Stand and Never Fall - for kiwiana
Title: Stand and Never Fall
Author/Artist: raeschae
Recipient: kiwiana
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: girl!Jensen/Adrianne
Word Count: ~3250
Summary: Jensen and Adrianne went their separate ways after college. Years later, Jensen can’t shake the memory of the time they spent together.
Notes: For kiwiana, who I adore.
“What do you think of this?”
Jensen looks up from the watches she’s comparing and raises an eyebrow at Danneel, who is holding, hands down, the ugliest sweater Jensen has ever seen. If Jensen stops to consider how a woman so beautiful has such wretched taste in clothing, she’s afraid she might lose her own mind.
“I think I would rather be buried naked than have that hideous ball of yarn on my cold, dead body.”
Danneel’s look is sarcastic as she slips the sweater back onto the rack. “You’re a label snob,” she accuses.
Jensen tucks her hair -- dyed jet black during her last attempt to score a date with her stylist -- behind her ear and smiles back down at her hands, a platinum time piece in one and a studded, leather one in the other.
She’s about to give Danneel a lecture on the color wheel again when it happens; someone passes behind her and the faintest hint of Chanel wafts over Jensen, causing her to freeze in her place.
It’s happening more often than she would like to admit lately, these reminders hitting her out of nowhere and carrying her back to a time when responsibility was non-existent and the only thing in the world that mattered was spending time with her friends in the rec room at Tommy Welling’s house. For years, she’s been working to bury it under layers of art, fashion, and success.
She thought she was making some headway, but recently? All it takes is a hint of a scent in the air or a snippet of a song in the background of a commercial and everything is rushing back in Technicolor surround-sound.
Today, her mind automatically produces a snapshot of Adrianne, stretched long and lithe across Jensen’s bed, one foot on the mattress, her knee bent and swaying with the rhythm of her laughter. Hair fanned over the pink pillowcase, her hands cover her face and when she pulls them away, the mascara smudges in the corners of her eyes are, for once, a sign of her happiness instead of heartbreak.
“Jesus Christ, just pick one,” Danneel nudges Jensen with her shoulder and the image of Adrianne evaporates.
Jolted, Jensen drops both of the watches and hitches her bag over her shoulder. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
She can feel Danneel watching her, knows that she’ll eventually have to answer questions about why she’s been zoning out so much and acting so strange lately. For the moment, she’s more than happy to pretend everything’s fine and just wait until Danneel decides to call her out.
*
Jensen had been in New York for approximately fourteen hours when she met Misha on the subway. Perusing ads for apartments, she could feel someone standing just a little too close, peering over her shoulder and when she turned, he was smiling as though they'd known one another forever.
"You need a place to live," he deduced, matter-of-fact in his assessment.
Bristling, Jensen turned back to her paper and tried to ignore him.
"I have a place. There's an extra room in my apartment and I've been thinking of renting it out. Would you be interested?"
With a sharp glance over her shoulder, she said, "I'm a lesbian." It always deterred the weird guys who tried to pick her up back home.
Misha was not one of the guys back home, though. "I'm agnostic," was his response and Jensen honestly couldn't tell if he was trying to be funny or he thought lesbian was a religious affiliation. It was possible, she considered, that he believed agnostic was a sexual orientation. Who knew? He was a crazy guy on the subway, after all.
It wasn't until he was stepping off at the next stop that he flicked her a business card with an NBC-Universal logo on it, and said, "Call me if you want to see the apartment," that she considered the possibility that he wasn't creepy or crazy.
Three years later, she can't imagine living with anyone other than Misha. He has his quirks but he's fascinating and Jensen loves having him around. Jared nearly had a heart attack when she called home to tell him she was moving in with a complete stranger she met on the subway, but Jared has worried too much about Jensen's well-being since they were kids. He wouldn't settle down until he saw for himself that Jensen wasn't in any imminent danger. Now he comes back twice a year, once in the spring for Misha's annual Pirate Pub Crawl -- costumes required -- and again for New Year's Eve.
When she gets home from shopping with Danneel and drops onto the couch beside him, Misha is eating yogurt with with a tiny, plastic spoon and watching a documentary on reindeer. "Grapenut?" he offers, lifting the cereal box from his side, his eyes never leaving the television.
Tucking her feet under her body, Jensen shovels her dark hair out of her face and steals the little spoon instead. The raspberry flavor explodes, sweet and biting, against her tongue and instantly reminds her of that flavored body spray Adrianne used for a week during college. It met its untimely death, launched from their apartment window after it caused her to break out in a vicious rash, but it was tasty while it lasted.
"Jared called," Misha says when Jensen lays her head against his shoulder and watches the newborn reindeer struggling to find its feet on the screen. When Jensen hums, he adds, "You should probably call him back. He said there was something you should know. Or possibly something you're not supposed to know. I don't remember, I'm a terrible answering machine."
With a sigh, Jensen sits and stretches her arms over her head. "You wanna go out tonight?"
Shrugging, Misha points his mini-spoon at the television. "The reindeer are on until seven. I'm free after that."
Pressing a kiss to his cheek, she darts down the hall, intent on finding something to wear for a night of debauchery. She's not looking to get drunk or laid. She's not even looking for a good time. She just wants a few hours to forget.
*
The thoughts get worse at night, creeping into the corners of her brain when the apartment is silent. She finds herself listening for the telling knock on her bedroom window, legs anxious to carry her over, arms itching to lift the pane and let Adrianne in again.
She thinks about the shadows that the television's blue glow used to cast over Adrianne's round cheeks, the way she would blush and tell Jensen to stop staring. Jensen would brush her knuckles against Adrianne's jaw and tell her that she was beautiful and Adrianne would turn to her with wide, disbelieving eyes, her voice caught in her throat when she asked, You think so?
Even now, Jensen thinks so. Maybe she's painting Adrianne's memory with an airbrush but when she thinks of those nights, she remembers the curve of Adrianne's hip and and the elegant length of her neck. Here, in the dark where nobody can hear her, she whispers, ”So beautiful”, her hand absently drawing lazy circles on her own stomach with idle fingers.
Jensen's not celibate or anything; she's found her fair share of beautiful, interesting women to spend her time with in the last few years. She's taught some of them a few things and, in turn, learned from them. It's good, some of it mind-blowing. None of it compares to Adrianne.
Recollections of lazy nights flood over her, nights pressed shoulder to hip on Adrianne's bed, listening to Ben Folds Five and The Dave Matthews band and wishing that it was this quiet, this serene, in her own house. Her breath catches when she thinks of the way Adrianne would run the back of her hand over Jensen's thigh, silently inviting her to stay the night, to hide away from the stress and the fighting awaiting her at home.
Tears prick the back of her eyelids when she squeezes them tight, emotions warring for attention. It hurts to remember the feel Adrianne's body writhing beneath her while Jensen's hands brushed her skin and held her hands at their sides. And it hurts to forget, to shove it all under the surface and pretend that it was just something she did when she was a stupid high school kid, like being with her didn't save Jensen's sanity, her life, more times than not.
Wishing that she could have Adrianne here again, or that she could make herself happy back home, doesn't help anything. Danneel once asked her what she would change about her life if she could -- just one thing -- and Jensen said 'nothing.' She meant it, still means it. She has a great job in a great gallery and cool friends. Things are good here and she can't imagine going back. Adrianne's working for her father now, dating some guy from the factory in town; Jensen can't imagine her giving that up.
She has to accept that they've already fulfilled their roles in each other's lives and move forward. There is no rewind and she wouldn't want one, if there was.
*
“You look like shit, Princess.”
Casting a glance to the mirror, Jensen shakes her head and laughs. “Didn't sleep much last night.”
Her stylist, Katie, shakes her long, dark hair when she smiles, her stare meeting Jensen's reflection. “By the looks of those circles under your eyes, you haven't slept much in the last month.” She massages her fingers through Jensen's hair and catches her lower lip between her teeth. “So what are we doin'?” she asks, holding her hands out to the sides of Jensen's head until the dark strands fall back around her shoulders.
“I wanna start over.”
Wordlessly, Katie reaches for the scissors. “You sure? We do this, there's no goin' back. I can't glue it back on.”
There's not a color available for purchase that has not stained Jensen's hair at some point in the last fifteen years. The only time she catches a glimpse of her natural shade, she's gone too long without a touch-up and her roots are starting to grow.
She can't exactly explain why today is the day she's taking the plunge, making good on her constant threat -- 'Someday, I'm just going to shave it all off and start over -- but the idea burrowed into her brain, along with another memory, yesterday.
They were installing a sculpture in an office complex on the Upper West Side when a couple of girls in matching, pleated skirts caught her attention outside the window. They were holding hands and running toward a sleek convertible parked in the massive circular drive in front of the building, rushing like they were afraid Daddy was going to realize they took his keys.
She thought about the day Adrianne pulled up to her curb in her brother's old, beat-up Honda Civic. It was the ugliest car Jensen has ever seen, but she didn't hesitate to jump into the passenger's seat and prop her old Converse sneakers up on the dash. Neither of them knew where they were going but Adrianne drove for hours, their arms out the windows while they screamed along with the radio and laughed until Jensen thought her face would go numb forever.
She’s not trying to make a statement. She’s not even that interested in making a change. This is about the feeling that she had that day in the car with Adrianne. It's about setting herself free from the memories and the pain and the overwhelming desire to regain something that is already locked away in the history books.
Katie is still watching her with an arched eyebrow when Jensen nods, determined. “I'm sure.”
*
“Holy, what the fuck did you do to yourself?” Aldis demands when Jensen strolls through the front door of the gallery later in the afternoon.
She runs her hand over the short crop of blond hair and laughs, really laughs, in response. “It was time for a change.”
With a shrug, Aldis hands her a nail gun and nods over his shoulder. “Got my part done this mornin',” he says, pulling his safety goggles over his head. “Kane was s'posed to bring coffee but his punk ass ain't shown up yet, so I'm goin'. You want anything?”
Jensen takes the glasses from him and shakes her head. “Nah, I think I'm good,” she says, waving him off as she heads back to the studio.
In high school, she enjoyed doodling but she never really considered making a living as an artist. There is a catharsis in the act of creating something from a giant pile of nothing, though, and when Aldis opened the studio up to her, even suggested they work on a few things together, she couldn't say no. It pays better than her position as his assistant did and it gives her an outlet for the emotions she doesn't like to talk about; it's a win all around, as far as Jensen is concerned.
She's in the middle of affixing ten thousand tiny pieces of sheet metal to the plywood structure Aldis crafted this morning when she hears a low whistle from the doorway.
“Jesus, Ackles, you lose a bet or somethin'?”
Her hand freezes on the gun, her heart plummeting to her toes. It's just another memory, a daydream, realistically containing the click of heels on the stone floor and the husky, amused chuckle she hears every day on the street and pretends to ignore.
Swallowing hard, she lowers the nail gun to her side and breathes hard through her nose. “What are you doing here?” She asks it quietly in case she's snapped and this isn't actually happening.
“Well, I figure it's about time one of us put on her big girl panties and fixed this thing between us.” She stands close enough that Jensen can feel her body heat. “Since you're clearly not gonna do it, I took some vacation time and here I am. Makin' the first move.”
Jensen's eyes clench tightly, her feet twitching but refusing to move any further. She thinks maybe she should have called Jared back the other night.
Adrianne leans in, breath heavy and sweet against Jensen's neck. “Turn your ass around and look me, Jen,” she orders in a low whisper that immediately sweeps Jensen back to the mornings of waking up, still dressed with her shoes on, to find Adrianne's bare leg draped over her thigh and her arms wrapped tightly around Jensen's torso, their fingers intertwined hard enough to cut off circulation.
Inhaling a shaky breath, Jensen turns and falls forward, arms draped around Adrianne's neck before she bothers to look at her face. “I fucking missed you.”
Adrianne's laughter is light against her ear, her sure fingers brushing softly over the back of Jensen's head. “You got a terrible way of showin' it,” she teases.
Sniffling, Jensen touches a the back of her work glove to the corner of her eye and coughs a short laugh. Meeting Adrianne's gaze is impossible so Jensen takes inventory of her battered jeans and her fitted tee shirt, the way her hair hangs in soft, golden waves to her shoulders. She's still built like an Amazon warrior princess.
“You look amazing,” she finally says, risking the truth that she'll undoubtedly see staring back at her. Love, hatred, disappointment, hope; she prepares for anything.
What she sees is affection, possibly tinged with relief. Adrianne holds the back of Jensen's head in both hands and dips her knees to press their foreheads together.
“I was scared for you,” she whispers against Jensen's lips.
Startling at the confession, Jensen pulls back enough to tilt her head. “What? Why?”
Adrianne's hands slide over Jensen's arms until their fingers tangle together. “You know why.”
Jensen's heart hammers against her chest, threatening to crack her open and spill her every suppressed thought and feeling to the floor at Adrianne's feet. “I'm fine,” she nearly chokes on the words.
Eyes drifting to the top of Jensen's head, Adrianne watches her hands skim up the back and over the crown, smiling distractedly at just how little she can pull between her fingers. “Maybe I'm not,” she says, more to herself than Jensen.
Chuckling, Jensen puts as much distance between them as possible while still holding Adrianne's hands in her own. “Genevieve says you’re good.”
Adrianne raises an eyebrow, familiar knowing in her sarcastic expression. “Well, I only wear my I'm Lost Without Jensen t shirt to sleep in, so she probably can't see my pain.”
Something deep in Jensen's gut starts to stir, a slumbering giant coming to life beneath her skin, stretching and nudging her until she can't hold back the bright smile that spreads across her lips. “You wanna get outta here?”
“You're working,” Adrianne points out, her eyes finally shifting from Jensen to the sculpture and then back again.
With a simple shrug, Jensen releases one of Adrianne's hands and waves dismissively over her shoulder. “It can wait.” Squeezing the fingers still laced with hers, she winks. “C'mon. I got a couch and a bucket of Moose Tracks with your name all over 'em.”
*
The couch looks too small with Adrianne draped over it, her hand dragging against the floor, feet hanging over the arm as she lounges in nothing but her rainbow striped panties. Her face is turned toward the television but her eyes drift lazily closed every few seconds.
Jensen drinks from a water bottle and fights back the flowery thoughts that keep blooming in her head when she allows her eyes to linger at the picture Adrianne makes.
Biting down on her tongue to keep the words back, Jensen abandons her bottle in the kitchen and crosses the living room to lie over Adrianne's prone body, skin exploding like a thousand firecrackers at each point of contact.
“I'm sorry,” she whispers into the curve of Adrianne's shoulder.
“Don't,” is Adrianne's warning, muffled by the couch cushion and her own exhaustion. “You had to go.”
Allowing her tongue to trail the line of Adrianne's shoulder blade, Jensen thinks about that statement. She had to go, had to make a life for herself; that much is true. Still, “I never wanted to leave you.”
It feels like an eternity that they lie together, silent and being, before Adrianne rolls onto her back, pushing for Jensen to sit until their eyes meet. “We had our time. It was great but I think we needed the time apart, too.” Jensen huffs but Adrianne just squeezes her hip with one hand and smiles, her eyes bright despite the sleepy drift of them. “I've thought about this a lot, Jen. I wouldn't go back if I could.”
As much as it hurts to hear the words, Jensen knows that they're both doing okay on their own. It doesn't stop her from wondering, though. “Do you think it's possible to have more than one time? Like, what if two people already had their time and it passes, but they meet up again somewhere down the road. Is there another run in the cards for them or is just empty nostalgia.”
Adrianne's smile is blinding, her back arching with her laughter. “Subtle,” she finally says when she settles back into the cushions. “I think,” she adds, expression contemplative, “that you never know until you try.”
Bending, Jensen buries her hand in Adrianne's hair and kisses along her jaw, chin to ear, before she whispers, “I wanna try.”
Adrianne slips her hands around Jensen's hips and settles into the kiss and Jensen knows that the feeling is still mutual.
Author/Artist: raeschae
Recipient: kiwiana
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: girl!Jensen/Adrianne
Word Count: ~3250
Summary: Jensen and Adrianne went their separate ways after college. Years later, Jensen can’t shake the memory of the time they spent together.
Notes: For kiwiana, who I adore.
“What do you think of this?”
Jensen looks up from the watches she’s comparing and raises an eyebrow at Danneel, who is holding, hands down, the ugliest sweater Jensen has ever seen. If Jensen stops to consider how a woman so beautiful has such wretched taste in clothing, she’s afraid she might lose her own mind.
“I think I would rather be buried naked than have that hideous ball of yarn on my cold, dead body.”
Danneel’s look is sarcastic as she slips the sweater back onto the rack. “You’re a label snob,” she accuses.
Jensen tucks her hair -- dyed jet black during her last attempt to score a date with her stylist -- behind her ear and smiles back down at her hands, a platinum time piece in one and a studded, leather one in the other.
She’s about to give Danneel a lecture on the color wheel again when it happens; someone passes behind her and the faintest hint of Chanel wafts over Jensen, causing her to freeze in her place.
It’s happening more often than she would like to admit lately, these reminders hitting her out of nowhere and carrying her back to a time when responsibility was non-existent and the only thing in the world that mattered was spending time with her friends in the rec room at Tommy Welling’s house. For years, she’s been working to bury it under layers of art, fashion, and success.
She thought she was making some headway, but recently? All it takes is a hint of a scent in the air or a snippet of a song in the background of a commercial and everything is rushing back in Technicolor surround-sound.
Today, her mind automatically produces a snapshot of Adrianne, stretched long and lithe across Jensen’s bed, one foot on the mattress, her knee bent and swaying with the rhythm of her laughter. Hair fanned over the pink pillowcase, her hands cover her face and when she pulls them away, the mascara smudges in the corners of her eyes are, for once, a sign of her happiness instead of heartbreak.
“Jesus Christ, just pick one,” Danneel nudges Jensen with her shoulder and the image of Adrianne evaporates.
Jolted, Jensen drops both of the watches and hitches her bag over her shoulder. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
She can feel Danneel watching her, knows that she’ll eventually have to answer questions about why she’s been zoning out so much and acting so strange lately. For the moment, she’s more than happy to pretend everything’s fine and just wait until Danneel decides to call her out.
*
Jensen had been in New York for approximately fourteen hours when she met Misha on the subway. Perusing ads for apartments, she could feel someone standing just a little too close, peering over her shoulder and when she turned, he was smiling as though they'd known one another forever.
"You need a place to live," he deduced, matter-of-fact in his assessment.
Bristling, Jensen turned back to her paper and tried to ignore him.
"I have a place. There's an extra room in my apartment and I've been thinking of renting it out. Would you be interested?"
With a sharp glance over her shoulder, she said, "I'm a lesbian." It always deterred the weird guys who tried to pick her up back home.
Misha was not one of the guys back home, though. "I'm agnostic," was his response and Jensen honestly couldn't tell if he was trying to be funny or he thought lesbian was a religious affiliation. It was possible, she considered, that he believed agnostic was a sexual orientation. Who knew? He was a crazy guy on the subway, after all.
It wasn't until he was stepping off at the next stop that he flicked her a business card with an NBC-Universal logo on it, and said, "Call me if you want to see the apartment," that she considered the possibility that he wasn't creepy or crazy.
Three years later, she can't imagine living with anyone other than Misha. He has his quirks but he's fascinating and Jensen loves having him around. Jared nearly had a heart attack when she called home to tell him she was moving in with a complete stranger she met on the subway, but Jared has worried too much about Jensen's well-being since they were kids. He wouldn't settle down until he saw for himself that Jensen wasn't in any imminent danger. Now he comes back twice a year, once in the spring for Misha's annual Pirate Pub Crawl -- costumes required -- and again for New Year's Eve.
When she gets home from shopping with Danneel and drops onto the couch beside him, Misha is eating yogurt with with a tiny, plastic spoon and watching a documentary on reindeer. "Grapenut?" he offers, lifting the cereal box from his side, his eyes never leaving the television.
Tucking her feet under her body, Jensen shovels her dark hair out of her face and steals the little spoon instead. The raspberry flavor explodes, sweet and biting, against her tongue and instantly reminds her of that flavored body spray Adrianne used for a week during college. It met its untimely death, launched from their apartment window after it caused her to break out in a vicious rash, but it was tasty while it lasted.
"Jared called," Misha says when Jensen lays her head against his shoulder and watches the newborn reindeer struggling to find its feet on the screen. When Jensen hums, he adds, "You should probably call him back. He said there was something you should know. Or possibly something you're not supposed to know. I don't remember, I'm a terrible answering machine."
With a sigh, Jensen sits and stretches her arms over her head. "You wanna go out tonight?"
Shrugging, Misha points his mini-spoon at the television. "The reindeer are on until seven. I'm free after that."
Pressing a kiss to his cheek, she darts down the hall, intent on finding something to wear for a night of debauchery. She's not looking to get drunk or laid. She's not even looking for a good time. She just wants a few hours to forget.
*
The thoughts get worse at night, creeping into the corners of her brain when the apartment is silent. She finds herself listening for the telling knock on her bedroom window, legs anxious to carry her over, arms itching to lift the pane and let Adrianne in again.
She thinks about the shadows that the television's blue glow used to cast over Adrianne's round cheeks, the way she would blush and tell Jensen to stop staring. Jensen would brush her knuckles against Adrianne's jaw and tell her that she was beautiful and Adrianne would turn to her with wide, disbelieving eyes, her voice caught in her throat when she asked, You think so?
Even now, Jensen thinks so. Maybe she's painting Adrianne's memory with an airbrush but when she thinks of those nights, she remembers the curve of Adrianne's hip and and the elegant length of her neck. Here, in the dark where nobody can hear her, she whispers, ”So beautiful”, her hand absently drawing lazy circles on her own stomach with idle fingers.
Jensen's not celibate or anything; she's found her fair share of beautiful, interesting women to spend her time with in the last few years. She's taught some of them a few things and, in turn, learned from them. It's good, some of it mind-blowing. None of it compares to Adrianne.
Recollections of lazy nights flood over her, nights pressed shoulder to hip on Adrianne's bed, listening to Ben Folds Five and The Dave Matthews band and wishing that it was this quiet, this serene, in her own house. Her breath catches when she thinks of the way Adrianne would run the back of her hand over Jensen's thigh, silently inviting her to stay the night, to hide away from the stress and the fighting awaiting her at home.
Tears prick the back of her eyelids when she squeezes them tight, emotions warring for attention. It hurts to remember the feel Adrianne's body writhing beneath her while Jensen's hands brushed her skin and held her hands at their sides. And it hurts to forget, to shove it all under the surface and pretend that it was just something she did when she was a stupid high school kid, like being with her didn't save Jensen's sanity, her life, more times than not.
Wishing that she could have Adrianne here again, or that she could make herself happy back home, doesn't help anything. Danneel once asked her what she would change about her life if she could -- just one thing -- and Jensen said 'nothing.' She meant it, still means it. She has a great job in a great gallery and cool friends. Things are good here and she can't imagine going back. Adrianne's working for her father now, dating some guy from the factory in town; Jensen can't imagine her giving that up.
She has to accept that they've already fulfilled their roles in each other's lives and move forward. There is no rewind and she wouldn't want one, if there was.
*
“You look like shit, Princess.”
Casting a glance to the mirror, Jensen shakes her head and laughs. “Didn't sleep much last night.”
Her stylist, Katie, shakes her long, dark hair when she smiles, her stare meeting Jensen's reflection. “By the looks of those circles under your eyes, you haven't slept much in the last month.” She massages her fingers through Jensen's hair and catches her lower lip between her teeth. “So what are we doin'?” she asks, holding her hands out to the sides of Jensen's head until the dark strands fall back around her shoulders.
“I wanna start over.”
Wordlessly, Katie reaches for the scissors. “You sure? We do this, there's no goin' back. I can't glue it back on.”
There's not a color available for purchase that has not stained Jensen's hair at some point in the last fifteen years. The only time she catches a glimpse of her natural shade, she's gone too long without a touch-up and her roots are starting to grow.
She can't exactly explain why today is the day she's taking the plunge, making good on her constant threat -- 'Someday, I'm just going to shave it all off and start over -- but the idea burrowed into her brain, along with another memory, yesterday.
They were installing a sculpture in an office complex on the Upper West Side when a couple of girls in matching, pleated skirts caught her attention outside the window. They were holding hands and running toward a sleek convertible parked in the massive circular drive in front of the building, rushing like they were afraid Daddy was going to realize they took his keys.
She thought about the day Adrianne pulled up to her curb in her brother's old, beat-up Honda Civic. It was the ugliest car Jensen has ever seen, but she didn't hesitate to jump into the passenger's seat and prop her old Converse sneakers up on the dash. Neither of them knew where they were going but Adrianne drove for hours, their arms out the windows while they screamed along with the radio and laughed until Jensen thought her face would go numb forever.
She’s not trying to make a statement. She’s not even that interested in making a change. This is about the feeling that she had that day in the car with Adrianne. It's about setting herself free from the memories and the pain and the overwhelming desire to regain something that is already locked away in the history books.
Katie is still watching her with an arched eyebrow when Jensen nods, determined. “I'm sure.”
*
“Holy, what the fuck did you do to yourself?” Aldis demands when Jensen strolls through the front door of the gallery later in the afternoon.
She runs her hand over the short crop of blond hair and laughs, really laughs, in response. “It was time for a change.”
With a shrug, Aldis hands her a nail gun and nods over his shoulder. “Got my part done this mornin',” he says, pulling his safety goggles over his head. “Kane was s'posed to bring coffee but his punk ass ain't shown up yet, so I'm goin'. You want anything?”
Jensen takes the glasses from him and shakes her head. “Nah, I think I'm good,” she says, waving him off as she heads back to the studio.
In high school, she enjoyed doodling but she never really considered making a living as an artist. There is a catharsis in the act of creating something from a giant pile of nothing, though, and when Aldis opened the studio up to her, even suggested they work on a few things together, she couldn't say no. It pays better than her position as his assistant did and it gives her an outlet for the emotions she doesn't like to talk about; it's a win all around, as far as Jensen is concerned.
She's in the middle of affixing ten thousand tiny pieces of sheet metal to the plywood structure Aldis crafted this morning when she hears a low whistle from the doorway.
“Jesus, Ackles, you lose a bet or somethin'?”
Her hand freezes on the gun, her heart plummeting to her toes. It's just another memory, a daydream, realistically containing the click of heels on the stone floor and the husky, amused chuckle she hears every day on the street and pretends to ignore.
Swallowing hard, she lowers the nail gun to her side and breathes hard through her nose. “What are you doing here?” She asks it quietly in case she's snapped and this isn't actually happening.
“Well, I figure it's about time one of us put on her big girl panties and fixed this thing between us.” She stands close enough that Jensen can feel her body heat. “Since you're clearly not gonna do it, I took some vacation time and here I am. Makin' the first move.”
Jensen's eyes clench tightly, her feet twitching but refusing to move any further. She thinks maybe she should have called Jared back the other night.
Adrianne leans in, breath heavy and sweet against Jensen's neck. “Turn your ass around and look me, Jen,” she orders in a low whisper that immediately sweeps Jensen back to the mornings of waking up, still dressed with her shoes on, to find Adrianne's bare leg draped over her thigh and her arms wrapped tightly around Jensen's torso, their fingers intertwined hard enough to cut off circulation.
Inhaling a shaky breath, Jensen turns and falls forward, arms draped around Adrianne's neck before she bothers to look at her face. “I fucking missed you.”
Adrianne's laughter is light against her ear, her sure fingers brushing softly over the back of Jensen's head. “You got a terrible way of showin' it,” she teases.
Sniffling, Jensen touches a the back of her work glove to the corner of her eye and coughs a short laugh. Meeting Adrianne's gaze is impossible so Jensen takes inventory of her battered jeans and her fitted tee shirt, the way her hair hangs in soft, golden waves to her shoulders. She's still built like an Amazon warrior princess.
“You look amazing,” she finally says, risking the truth that she'll undoubtedly see staring back at her. Love, hatred, disappointment, hope; she prepares for anything.
What she sees is affection, possibly tinged with relief. Adrianne holds the back of Jensen's head in both hands and dips her knees to press their foreheads together.
“I was scared for you,” she whispers against Jensen's lips.
Startling at the confession, Jensen pulls back enough to tilt her head. “What? Why?”
Adrianne's hands slide over Jensen's arms until their fingers tangle together. “You know why.”
Jensen's heart hammers against her chest, threatening to crack her open and spill her every suppressed thought and feeling to the floor at Adrianne's feet. “I'm fine,” she nearly chokes on the words.
Eyes drifting to the top of Jensen's head, Adrianne watches her hands skim up the back and over the crown, smiling distractedly at just how little she can pull between her fingers. “Maybe I'm not,” she says, more to herself than Jensen.
Chuckling, Jensen puts as much distance between them as possible while still holding Adrianne's hands in her own. “Genevieve says you’re good.”
Adrianne raises an eyebrow, familiar knowing in her sarcastic expression. “Well, I only wear my I'm Lost Without Jensen t shirt to sleep in, so she probably can't see my pain.”
Something deep in Jensen's gut starts to stir, a slumbering giant coming to life beneath her skin, stretching and nudging her until she can't hold back the bright smile that spreads across her lips. “You wanna get outta here?”
“You're working,” Adrianne points out, her eyes finally shifting from Jensen to the sculpture and then back again.
With a simple shrug, Jensen releases one of Adrianne's hands and waves dismissively over her shoulder. “It can wait.” Squeezing the fingers still laced with hers, she winks. “C'mon. I got a couch and a bucket of Moose Tracks with your name all over 'em.”
*
The couch looks too small with Adrianne draped over it, her hand dragging against the floor, feet hanging over the arm as she lounges in nothing but her rainbow striped panties. Her face is turned toward the television but her eyes drift lazily closed every few seconds.
Jensen drinks from a water bottle and fights back the flowery thoughts that keep blooming in her head when she allows her eyes to linger at the picture Adrianne makes.
Biting down on her tongue to keep the words back, Jensen abandons her bottle in the kitchen and crosses the living room to lie over Adrianne's prone body, skin exploding like a thousand firecrackers at each point of contact.
“I'm sorry,” she whispers into the curve of Adrianne's shoulder.
“Don't,” is Adrianne's warning, muffled by the couch cushion and her own exhaustion. “You had to go.”
Allowing her tongue to trail the line of Adrianne's shoulder blade, Jensen thinks about that statement. She had to go, had to make a life for herself; that much is true. Still, “I never wanted to leave you.”
It feels like an eternity that they lie together, silent and being, before Adrianne rolls onto her back, pushing for Jensen to sit until their eyes meet. “We had our time. It was great but I think we needed the time apart, too.” Jensen huffs but Adrianne just squeezes her hip with one hand and smiles, her eyes bright despite the sleepy drift of them. “I've thought about this a lot, Jen. I wouldn't go back if I could.”
As much as it hurts to hear the words, Jensen knows that they're both doing okay on their own. It doesn't stop her from wondering, though. “Do you think it's possible to have more than one time? Like, what if two people already had their time and it passes, but they meet up again somewhere down the road. Is there another run in the cards for them or is just empty nostalgia.”
Adrianne's smile is blinding, her back arching with her laughter. “Subtle,” she finally says when she settles back into the cushions. “I think,” she adds, expression contemplative, “that you never know until you try.”
Bending, Jensen buries her hand in Adrianne's hair and kisses along her jaw, chin to ear, before she whispers, “I wanna try.”
Adrianne slips her hands around Jensen's hips and settles into the kiss and Jensen knows that the feeling is still mutual.