fic: Food Porn (3/7) R - J2 AU
ONE | TWO | THREE | FOUR | FIVE | SIX | EPILOGUE
MASTER POST
CHAPTER THREE
The first person Jensen sees when he gets to work Tuesday morning is, predictably, Kristen. They go for the coffee at the same time, and pretty much right off the bat he realizes that they both remember everything in lurid detail.
She can’t quite meet his eyes and he can’t look at her at all, but he doubts she’s looking everywhere else but him because she’s having a sudden attack of gay crisis. Well, okay, not gay crisis precisely-he did that back in high school-but more like a Jared crisis. He’s going to guess she’s not having a Jared crisis. Yeah.
Jensen sighs.
“Oh. Hey,” she says as she’s stirring Splenda into her cup. He grimaces and takes a long drink of his own coffee. It’s milky but not sweet.
“Um, morning,” he says, coughing.
“Okay, awkward,” she says sadly, then takes her cup and goes back to her little corner to work on a tiramisu with Cliff, her assistant.
Jensen could use the pick-me-up, too, he thinks, looking down into his cup. He wonders if it’s too early in the day to be considering making it an Irish coffee. He could probably claim hair of the dog.
The day doesn’t get much better, but at least there’s drama to take his mind off everything from Kristen to Jared to his own dick. He and Eric decided that they really only need Jared Thursday through Sunday, so he doesn’t even need to worry about seeing the big guy ‘til he gets home.
Instead, he gets to deal with the trainwreck that is Chad and Sophia. Their status is still off-again, which makes everything difficult. When they’re on-again, they’re the most nauseatingly affectionate couple ever, tossing casual and embarrassingly heartfelt I love yous through the window and generally making Jensen grit his teeth any time she comes anywhere near the kitchen. Jensen likes Sophia a hell of a lot more than he likes Chad-at least she doesn’t smell like death-but he has limits, too.
But when Chad and Sophia are off-again, Supernatural just pretty much fucking sucks. Chad spends most of his time flirting with anything with tits that isn’t Sophia, although he sucks at it, so it mostly just makes people punch him and Sophia turn red. Inevitably, screaming fights are picked through the window, and Sophia finds herself banned from the kitchen because that’s easier than being down a rotisseur. Jensen hates working the grill.
“Maybe if you had the class God gave a fruitfly I wouldn’t have to be such a-what was it you just called me?-oh, right! A fucking shrew!” she shrills at Chad halfway through the dinner rush, a heavy pasta plate in one hand like she’d like to Frisbee Chad’s head clean off. Jensen and Victor, standing on either side of Chad, eye her warily.
“Baby, I’m just as God made me,” Chad snaps back, waving his meat fork a little too freely. Victor takes a big step back.
Sophia slams the plate down on the stainless counter on her side of the window, but she does lob a cheese grater at Chad’s head. Jensen snatches it out of the air before it can hit him, which seems to piss her off even more. With a strangled sound and a glare that could probably peel the enamel off the stove, she turns on her heel and storms out of the kitchen.
“It’s that time of the month,” Chad says simply after she’s gone, turning back to his cutting board with a shrug.
Jensen gives him a sideways glare and shakes his head. “You are just all charm and sunshine, aren’t you?”
Chad shrugs again, but he looks a little sick. “I’m not the one with a hickey the size of Manhattan on my neck. What did you crazy kids get up to last night? I mean, fuck, did you make out with a Shop-Vac?”
Of course Kristen walks onto the line at just in time to hear that, and she glares at both of them before turning on her heel. “Should’ve sent Cliff,” she mutters.
Chad watches her go, a funny, pinched look on his face. He turns to Jensen like he’s about to say something, but he just shakes his head. Jensen sighs and wonders if he could just melt through the floor if he stood close enough to the range.
--
By ten o’clock that night, the only thing Jensen can think of to do besides lose his fucking mind is go out back and smoke about five packs of cigarettes in succession. It’s nights like this, when everyone seems to hate each other and none of the food looks right and the whole atmosphere is tense and awkward and unhappy-nights like this make Jensen wonder if maybe it’s not too late to switch careers. Food service really sucks hardcore sometimes. He’s always wanted to be a dental hygenist, seriously. Pet store employee? Sign him up.
He was a proud chain smoker all through high school and his first year of culinary school. Cooking professionally has that effect on people. Anyway, he liked smoking. He liked the raspy voice and yellow fingertips it gave him. But then there was Jess, who didn’t like when he smelled and tasted like an ashtray (even though she totally smoked, too), and then like five minutes after they started dating she got pregnant with Ross. Jensen was reluctant to smoke around the kid for fear the second-hand smoke would stunt his growth or make him grow a second head or something, so it’s been ten years since Jensen has sat down and properly smoked.
He keeps a pack of Marlboro reds in the glove compartment of the Altima for emergencies, though.
Sandy comes out and sits down on a milk crate beside him, pulling out her own pack of Virginia Slims and taking his proffered lighter without a word.
“So…” she starts, then shakes her head. “No, I’m doing this wrong. Give me a second.” She takes a long drag from her cigarette and blows two smoke rings into the night.
He looks at her curiously through the haze in front of his face and flicks his ash.
They sit there for a few minutes, silent and watching raccoons climb all over the dumpster like it’s a fucking playground back there.
“So… you and Jared talk, right?”
He gives her a sideways look. “We mostly just belch at each other and argue about sports, but occasionally we do talk about our feelings and sing campfire songs,” he says.
“Um, right,” Sandy says slowly. She ashes her cigarette and flutters her hands. “God, would you tell me what’s wrong with him lately?”
Jensen chokes on an inhale. She thumps him a few times on the back. “Not-not what I expected you to say, there,” he coughs.
“There is something wrong with his brain, I think,” Sandy says, shaking her head. She blows another smoke ring. “What the hell did you people get up to last night, anyway?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that like I did something wrong?” Jensen whines. She pokes the hickey on the side of his neck and he smacks her hand away. He stabs out his cigarette against the wall and lights the one he’d had waiting behind his ear. The cloud of smoke’s starting to make his contacts itch. He can’t bring himself to care.
“But really… you know why Jared’s being even more of a freak than usual?” She looks all genuine and concerned and Jensen would rather be just about anywhere else right now than the receiving end of that look from this girl. He thinks about this morning and feels queasy.
But he knows what’s wrong, doesn’t he? Jared told him as much, and now Jensen has to lie because it’s not his place to break up with Sandy for the guy. He glares at the raccoons and takes a deep drag. Jared’s an asshole, he thinks.
“He’s probably just stressed about the book,” he says, which is actually true. The sky’s also blue; don’t mean it’s relevant. “He bought me a three hundred dollar knife, you know.”
She laughs, short and a little tense. “Yeah, I was there,” she says, shaking her head. People always shake their heads when they talk about Jared, Jensen’s noticed. Even Chad, and that’s just pathetic. “You know how he is about that place. It’s worse than a candy store. It is his candy store. I only just kept him from buying another espresso machine, so thank me that all you ended up with was that knife.”
Jensen wouldn’t be opposed to a new espresso machine, but he doesn’t tell her that. The decrepit Krups Jared has is almost as old as Ross and it doesn’t even grind the beans anymore. It has it in for Jensen, too, so he mostly sticks to the straight coffee maker except in times of dire need.
“We were talking about maybe calling a spade a spade,” Sandy says after a second, flicking her ash. “You know, admit that yeah, we fuck on a regular basis, really like each other, and go out to restaurants so yeah, we’re in a-a relationship. God, I hate that word.”
Jensen makes a noncommittal noise and keeps puffing.
She tosses her spent butt into the barrel of sand to her left. “I don’t know. I have another year of school and then what? I’ll be doing my internship and residency anywhere in the country and he’s gonna be, where? Here, still fighting with that stupid book and working on the blog, probably.” She sighs and stands up, brushing her ass off. “I’m starting to think maybe it’s just time to shit or get off the pot, you know?”
“Don’t I,” he says. Everyone keeps saying that, and he’s starting to think maybe it’s time he did the same, only with his whole life.
--
It’s that uneasy lull right before the Thursday dinner rush gets going, when all the prep’s done but there aren’t really any orders yet. Everyone stands around, waiting. Usually Chad keeps up a running commentary about whatever vile things he gets up to when he’s off the clock while Jensen makes lists in his head, but today Chad looks positively despondent.
“What crawled up your cooter and died, man?” Jared asks. Jensen watches them with concern, wondering if Chad’s not going to maybe flip out and leave in a blaze of glory and leave him without a rotisseur. No matter how miserable he looks, though, Jensen isn’t sure he wants to get too close. “You’re not gonna gore yourself with Jensen’s pretty new knife, are you?”
Jensen frowns. He really doesn’t want to have to bleach the knife already to remove Chad-borne pathogens.
“I’m going to vomit,” Chad says in a strangled voice. He does look rather green. “On your face.”
Jared takes a comically large step backwards, bumping into Jensen and knocking over a bottle of olive oil that Jensen only just catches before it hits the floor and busts. Jared doesn’t even seem to notice. Chad gives them a baleful look and slumps over his counterspace with his head firmly buried in his folded arms.
“Dude, come on,” Jared cajoles, inching forward again. “You hungover? What the fuck, man?”
Chad takes a big, shaking breath and murmurs something. Jensen drops his knife onto the cutting board with a clatter and stares at him, because he knows exactly where this is going and he so does not even want to think about it. Jared looks confused.
“Oh, Chad,” Jensen says with feeling.
“Oh, me,” Chad agrees, voice muffled.
“Oh, enlighten Jared,” the tall one chimes in, glancing between them.
Jensen puts a hand on Jared’s shoulder but doesn’t look away from Chad. “Uh, congrats?” he says awkwardly. “Explains a lot. Hormones.”
Jared looks between them, dubious at first. When everything clicks, his eyes get big and he gasps. “No. No fucking way,” he says.
“Way,” Chad moans.
Jensen wrinkles his nose. “You knocked her up? Really?”
“We were careful,” Chad mutters, raising his head just enough to glare fiercely at Jared.
A horrible thought strikes Jensen. “Was this baby conceived in the employee men’s?” he asks.
Chad’s silent for a long time, then he inclines his head at Jensen and narrows his eyes. “Possibly?”
Jared just bursts out laughing. He’s the kind of guy that laughs with his entire body shaking and generally looking like some fragile stuff in the vicinity might be in danger. Jensen moves the bottle of olive oil a little farther away. Chad gives them both the most pathetic, hurt look Jensen’s ever seen, then drops his head back down and lets out a groan that sounds like puppies being tortured.
“So…” Jared says, wheezing as he comes down. “Right. Sorry. Um, yeah.”
“She just found out today,” Chad says, hoisting himself back up to his full height and sighing deeply. He points at the faint red mark on his jaw. “She came over to tell me, then she hit me!”
“And why are you fighting again this time?” Jensen asks in spite of his better judgment.
“Because she makes you look rational and shit, asshawk,” Chad snipes.
“That was cheap,” Jared interrupts. Jensen glares at him.
“Whatever, fuckers,” Chad grumbles. “Fact is, in, like, seven months I’m gonna be somebody’s daddy.”
On the other side of the window, Sandy drops the plate she’s been polishing for a long time and pretending she isn’t just eavesdropping, and broken china goes everywhere. She points a finger at Chad. “Yeah, that? That’s some scary shit.”
“Sing it, sister,” Chad replies. He looks at the empty grill and sighs.
--
Jeff calls for the first time on Friday morning, in between Jensen’s shower and his third cup of coffee.
“Alright, kiddo,” Jeff says, “hit me with your worst. You get committed yet? Spend a little time resting in the loony bin with the rest of your people?”
“Nah, all in all, shit’s not too bad,” Jensen says, padding into the kitchen to pour another cup.
Jared and Ross are crowded around the stove. The room smells like hot oil and cooking sausage and Jensen frowns. Jensen hadn’t been working at Supernatural for too long when Sandy had to take time off for Jared’s dad’s funeral. Sandy has a grim little theory that Jared’ll die young as well, keeling over from pulmonary hypertension from his high-salt, fairly low-nutrient diet. Jensen has to agree. He lost his own dad to a heart attack right after he graduated from CIA and he hasn’t touched a potato chip since.
“That right there sounds like some bullshit,” Jeff laughs. Jensen can hear some voices in the background, a woman’s deeper voice laughing and someone else yelling back.
“I thought y’all weren’t s’posed to have contact with the outside world,” Jensen says. He sets his coffee mug in the sink and pours himself a glass of orange juice. Jared actually bought a carton with pulp for once. Maybe he’s growing up. “Also: fuck you.”
Jeff laughs.
“Morning Dad!” Ross crows. Jared tosses him a grin over his shoulder. “We’re making empanadas.”
“I don’t want to know,” Jensen tells them. He hopes they don’t get grease everywhere.
“This ain’t Big Brother, dumbass,” Jeff scoffs. “And if crazy Sandra from Canada didn’t have her phone fucking surgically grafted to her face I think her restaurant would go up in a ball of flames visible here in Washington. You think Supernatural’s got problems? Jesus Christ. Speaking of that pit, tell me about my kitchen.”
“Well, Sandy tried to kill Victor Alfonseca,” Jensen says conversationally.
Jeff snorts. “He don’t weigh what she does. How’d she not succeed?”
“She swears she wasn’t really trying. Stabbed him in the arm with a pen.” Jensen thinks back over the last few weeks, trying to remember everything that’s happened in Jeff’s kitchen since he’s been gone.
“And how’s my little Tinkerbell?” Jeff thinks the sun actually shines out of Kristen’s ass. He always turns into a big ball of fluff when she comes into rooms. It’s kind of adorable.
Jensen squeezes his eyes closed and exhales slowly through his nose. “She burned the fuck out of her arm the same night Sandy stabbed Victor.” he says, and thinks, also, she went down on me in the back of Jared’s SUV but I couldn’t get it up because I. Suck. He swallows while Jeff rambles about workplace safety and how he should just fire Chad because he just knows it was the squinty little shit’s fault.
“What else?” Jensen taps his chin. “Well, Bartólo Ruiz had another big diva fit, too, but he’s back. Punched a hole in the men’s wall, told me to suck his dick, the usual. Oh, and Chad knocked Sophia up, but they’re not speaking right now.”
“Oh, Christ,” Jeff says with feeling. “I can’t fire him, then. Fuck. The little runt’s reproducing, huh? Isn’t that one of the signs of the apocalypse?”
“Right before the plague of locust,” Jensen says.
“You want one, Dad?” Ross asks.
Jensen rinses out his glass and pours himself another cup of coffee. “What’s in ‘em?”
“Chorizo, tomatillos, and refried,” Jared reports. Jensen notices the sausage casings in the sink too late, and makes a face. It looks like some little monster just molted and was discourteous enough to leave its pile of slimy shed skin for anyone to come across.
“You got your kid over?” Jeff asks.
“Yeah, his mom’s up in New England for a week, so I get him. I think he likes Jared better’n me, though.”
“I’m much cooler,” Jared says sagely, scooping an empanada from the oil onto a pile of paper towels (and those better not be Jensen’s Vivas, damn it, heads are going to roll) and sliding the plate Jensen’s way.
“He really is,” Jeff agrees, laughing.
“That Jeff?” Jared asks, gesturing at the phone with the skimmer in his hand. He drips oil on the floor, notices it, and shrugs. Jensen cringes just a little, then nods. “Ask him if he’s nailed anybody yet.”
“I’m not asking-you’re all assholes.” Jensen huffs while the other three laugh, and he scowls at the empanada on his plate. “This better not taste like ass,” he adds warningly.
Jared gives him a wounded look. “You tell that ugly motherfucker I’m fillin’ in for his hairy ass yet?”
“Haven’t had the chance yet-ow! Fuck, that’s hot!” Jensen drops the empanada back on the plate, swallows quickly, and takes a big gulp of coffee (which so does not help alleviate the burn, but whatever).
“You okay there? ‘Cause I can’t be having you dying while I’m halfway across the country, son.” Jeff laughs.
Jensen turns bright red and glares at Jared because he’s several hundred miles closer. “Hey, fuckface, you couldn’t give me a cooling one?” Jared shoots him a rather fiendish grin. “Oh, Jeff, forgot to tell you,” he says loudly. “Jared’s playing second sous ‘til you crawl your ass back here. Speaking of which, you haven’t been kicked off yet, really? ‘Cause you know, you kinda suck.”
“Never sucked in my life, boy. I am actually a god, you know. And I can’t tell you that. You gotta watch to find out.” A woman shouts on his end and he swears softly. “Alright, kiddo, I gotta go play with food. You be good, y’hear?”
“Yeah, yeah, Papa Bear. You’re still a dick,” Jensen says, all surly, then snaps his phone shut to the sound of Jeff laughing. He blows on the open end of his pastry. Over by the stove, Jared and Ross look all intense, switching a cooked one out of the oil for another raw one-and precisely how many of these fucking things are they planning on making, anyway? The cooling rack looks pretty full.
“He get kicked off yet?” Jared asks, handing the skimmer to Ross and hopping up on the counter next to where Jensen’s leaning. His thigh brushes Jensen’s side and Jensen shivers. Just a little. He blames it on the big bite he’s just taken, though, because the filling is awesome.
“He was trying to be stealthy, but nah, he’s still in the running to be America’s Next Top Model,” Jensen says after swallowing. “And this is amazing, man.”
“It was mostly Ross,” Jared says modestly, pointing at the stove, where Ross is standing on a footstool and peering down at the pan of oil with a very serious look on his face. His glasses are all fogged up and Jensen’s heart clenches a little.
“Damn straight it was, dick,” Jensen says, punching Jared right above the knee.
--
Kristen corners him that afternoon, finding him when he’s hiding in Jeff’s office doing paperwork. It’s only an office in the loosest sense, in that there’s a desk and a phone and a calendar. It’s mostly just a huge mess crammed in an oddly shaped nook in the dry stock room, surrounded on all sides by floor-to-ceiling shelving units full of canned goods.
He and Kristen have been playing a pretty impressive game of mutual avoidance, but he’s known her long enough to know that she always cracks after day five of anything. He’s been trapped and forced to listen to her dramatic breakup tales enough times to know that she’s one of those girls who always wants to talk about things.
He’s sitting with his feet up on the desk, frowning at how dingy his socks looked in the fluorescents, and at the produce invoice Mike just dropped off, when Kristen appears in the doorway. He doesn’t remember ordering celeriac-it’s not exactly a June vegetable-but he figures he can either make soup out of it or give it to Ana-Beatriz to make chips.
“You busy?” she asks, hovering just around the corner of a shelf full of cans of olives and looking a little uneasy.
He drops his feet to the floor and tosses the invoice back on the desk. “Nah, come in,” he tells her.
She reaches behind her and pulls the stock room door most of the way closed, then she sits carefully on a stack of cases of canned diced tomato.
“Okay, so we have got to clear the air here,” she says, steepling her hands on her knees.
“Yeah, we really do,” he agrees. “I’m really sorry about-I think it’s stress, or-”
She shakes her head and looks down, so he stops. She coughs once into her fist, then she looks up at him through her bangs. “You know, we’ve been dancing around this for so long… since you’ve worked here, I think, way before you got divorced. And in all that time, you and me have never done more than cuddle and make out. Are we in junior high? Why do you think that is?”
He shrugs and fiddles with the stubby China marker Jeff uses to make out the schedule. “Our timing sucks ass?” he offers and she laughs.
“I don’t know,” she says a little sadly. She leans forward and cups her fingers around one of his kneecaps, rubbing her thumb over the spur of bone where his femur ends. “But I have to ask: who is she?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Who is who?”
She makes a great effort of smiling brightly, and for the most part she succeeds. “I was giving you space after your divorce, you know,” she says, looking away and pulling back, staring blankly at a picture of Jeff with his kids that’s taped to the shelf frame. “I figured that even if it had been a long time since you’d been in love with her-Jessica, I mean-you’d still need to time to mourn not being married to her anymore, right? I was going to wait for my moment, then sweep you off your feet-”
“Um, hi,” he interrupts. “Guy here. Big, girly romantic gestures aren’t necessary.”
She rolls her eyes and smacks one of her palms against the box she’s sitting on. “Anyway, yeah. It was going to be, like, epic and stuff. Made of total rom-com awesome. Jared could write about it in his blog, ‘Norm’s little romance,’ you know?”
Jensen bristles for a second. “I’m not Norm,” he says automatically. He’s tired of the argument that Norm, one of Jared’s less flattering characterizations, is in any way based on him. Norm is crazy and kind of stupid and completely oblivious to the fact that Chef Guy utterly adores him. The subtext is so glaring that there is slash fanfiction about Chef Guy and Norm. Jared’s agent has sent links to it to him hoping it might spark him into writing. All it does is make Jared print the stories out and crow about how awesome his fans are.
“You’re totally Norm. It’s cool. Norm is totally everybody’s favorite,” Kristen says, flashing him a genuine smile, but then she dims again. “I just waited too long for you.”
He rolls his chair closer and covers one of her hands with one of his. “Kristen,” he starts to say.
She shakes her head and he sits back. “No, Jensen. Come on.” She hops off the stack of tomato tidbits cases and throws her arms around his neck. “You’re my best friend,” she says against his neck. “I’m okay with that much, and I’m okay with you falling for someone else while I was-while I was sitting around with my thumb up my butt.” She breaks the hug and refuses to make eye contact. Her voice is a little scratchy with trying not to cry.
“I really haven’t fallen for somebody else, though,” he tells her, smiling at her with sympathy. He hasn’t met anyone new in ages, let alone dated. Sure, there were a few fumblings in club bathrooms and one disastrous blind date with some girl Mike knew, not to mention the twinky one night stand he brought home from Sandy’s birthday party back in April. He’s pretty sure that particular morning-after breakfast (because Jensen couldn’t just send the guy home in the morning on an empty stomach) was the most awkward meal of his life once Jared walked into the kitchen. Jared had just stared at him like he had turned into some kind of African mammal overnight, and there had been stuttered apologies, and it was mostly just an awful way to admit to your roommate that, yeah, you enjoy a nice, satisfying ride on a cock on occasion. And Jared had been all “No, really, it’s totally fine,” even though it mostly sounded like he was lying.
And then the smile slides right off Jensen’s face, because, well… fucking duh.
“Oh, fuck a duck,” he says softly, looking away and pointedly ignoring the sick feeling that bubbles up in his stomach. The labels on the cans of black olives to his right are facing all kinds of different directions.
“See?” she says, squeezing him again. “It’s okay, Jennybean,” she tells him, sniffing. “But this girl better let me in the wedding party, s’all I’m saying.”
Jensen feels a little like throwing up. He exhales heavily through his nose.
There’s the sound of someone clearing his throat at the door. It’s Tom, the meat delivery guy, standing there awkwardly and holding his clipboard. “Uh, hi?” he says, waving.
Kristen snaps to attention and brushes past him, pausing in the doorway to shoot Jensen one last weak smile. “I better, uh… go check on my pies. Mike brought me Bing cherries as big as my fist, did I tell you? That man’s got it bad for me.”
Jensen watches her go, then shakes his head and scratches the back of his neck. Tom gives him a male solidarity, sympathetic look. “Well, that looked brutal,” he comments, handing him the clipboard for him to sign off on the invoice.
“Trust me, not as brutal as the other night,” Jensen says. He pinches the bridge of his nose and scrawls his name on the usual line. “Anyway, big guy, you actually bring me that veal this time like I asked?”
Tom rolls his eyes. “Yep. Big ol’ case of dead baby cow sitting in your walk-in as we speak.” He jots something down on the clipboard and tucks it under his arm. He gestures with his pen, pointing over his shoulder. “Oh, and hey, tell Chad I said congrats. Just went to take a leak and I saw the note about him going to be a dad on the wall.”
“I swear to God, that bathroom wall’s better’n a bulletin board,” Jensen says.
Tom laughs. “Yeah, tell me about it. I do a lot of restaurants in the area, and Supernatural here’s the only one that’s got a bathroom quite like it. Oh, hey, I got to get going on the rest of my run. Meat to be disseminated and all.” He looks at Jensen with concern. “Good luck, man,” he says, before heading for the door.
“Yeah,” Jensen echoes. “Thanks.”
He sits back down at Jeff’s desk, but he just rests his head in his hands and concentrates on breathing in, breathing out, repeat. He doesn’t feel crazy anymore-which is nice, and weird, and actually a little nauseating-just kind of empty and really, really fucking tired.
--
For Ross’s last dinner at chez Padalecki that night, Jensen makes the gnocchi with sage butter. They spend the whole afternoon making gnocchi dough from scratch, from baking and mashing the potatoes to rolling long snakes of dough and cutting and fork-rolling them into perfect little blobs.
“They look like grubs,” Ross observes. “Like in the Lion King.”
“Hakuna matata,” Jensen replies, arranging the ones they aren’t going to be eating tonight on a couple of jelly roll cookie sheets and sticking them in the freezer. He’s got big plans for sending a big bag of them home with Ross.
Jared’s running the line at Supernatural tonight, so it’s just Jensen and the kid tonight. He grills a couple of steaks to go with the gnocchi-Ross’s every bit as medium rare as his own-and after they finish eating dinner out on the terrace they lay in the grass out back while the dogs chase each other around the perimeter of the yard. He’s got the Cubs-White Sox game on the radio, and the Sox are winning. Jensen roots for the Sox most of the time. He thinks Jim Thome is awesome.
“I could stay longer,” Ross offers. “Mom’s dating that Belgian guy she met at that convention in Charlotte-you know, Kees, or whatever his name is-so she’d probably like the chance to have the house all to herself to do, like, stuff with him.”
Jensen makes a face. “Watch the sunset,” he orders. “It’s pretty and you’ll never see one exactly like it for the rest of your life.”
Ross snorts. “Wow, sentimental overload, there.”
“I really need to keep you away from Jared, I think. It’s damaging your still-developing psyche.”
Harley, the bigger of the dogs, comes over and lies down on Ross’s other side, resting his chin on Ross’s belly and sighing dramatically. Sadie squeezes between them, back to Ross, and gives Jensen an incredibly judgmental look.
“I think the dogs are bored,” Ross observes, playing with Harley’s ears.
“I think you’re right,” Jensen agrees, sitting up and scratching his fingers down Sadie’s spine. She whines happily and wiggles closer to him.
They play with the dogs for a while, tossing a severely misshapen Frisbee for Sadie and the rattiest, saddest tennis ball ever for Harley. The dogs, of course, act like no one has ever played with them in their lives, and knock Ross down at least five times in their excitement. Jensen gets knocked over and thoroughly bathed in dog slobber at least twice himself.
“You gonna be okay on your own, Dad?” Ross asks quietly as they head back inside. The dogs stop briefly to get messy drinks in the laundry room under the stairs, before heading up to Jared’s room to pass out on his bed.
Jensen ruffles Ross’s hair and smiles. “I’m gonna be fine, bucko,” he says, and it’s mostly the truth. He really wishes people would stop asking, though. “I got Kristen-I think-and Jared and Sandy and even Chad if I’m desperate.”
“I like Chad,” Ross says, grabbing a can of Mountain Dew for himself and a bottle of Jensen’s beer from the fridge. “He’s fun. He tells dirty jokes.”
Jensen pops the cap off his beer with his ring, tosses it in the old Depression glass pitcher Jared keeps by the window just for that purpose. It’s almost full again, and God only knows what Jared does with all the bottle caps they collect.
“Chad’s gonna be a dad, d’I tell you that? Sophia just found out she’s pregnant.” Which Jensen still cannot quite wrap his head around, but some cracked little part of his brain seems to think that given the chance, Chad will probably turn out to be a pretty good father. It’s a pretty horrifying thought, actually.
Ross trips over the rug in the dining room. Jensen near bites clear through his lip trying not to laugh. He’s officially the only one who never seems to run into his shit strewn from stem to stern, so he thinks that maybe on Monday he’ll consider cleaning some of the mess up. That’s what Mondays are for: maybes.
They sit down in the living room, Ross on his stomach on the couch and Jensen in his chair. They watch part of a Good Eats marathon on Food Network (and Jensen totally has a mancrush on Alton Brown, despite all the science talk and the questionable taste in clothing) and then a random episode of that Disney Channel show about the family of wizards before Ross decides that it’s time to embarrass Jensen at Guitar Hero.
They’re still playing when Jared gets home around one. Ross is a little punch-drunk from the late hour and Jensen’s actually getting worse at the game, which is saying something. Jared laughs at them and heads upstairs. When he comes back down sometime later, his hair is dripping on his shoulders, and he’s changed into bleach-marked dark sweats and a Metallica t-shirt that might actually belong to Jensen.
Jensen is totally content to sit back in his chair and watch Ross utterly own Jared at one of the Star Wars games Jared has for the 360. He’s got a bottle of beer growing warm against his belly and a lazy smile on his face.
“You good over there, douchsicle?” Jared asks during a loading screen.
“Yeah, man,” Jensen replies.
“S’good to hear,” Jared says. He turns back to the game. “So I have blisters from my clogs,” he adds, walking non-sequitur that he is.
“Another life lesson, Ross, my padawan,” Jensen says loudly, “is to always wear socks when you wear any footwear that isn’t sandals. It’s barbaric not to, okay?”
“Oh, hi, fuck you,” Jared says, but he’s smiling a little. He’s got his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth, concentrating hard on the game. He flicks a glance at Jensen, who raises one middle finger in his direction.
He actually wins whatever skirmish he was involved in-Jensen has no idea, as he’s not paying any attention to the game at all, too busy watching Jared enjoying himself-and pumps both hands in the air. “Holy shit, I won! Suck on that!” he crows, then he glances at Ross next to him and he blushes a deep, dark red. “And wow, that’s an inappropriate thing to yell at a ten-year-old. Just… Jesus. Sorry, Ross.”
Ross shrugs, setting his controller on the coffee table and yawning. “What? Oh. Sorry. I fell asleep,” he says after a second.
Jensen just laughs and Jared sputters for a second.
Jess calls early Saturday morning from Atlanta to let him know that her connecting flight’s been delayed. As usual, she’s worked up a good steam of complaint despite it only being eight in the morning, but luckily for Jensen, Sadie had already woken him up to let her outside. He’s leaning against the counter and watching the coffee machine dribble out ambrosia when his phone rings.
“Why do I always fucking forget how much I hate flying Delta?” Jess says when Jensen answers, her idea of an acceptable greeting. “And then the next trip, I fly Delta anyway, and I call you and bitch at you from Atlanta, like, immediately after I step off the people-mover and try to crack the whiplash out of my neck. God. It doesn’t even make sense not to have a direct flight from Providence to O’Hare.”
Jensen gives her a zombie moan and peels himself away from the counter. “Hold on. You get to break the news to your child yourself that you won’t be home for Christmas,” he says as he walks to his room and tries to stretch all the kinks Jared’s couch put in his spine overnight. It’s not really working.
“You are such a tool, Jensen Ackles,” she says, but he can hear the smile in her voice.
He stops in the middle of the hallway. “Speaking of our illustrious last name. My mother asked me if you were keeping it or going back to Alba, and I had to tell her I wasn’t sure. Do you know what kind of ammunition that gives her to further criticize my life choices, Jess? Do you?” Jensen’s fairly certain that his mother only exists to do exactly that. Retirement must be really fucking boring, is all he’s saying.
“Eh, it’s my byline,” Jess says, snorting. “There’s this chick named Jessica Ackles, and she’s this famous food writer, you know? I think she used to be married to that neurotic chef at Supernatural, right? Also, it’s got some excellent consonance and assonance going on.”
“Something to do with ass, anyway,” he laughs as he shoves his bedroom door open. Ross is sacked out on his stomach on the right side of the bed, Harley taking up the rest of the space. Sadie’s still outside.
“You’re just jealous that your name doesn’t flow as well,” she says. “If you say it quickly it sounds like ‘Jessie Cackles.’”
“Fucking hell, Jess,” Jensen says. “The people-mover actually scrambled your brain this time, didn’t it?”
Rousing Ross is kind of a let-sleeping-dragons-lie type of situation, so Jensen prods him several times before stepping back to avoid flailing limbs.
“Your mother would like to talk to you,” Jensen says loudly, poking Ross again after the first attempt fails to achieve any result besides Harley giving Jensen an annoyed look.
“’m sleeping,” Ross mumbles, face pressed into his pillow.
“But she’s your mother and she loves you very much,” Jensen points out, a little sing-songy.
Ross holds out his hand and once he’s got hold of it, he plops the phone against his face. “Mom?”
Jensen ruffles his hair and heads into his bathroom to take a leak and brush his teeth.
Later on, Jensen makes sure to spend the day drinking Mountain Dew and playing a lot of first-person shooters with Ross, to make up for Jess’s delay. The Flood doesn’t stand a chance against Ross Ackles, master of all video games, and Jensen sends him home high on caffeine and pixilated bloodlust.
“This is us being normal men,” Jensen says very seriously.
“We’re awesome,” Ross agrees.
Part four
MASTER POST
CHAPTER THREE
The first person Jensen sees when he gets to work Tuesday morning is, predictably, Kristen. They go for the coffee at the same time, and pretty much right off the bat he realizes that they both remember everything in lurid detail.
She can’t quite meet his eyes and he can’t look at her at all, but he doubts she’s looking everywhere else but him because she’s having a sudden attack of gay crisis. Well, okay, not gay crisis precisely-he did that back in high school-but more like a Jared crisis. He’s going to guess she’s not having a Jared crisis. Yeah.
Jensen sighs.
“Oh. Hey,” she says as she’s stirring Splenda into her cup. He grimaces and takes a long drink of his own coffee. It’s milky but not sweet.
“Um, morning,” he says, coughing.
“Okay, awkward,” she says sadly, then takes her cup and goes back to her little corner to work on a tiramisu with Cliff, her assistant.
Jensen could use the pick-me-up, too, he thinks, looking down into his cup. He wonders if it’s too early in the day to be considering making it an Irish coffee. He could probably claim hair of the dog.
The day doesn’t get much better, but at least there’s drama to take his mind off everything from Kristen to Jared to his own dick. He and Eric decided that they really only need Jared Thursday through Sunday, so he doesn’t even need to worry about seeing the big guy ‘til he gets home.
Instead, he gets to deal with the trainwreck that is Chad and Sophia. Their status is still off-again, which makes everything difficult. When they’re on-again, they’re the most nauseatingly affectionate couple ever, tossing casual and embarrassingly heartfelt I love yous through the window and generally making Jensen grit his teeth any time she comes anywhere near the kitchen. Jensen likes Sophia a hell of a lot more than he likes Chad-at least she doesn’t smell like death-but he has limits, too.
But when Chad and Sophia are off-again, Supernatural just pretty much fucking sucks. Chad spends most of his time flirting with anything with tits that isn’t Sophia, although he sucks at it, so it mostly just makes people punch him and Sophia turn red. Inevitably, screaming fights are picked through the window, and Sophia finds herself banned from the kitchen because that’s easier than being down a rotisseur. Jensen hates working the grill.
“Maybe if you had the class God gave a fruitfly I wouldn’t have to be such a-what was it you just called me?-oh, right! A fucking shrew!” she shrills at Chad halfway through the dinner rush, a heavy pasta plate in one hand like she’d like to Frisbee Chad’s head clean off. Jensen and Victor, standing on either side of Chad, eye her warily.
“Baby, I’m just as God made me,” Chad snaps back, waving his meat fork a little too freely. Victor takes a big step back.
Sophia slams the plate down on the stainless counter on her side of the window, but she does lob a cheese grater at Chad’s head. Jensen snatches it out of the air before it can hit him, which seems to piss her off even more. With a strangled sound and a glare that could probably peel the enamel off the stove, she turns on her heel and storms out of the kitchen.
“It’s that time of the month,” Chad says simply after she’s gone, turning back to his cutting board with a shrug.
Jensen gives him a sideways glare and shakes his head. “You are just all charm and sunshine, aren’t you?”
Chad shrugs again, but he looks a little sick. “I’m not the one with a hickey the size of Manhattan on my neck. What did you crazy kids get up to last night? I mean, fuck, did you make out with a Shop-Vac?”
Of course Kristen walks onto the line at just in time to hear that, and she glares at both of them before turning on her heel. “Should’ve sent Cliff,” she mutters.
Chad watches her go, a funny, pinched look on his face. He turns to Jensen like he’s about to say something, but he just shakes his head. Jensen sighs and wonders if he could just melt through the floor if he stood close enough to the range.
--
By ten o’clock that night, the only thing Jensen can think of to do besides lose his fucking mind is go out back and smoke about five packs of cigarettes in succession. It’s nights like this, when everyone seems to hate each other and none of the food looks right and the whole atmosphere is tense and awkward and unhappy-nights like this make Jensen wonder if maybe it’s not too late to switch careers. Food service really sucks hardcore sometimes. He’s always wanted to be a dental hygenist, seriously. Pet store employee? Sign him up.
He was a proud chain smoker all through high school and his first year of culinary school. Cooking professionally has that effect on people. Anyway, he liked smoking. He liked the raspy voice and yellow fingertips it gave him. But then there was Jess, who didn’t like when he smelled and tasted like an ashtray (even though she totally smoked, too), and then like five minutes after they started dating she got pregnant with Ross. Jensen was reluctant to smoke around the kid for fear the second-hand smoke would stunt his growth or make him grow a second head or something, so it’s been ten years since Jensen has sat down and properly smoked.
He keeps a pack of Marlboro reds in the glove compartment of the Altima for emergencies, though.
Sandy comes out and sits down on a milk crate beside him, pulling out her own pack of Virginia Slims and taking his proffered lighter without a word.
“So…” she starts, then shakes her head. “No, I’m doing this wrong. Give me a second.” She takes a long drag from her cigarette and blows two smoke rings into the night.
He looks at her curiously through the haze in front of his face and flicks his ash.
They sit there for a few minutes, silent and watching raccoons climb all over the dumpster like it’s a fucking playground back there.
“So… you and Jared talk, right?”
He gives her a sideways look. “We mostly just belch at each other and argue about sports, but occasionally we do talk about our feelings and sing campfire songs,” he says.
“Um, right,” Sandy says slowly. She ashes her cigarette and flutters her hands. “God, would you tell me what’s wrong with him lately?”
Jensen chokes on an inhale. She thumps him a few times on the back. “Not-not what I expected you to say, there,” he coughs.
“There is something wrong with his brain, I think,” Sandy says, shaking her head. She blows another smoke ring. “What the hell did you people get up to last night, anyway?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that like I did something wrong?” Jensen whines. She pokes the hickey on the side of his neck and he smacks her hand away. He stabs out his cigarette against the wall and lights the one he’d had waiting behind his ear. The cloud of smoke’s starting to make his contacts itch. He can’t bring himself to care.
“But really… you know why Jared’s being even more of a freak than usual?” She looks all genuine and concerned and Jensen would rather be just about anywhere else right now than the receiving end of that look from this girl. He thinks about this morning and feels queasy.
But he knows what’s wrong, doesn’t he? Jared told him as much, and now Jensen has to lie because it’s not his place to break up with Sandy for the guy. He glares at the raccoons and takes a deep drag. Jared’s an asshole, he thinks.
“He’s probably just stressed about the book,” he says, which is actually true. The sky’s also blue; don’t mean it’s relevant. “He bought me a three hundred dollar knife, you know.”
She laughs, short and a little tense. “Yeah, I was there,” she says, shaking her head. People always shake their heads when they talk about Jared, Jensen’s noticed. Even Chad, and that’s just pathetic. “You know how he is about that place. It’s worse than a candy store. It is his candy store. I only just kept him from buying another espresso machine, so thank me that all you ended up with was that knife.”
Jensen wouldn’t be opposed to a new espresso machine, but he doesn’t tell her that. The decrepit Krups Jared has is almost as old as Ross and it doesn’t even grind the beans anymore. It has it in for Jensen, too, so he mostly sticks to the straight coffee maker except in times of dire need.
“We were talking about maybe calling a spade a spade,” Sandy says after a second, flicking her ash. “You know, admit that yeah, we fuck on a regular basis, really like each other, and go out to restaurants so yeah, we’re in a-a relationship. God, I hate that word.”
Jensen makes a noncommittal noise and keeps puffing.
She tosses her spent butt into the barrel of sand to her left. “I don’t know. I have another year of school and then what? I’ll be doing my internship and residency anywhere in the country and he’s gonna be, where? Here, still fighting with that stupid book and working on the blog, probably.” She sighs and stands up, brushing her ass off. “I’m starting to think maybe it’s just time to shit or get off the pot, you know?”
“Don’t I,” he says. Everyone keeps saying that, and he’s starting to think maybe it’s time he did the same, only with his whole life.
--
It’s that uneasy lull right before the Thursday dinner rush gets going, when all the prep’s done but there aren’t really any orders yet. Everyone stands around, waiting. Usually Chad keeps up a running commentary about whatever vile things he gets up to when he’s off the clock while Jensen makes lists in his head, but today Chad looks positively despondent.
“What crawled up your cooter and died, man?” Jared asks. Jensen watches them with concern, wondering if Chad’s not going to maybe flip out and leave in a blaze of glory and leave him without a rotisseur. No matter how miserable he looks, though, Jensen isn’t sure he wants to get too close. “You’re not gonna gore yourself with Jensen’s pretty new knife, are you?”
Jensen frowns. He really doesn’t want to have to bleach the knife already to remove Chad-borne pathogens.
“I’m going to vomit,” Chad says in a strangled voice. He does look rather green. “On your face.”
Jared takes a comically large step backwards, bumping into Jensen and knocking over a bottle of olive oil that Jensen only just catches before it hits the floor and busts. Jared doesn’t even seem to notice. Chad gives them a baleful look and slumps over his counterspace with his head firmly buried in his folded arms.
“Dude, come on,” Jared cajoles, inching forward again. “You hungover? What the fuck, man?”
Chad takes a big, shaking breath and murmurs something. Jensen drops his knife onto the cutting board with a clatter and stares at him, because he knows exactly where this is going and he so does not even want to think about it. Jared looks confused.
“Oh, Chad,” Jensen says with feeling.
“Oh, me,” Chad agrees, voice muffled.
“Oh, enlighten Jared,” the tall one chimes in, glancing between them.
Jensen puts a hand on Jared’s shoulder but doesn’t look away from Chad. “Uh, congrats?” he says awkwardly. “Explains a lot. Hormones.”
Jared looks between them, dubious at first. When everything clicks, his eyes get big and he gasps. “No. No fucking way,” he says.
“Way,” Chad moans.
Jensen wrinkles his nose. “You knocked her up? Really?”
“We were careful,” Chad mutters, raising his head just enough to glare fiercely at Jared.
A horrible thought strikes Jensen. “Was this baby conceived in the employee men’s?” he asks.
Chad’s silent for a long time, then he inclines his head at Jensen and narrows his eyes. “Possibly?”
Jared just bursts out laughing. He’s the kind of guy that laughs with his entire body shaking and generally looking like some fragile stuff in the vicinity might be in danger. Jensen moves the bottle of olive oil a little farther away. Chad gives them both the most pathetic, hurt look Jensen’s ever seen, then drops his head back down and lets out a groan that sounds like puppies being tortured.
“So…” Jared says, wheezing as he comes down. “Right. Sorry. Um, yeah.”
“She just found out today,” Chad says, hoisting himself back up to his full height and sighing deeply. He points at the faint red mark on his jaw. “She came over to tell me, then she hit me!”
“And why are you fighting again this time?” Jensen asks in spite of his better judgment.
“Because she makes you look rational and shit, asshawk,” Chad snipes.
“That was cheap,” Jared interrupts. Jensen glares at him.
“Whatever, fuckers,” Chad grumbles. “Fact is, in, like, seven months I’m gonna be somebody’s daddy.”
On the other side of the window, Sandy drops the plate she’s been polishing for a long time and pretending she isn’t just eavesdropping, and broken china goes everywhere. She points a finger at Chad. “Yeah, that? That’s some scary shit.”
“Sing it, sister,” Chad replies. He looks at the empty grill and sighs.
--
Jeff calls for the first time on Friday morning, in between Jensen’s shower and his third cup of coffee.
“Alright, kiddo,” Jeff says, “hit me with your worst. You get committed yet? Spend a little time resting in the loony bin with the rest of your people?”
“Nah, all in all, shit’s not too bad,” Jensen says, padding into the kitchen to pour another cup.
Jared and Ross are crowded around the stove. The room smells like hot oil and cooking sausage and Jensen frowns. Jensen hadn’t been working at Supernatural for too long when Sandy had to take time off for Jared’s dad’s funeral. Sandy has a grim little theory that Jared’ll die young as well, keeling over from pulmonary hypertension from his high-salt, fairly low-nutrient diet. Jensen has to agree. He lost his own dad to a heart attack right after he graduated from CIA and he hasn’t touched a potato chip since.
“That right there sounds like some bullshit,” Jeff laughs. Jensen can hear some voices in the background, a woman’s deeper voice laughing and someone else yelling back.
“I thought y’all weren’t s’posed to have contact with the outside world,” Jensen says. He sets his coffee mug in the sink and pours himself a glass of orange juice. Jared actually bought a carton with pulp for once. Maybe he’s growing up. “Also: fuck you.”
Jeff laughs.
“Morning Dad!” Ross crows. Jared tosses him a grin over his shoulder. “We’re making empanadas.”
“I don’t want to know,” Jensen tells them. He hopes they don’t get grease everywhere.
“This ain’t Big Brother, dumbass,” Jeff scoffs. “And if crazy Sandra from Canada didn’t have her phone fucking surgically grafted to her face I think her restaurant would go up in a ball of flames visible here in Washington. You think Supernatural’s got problems? Jesus Christ. Speaking of that pit, tell me about my kitchen.”
“Well, Sandy tried to kill Victor Alfonseca,” Jensen says conversationally.
Jeff snorts. “He don’t weigh what she does. How’d she not succeed?”
“She swears she wasn’t really trying. Stabbed him in the arm with a pen.” Jensen thinks back over the last few weeks, trying to remember everything that’s happened in Jeff’s kitchen since he’s been gone.
“And how’s my little Tinkerbell?” Jeff thinks the sun actually shines out of Kristen’s ass. He always turns into a big ball of fluff when she comes into rooms. It’s kind of adorable.
Jensen squeezes his eyes closed and exhales slowly through his nose. “She burned the fuck out of her arm the same night Sandy stabbed Victor.” he says, and thinks, also, she went down on me in the back of Jared’s SUV but I couldn’t get it up because I. Suck. He swallows while Jeff rambles about workplace safety and how he should just fire Chad because he just knows it was the squinty little shit’s fault.
“What else?” Jensen taps his chin. “Well, Bartólo Ruiz had another big diva fit, too, but he’s back. Punched a hole in the men’s wall, told me to suck his dick, the usual. Oh, and Chad knocked Sophia up, but they’re not speaking right now.”
“Oh, Christ,” Jeff says with feeling. “I can’t fire him, then. Fuck. The little runt’s reproducing, huh? Isn’t that one of the signs of the apocalypse?”
“Right before the plague of locust,” Jensen says.
“You want one, Dad?” Ross asks.
Jensen rinses out his glass and pours himself another cup of coffee. “What’s in ‘em?”
“Chorizo, tomatillos, and refried,” Jared reports. Jensen notices the sausage casings in the sink too late, and makes a face. It looks like some little monster just molted and was discourteous enough to leave its pile of slimy shed skin for anyone to come across.
“You got your kid over?” Jeff asks.
“Yeah, his mom’s up in New England for a week, so I get him. I think he likes Jared better’n me, though.”
“I’m much cooler,” Jared says sagely, scooping an empanada from the oil onto a pile of paper towels (and those better not be Jensen’s Vivas, damn it, heads are going to roll) and sliding the plate Jensen’s way.
“He really is,” Jeff agrees, laughing.
“That Jeff?” Jared asks, gesturing at the phone with the skimmer in his hand. He drips oil on the floor, notices it, and shrugs. Jensen cringes just a little, then nods. “Ask him if he’s nailed anybody yet.”
“I’m not asking-you’re all assholes.” Jensen huffs while the other three laugh, and he scowls at the empanada on his plate. “This better not taste like ass,” he adds warningly.
Jared gives him a wounded look. “You tell that ugly motherfucker I’m fillin’ in for his hairy ass yet?”
“Haven’t had the chance yet-ow! Fuck, that’s hot!” Jensen drops the empanada back on the plate, swallows quickly, and takes a big gulp of coffee (which so does not help alleviate the burn, but whatever).
“You okay there? ‘Cause I can’t be having you dying while I’m halfway across the country, son.” Jeff laughs.
Jensen turns bright red and glares at Jared because he’s several hundred miles closer. “Hey, fuckface, you couldn’t give me a cooling one?” Jared shoots him a rather fiendish grin. “Oh, Jeff, forgot to tell you,” he says loudly. “Jared’s playing second sous ‘til you crawl your ass back here. Speaking of which, you haven’t been kicked off yet, really? ‘Cause you know, you kinda suck.”
“Never sucked in my life, boy. I am actually a god, you know. And I can’t tell you that. You gotta watch to find out.” A woman shouts on his end and he swears softly. “Alright, kiddo, I gotta go play with food. You be good, y’hear?”
“Yeah, yeah, Papa Bear. You’re still a dick,” Jensen says, all surly, then snaps his phone shut to the sound of Jeff laughing. He blows on the open end of his pastry. Over by the stove, Jared and Ross look all intense, switching a cooked one out of the oil for another raw one-and precisely how many of these fucking things are they planning on making, anyway? The cooling rack looks pretty full.
“He get kicked off yet?” Jared asks, handing the skimmer to Ross and hopping up on the counter next to where Jensen’s leaning. His thigh brushes Jensen’s side and Jensen shivers. Just a little. He blames it on the big bite he’s just taken, though, because the filling is awesome.
“He was trying to be stealthy, but nah, he’s still in the running to be America’s Next Top Model,” Jensen says after swallowing. “And this is amazing, man.”
“It was mostly Ross,” Jared says modestly, pointing at the stove, where Ross is standing on a footstool and peering down at the pan of oil with a very serious look on his face. His glasses are all fogged up and Jensen’s heart clenches a little.
“Damn straight it was, dick,” Jensen says, punching Jared right above the knee.
--
Kristen corners him that afternoon, finding him when he’s hiding in Jeff’s office doing paperwork. It’s only an office in the loosest sense, in that there’s a desk and a phone and a calendar. It’s mostly just a huge mess crammed in an oddly shaped nook in the dry stock room, surrounded on all sides by floor-to-ceiling shelving units full of canned goods.
He and Kristen have been playing a pretty impressive game of mutual avoidance, but he’s known her long enough to know that she always cracks after day five of anything. He’s been trapped and forced to listen to her dramatic breakup tales enough times to know that she’s one of those girls who always wants to talk about things.
He’s sitting with his feet up on the desk, frowning at how dingy his socks looked in the fluorescents, and at the produce invoice Mike just dropped off, when Kristen appears in the doorway. He doesn’t remember ordering celeriac-it’s not exactly a June vegetable-but he figures he can either make soup out of it or give it to Ana-Beatriz to make chips.
“You busy?” she asks, hovering just around the corner of a shelf full of cans of olives and looking a little uneasy.
He drops his feet to the floor and tosses the invoice back on the desk. “Nah, come in,” he tells her.
She reaches behind her and pulls the stock room door most of the way closed, then she sits carefully on a stack of cases of canned diced tomato.
“Okay, so we have got to clear the air here,” she says, steepling her hands on her knees.
“Yeah, we really do,” he agrees. “I’m really sorry about-I think it’s stress, or-”
She shakes her head and looks down, so he stops. She coughs once into her fist, then she looks up at him through her bangs. “You know, we’ve been dancing around this for so long… since you’ve worked here, I think, way before you got divorced. And in all that time, you and me have never done more than cuddle and make out. Are we in junior high? Why do you think that is?”
He shrugs and fiddles with the stubby China marker Jeff uses to make out the schedule. “Our timing sucks ass?” he offers and she laughs.
“I don’t know,” she says a little sadly. She leans forward and cups her fingers around one of his kneecaps, rubbing her thumb over the spur of bone where his femur ends. “But I have to ask: who is she?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Who is who?”
She makes a great effort of smiling brightly, and for the most part she succeeds. “I was giving you space after your divorce, you know,” she says, looking away and pulling back, staring blankly at a picture of Jeff with his kids that’s taped to the shelf frame. “I figured that even if it had been a long time since you’d been in love with her-Jessica, I mean-you’d still need to time to mourn not being married to her anymore, right? I was going to wait for my moment, then sweep you off your feet-”
“Um, hi,” he interrupts. “Guy here. Big, girly romantic gestures aren’t necessary.”
She rolls her eyes and smacks one of her palms against the box she’s sitting on. “Anyway, yeah. It was going to be, like, epic and stuff. Made of total rom-com awesome. Jared could write about it in his blog, ‘Norm’s little romance,’ you know?”
Jensen bristles for a second. “I’m not Norm,” he says automatically. He’s tired of the argument that Norm, one of Jared’s less flattering characterizations, is in any way based on him. Norm is crazy and kind of stupid and completely oblivious to the fact that Chef Guy utterly adores him. The subtext is so glaring that there is slash fanfiction about Chef Guy and Norm. Jared’s agent has sent links to it to him hoping it might spark him into writing. All it does is make Jared print the stories out and crow about how awesome his fans are.
“You’re totally Norm. It’s cool. Norm is totally everybody’s favorite,” Kristen says, flashing him a genuine smile, but then she dims again. “I just waited too long for you.”
He rolls his chair closer and covers one of her hands with one of his. “Kristen,” he starts to say.
She shakes her head and he sits back. “No, Jensen. Come on.” She hops off the stack of tomato tidbits cases and throws her arms around his neck. “You’re my best friend,” she says against his neck. “I’m okay with that much, and I’m okay with you falling for someone else while I was-while I was sitting around with my thumb up my butt.” She breaks the hug and refuses to make eye contact. Her voice is a little scratchy with trying not to cry.
“I really haven’t fallen for somebody else, though,” he tells her, smiling at her with sympathy. He hasn’t met anyone new in ages, let alone dated. Sure, there were a few fumblings in club bathrooms and one disastrous blind date with some girl Mike knew, not to mention the twinky one night stand he brought home from Sandy’s birthday party back in April. He’s pretty sure that particular morning-after breakfast (because Jensen couldn’t just send the guy home in the morning on an empty stomach) was the most awkward meal of his life once Jared walked into the kitchen. Jared had just stared at him like he had turned into some kind of African mammal overnight, and there had been stuttered apologies, and it was mostly just an awful way to admit to your roommate that, yeah, you enjoy a nice, satisfying ride on a cock on occasion. And Jared had been all “No, really, it’s totally fine,” even though it mostly sounded like he was lying.
And then the smile slides right off Jensen’s face, because, well… fucking duh.
“Oh, fuck a duck,” he says softly, looking away and pointedly ignoring the sick feeling that bubbles up in his stomach. The labels on the cans of black olives to his right are facing all kinds of different directions.
“See?” she says, squeezing him again. “It’s okay, Jennybean,” she tells him, sniffing. “But this girl better let me in the wedding party, s’all I’m saying.”
Jensen feels a little like throwing up. He exhales heavily through his nose.
There’s the sound of someone clearing his throat at the door. It’s Tom, the meat delivery guy, standing there awkwardly and holding his clipboard. “Uh, hi?” he says, waving.
Kristen snaps to attention and brushes past him, pausing in the doorway to shoot Jensen one last weak smile. “I better, uh… go check on my pies. Mike brought me Bing cherries as big as my fist, did I tell you? That man’s got it bad for me.”
Jensen watches her go, then shakes his head and scratches the back of his neck. Tom gives him a male solidarity, sympathetic look. “Well, that looked brutal,” he comments, handing him the clipboard for him to sign off on the invoice.
“Trust me, not as brutal as the other night,” Jensen says. He pinches the bridge of his nose and scrawls his name on the usual line. “Anyway, big guy, you actually bring me that veal this time like I asked?”
Tom rolls his eyes. “Yep. Big ol’ case of dead baby cow sitting in your walk-in as we speak.” He jots something down on the clipboard and tucks it under his arm. He gestures with his pen, pointing over his shoulder. “Oh, and hey, tell Chad I said congrats. Just went to take a leak and I saw the note about him going to be a dad on the wall.”
“I swear to God, that bathroom wall’s better’n a bulletin board,” Jensen says.
Tom laughs. “Yeah, tell me about it. I do a lot of restaurants in the area, and Supernatural here’s the only one that’s got a bathroom quite like it. Oh, hey, I got to get going on the rest of my run. Meat to be disseminated and all.” He looks at Jensen with concern. “Good luck, man,” he says, before heading for the door.
“Yeah,” Jensen echoes. “Thanks.”
He sits back down at Jeff’s desk, but he just rests his head in his hands and concentrates on breathing in, breathing out, repeat. He doesn’t feel crazy anymore-which is nice, and weird, and actually a little nauseating-just kind of empty and really, really fucking tired.
--
For Ross’s last dinner at chez Padalecki that night, Jensen makes the gnocchi with sage butter. They spend the whole afternoon making gnocchi dough from scratch, from baking and mashing the potatoes to rolling long snakes of dough and cutting and fork-rolling them into perfect little blobs.
“They look like grubs,” Ross observes. “Like in the Lion King.”
“Hakuna matata,” Jensen replies, arranging the ones they aren’t going to be eating tonight on a couple of jelly roll cookie sheets and sticking them in the freezer. He’s got big plans for sending a big bag of them home with Ross.
Jared’s running the line at Supernatural tonight, so it’s just Jensen and the kid tonight. He grills a couple of steaks to go with the gnocchi-Ross’s every bit as medium rare as his own-and after they finish eating dinner out on the terrace they lay in the grass out back while the dogs chase each other around the perimeter of the yard. He’s got the Cubs-White Sox game on the radio, and the Sox are winning. Jensen roots for the Sox most of the time. He thinks Jim Thome is awesome.
“I could stay longer,” Ross offers. “Mom’s dating that Belgian guy she met at that convention in Charlotte-you know, Kees, or whatever his name is-so she’d probably like the chance to have the house all to herself to do, like, stuff with him.”
Jensen makes a face. “Watch the sunset,” he orders. “It’s pretty and you’ll never see one exactly like it for the rest of your life.”
Ross snorts. “Wow, sentimental overload, there.”
“I really need to keep you away from Jared, I think. It’s damaging your still-developing psyche.”
Harley, the bigger of the dogs, comes over and lies down on Ross’s other side, resting his chin on Ross’s belly and sighing dramatically. Sadie squeezes between them, back to Ross, and gives Jensen an incredibly judgmental look.
“I think the dogs are bored,” Ross observes, playing with Harley’s ears.
“I think you’re right,” Jensen agrees, sitting up and scratching his fingers down Sadie’s spine. She whines happily and wiggles closer to him.
They play with the dogs for a while, tossing a severely misshapen Frisbee for Sadie and the rattiest, saddest tennis ball ever for Harley. The dogs, of course, act like no one has ever played with them in their lives, and knock Ross down at least five times in their excitement. Jensen gets knocked over and thoroughly bathed in dog slobber at least twice himself.
“You gonna be okay on your own, Dad?” Ross asks quietly as they head back inside. The dogs stop briefly to get messy drinks in the laundry room under the stairs, before heading up to Jared’s room to pass out on his bed.
Jensen ruffles Ross’s hair and smiles. “I’m gonna be fine, bucko,” he says, and it’s mostly the truth. He really wishes people would stop asking, though. “I got Kristen-I think-and Jared and Sandy and even Chad if I’m desperate.”
“I like Chad,” Ross says, grabbing a can of Mountain Dew for himself and a bottle of Jensen’s beer from the fridge. “He’s fun. He tells dirty jokes.”
Jensen pops the cap off his beer with his ring, tosses it in the old Depression glass pitcher Jared keeps by the window just for that purpose. It’s almost full again, and God only knows what Jared does with all the bottle caps they collect.
“Chad’s gonna be a dad, d’I tell you that? Sophia just found out she’s pregnant.” Which Jensen still cannot quite wrap his head around, but some cracked little part of his brain seems to think that given the chance, Chad will probably turn out to be a pretty good father. It’s a pretty horrifying thought, actually.
Ross trips over the rug in the dining room. Jensen near bites clear through his lip trying not to laugh. He’s officially the only one who never seems to run into his shit strewn from stem to stern, so he thinks that maybe on Monday he’ll consider cleaning some of the mess up. That’s what Mondays are for: maybes.
They sit down in the living room, Ross on his stomach on the couch and Jensen in his chair. They watch part of a Good Eats marathon on Food Network (and Jensen totally has a mancrush on Alton Brown, despite all the science talk and the questionable taste in clothing) and then a random episode of that Disney Channel show about the family of wizards before Ross decides that it’s time to embarrass Jensen at Guitar Hero.
They’re still playing when Jared gets home around one. Ross is a little punch-drunk from the late hour and Jensen’s actually getting worse at the game, which is saying something. Jared laughs at them and heads upstairs. When he comes back down sometime later, his hair is dripping on his shoulders, and he’s changed into bleach-marked dark sweats and a Metallica t-shirt that might actually belong to Jensen.
Jensen is totally content to sit back in his chair and watch Ross utterly own Jared at one of the Star Wars games Jared has for the 360. He’s got a bottle of beer growing warm against his belly and a lazy smile on his face.
“You good over there, douchsicle?” Jared asks during a loading screen.
“Yeah, man,” Jensen replies.
“S’good to hear,” Jared says. He turns back to the game. “So I have blisters from my clogs,” he adds, walking non-sequitur that he is.
“Another life lesson, Ross, my padawan,” Jensen says loudly, “is to always wear socks when you wear any footwear that isn’t sandals. It’s barbaric not to, okay?”
“Oh, hi, fuck you,” Jared says, but he’s smiling a little. He’s got his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth, concentrating hard on the game. He flicks a glance at Jensen, who raises one middle finger in his direction.
He actually wins whatever skirmish he was involved in-Jensen has no idea, as he’s not paying any attention to the game at all, too busy watching Jared enjoying himself-and pumps both hands in the air. “Holy shit, I won! Suck on that!” he crows, then he glances at Ross next to him and he blushes a deep, dark red. “And wow, that’s an inappropriate thing to yell at a ten-year-old. Just… Jesus. Sorry, Ross.”
Ross shrugs, setting his controller on the coffee table and yawning. “What? Oh. Sorry. I fell asleep,” he says after a second.
Jensen just laughs and Jared sputters for a second.
Jess calls early Saturday morning from Atlanta to let him know that her connecting flight’s been delayed. As usual, she’s worked up a good steam of complaint despite it only being eight in the morning, but luckily for Jensen, Sadie had already woken him up to let her outside. He’s leaning against the counter and watching the coffee machine dribble out ambrosia when his phone rings.
“Why do I always fucking forget how much I hate flying Delta?” Jess says when Jensen answers, her idea of an acceptable greeting. “And then the next trip, I fly Delta anyway, and I call you and bitch at you from Atlanta, like, immediately after I step off the people-mover and try to crack the whiplash out of my neck. God. It doesn’t even make sense not to have a direct flight from Providence to O’Hare.”
Jensen gives her a zombie moan and peels himself away from the counter. “Hold on. You get to break the news to your child yourself that you won’t be home for Christmas,” he says as he walks to his room and tries to stretch all the kinks Jared’s couch put in his spine overnight. It’s not really working.
“You are such a tool, Jensen Ackles,” she says, but he can hear the smile in her voice.
He stops in the middle of the hallway. “Speaking of our illustrious last name. My mother asked me if you were keeping it or going back to Alba, and I had to tell her I wasn’t sure. Do you know what kind of ammunition that gives her to further criticize my life choices, Jess? Do you?” Jensen’s fairly certain that his mother only exists to do exactly that. Retirement must be really fucking boring, is all he’s saying.
“Eh, it’s my byline,” Jess says, snorting. “There’s this chick named Jessica Ackles, and she’s this famous food writer, you know? I think she used to be married to that neurotic chef at Supernatural, right? Also, it’s got some excellent consonance and assonance going on.”
“Something to do with ass, anyway,” he laughs as he shoves his bedroom door open. Ross is sacked out on his stomach on the right side of the bed, Harley taking up the rest of the space. Sadie’s still outside.
“You’re just jealous that your name doesn’t flow as well,” she says. “If you say it quickly it sounds like ‘Jessie Cackles.’”
“Fucking hell, Jess,” Jensen says. “The people-mover actually scrambled your brain this time, didn’t it?”
Rousing Ross is kind of a let-sleeping-dragons-lie type of situation, so Jensen prods him several times before stepping back to avoid flailing limbs.
“Your mother would like to talk to you,” Jensen says loudly, poking Ross again after the first attempt fails to achieve any result besides Harley giving Jensen an annoyed look.
“’m sleeping,” Ross mumbles, face pressed into his pillow.
“But she’s your mother and she loves you very much,” Jensen points out, a little sing-songy.
Ross holds out his hand and once he’s got hold of it, he plops the phone against his face. “Mom?”
Jensen ruffles his hair and heads into his bathroom to take a leak and brush his teeth.
Later on, Jensen makes sure to spend the day drinking Mountain Dew and playing a lot of first-person shooters with Ross, to make up for Jess’s delay. The Flood doesn’t stand a chance against Ross Ackles, master of all video games, and Jensen sends him home high on caffeine and pixilated bloodlust.
“This is us being normal men,” Jensen says very seriously.
“We’re awesome,” Ross agrees.
Part four