroling?" he's asking Maggie, tugging on the bobbles of her hat.
"What's that?"
"It's when a bunch of people get together at night around Christmas and go around the neighborhood, singing Christmas carols to their neighbors."
"Or Hanukkah songs," Jared adds absently. "Or solstice jams, or--"
"You knock on people's doors and sing to them, unless they don't want to be sung to," Jensen amends, rolling his eyes and tossing a little curl of smile Jared's way. "You wanna do that?"
"Yeah!" Maggie cheers, her eyes lighting up. Jared's not surprised--she loves singing, like Jensen does, and walks around the house making up little songs all the time. Any excuse to perform and she's there. Takes after her dads that way, Jared thinks, but another part of his mind is going caroling? We've never gone caroling and stumbling with confusion.
"Awesome," Jensen says, with real enthusiasm, and holds his hand up for a high-five. Maggie slams her hand into his, and Jensen pretends to wince and wave out the sting while she giggles.
"When are we going?"
"Tomorrow night," Jensen says. "That's who I was talking to on the phone. You wanna go pick out some songs to sing?"
Jared almost asks, but Jensen and Maggie look so happy that he really doesn't have the heart to. He slinks back up to his office instead, and tries to get a little work done, doubt a low throb in his chest.
-
Jared would love it if he could stop thinking about what Chad said, but it sticks in his mind, flaring at unexpected moments. Jared wishes he didn't fixate on and worry about things that are clearly dumb to worry about--of course there's a reasonable explanation for this Christmas mania, some rational part of his mind's muttering--but he's always been that way. Now that someone's suggested Jensen might be doing all this for a Scary Reason, Jared can't stop he niggling worry that something might be wrong.
It's not even that he's freaking out, just that it's confusing. Jensen's got the car radio permanently stuck on a carol station; they go ice skating at the local rink--which Jared sucks at, by the way, and comes away from bruised; Jensen makes them tickets for the Nutcracker. They even make a pilgrimage a little farther north so Maggie can get the snow she's craving. All things they've never done before, and things Jensen is apparently really into, now. Jared has pretty much no idea what to think of that, or whether it means something or not, and it bugs him.
So he caves. He does what has become, in recent years, his miracle solution--he calls Danneel the minute he's sure Jensen's not home, after he and Maggie come home from a walk a few days later.
"Hi Jared!" she says when the connection comes through. "What's going on?"
"Aunt Danny, Aunt Danny, Aunt Danny," chants Maggie immediately, reaching up for the phone.
"Mags," Jared warns, and Maggie heaves a sigh and backs off, scrunching up her face. "Wait your turn," Jared reminds, and leans down to untie her bootlaces. "Hi, Danny. What's up?"
"Same thing you knew was up before you called--hanging around at home before I head out to Texas," she says. "Did I hear the dulcet tones of my darling baby girl?"
Jared can't help but grin. "Hold on a sec, lemme get her wet boots off and you can talk to her."
"Daddy, when's my turn?" Maggie asks, swinging her other foot.
"Soon's you stand still," Jared tells her, firm; miraculously, she freezes for a second, allowing him to peel of her boots and wet socks. He kisses her crown. "Thank you sweetheart," he says, and switches on speakerphone. "All right, Danny, here she is."
"Well hello there, Miss Margaret Allison. How's my favorite niece?"
"Good!" shouts Maggie. Jared rubs a hand over his forehead and maybe falls a little more in platonic love with Danneel when she says "indoor voices, Maggie" so he doesn't have to. Maggie's nothing if not loud, and it gets kind of exhausting reminding her to keep quiet, after all. Maybe another area where she takes after her dads, Jared thinks ruefully.
"Hey, your daddy told me you've been doing some awesome dinosaur drawings lately," Danneel's saying when he tunes back in. "Is that right?"
"Uh-huh! You wanna see?" Maggie demands.
"You bet I do. How about you go get them, and your daddy can switch on video when you get back so I can see?"
Maggie's out the door before Jared can blink, running up the stairs. He opens his mouth to say something, but Danneel beats him to it. "So what is it, Padalecki?" she asks.
"That obvious, huh?" Jared laughs, rubbing a sheepish hand over the back of his neck.
"Subtle you ain't," she agrees, not unkindly. "Tell me what's going on."
Jared blows out a breath and wonders how exactly to start. "Danny," he blurts before he can think of a good way, "has Jensen been like--stressed on set, recently?" He grimaces at how stupid that sounds, but at least it's out there.
He can hear the frown in her voice. "No, not really. Why . . . ?"
Jared scrunches up his face. "He's, uh," he says. "He's just--really, really into Christmas, this year."
A pause. "Jensen loves Christmas," she says, cautiously. "That's not unusual."
"I know--believe me, I know, Christmas up here when Supernatural was on used to be epic. But this, this is like--"
He explains everything that's been going on, including Chad. "And now I can't stop wondering. I don't get any of it," he finishes with. "I thought maybe, like, displacement--or, uh, projection--you know, one of those big psychology words--"
Danneel snorts. "Did you try asking him, maybe, Jared?" she suggests, and he can hear the smile in her voice.
"I was getting there," he says, a little sheepishly. "I just--I don't know, I don't . . . " he sighs. "He's having a good time. You know? He--ck, I'm having a good time, and Maggie's in heaven, and it's not like it's something I want to stop, seriously, I just--"
"--want to know what's going on in his brain?"
Jared huffs out a laugh. "Yeah. That. I mean, I just. Yeah. I want to know what's up."
"Yeah, you guys always did have that have-to-live-in-each-other's-head thing," she says, amused. There's a pause, and Jared picks at a stain on his sweatshirt to fill the silence. "Jared, sweetheart," she says then, gently. "My recommendation is ask him and don't freak out. He'll tell you what's going on. It's Jensen, remember?"
He breathes out; lets the certainty of her words sink into him, solid, and concentrates on the anchoring weight of them until he feels his heartbeat slow. "Yeah," he says, "yeah. Why are you so smart, again?"
"One of us has to be," she teases lightly. "Seriously, though, I promise he's not hiding cancer. Besides, this is all Chad's idea; it's probably not even a big deal. Relax a little, okay?" He imagines the grin curving up her mouth, the corners of her eyes creasing. "And put my niece back on the phone, she's much cuter than you are."
Jared shakes his head, admiring. God, she knows every time how to talk him and Jensen down from something. Moments like this, he always thinks of how lucky it is that she and Jensen worked so hard to keep their friendship after they broke up. "Yes ma'am," he says, and calls for Maggie.
-
He makes this elaborate plan to confront Jensen calmly after Maggie's gone to bed; plots out what he's going to say and everything, complete with I-statements and stuff. It's going to be awesome, and easy, and it's going to work.
Then there are the cookies, and that's just too weird to let slide without comment.
It's not like he and Jensen never cook, of course. They're both pretty good at grilling, for example, and they've both got a handle on breakfast foods. (They're excellent at pancakes, because Jared decided it wasn't okay for them to raise their kid in Canada without knowing how to make some damn good pancakes to match the maple syrup, and totally stealth-signed them up for a pancake class at the local cooking school.) Jensen can do a bunch of kinds of pasta and some good rice things, and Jared's a salad master. But that's pretty much it. They cook simple or they call in; that's been their modus operandi since day one. And yeah, sure, every so often one of them makes cookies--but they're always the kind you buy in a tube at the grocery store, and honestly, half the time they just end up eating the dough.
So when Jared comes home, he thinks maybe Jensen just lit a ton of Jared's candles. Jared loves cookies, and always buys about a million of those candles that smell like baking cookies around this time of the year. Which Jensen teases him about mercilessly, but apparently, Jared thinks, he's had a change of heart. He's on his way through the kitchen to find Jensen and gloat when he notices there's a ton of dirty dishes in the sink, and the oven's on. He actually does a double-take, and then wheels around, taking everything in. Dirty dishes--dirty rolling pin, Jared didn't even know they had a rolling pin--oven on, smell of deliciously baking cookies.
Jensen's baking cookies.
Jared can feel his mouth drop open. This is full-on Twilight Zone. He looks around for Jensen; Jensen's on the porch, wearing a jacket and mixing something because he's weird like that, and apparently wants to stand in below thirty-degree weather to bake--Jared barrels out onto the porch, snagging his own coat, and marches up to Jensen.
"You're totally into this," he accuses.
Jensen frowns in confusion. "Into what?"
"This!" Jared says, waving a hand to emphasize the total weirdness of this all. "Christmas!"
Jensen snorts and keeps poking at what looks like eggs with a whisk, giving Jared a "you're crazy" eyebrow raise. And okay, yeah, Jared has to admit, that sounded stupid. For as long as he's known Jensen, Jensen's been into Christmas, after all. It's his favorite holiday, hands down, and it's not like it's never been obvious. Like Jared told Danneel, Christmas around the Supernatural set used to be pretty epic. Just . . . Jared shakes his head, trying to find better words, feeling like that's all he's been doing lately.
"It's just," he starts, "you never, before, when we--when we lived here during Supernatural, you never did this. You never got this into it, I mean, I know you love Christmas, man, believe me, but this is like--this is like a whole new level of Christmas." He huffs out a breath, a cloud of white in the Vancouver night. "The caroling, the mall, the movies, the--just, I'm. Surprised, that's all. I--is there something wrong?"
He feels his stomach curl painfully at the idea, like it always does at the idea of his family unhappy. He glances at Jensen out of the corner of his eye, coughing and rubbing his foot over the wood for something to do; waiting. Jensen's still giving him a weird look, forehead creased and mouth twisted in confusion.
"Nothing's wrong," he says slowly. "I uh, I didn't realize it was so--weird to you? I--"
"Nonono," Jared hastens to say, "not--dude." He sighs. "I like it, okay? I love it. I've been having a blast. I just can't figure out why." He hunches his shoulders. "And you know how stupid I get when I don't know the why of stuff. This is totally just my own paranoia, but--man, you'd tell me if something was wrong, right? What's up?"
Jensen gives him a tiny smile, shaking his head. "Your own paranoia, huh."
"My own paranoia. Okay, and maybe a little of Chad's drunken paranoia. And." Jared sighs. "Maybe just some of that distance thing. You know it always gets into my head, worms its way everywhere," he admits, biting his lip.
"Yeah," Jensen says, tossing him another little smile. "You're not the only one--but that's not what this is." He pauses, and Jared waits, feels like he's holding his breath.
"We never had a kid before," Jensen offers, finally. "And then we were in LA, and then Mags got sick, and--never had a chance to get to really do Christmas, you know?"
"Yeah," Jared says. "Guess that's true."
Jensen leans back and turns to look at Jared. This is something Jared loves about Jensen: the way he just looks you in the eye, and you know he's all there; that he's really looking at you, and paying attention, and being honest. His green eyes are wide and clear, and something in Jared settles a little just at the look of them.
"This is," Jensen starts, "her third Christmas. Not gonna be too many more where she even believes in Santa Claus. I mean, dude, when I was little, Christmas was pretty much the best thing ever. You get to do all these special things, eat awesome food, see your family--" he shrugs, shoulders coming up tight near his ears. "I want that for her. I want her to love it, that's all."
Jared can hear the exhaustion of months in the way his vowels slip further south, the drawl he slips into so easy. It makes Jared think of Texas Christmas, of the lights on the Riverwalk back home--of church plays and his grandma's cookies and his mama singing Silent Night on Christmas Eve, everyone all hushed in the living room. He feels a sharp pull of homesickness, deep in his gut, and he leans further into Jensen to keep it at bay. Just touching the edges of his body's to Jensen's, letting their coats and fingers brush. He thinks maybe he's starting to get what Jensen's saying. "Yeah?" he says softly.
"Yeah," says Jensen. He stretches out his shoulders, and taps the bowl with the whisk. "I mean, yeah, I love Christmas. But this, this is for her. I want to make sure she has a good one." He shrugs, and adds, "Because she deserves it. She's the coolest person in the entire world." Like it isn't even a question.
Jared blinks. "She talks about dinosaurs, pink, and toilet jokes a disproportionate amount of the time," he reminds Jensen, reeling a little.
Jensen cracks a smile, eyes crinkling at the corners. "'Course she does," he rasps. He tilts his chin up at Jared, and adds, "She's our kid, isn't she?"
Jared's startled into a little laugh, one he feels warmly right down in his bones. Because God, it's true. Maggie's--he starts laughing harder, thinking of their baby girl in all her glory. She's definitely their kid. She's a total nutcase, is what she is. She knows more facts about dinosaurs than Jared even thought existed, and she forces her friends to sit and listen to her recite them; she'll walk up to people in her raincoat and fairy wings and charm them without even trying; she's stubborn as a damn mule and can scream higher than anything. She's loud, and wild, and so fucking smart that it kills him sometimes. And she's beautiful, he thinks, heart turning in his chest, and awesome, and perfect.
He catches the edge of Jensen's grin, and feels his own widen till his cheeks hurt.
"Yeah," he says, softly. "She is our kid."
He turns and kisses the corner of Jensen's mouth, then, letting his lips linger a little and just enjoying being here. Jensen turns his head after a quiet beat, sliding his mouth over Jared's until they click together like they always have, and then they're trading warm, lazy kisses on their front porch. Their front porch, thinks Jared, cupping Jensen's jaw in his hand. The front porch they have together, the life they have together. This place they've carved out in this crazy world. Them and their little girl. Jensen's hands are steady and solid at his waist, and Jared feels that familiar thrill sparking down his spine at the physical, warm reality of Jensen's body, at how well they come together.
It's a long time before he pulls back, and they're both panting and a little giddy with it, then. The way Jensen's fingers are digging into his hips is familiar and hot, and Jared just knows he's got a stupid smile on his face.
"So," he whispers, pressing his forehead to Jensen's, "this Christmas thing."
"This Christmas thing," Jensen repeats, quirking a brow.
"Don't give me that look," Jared murmurs, and leans in to rub his lips over Jensen's jaw again, feeling it when Jensen's mouth curls in another smile. "I'm just saying, it's pretty awesome."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. If you have to morph into a housewife one time of the year--agh! Jensen!"
"Fuck you, you deserved it," Jensen laughs, looking at where Jared's jacket is spattered with egg. He grins up at Jared. "I regret nothing."
The words set something warm off in Jared's chest, and he beams back. "Me neither," he says, meaning every syllable. He pulls Jensen in for another kiss, and pours everything bubbling up inside him--every piece of joy lighting him up right now, every moment he's thought of how lucky he is--into that kiss.
Then mashes his sleeve into Jensen's face when Jensen's gone soft and eager, and not expecting it.
"Oh, it's fucking on!" Jensen yells, and dumps the bowl over Jared's head.
They don't come off the porch for a long while, and when they do, they're covered in egg and Jensen's fourth batch of cookies is ruined. But Jensen's grinning--that clear, uncomplicated little-boy grin, the one that always makes Jared's heart swell--and Jared can feel his cheeks burning with his own smile. He hooks their pinkies together just because he can, and then he helps Jensen make a new batch of cookies. Because Maggie's going to have the best Christmas in the world, if they've got anything to say about it.
-
When Jared wakes up, it's to an elbow in his face and a knee digging into his stomach. Somewhere above him, someone is singing his last name loud enough to wake the neighbors while drumming on his head.
"Monster," he says without opening his eyes, and swings an arm up to snag Maggie and pull her in close. He forces his eyes open and squints down into her giggling face, and can't keep a smile from curving his lips, either. "What is it this time?" he asks, voice rough with sleep.
"Hi Daddy! Dad said make you come downstairs!" she tells him, bouncing and grinning. "He said it's a surprise."
Jared peers over at the clock. Six fifty-one AM, of course. He should just stop having ambitions to sleep beyond eight, he decides. "Well, I guess we'd better not keep him waiting, huh?" he says, sighing a little. But hey, whatever. At least if his sleep cycle's getting cut short, it's because he has a totally awesome family.
That thought sets a grin on his face that doesn't seem to want to leave, so he doesn't fight it. He wiggles out from underneath the covers and hoists Maggie up onto his hip. She curls her arms around his neck and tucks her head into his shoulder, and he holds her close and enjoys it, because someday she's going to be too big to want to be held.
"Jensen," he calls when he hits the bottom step. "Hear you got a surprise for me! And it better involve coffee, dude, I'm just sayin'."
"Maybe it does," comes Jensen's voice from the living room. "Guess you're gonna hafta find out, huh? C'mere."
Jared heaves a put-upon sigh and heads into the room, hitching Maggie up a little higher. "Honestly, Jensen, my love only extends so far before cof--"
He stops short, mouth falling open. The curtains are open, and Jensen's off to the side, grinning, but Jared can't even really concentrate on either of those things, because he's too busy being blinded.
Their frozen lawn is covered in lights.
Every spare inch is smothered in figurines, topiary statues, and laser displays. It is, hands down, the tackiest thing Jared has ever seen. It looks like Christmas threw up all over the grass; Pam and Larry's house looks meek and apologetic behind it, in between the flashing and rainbows and sparkles. He looks up at Jensen, stunned.
"Merry Christmas," says Jensen, smirking. "Nothing on the roof, but yeah. Whaddya think?"
Jared glances from the blinking, waving Santa to the blinking, dancing Santa to the upside-down reindeer on the blow-up merry-go-round and the frantically cycling rainbow bells, and throws back his head and just laughs and laughs and laughs.
When he can breathe again, he sets Maggie down so she can go press her nose to the glass, admiring. He twines his fingers with Jensen's and pulls him in close. Jensen's grinning, and it hits Jared right in the chest, bright and sweet and sharp. He slips his fingers into Jensen's hair and kisses him, and thinks: yeah. This is a good Christmas.
rating: PG-13ish
wordcount: 8210
summary: J2 non-AU, for ladyrhyanne for spn_j2_xmas. This is a modified version of her prompt for J2 kidfic and Christmas. Jared is surprised to figure out that Jensen is just as excited to prepare for Christmas (buying the tree, gift shopping, decorating the house, etc) as their kid is for Christmas morning. So sorry this took so long, ladyrhyanne! Hope you like it all right! ♥
warnings: kidfic, if that wasn't clear; dangerous levels of fluff.
disclaimer: One hundred percent fictional! This in no way represents the actual lives of Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki.
notes: Thanks must go to gypsy_sunday for her lovely continued encouragement and betweenthebliss for basically talking me off the cliff with this one and helping me fix it. ♥ Thank you SO MUCH, y'all have no idea.
-
When Jared wakes up, it's to an elbow in his face and a knee digging into his stomach. Somewhere above him, someone is singing his last name loud enough to wake the neighbors while drumming gently on his head.
Jared feels a mutinous groan bubbling up in his throat at the thought of opening his eyes. It's early. It's too early. He can just tell. Birds aren't even singing outside yet, he'll bet; the sun can't be up. And even if it is, his body feels like it's made of aches, and getting up does not seem worth it. He just wants to go back to sleep for oh, about ten more hours, then wake up at a leisurely pace with a cup of coffee and maybe a blowjob. That would be his idea of an awesome morning.
But things like that just don't happen that often in Jared's world anymore, and the reason why is sitting on his chest. Blindly, he reaches out a hand and pulls her down beside him.
"Maggie Padalecki," he says into the top of her head, "what did I say about waking me up like that?"
He opens his eyes and leans back a little to get a good look at her. She's dressed already in her pink sheep shirt and jeans, her curly blonde hair wrestled by clever fingers into two French braids on either side of her head. Her brown eyes are sparkling, which Jared never thought was actually possible until he started hanging out with children. She's practically the dictionary definition of mischievous.
"You told me not to!" she says, cheerful and bright and way too awake. "But Dad said wake you up, cuz we're gonna go get the Christmas tree!"
Jared paws through his memory and comes up with a vague string of something Jensen said last night about trees. Thinking about it farther than that, he's got nothing, so he gives up. He squints over at the clock and doesn't try to hold back the groan when he sees the readout: eight AM. His first day off and he's waking up at eight AM. If there is a God, he obviously enjoys laughing at Jared.
"Daddy," says Maggie, nudging him with her feet. "C'mon!"
"All right, sweetheart, I'll be down in a few minutes," he manages through a yawn, smoothing a piece of hair behind her ear absently. "Gimme a sec."
"Hurry up, slowpoke," she says, and plants a wet kiss on his cheek before bounding out of the room. He hears her go down the stairs like a herd of elephants, and shakes his head, wondering absently how a four-and-a-half-year-old can make so much noise.
He stretches, wincing. He flew in from Chicago late last night, and he's definitely feeling it this morning. Normally he doesn't even sleep past seven, but it just figures that the one morning he wants to recover from a late wrap party and a later flight, he has to wake up. He delays as long as he can, then sighs and heaves himself up out of bed. He takes the stairs slowly, and pads into the kitchen, thinking of coffee. When he gets there, some more awake part of his brain is surprised to see Jensen already at the coffee pot, alert and upright and dressed instead of zombie-like.
"You're actually awake?" he asks, muzzily. He yawns and bumps his shoulder into Jensen's, too tired for much more. "The Prince of Uncaffeinated Grumpiness himself, really awake before me?"
"Surprise."
"It's a Christmas miracle," Jared agrees. He leans back against the counters and closes his eyes. "Seriously, what? In the fourteen years we've known each other, this has happened like, twice. Three times, maybe."
"Ha, ha," Jensen says dryly, and knocks something cool and hard against Jared's hands. "Here, butthead."
"You're a butthead," Jared mutters, and takes the cup of coffee. Their insults have degraded since they got Maggie--dickface and asshole aren't exactly words they want her repeating to her grandma on the phone, after all. Chad gives Jared shit for it, but then Chad's doing the sixth season of My Brother's Keeper, so Jared's pretty sure he doesn't have a leg to stand on. The only people who watch My Brother's Keeper are thirteen-year-old girls and eighty-year-old cat ladies.
"We're gonna get the tree today," Jensen says, derailing Jared's inner Chad mockery.
"I heard," Jared says. His sip of coffee brings him a little closer to the land of the living, so he has enough brain to add, "What I'm wondering is why exactly we need to get it today. At eight AM, no less. Day after I flew in."
Jensen snorts so scornfully that Jared opens his eyes. Jared can read "eyeroll" in every line of his body.
"Dude, it's already the seventh," he says. "We've gotta hurry if we wanna get a good tree, man."
Jared stares, uncomprehending. "Jensen," he says, carefully, "it's the seventh."
"'S what I said, yeah--"
"Dude, nobody's going to get their Christmas tree for at least another week, Jensen. People are just not that organized, man. We could wait a few days and be fine, y'know," Jared says.
Jensen scoffs. "Yeah, if we wanna end up with an ugly lopsided one, sure." He shakes his head and turns to Jared. "You wanna get a good tree, you gotta go early. Isn't that right, Maggie?" he asks her as she comes into the kitchen, her hat slung on. "The early bird gets the--"
"--Christmas tree!" she cheers, and leaps into Jensen's open arms. He swings her up easily, grins, and kisses her cheek.
"That's my girl," he tells her, smiling wider when she giggles.
Jared shakes his head, biting back a smile. "Surrounded by freaks," he stage-whispers to his coffee.
"Says the guy talking into a mug," says Jensen, coming close. He kisses Jared, soft and quick and familiar, and smiles up at him. "Good morning, Jared. Go get dressed so we can go get the tree."
"Yeah, Daddy."
"Still think it's too early, you crazy people," Jared mutters as he leaves, but he knows Jensen catches the grin he can't keep down.
He takes the stairs slowly, two at a time, touching the pictures on the wall like he always does. The coffee's kicking in now; he can take things in again, and he's registering that feeling of home for the first time in months, setting his body humming with content. He loved the set of Il Destino, and he made some awesome new friends, yeah, but there's just nothing like being back here, in the house he and Jensen bought. Like he moves more smoothly, here; like his bones know it. Like it's right. Christmas here will be good, he thinks, and feels the certainty of it.
It's not their first Christmas with Maggie, of course. They got her in January three years ago--well, almost three, Jared amends--so this will be their third one. But the other two have been pretty rushed, one in L.A. because Jared couldn't back out of a Christmas premiere and one in Texas where everyone got bizarrely sick. Jared's not sure Maggie even remembers that, so in a way, this is their first real Christmas.
He dresses quickly and heads downstairs, where Jensen's got Maggie bundled up. They head out in their truck, with Jackson driving. Jackson's been their bodyguard for just about as long as they've had Maggie, and she loves him to pieces, so any time she gets to drive with him is awesome, as far as she's concerned. She makes him put on radio Disney and sing along. Jared's glad it's not him this time.
Jensen spends the time catching Jared up on stupid little neighborhood gossipy things, his foot pressed lightly against Jared's. Jared spends the time listening to the cadence of Jensen's voice and pressing his foot back; brushing his fingers over Jensen's knee until Jensen catches them and laces their fingers together, rolling his eyes a little at Jared. Jared just grins, unrepentant, and drapes himself as far over Jensen as he can get in reply to the eyeroll. Jensen rolls his eyes again, adding in a dramatic head toss, but doesn't move, though. He's warm and solid underneath Jared, and he pulls a hand up around Jared's waist; that's enough answer, as far as Jared's concerned. He curls closer and lets Jensen's words wash over him for the rest of the ride.
The tree lot is full of trees when they get there. Jared raises his eyebrows at Jensen. "See? We woulda been fine waiting a couple days," he murmurs, squeezing Jensen's hand. "You're so paranoid." Jensen pays him no mind, though; he's hurrying up to the front seat to help Maggie out of the car. Jared watches, shaking his head a little in confusion, as Jensen sets Maggie down on the ground and kneels, hands cupped over her shoulders.
"Okay, Maggie," he tells her. "We gotta get a good tree, right? A real pretty one, with a lot of branches." Maggie nods solemnly, braids bouncing, and Jensen claps her lightly on the back. "I think you oughta pick. You're the only one I can trust with a job this important," he adds, seriously. Jared bites back a grin with huge effort.
Maggie's eyes go wide. "I get to pick?"
"You get to pick," Jensen affirms. "Let's take a look at the trees, and you can tell me which one you think is a good one, okay?"
"Okay," Maggie says, breathlessly.
Jensen leads her by the mittened hand through a little copse of thick, lush trees. They all look pretty much the same to Jared, but Jensen and Maggie debate a series of them, knocking down possibilities as "too fat," "too short," and "too ugly" while Jared watches, bemused. When they've looked at them all, Maggie marches up and down the line again, face twisted in a fierce frown of indecision.
"Why don't we get one of those?" Jared murmurs as she inspects one, motioning to a stand of trees with thinner branches. "Think they're a bit cheaper, dude."
Jensen makes a face. "The branches won't hold any ornaments, they're too thin. Everything we put on the tree's just gonna fall off."
"If you say so, Mr. I'm-Suddenly-A-Tree-Afficionado," Jared says, grinning.
"I do," Jensen says. Jared snorts, but Maggie's running up to tug on their hands, pointing and yelling that she's found their tree, so he doesn't get a chance to retort.
They manage to get the tree home with a minimum of fuss. He and Jensen waffle over how to stick the damn thing in the tree stand for--no joke--an hour, while Maggie cons Jackson into coloring and then watching princess movies with her.
"You'd think this would be easy for two strong guys," Jared grunts, heaving the tree to the left at Jensen's direction.
"You'd think, except we're also really dumb," Jensen mutters. "Okay! Now!"
They finally get it done, after spending another fifteen minutes straightening it out in the stand. Jared flops down on the couch and lets out a long groan, then, digging his palms into his eyes. "Can we do the actual decorating tomorrow?" he asks, squinting up at Jensen. "I'm gonna die if I have to do anything else concentratey."
"Wimp," Jensen scoffs, shaking his head. He looks bizarrely full of energy, as if they haven't been out for hours. "We gotta do the lights and the star, at least."
"You are a cruel taskmaster," Jared mutters, dragging his fingers down his face.
"Darn straight," Jensen says, grinning and kicking Jared's foot. "Up, lazy. Lights."
Jared heaves a sigh and follows orders. They manage to string the colored lights around the tree with a minimum of fuss, miraculously. Jensen frees Jackson from the prison of princesses, and brings out a special box Jared hasn't seen before, Maggie perched on his hip.
"The star I got just came the other day," he says, kissing Jared's jaw lightly, absently. "Wanna open it?"
Jared obliges, revealing a shiny silver star almost as big as Maggie's face. He's about to hand it to her--because the youngest kid always gets to place the star, that's the rule--when he notices something written on the surface. Frowning, he tilts it further into the light, and doesn't know whether to laugh or think it's awesome. "Jensen," he asks, "Does this says 'Texas' on it?"
Jensen's grinning when Jared catches his eye. "'Course it does. We need a little touch of the States to keep our sanity, don't we? And Maggie, what's the greatest state in the whole wide world?"
"Texas!" she yells.
"Atta girl," says Jensen, and kisses the top of her head. "See?"
Jared feels a grin of his own dimpling his cheeks. The two of them look like a goddamn stock photo, Maggie beaming and this little smile of delight and wonder making Jensen's eyes soft around the edges, the two of them bathed in the glow of Christmas tree lights.
Okay, he thinks, maybe getting the tree this early wasn't such a bad idea after all.
-
The next few days are filled with stuff like that. They finish decorating the tree; they get a bunch of pine branches and holly to decorate the house; they put a wreath on the front door. They buy candy canes at the store, and a bunch of advent calendars, which Maggie delights in opening. They watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, and then Jensen starts bringing home all the other Christmas specials he can find, because Maggie loved it so much.
Jared's a little surprised, because Jensen's never done this much for Christmas--before Maggie, they pretty much spent Christmas in San Antonio and New Years in Richardson, and Jensen went with the flow. But whatever, Jared's having a good time, so he's not gonna question it. Besides, the rest of the world is going to catch up with them pretty quick, if their across-the-street-neighbors Pam and Larry are anything to go by.
Pam is like Martha Stewart, if Martha Stewart were Canadian. She always decorates her house like a magazine, come holiday time--except a cheesy, stupid magazine. At Halloween she carved about fifty pumpkins for her front yard with her fancy pumpkin-carving kit, but they were all smiling dopily, and her kid went as a tooth for Halloween. A lovingly crafted papier-mache tooth with sparkly white glitter and a matching toothpaste bag for collecting candy, but still, a tooth. At Easter, her yard was overrun with blow-up bunnies, and at Canadian Thanksgiving she covered her door in maple leaf decals. Pretty much any excuse to be tacky, Pam takes. Really, Jared should have expected nothing less than a crazy Christmas light display from her. Still, it's a surprise when he walks into the kitchen and is nearly blinded at seven in the morning. He always thought Christmas lights were meant to be lit at nighttime.
He blinks and takes it all in. Wildly blinking snowflakes, check. Set of glowing lawn reindeer, check. Blisteringly red Santa Claus, check. Total horror show, check, check, and check. Jared is forcibly reminded of that couple from the Supernatural Christmas episode, and shakes his head.
Jensen's at the kitchen counter making Maggie a snack for their trip to the mall (See the Real Santa, Photos Included! Saturday and Sunday This Month!). Jared pads over for his second cup of coffee, hooking his chin over Jensen's shoulder to further observe the mess out the window.
"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, huh," Jensen mutters.
Jared nods into his shoulder. "That," he tells Jensen, "is a challenge."
Jensen snorts. "Is it now?" he asks, slicing into an apple.
"'Course it is!" Jared says. He waves his mug at the blur of brightness. "Dude, look at that. She's practically asking for it. She might as well have written BRING IT ON in sparkly bling lights. I gotta think of something good to retaliate," he murmurs into the skin of Jensen's neck before pressing a kiss there.
"Jared," says Jensen, shaking his head so the edges of his hat hit Jared's cheeks. "You remember the last time you tried to put up actual lights?"
Jared winces, remembering the awful bruise he got. "I was young," he says, trying a few more kisses, "impetuous!--I'd do so much better this time. So much better."
"Uh-huh," Jensen says. "Yeah, no lights on the roof. I'm vetoing lights on the roof."
"Jensen, assault to our manhood!" Jared protests, eyeing at the blinking reindeer in the yard across the street. "C'mon! Think of how tacky we could be," he wheedles.
"I see those sugarplum lights dancing in your head and hit you with a no," says Jensen, nudging Jared's shin with his heel. "Seriously, Jared, broken necks. No fun."
"Your mom is no fun," Jared grumbles, but maybe he's secretly a little glad. It's not that he actually wants to get up on the roof. Just that he feels like he should, because it's Pam and Larry, and they suck.
"Your face is no fun," says Jensen. His reflection makes a ridiculous expression at Jared in the dark window, eyebrows going everywhere and mouth twisted up like a gargoyle's. It flashes Jared back through a million other of Jensen's ridiculous faces, and he wants to turn him around and press him into the counter for a real kiss or ten, for all the ones he didn't take, then.
Maggie barrels into his legs out of nowhere and kills that idea.
"Oof," Jared says, reaching a hand back to steady her, silently mourning the loss of potential making out. "Mags, no running in here," he adds. He twists and kneels to face her.
"'Kay. Daddy," she says, peering up at him, "When are we getting snow?"
Jared tries to check his immediate reflex to wince. He's pretty sure it's Jensen's fault Maggie ever got hold of the idea of a white Christmas, the way Jensen's been talking and playing Christmas carols all over the place. It sucks she even knows what it is at all, because it never really snows in Vancouver, and Jared doesn't really know how to break it to her. He thinks help me at Jensen, but Jensen is annoyingly silent, the jerk, concentrating on the apple. After floundering for a second, Jared goes for a Christmas classic: "I dunno, maybe Santa will bring you some for Christmas if you're good, pumpkin." He mentally crosses his fingers and hopes she won't question it.
She scrunches up her face. "'Kay. I'm not a pumpkin, Daddy," she says in an exasperated voice, then skips off to God only knows where before Jared can reply, singing, "snow, snow snow." He stares after her.
"Yeah, sometimes I wonder if we adopted an alien," he says to Jensen, complacently. "And that snow thing? Totally your fault, man."
"She's just waiting until we're older to harvest our brains," agrees Jensen, clapping him on the back. "And snow is awesome. Now c'mon, mall or bust."
Jared flips his hood up. "Once more unto the breach," he mutters, and strikes a pose. "Seriously, braving commercial Christmas for you? That's love."
"Shut up, you dork," says Jensen, but Jared can hear all the fondness of years pressed into the syllables, and he grins as he follows Jensen out of the room.
-
He's not grinning two hours later--or, he is, but it's more of a fixed rictus than a cheerful smile. He's pretty sure it's glued on his face, and his mouth is a little strained with the effort.
The loudspeakers are blasting what's got to be the worst compilation CD in the world, jazz and pop remixes of Christmas songs Jared's already heard way too many times on the radio. Everywhere he looks, there's tinsel and nutcracker statues and eerily grinning reindeer. The line to see Santa is really long, and they've seen three kids have meltdowns so far--crying, screaming tantrums. Jared's betting on at least two more before they reach the front of the line. Maggie's getting restless, too, so she and Jensen are playing Twenty Questions, but Jared can see the way she's getting tired and droopy. He hopes they get this over with soon, because otherwise they might be dealing with a sobbing kid of their own. Wouldn't that be great, leaving after having stood here for almost an hour?
And for the cherry on the cake of stress, somehow Pam and Larry are there.
They spot Jared--Jensen's on a bathroom break, perfect timing--maybe ten feet from the end of the line. Given that said line is moving with glacial slowness, this gives Pam plenty of time to come back to talk with Jared, leaving their son Stephen with Larry standing a few people ahead. She starts off the conversation with the question Jared hates most in the world: "So how are you and Jensen?" She has this special way of saying it, all nasal and nosy and soccermom-y, and it just makes Jared feel tiny and horrible. Like no matter what his mistakes in parenting are, Pam is there watching him fuck up and shaking her head, making tsking noises from her perfectly clean house.
He flounders through a conversation with her, and is just running out of things to say besides "so, how 'bout that crazy lights display?" when Jensen rescues him. Jensen totally has some sort of Jared's-About-To-Be-Stupid spidey sense; he comes up and slides his arm around Jared's waist, taking over the conversation seamlessly. His thumb, stroking above the waist of Jared's jeans, is just the right amount of distracting to keep Jared occupied until they reach the front of the line and Maggie has her turn.
Jared's just glad she made it that far. When they finally emerge from the mall, she's a tired lump in Jensen's arms, and she's out for the count the minute she hits the carseat. Jared wishes he could do the same, because he's now officially exhausted from Christmas.
"I hate other parents," he moans to Jensen when he's sure Maggie's asleep in the backseat.
"Me too," says Jensen, shaking his head. "It was totally worth it, though."
"Yeah, okay, it was," Jared admits. Maggie was so excited when she got to the front of the line that she barely took a breath, and Jensen took about ten thousand pictures, with this little grin on his face that set something warm and happy buzzing in Jared's stomach. The two of them together pretty much melted away any tension the past few hours had pressed into him. Like they always do, Jared thinks, smiling. "I still hate other parents," he grumbles on principle. "But thanks for not letting me kill her."
"It was in my best interests," Jensen tells him, raising a teasing eyebrow. "Maggie wouldn't have gotten to see Santa. Besides, you would have bled all over the marble floor, and it would've been a pain in the ass to clean that up."
"Here lies Jared Padalecki: death by Christmas," Jared sighs. "It was all too much for him." He rolls his neck and groans at the tiredness hanging like lead in his body.
"C'mon, not giving up yet, are ya?" Jensen asks, elbowing him. His grin widens, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening. "We didn't even get to the mistletoe yet, dude. Where's your Christmas spirit?"
Jared heaves a dramatic sigh and puts a hand on his forehead. "I don't think I'm gonna make it to the mistletoe. You should kiss me now, just in case."
Jensen snorts and shakes his head, but slides his hand around the back of Jared's neck and pulls him close, brushing his lips over Jared's and making something hot curl in Jared's stomach. "You are such a horndog," he murmurs into Jared's mouth.
"Takes one to know one," Jared says back. And if they don't leave the parking lot for another five minutes because they're making out--well, no one's counting.
-
Trust Chad to be the one to tip Jared over from enjoying the confusing amount of Christmas preparations into paranoid concern, completely accidentally.
He calls Jared from a party on Thursday night and immediately launches into a monologue about how awesome Canada is. The reasons seem to have something to do with liquor, but Chad's voice is so slurred Jared has a hard time guessing. The discussion includes references to powerpoint slides Jared is not viewing, and he has a hard time keeping from cracking up too loudly, because Jensen's on the phone himself in the other room.
"In conclusion, tequila, motherfuckaaaaa!" Chad shouts into the phone.
Jared manages to hold in his laughter till he can get out onto the porch. "God, you are so drunk," he says between breaths.
"Oh, yes," says Chad, "yes, my friend, yes. Alcohol is officially my bitch." He goes on before Jared can say anything else, adding, "Dude, come have a drink. Patron misses you."
"Can't," Jared says without thinking, still grinning. "Jensen and I are supposed to read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas to Maggie tonight."
He realizes how weird that sounds the minute it's out of his mouth, and winces a little. From the silence on the other end of the line, Chad gets that, too.
"Isn't that supposed to happen, y'know--the night before Christmas?" he asks Jared.
Jared shrugs, then realizes Chad can't see him. "Jensen thought maybe we could do it two times--once now, and then once the night before, so she'll be able to read along the second time."
Chad doesn't hesitate. "Dude, that's weird. What's wrong with him?"
Jared reels back a little. "Nothing's wrong with him," he says. "He's just--" he flounders-- "uh, he's really into Christmas this year. We've uh, been doing a lot of stuff like that."
"You have?"
"Yeah? You know, advent calendars, mall Santa--um, got our tree, blah blah, done everything except put a million lights on the roof, pretty much, and that's cuz Jensen won't let me."
"Whoa," Chad says. "Overcompensating much?"
Jared blinks. "What?"
Chad makes a worried noise. "I mean why does Jensen wanna go all this, this crazy stuff?" he asks, with the intense concern of a very drunk person. "Why now?"
"Um," Jared says, "I dunno, I hadn't really thought about it."
"Is this some thing about how you guys don't love her enough? That's dumb," says Chad, oddly gentle. "Going overboard at holidays is never a good idea, Jay. Are you guys okay? Do you need me to come fix your marriage?"
Jared feels like he got lost somewhere a few sentences ago, unsure if he should laugh. "No?" he tries. "No. But thank you, Chad. It's good to know I have a friend in you?"
"Man, the best," Chad said. "Okay. But let me know if Jensen's like, sick or in trouble or something, dude, I can hook you up to fix that."
"All righty," says Jared, shaking his head and frowning.
They chat for a few more minutes, and then someone challenges Chad to beer pong, so he hangs up. Jared heads back inside and stands in the kitchen for a few minutes after, phone earpiece held in his fingers. Something about what Chad said is kind of getting to him. He wrinkles his nose. Jensen's not--it's not really weird, is it--
Okay, it is a little weird. Jensen's never done anything to this level, before. But that doesn't mean something's wrong with him, Jared tells himself, jiggling the earpiece absently. It doesn't mean--whatever Chad said, that he's overcompensating or stressed or sick, or anything else he's not telling Jensen. Jared knows Jensen. Just because they've been apart for a few months more than usual, and farther away than usual, doesn't mean that's changed. Doesn't mean Jared's lost all ability to read him.
Right?
Right.
He wanders into the living room restlessly, no goal in mind, and stops in the doorjamb. Maggie's curled up on Jensen's lap, swinging her feet, and Jensen's just hanging up the phone, a satisfied look on his face.
"You wanna go caroling?" he's asking Maggie, tugging on the bobbles of her hat.
"What's that?"
"It's when a bunch of people get together at night around Christmas and go around the neighborhood, singing Christmas carols to their neighbors."
"Or Hanukkah songs," Jared adds absently. "Or solstice jams, or--"
"You knock on people's doors and sing to them, unless they don't want to be sung to," Jensen amends, rolling his eyes and tossing a little curl of smile Jared's way. "You wanna do that?"
"Yeah!" Maggie cheers, her eyes lighting up. Jared's not surprised--she loves singing, like Jensen does, and walks around the house making up little songs all the time. Any excuse to perform and she's there. Takes after her dads that way, Jared thinks, but another part of his mind is going caroling? We've never gone caroling and stumbling with confusion.
"Awesome," Jensen says, with real enthusiasm, and holds his hand up for a high-five. Maggie slams her hand into his, and Jensen pretends to wince and wave out the sting while she giggles.
"When are we going?"
"Tomorrow night," Jensen says. "That's who I was talking to on the phone. You wanna go pick out some songs to sing?"
Jared almost asks, but Jensen and Maggie look so happy that he really doesn't have the heart to. He slinks back up to his office instead, and tries to get a little work done, doubt a low throb in his chest.
-
Jared would love it if he could stop thinking about what Chad said, but it sticks in his mind, flaring at unexpected moments. Jared wishes he didn't fixate on and worry about things that are clearly dumb to worry about--of course there's a reasonable explanation for this Christmas mania, some rational part of his mind's muttering--but he's always been that way. Now that someone's suggested Jensen might be doing all this for a Scary Reason, Jared can't stop he niggling worry that something might be wrong.
It's not even that he's freaking out, just that it's confusing. Jensen's got the car radio permanently stuck on a carol station; they go ice skating at the local rink--which Jared sucks at, by the way, and comes away from bruised; Jensen makes them tickets for the Nutcracker. They even make a pilgrimage a little farther north so Maggie can get the snow she's craving. All things they've never done before, and things Jensen is apparently really into, now. Jared has pretty much no idea what to think of that, or whether it means something or not, and it bugs him.
So he caves. He does what has become, in recent years, his miracle solution--he calls Danneel the minute he's sure Jensen's not home, after he and Maggie come home from a walk a few days later.
"Hi Jared!" she says when the connection comes through. "What's going on?"
"Aunt Danny, Aunt Danny, Aunt Danny," chants Maggie immediately, reaching up for the phone.
"Mags," Jared warns, and Maggie heaves a sigh and backs off, scrunching up her face. "Wait your turn," Jared reminds, and leans down to untie her bootlaces. "Hi, Danny. What's up?"
"Same thing you knew was up before you called--hanging around at home before I head out to Texas," she says. "Did I hear the dulcet tones of my darling baby girl?"
Jared can't help but grin. "Hold on a sec, lemme get her wet boots off and you can talk to her."
"Daddy, when's my turn?" Maggie asks, swinging her other foot.
"Soon's you stand still," Jared tells her, firm; miraculously, she freezes for a second, allowing him to peel of her boots and wet socks. He kisses her crown. "Thank you sweetheart," he says, and switches on speakerphone. "All right, Danny, here she is."
"Well hello there, Miss Margaret Allison. How's my favorite niece?"
"Good!" shouts Maggie. Jared rubs a hand over his forehead and maybe falls a little more in platonic love with Danneel when she says "indoor voices, Maggie" so he doesn't have to. Maggie's nothing if not loud, and it gets kind of exhausting reminding her to keep quiet, after all. Maybe another area where she takes after her dads, Jared thinks ruefully.
"Hey, your daddy told me you've been doing some awesome dinosaur drawings lately," Danneel's saying when he tunes back in. "Is that right?"
"Uh-huh! You wanna see?" Maggie demands.
"You bet I do. How about you go get them, and your daddy can switch on video when you get back so I can see?"
Maggie's out the door before Jared can blink, running up the stairs. He opens his mouth to say something, but Danneel beats him to it. "So what is it, Padalecki?" she asks.
"That obvious, huh?" Jared laughs, rubbing a sheepish hand over the back of his neck.
"Subtle you ain't," she agrees, not unkindly. "Tell me what's going on."
Jared blows out a breath and wonders how exactly to start. "Danny," he blurts before he can think of a good way, "has Jensen been like--stressed on set, recently?" He grimaces at how stupid that sounds, but at least it's out there.
He can hear the frown in her voice. "No, not really. Why . . . ?"
Jared scrunches up his face. "He's, uh," he says. "He's just--really, really into Christmas, this year."
A pause. "Jensen loves Christmas," she says, cautiously. "That's not unusual."
"I know--believe me, I know, Christmas up here when Supernatural was on used to be epic. But this, this is like--"
He explains everything that's been going on, including Chad. "And now I can't stop wondering. I don't get any of it," he finishes with. "I thought maybe, like, displacement--or, uh, projection--you know, one of those big psychology words--"
Danneel snorts. "Did you try asking him, maybe, Jared?" she suggests, and he can hear the smile in her voice.
"I was getting there," he says, a little sheepishly. "I just--I don't know, I don't . . . " he sighs. "He's having a good time. You know? He--ck, I'm having a good time, and Maggie's in heaven, and it's not like it's something I want to stop, seriously, I just--"
"--want to know what's going on in his brain?"
Jared huffs out a laugh. "Yeah. That. I mean, I just. Yeah. I want to know what's up."
"Yeah, you guys always did have that have-to-live-in-each-other's-head thing," she says, amused. There's a pause, and Jared picks at a stain on his sweatshirt to fill the silence. "Jared, sweetheart," she says then, gently. "My recommendation is ask him and don't freak out. He'll tell you what's going on. It's Jensen, remember?"
He breathes out; lets the certainty of her words sink into him, solid, and concentrates on the anchoring weight of them until he feels his heartbeat slow. "Yeah," he says, "yeah. Why are you so smart, again?"
"One of us has to be," she teases lightly. "Seriously, though, I promise he's not hiding cancer. Besides, this is all Chad's idea; it's probably not even a big deal. Relax a little, okay?" He imagines the grin curving up her mouth, the corners of her eyes creasing. "And put my niece back on the phone, she's much cuter than you are."
Jared shakes his head, admiring. God, she knows every time how to talk him and Jensen down from something. Moments like this, he always thinks of how lucky it is that she and Jensen worked so hard to keep their friendship after they broke up. "Yes ma'am," he says, and calls for Maggie.
-
He makes this elaborate plan to confront Jensen calmly after Maggie's gone to bed; plots out what he's going to say and everything, complete with I-statements and stuff. It's going to be awesome, and easy, and it's going to work.
Then there are the cookies, and that's just too weird to let slide without comment.
It's not like he and Jensen never cook, of course. They're both pretty good at grilling, for example, and they've both got a handle on breakfast foods. (They're excellent at pancakes, because Jared decided it wasn't okay for them to raise their kid in Canada without knowing how to make some damn good pancakes to match the maple syrup, and totally stealth-signed them up for a pancake class at the local cooking school.) Jensen can do a bunch of kinds of pasta and some good rice things, and Jared's a salad master. But that's pretty much it. They cook simple or they call in; that's been their modus operandi since day one. And yeah, sure, every so often one of them makes cookies--but they're always the kind you buy in a tube at the grocery store, and honestly, half the time they just end up eating the dough.
So when Jared comes home, he thinks maybe Jensen just lit a ton of Jared's candles. Jared loves cookies, and always buys about a million of those candles that smell like baking cookies around this time of the year. Which Jensen teases him about mercilessly, but apparently, Jared thinks, he's had a change of heart. He's on his way through the kitchen to find Jensen and gloat when he notices there's a ton of dirty dishes in the sink, and the oven's on. He actually does a double-take, and then wheels around, taking everything in. Dirty dishes--dirty rolling pin, Jared didn't even know they had a rolling pin--oven on, smell of deliciously baking cookies.
Jensen's baking cookies.
Jared can feel his mouth drop open. This is full-on Twilight Zone. He looks around for Jensen; Jensen's on the porch, wearing a jacket and mixing something because he's weird like that, and apparently wants to stand in below thirty-degree weather to bake--Jared barrels out onto the porch, snagging his own coat, and marches up to Jensen.
"You're totally into this," he accuses.
Jensen frowns in confusion. "Into what?"
"This!" Jared says, waving a hand to emphasize the total weirdness of this all. "Christmas!"
Jensen snorts and keeps poking at what looks like eggs with a whisk, giving Jared a "you're crazy" eyebrow raise. And okay, yeah, Jared has to admit, that sounded stupid. For as long as he's known Jensen, Jensen's been into Christmas, after all. It's his favorite holiday, hands down, and it's not like it's never been obvious. Like Jared told Danneel, Christmas around the Supernatural set used to be pretty epic. Just . . . Jared shakes his head, trying to find better words, feeling like that's all he's been doing lately.
"It's just," he starts, "you never, before, when we--when we lived here during Supernatural, you never did this. You never got this into it, I mean, I know you love Christmas, man, believe me, but this is like--this is like a whole new level of Christmas." He huffs out a breath, a cloud of white in the Vancouver night. "The caroling, the mall, the movies, the--just, I'm. Surprised, that's all. I--is there something wrong?"
He feels his stomach curl painfully at the idea, like it always does at the idea of his family unhappy. He glances at Jensen out of the corner of his eye, coughing and rubbing his foot over the wood for something to do; waiting. Jensen's still giving him a weird look, forehead creased and mouth twisted in confusion.
"Nothing's wrong," he says slowly. "I uh, I didn't realize it was so--weird to you? I--"
"Nonono," Jared hastens to say, "not--dude." He sighs. "I like it, okay? I love it. I've been having a blast. I just can't figure out why." He hunches his shoulders. "And you know how stupid I get when I don't know the why of stuff. This is totally just my own paranoia, but--man, you'd tell me if something was wrong, right? What's up?"
Jensen gives him a tiny smile, shaking his head. "Your own paranoia, huh."
"My own paranoia. Okay, and maybe a little of Chad's drunken paranoia. And." Jared sighs. "Maybe just some of that distance thing. You know it always gets into my head, worms its way everywhere," he admits, biting his lip.
"Yeah," Jensen says, tossing him another little smile. "You're not the only one--but that's not what this is." He pauses, and Jared waits, feels like he's holding his breath.
"We never had a kid before," Jensen offers, finally. "And then we were in LA, and then Mags got sick, and--never had a chance to get to really do Christmas, you know?"
"Yeah," Jared says. "Guess that's true."
Jensen leans back and turns to look at Jared. This is something Jared loves about Jensen: the way he just looks you in the eye, and you know he's all there; that he's really looking at you, and paying attention, and being honest. His green eyes are wide and clear, and something in Jared settles a little just at the look of them.
"This is," Jensen starts, "her third Christmas. Not gonna be too many more where she even believes in Santa Claus. I mean, dude, when I was little, Christmas was pretty much the best thing ever. You get to do all these special things, eat awesome food, see your family--" he shrugs, shoulders coming up tight near his ears. "I want that for her. I want her to love it, that's all."
Jared can hear the exhaustion of months in the way his vowels slip further south, the drawl he slips into so easy. It makes Jared think of Texas Christmas, of the lights on the Riverwalk back home--of church plays and his grandma's cookies and his mama singing Silent Night on Christmas Eve, everyone all hushed in the living room. He feels a sharp pull of homesickness, deep in his gut, and he leans further into Jensen to keep it at bay. Just touching the edges of his body's to Jensen's, letting their coats and fingers brush. He thinks maybe he's starting to get what Jensen's saying. "Yeah?" he says softly.
"Yeah," says Jensen. He stretches out his shoulders, and taps the bowl with the whisk. "I mean, yeah, I love Christmas. But this, this is for her. I want to make sure she has a good one." He shrugs, and adds, "Because she deserves it. She's the coolest person in the entire world." Like it isn't even a question.
Jared blinks. "She talks about dinosaurs, pink, and toilet jokes a disproportionate amount of the time," he reminds Jensen, reeling a little.
Jensen cracks a smile, eyes crinkling at the corners. "'Course she does," he rasps. He tilts his chin up at Jared, and adds, "She's our kid, isn't she?"
Jared's startled into a little laugh, one he feels warmly right down in his bones. Because God, it's true. Maggie's--he starts laughing harder, thinking of their baby girl in all her glory. She's definitely their kid. She's a total nutcase, is what she is. She knows more facts about dinosaurs than Jared even thought existed, and she forces her friends to sit and listen to her recite them; she'll walk up to people in her raincoat and fairy wings and charm them without even trying; she's stubborn as a damn mule and can scream higher than anything. She's loud, and wild, and so fucking smart that it kills him sometimes. And she's beautiful, he thinks, heart turning in his chest, and awesome, and perfect.
He catches the edge of Jensen's grin, and feels his own widen till his cheeks hurt.
"Yeah," he says, softly. "She is our kid."
He turns and kisses the corner of Jensen's mouth, then, letting his lips linger a little and just enjoying being here. Jensen turns his head after a quiet beat, sliding his mouth over Jared's until they click together like they always have, and then they're trading warm, lazy kisses on their front porch. Their front porch, thinks Jared, cupping Jensen's jaw in his hand. The front porch they have together, the life they have together. This place they've carved out in this crazy world. Them and their little girl. Jensen's hands are steady and solid at his waist, and Jared feels that familiar thrill sparking down his spine at the physical, warm reality of Jensen's body, at how well they come together.
It's a long time before he pulls back, and they're both panting and a little giddy with it, then. The way Jensen's fingers are digging into his hips is familiar and hot, and Jared just knows he's got a stupid smile on his face.
"So," he whispers, pressing his forehead to Jensen's, "this Christmas thing."
"This Christmas thing," Jensen repeats, quirking a brow.
"Don't give me that look," Jared murmurs, and leans in to rub his lips over Jensen's jaw again, feeling it when Jensen's mouth curls in another smile. "I'm just saying, it's pretty awesome."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. If you have to morph into a housewife one time of the year--agh! Jensen!"
"Fuck you, you deserved it," Jensen laughs, looking at where Jared's jacket is spattered with egg. He grins up at Jared. "I regret nothing."
The words set something warm off in Jared's chest, and he beams back. "Me neither," he says, meaning every syllable. He pulls Jensen in for another kiss, and pours everything bubbling up inside him--every piece of joy lighting him up right now, every moment he's thought of how lucky he is--into that kiss.
Then mashes his sleeve into Jensen's face when Jensen's gone soft and eager, and not expecting it.
"Oh, it's fucking on!" Jensen yells, and dumps the bowl over Jared's head.
They don't come off the porch for a long while, and when they do, they're covered in egg and Jensen's fourth batch of cookies is ruined. But Jensen's grinning--that clear, uncomplicated little-boy grin, the one that always makes Jared's heart swell--and Jared can feel his cheeks burning with his own smile. He hooks their pinkies together just because he can, and then he helps Jensen make a new batch of cookies. Because Maggie's going to have the best Christmas in the world, if they've got anything to say about it.
-
When Jared wakes up, it's to an elbow in his face and a knee digging into his stomach. Somewhere above him, someone is singing his last name loud enough to wake the neighbors while drumming on his head.
"Monster," he says without opening his eyes, and swings an arm up to snag Maggie and pull her in close. He forces his eyes open and squints down into her giggling face, and can't keep a smile from curving his lips, either. "What is it this time?" he asks, voice rough with sleep.
"Hi Daddy! Dad said make you come downstairs!" she tells him, bouncing and grinning. "He said it's a surprise."
Jared peers over at the clock. Six fifty-one AM, of course. He should just stop having ambitions to sleep beyond eight, he decides. "Well, I guess we'd better not keep him waiting, huh?" he says, sighing a little. But hey, whatever. At least if his sleep cycle's getting cut short, it's because he has a totally awesome family.
That thought sets a grin on his face that doesn't seem to want to leave, so he doesn't fight it. He wiggles out from underneath the covers and hoists Maggie up onto his hip. She curls her arms around his neck and tucks her head into his shoulder, and he holds her close and enjoys it, because someday she's going to be too big to want to be held.
"Jensen," he calls when he hits the bottom step. "Hear you got a surprise for me! And it better involve coffee, dude, I'm just sayin'."
"Maybe it does," comes Jensen's voice from the living room. "Guess you're gonna hafta find out, huh? C'mere."
Jared heaves a put-upon sigh and heads into the room, hitching Maggie up a little higher. "Honestly, Jensen, my love only extends so far before cof--"
He stops short, mouth falling open. The curtains are open, and Jensen's off to the side, grinning, but Jared can't even really concentrate on either of those things, because he's too busy being blinded.
Their frozen lawn is covered in lights.
Every spare inch is smothered in figurines, topiary statues, and laser displays. It is, hands down, the tackiest thing Jared has ever seen. It looks like Christmas threw up all over the grass; Pam and Larry's house looks meek and apologetic behind it, in between the flashing and rainbows and sparkles. He looks up at Jensen, stunned.
"Merry Christmas," says Jensen, smirking. "Nothing on the roof, but yeah. Whaddya think?"
Jared glances from the blinking, waving Santa to the blinking, dancing Santa to the upside-down reindeer on the blow-up merry-go-round and the frantically cycling rainbow bells, and throws back his head and just laughs and laughs and laughs.
When he can breathe again, he sets Maggie down so she can go press her nose to the glass, admiring. He twines his fingers with Jensen's and pulls him in close. Jensen's grinning, and it hits Jared right in the chest, bright and sweet and sharp. He slips his fingers into Jensen's hair and kisses him, and thinks: yeah. This is a good Christmas.