Mid-Afternoon Sun on Texas Sky (36/?)
Author's Notes: It’s fiction. That means it’s not real, folks. Jensen and Jared are real people. So is Eric Kripke. The show “Supernatural” is a real TV show on the WB11. If anything else in this is real, I wasn’t aware of it.
This is a sequel to the previously ‘neverending story’, Early Mornings and Late Nights Under Overcast Sky. It finally ended.
Summary: Jensen and Jared go back to Texas for Christmas. Their relationship deepens and they take the next step… pr0n!
Spoilers: none to speak of
-------------------------
Chapter Thirty-Six: Scared
Rating: R, for adult themes
Pairing: Jensen/Jared
Word Count: 3,257
Chapter Thirty-Six: Scared
“…wind gusts upwards of forty miles per hour tonight. We can expect high snowdrifts by morning, with continuing snowfall, expected accumulation of upwards of twelve inches.”
I glance outside the window of my trailer, and they’re not lying. Snow swirls in harsh circles as it falls to the ground, and already it’s hard to see more than ten feet outside the window. I try calling Jared again, leave another message on his voicemail. “Dude, weather’s bad. Hurry up so we don’t get snowed in here.”
Five minutes later, my phone’s ringing, but it’s not Jared-it’s Eric. “You get home alright?”
“Uh…” I give a choked laugh. “Well… I haven’t left yet, Eric.”
“Better hurry. The roads are bad. Really bad. And they’re only getting worse.” Eric replies. “You heard from Jared? He didn’t answer his cell.”
“His truck’s still here.” I answer evasively.
“Well tell him to get moving. The emergency vehicles and salt trucks are already on the roads, I’m hearing they might be closing roads to non-emergency vehicles and four-wheel drive trucks.”
“Sounds like a doozy.” I shake my head.
“Yeah. Last thing we needed for production. This is why we don’t do more than 22 episodes in a season. We film nine months out of the year and two of those months are scrapped due to weather and holidays.” Eric always grouses about that. Initially it had been hoped that we could cover a full season, October through the first week of June, maybe 26 or 28 episodes, but filming in Vancouver through the winter months never really made that possible, between Christmas and New Years, Thanksgiving, and the unpredictable weather in December, January and February.
I really can’t do anything but nod.
“So there’s no filming tomorrow. It’ll take ‘til noon just to dig out, and that’s if the snow stops before morning.”
After a lull in conversation, Eric says goodbye, tells me to go home.
But I don’t. What I do, is check on Jared. Coat, hat, gloves, they all go on, along with heavy, waterproof boots. Halfway to Jared’s trailer-and it’s really not that far between our trailers-I realize getting home tonight is going to be a near impossibility if we don’t leave within the next ten minutes. I rap loudly on the door to Jared’s trailer, noticing it’s dark inside. I wonder if he didn’t just fall asleep after showering.
Another several knocks go unanswered, and I put a hard shoulder into the door, opening it. It’s amazing how you can force trailer doors open and it never breaks them.
The trailer’s empty, even turning on the lights reveals nothing. The bed is neatly made, the shower appears dry and unused, towels still neatly folded on the counter near the shower. There are two containers of leftovers from the food trailer-Jared’s buddy there knows he loves the fried chicken and mashed potatoes, which was the special today, so I imagine his friend came by with two small trays worth for him.
I re-lock the door and pull it shut, retrace steps mentally before physically starting to retrace steps-to the warehouse. And the warehouse is where I find Jared, still asleep on the stage couch. I’m ready to kick him awake and ream him a new one until I see him twitching on the couch, face twisting in pain, hear whimpers escaping his lips, and I realize he’s essentially passed out there from exhaustion, and even still he’s having nightmares.
I kneel near the couch instead, gently reaching out to shake him awake, hoping to not startle him too much. “Jare…” I whisper softly. “Jare…?”
He jerks beneath my touch, startling into awareness and sucking in a breath. He looks around, somewhat disoriented, falls back against the couch, and takes deep breaths.
“Jare…” I call his name again, leaning closer over him. “Jare… talk to me?”
“M’tired, Jen.” He sighs.
“Yeah.” I stand up, reach down to him, take him under the arms and haul him to his feet, only somewhat surprised when he’s a dead weight at first, slowly stumbling to his own feet and taking some of his own weight, still leaning on me heavily, lifting his arms to drape them over my shoulders. “Come on, Jare… gotta get outta here.”
“Shower.”
“Not if you want to get home.” I tell him. “It’s bad out there.”
He settles on his own two feet, walks next to me towards the door and outside. He wraps his arms around his waist and trudges through snow next to me, shivering without a coat or warm clothes. We stop at his trailer, pick up the food and get him into a heavy coat and his warm boots, hurry to the parking lot and start cleaning off my car.
“Could just take my truck. Probably handles better in this shit.” Jared mumbles.
We look at each other over the windshield of my car, and within seconds we’re locking up my car and hurrying to his truck. I toss his man purse and our food into the cab, grab the scraper/brush combo he has in the front seat and go to work with him cleaning off the rear windows and front windshield.
He uses a gloved hand to swipe snow from the side mirror and his driver-side window, clambers into the cab and starts the engine, puts the defroster on. “Come on!” he yells to me, rolling the window down, then up, to clear off the remaining snow. By the time I’m in the cab, he’s backing out of the lot carefully, checking the tires and the brakes, and by the time I buckle my seatbelt, he’s on the road. “We need to stop for anything?”
I mentally review the contents of my refrigerator in my head, the contents of my cabinets. “Probably milk. Soda or something to drink… should probably pick up some food…”
Jared swerves into the parking lot of a small supermarket, parks haphazardly outside and sends me in while he keeps the truck idling. I buy what I said we needed, grab some cold-cuts at the deli and some fresh rolls at the bakery. They also have pre-made salads and foods, I buy a quart of the potato salad and a quart of the ziti, also a pint of the tuna salad spread (something special they make here, with some mystery ingredients… tuna and mayo with chopped hard-boiled egg are the obvious ingredients, with some onion and black pepper, but there are other things we can’t figure out, but it tastes incredible) for sandwiches and two six-packs of beer, two 2-liter bottles of diet coke, and some cans of Progresso soup-Chicken Minestrone and Italian Wedding Soup, Chicken Noodle and New England Clam Chowder.
Shoving the bags into the cab with us proves to be quite the exercise in cramped living, seeing as Jared has to drive with a six pack between his legs, and I’m shoved in the passenger seat with bags between my legs and a bag on my lap. There are also two bags separating me from Jared on the bench seat. I really hope we don’t get stopped by the police.
Jared drives slow on the highway, which is nearly empty, takes it even slower on the abandoned side roads leading up to my apartment, and parks carefully in one of the remaining spaces not far from my unit. We both carry bags up the slippery stairs, I fumble with the keys, nearly dropping them twice before getting the correct one and unlocking the door.
We leave our coats, gloves, scarves and hats on the coat rack by the door, our boots on the tile square near the door, then head in to change, strip out of cold and damp clothes and pull on warmer and more comfortable sweats. I set the thermostat a little warmer, knowing it’ll make Jared happy and figuring I’d rather be a little warm inside while it’s cold and ugly like it is outside.
Halfway through re-heated fried chicken and mashed potatoes, I’m tugging off my sweatshirt because it’s too warm, and even Jared’s reclining on the sofa in cotton pants and a wife beater. He hasn’t eaten much, only a few bites of mashed potatoes and half a chicken wing. He has downed a beer and a half though.
“Jared.” I toss bones and my paper plate into the trash bag I brought into the living room when we decided to eat there while watching the news, all the updates on the storm that’s still raging outside. It’s still snowing hard, and the wind rattles the windows of my apartment, whistle along the eaves and tear at the barren branches of the trees. “Jared, we’ve got to talk.”
He just looks at me. I can’t place the expression in his eyes, don’t know if I want to try. It’s not fear, and it’s not love. It’s not tiredness or stress, discomfort or anything else I’ve seen there before. Maybe exasperation. Maybe acceptance.
“So says you.” Jared replies quietly.
“Jare…” I don’t have anything else to say to him that might make him talk to me, might make him at least agreeable. I can’t say please-can’t or won’t, regardless it doesn’t make sense to me-if he won’t talk, it’s not like please is going to make him more likely to.
“I know.” He says. He moves the spoon idly through the mashed potatoes. “Just not hungry, Jen.”
“This isn’t even about that.” Though it is, in a roundabout way. It’s about Jared, and how he’s dealing or not dealing with everything that he’s remembering, everything he’s trying to make sense of, everything he’s talked to me about and everything he is and has been talking to Dr. Davidson about. It’s about how he’s not sleeping well, how Cindy has to keep covering up the dark circles under his eyes that are only getting worse… and how he never seems to be hungry. Because it doesn’t take a degree in psychology or psychiatry or whatever Dr. Davidson’s got to figure out that the nightmares and the sleep problems and the eating problems are all related to how he’s dealing (or not dealing) with his past.
“I…” Jared starts. I barely hear him over the thoughts of what I’m going to say next. But I do hear him, and I close my mouth. I listen. “I can’t…” He whispers. “I can’t… can’t, Jen… it’s… … …just the smell of food is enough to make me sick… and I’m so afraid… if I eat, it’s just all going to come back up a minute later…”
I don’t know what to say to him, so I don’t say anything, and Jared continues moments later.
“…at the hospital… the first couple days… I had the IV… but after… when I woke up… they wanted me to eat. And every time I tried, I’d just throw it up, remembering what happened… it turned my stomach, like a panic…” He’s still stirring the mashed potatoes, holding the bowl in one hand, stirring without looking with the other.
“Understandable… that is a panic reaction, Jare… they should have expected that… told you that you might…”
“They did…” Jared nods. “And then they’d tell me I was safe and that it was okay… that I had to eat, for my body to heal… and I’d try, but I’d end up throwing it up anyhow… “ Another long pause. “When I got home… when they let me go home… it got a little better...” He trails off, and I have an idea.
“You were scared still, at the hospital.” I say softly, encouraged when he nods. “And when you got home, maybe you weren’t so scared…”
He nods again. “Still scared… but not so much.” “And now it’s all coming back to you, like before…” I don’t want to say it, don’t want to put the words in his mouth. When he nods, I decide to take the chance, and continue. “…and that fear… it’s just the same, like it was before…” He looks at me then, thoughtfully. “It’s okay, Jared…” I reach out to him hesitantly, not wanting to startle him, hurt him. “It’s okay… you’re scared, remembering it… it’s okay to feel that, Jare… it’s okay to be scared…” He lets me rest my hand on his arm, looks down at it, then back up at me with sad eyes. “I should…” He shakes his head no. “No, Jare…” I take the plate from him and place it on the coffee table before turning back towards him. “…there is no should or shouldn’t here… there’s just you, and how you feel. And that’s all okay… nobody’s telling you that you have to feel a certain way… or that you should feel a certain way… how you feel is yours alone, it’s not for anyone to say it’s wrong or right.” “But it was so long ago… I shouldn’t…” “You blocked it out, Jare… and now you’re remembering like it was yesterday… Everything you didn’t let yourself feel back then… you’re feeling it now… it’s okay, Jared… it’s okay…” He looks at me and lifts his hands, lets them fall back to his lap, palms-up. I cover his hands with mine. “Jare… please…” He shakes his head again, no, takes his hands from mine, and his shoulders tremble. He draws away from me, pulls his knees up to his chest, feet coming to rest on the sofa. He wiggles his toes inside worn, warm gray wool socks. “How can I show you that you’re safe, Jare?” I ask. “What… what do you need to feel safe?” I break off, and then, in a whisper, “ …how do I prove to you that I won’t hurt you like that?” His closed lips curve in a wan smile. “I was never afraid of you.” He says, but I notice his use of the past tense, and when he doesn’t say anything more now, I call him on it. “But you are now.”
“I… I… I don’t know…” he stutters. “I… I just…” He sighs, like he’s about to admit something huge, something that’s going to hurt him just to say. “…I haven’t felt safe in a long time, Jen… I… I forgot what safe feels like… …and it’s just worse now… with all the memories coming back… it’s just worse…” He’s shaking-shoulders, hands-everything. His entire body is rocking back and forth and his eyes are wide and nervous, but not panicked. “…I am still scared…” He whispers. “I don’t think I ever stopped being scared…” He presses himself into the cushions of the couch, makes himself as small as possible-not an easy feat for a man his size.
“Jare…” I reach out to him, and it hurts in a way I never thought it would when he flinches away from me, recoils from my touch in a whole-bodied fashion. I lower my hand to my own knee, look down. “I won’t… you’re safe here, Jare… this is your home now… home means… home means you’re safe…”
“Home?” He asks hopefully, his voice so small that I barely hear it when he speaks, interrupting me between ‘home means…’ and ‘home means you’re safe’.
“Home.” I repeat. “Not like with mom or dad… but a second home, Jare.”
“Home…” He says it slowly, like he’s feeling it out, like he’s tasting it, trying to decide if he likes it. “…safe…” He whispers afterwards.
I nod. “If you don’t feel safe at home… it’s not really your home.”
“Home is just a place to hang your hat.” Jared says.
“No. Home is where your heart is. Home is with people who love you, with people who would never hurt you… home is where you feel safe.”
“I don’t have a home.” Jared whispers sadly.
“Sure you do. In Texas, with mom and dad, and your sister…”
He interrupts. “I didn’t… feel safe there… not after… I felt safer than… outside… but especially with my Uncle… it didn’t feel like home after the attack…”
I hate it, hate that he hasn’t felt safe in years, hate that he didn’t feel safe even at home with his mom and dad because they didn’t know, didn’t see what Uncle Tom was doing. I hate that he doesn’t feel safe with me, and I hate that I don’t know how to fix that.
He looks at me then though, as I’m lost in my own thoughts of how to fix that, how to make Jared feel safe, and says softly, “…the safest I’ve felt… in years…” I look at him, and he reaches out a hand to me, slowly, tentatively. It shakes, but his voice sounds a little stronger. “…the safest I’ve felt… is with you.”
I take his offered hand in both of mine, bring it to my lips, and raise my eyes to his. “I won’t hurt you.” I whisper, and it sounds like a promise, and I hope I can keep it. “I won’t let anyone else hurt you.” That’s a promise I can keep, or die trying.
It’s Jared who moves closer to me, leans in, lets his head fall to my shoulder. “Please, Jen…” He whispers, and it’s all he says for a long time.
It takes a long time for me to put my arms around him, in my own way afraid of scaring him again, hurting him somehow without meaning to. When I finally do, he leans into it for a little while, nuzzles his face against the skin of my neck. His breath is warm when he laughs. “…feel like such a girl…”
It makes me laugh too. “You always were, Padalecki…”
He lifts his head, and there aren’t any more tears in his eyes, just laughter, heartfelt thanks when he says, “Thanks, Jen.”
“Anytime.” And I mean it. We may have just had what Dean Winchester would call a major chick-flick moment, but when it’s your best friend-and lover’s-mental state that’s on the other side of it, there’s no choice but to get through it. Jared means more to me than someone accusing me of being less of a man than I used to be, or less of a man than they are. I think, in a way, it makes me more of a man, for being able to accept that, for being able to have this kind of moment, this kind of bond with my friend. I feel closer to Jared than I’ve ever felt to any of my other male friends, even Eddie. Closer than I ever will feel to any other friend, I bet. And I think I finally understand what my sister means, when she says she found in Katie (her best friend) a person who understands her, needs her but at the same time who she needs, someone she can trust with her heart and her soul, share good times and bad with. She says it’s different than the love she’s had with boyfriends in the past, claims it’s why she hasn’t found the ‘right one’ yet, when she finds the ‘right one’, it’ll be because it feels like it does with Katie, but the sexual aspect will be there also, the desire and the intrigue. It never made sense before. I always thought she was talking nonsense, but it makes a little more sense now. Jared yawns then, getting up from the sofa and going to the window. “m’ tired.”
“Yeah… me too.”
-------------------------
This is a sequel to the previously ‘neverending story’, Early Mornings and Late Nights Under Overcast Sky. It finally ended.
Summary: Jensen and Jared go back to Texas for Christmas. Their relationship deepens and they take the next step… pr0n!
Spoilers: none to speak of
-------------------------
Chapter Thirty-Six: Scared
Rating: R, for adult themes
Pairing: Jensen/Jared
Word Count: 3,257
Chapter Thirty-Six: Scared
“…wind gusts upwards of forty miles per hour tonight. We can expect high snowdrifts by morning, with continuing snowfall, expected accumulation of upwards of twelve inches.”
I glance outside the window of my trailer, and they’re not lying. Snow swirls in harsh circles as it falls to the ground, and already it’s hard to see more than ten feet outside the window. I try calling Jared again, leave another message on his voicemail. “Dude, weather’s bad. Hurry up so we don’t get snowed in here.”
Five minutes later, my phone’s ringing, but it’s not Jared-it’s Eric. “You get home alright?”
“Uh…” I give a choked laugh. “Well… I haven’t left yet, Eric.”
“Better hurry. The roads are bad. Really bad. And they’re only getting worse.” Eric replies. “You heard from Jared? He didn’t answer his cell.”
“His truck’s still here.” I answer evasively.
“Well tell him to get moving. The emergency vehicles and salt trucks are already on the roads, I’m hearing they might be closing roads to non-emergency vehicles and four-wheel drive trucks.”
“Sounds like a doozy.” I shake my head.
“Yeah. Last thing we needed for production. This is why we don’t do more than 22 episodes in a season. We film nine months out of the year and two of those months are scrapped due to weather and holidays.” Eric always grouses about that. Initially it had been hoped that we could cover a full season, October through the first week of June, maybe 26 or 28 episodes, but filming in Vancouver through the winter months never really made that possible, between Christmas and New Years, Thanksgiving, and the unpredictable weather in December, January and February.
I really can’t do anything but nod.
“So there’s no filming tomorrow. It’ll take ‘til noon just to dig out, and that’s if the snow stops before morning.”
After a lull in conversation, Eric says goodbye, tells me to go home.
But I don’t. What I do, is check on Jared. Coat, hat, gloves, they all go on, along with heavy, waterproof boots. Halfway to Jared’s trailer-and it’s really not that far between our trailers-I realize getting home tonight is going to be a near impossibility if we don’t leave within the next ten minutes. I rap loudly on the door to Jared’s trailer, noticing it’s dark inside. I wonder if he didn’t just fall asleep after showering.
Another several knocks go unanswered, and I put a hard shoulder into the door, opening it. It’s amazing how you can force trailer doors open and it never breaks them.
The trailer’s empty, even turning on the lights reveals nothing. The bed is neatly made, the shower appears dry and unused, towels still neatly folded on the counter near the shower. There are two containers of leftovers from the food trailer-Jared’s buddy there knows he loves the fried chicken and mashed potatoes, which was the special today, so I imagine his friend came by with two small trays worth for him.
I re-lock the door and pull it shut, retrace steps mentally before physically starting to retrace steps-to the warehouse. And the warehouse is where I find Jared, still asleep on the stage couch. I’m ready to kick him awake and ream him a new one until I see him twitching on the couch, face twisting in pain, hear whimpers escaping his lips, and I realize he’s essentially passed out there from exhaustion, and even still he’s having nightmares.
I kneel near the couch instead, gently reaching out to shake him awake, hoping to not startle him too much. “Jare…” I whisper softly. “Jare…?”
He jerks beneath my touch, startling into awareness and sucking in a breath. He looks around, somewhat disoriented, falls back against the couch, and takes deep breaths.
“Jare…” I call his name again, leaning closer over him. “Jare… talk to me?”
“M’tired, Jen.” He sighs.
“Yeah.” I stand up, reach down to him, take him under the arms and haul him to his feet, only somewhat surprised when he’s a dead weight at first, slowly stumbling to his own feet and taking some of his own weight, still leaning on me heavily, lifting his arms to drape them over my shoulders. “Come on, Jare… gotta get outta here.”
“Shower.”
“Not if you want to get home.” I tell him. “It’s bad out there.”
He settles on his own two feet, walks next to me towards the door and outside. He wraps his arms around his waist and trudges through snow next to me, shivering without a coat or warm clothes. We stop at his trailer, pick up the food and get him into a heavy coat and his warm boots, hurry to the parking lot and start cleaning off my car.
“Could just take my truck. Probably handles better in this shit.” Jared mumbles.
We look at each other over the windshield of my car, and within seconds we’re locking up my car and hurrying to his truck. I toss his man purse and our food into the cab, grab the scraper/brush combo he has in the front seat and go to work with him cleaning off the rear windows and front windshield.
He uses a gloved hand to swipe snow from the side mirror and his driver-side window, clambers into the cab and starts the engine, puts the defroster on. “Come on!” he yells to me, rolling the window down, then up, to clear off the remaining snow. By the time I’m in the cab, he’s backing out of the lot carefully, checking the tires and the brakes, and by the time I buckle my seatbelt, he’s on the road. “We need to stop for anything?”
I mentally review the contents of my refrigerator in my head, the contents of my cabinets. “Probably milk. Soda or something to drink… should probably pick up some food…”
Jared swerves into the parking lot of a small supermarket, parks haphazardly outside and sends me in while he keeps the truck idling. I buy what I said we needed, grab some cold-cuts at the deli and some fresh rolls at the bakery. They also have pre-made salads and foods, I buy a quart of the potato salad and a quart of the ziti, also a pint of the tuna salad spread (something special they make here, with some mystery ingredients… tuna and mayo with chopped hard-boiled egg are the obvious ingredients, with some onion and black pepper, but there are other things we can’t figure out, but it tastes incredible) for sandwiches and two six-packs of beer, two 2-liter bottles of diet coke, and some cans of Progresso soup-Chicken Minestrone and Italian Wedding Soup, Chicken Noodle and New England Clam Chowder.
Shoving the bags into the cab with us proves to be quite the exercise in cramped living, seeing as Jared has to drive with a six pack between his legs, and I’m shoved in the passenger seat with bags between my legs and a bag on my lap. There are also two bags separating me from Jared on the bench seat. I really hope we don’t get stopped by the police.
Jared drives slow on the highway, which is nearly empty, takes it even slower on the abandoned side roads leading up to my apartment, and parks carefully in one of the remaining spaces not far from my unit. We both carry bags up the slippery stairs, I fumble with the keys, nearly dropping them twice before getting the correct one and unlocking the door.
We leave our coats, gloves, scarves and hats on the coat rack by the door, our boots on the tile square near the door, then head in to change, strip out of cold and damp clothes and pull on warmer and more comfortable sweats. I set the thermostat a little warmer, knowing it’ll make Jared happy and figuring I’d rather be a little warm inside while it’s cold and ugly like it is outside.
Halfway through re-heated fried chicken and mashed potatoes, I’m tugging off my sweatshirt because it’s too warm, and even Jared’s reclining on the sofa in cotton pants and a wife beater. He hasn’t eaten much, only a few bites of mashed potatoes and half a chicken wing. He has downed a beer and a half though.
“Jared.” I toss bones and my paper plate into the trash bag I brought into the living room when we decided to eat there while watching the news, all the updates on the storm that’s still raging outside. It’s still snowing hard, and the wind rattles the windows of my apartment, whistle along the eaves and tear at the barren branches of the trees. “Jared, we’ve got to talk.”
He just looks at me. I can’t place the expression in his eyes, don’t know if I want to try. It’s not fear, and it’s not love. It’s not tiredness or stress, discomfort or anything else I’ve seen there before. Maybe exasperation. Maybe acceptance.
“So says you.” Jared replies quietly.
“Jare…” I don’t have anything else to say to him that might make him talk to me, might make him at least agreeable. I can’t say please-can’t or won’t, regardless it doesn’t make sense to me-if he won’t talk, it’s not like please is going to make him more likely to.
“I know.” He says. He moves the spoon idly through the mashed potatoes. “Just not hungry, Jen.”
“This isn’t even about that.” Though it is, in a roundabout way. It’s about Jared, and how he’s dealing or not dealing with everything that he’s remembering, everything he’s trying to make sense of, everything he’s talked to me about and everything he is and has been talking to Dr. Davidson about. It’s about how he’s not sleeping well, how Cindy has to keep covering up the dark circles under his eyes that are only getting worse… and how he never seems to be hungry. Because it doesn’t take a degree in psychology or psychiatry or whatever Dr. Davidson’s got to figure out that the nightmares and the sleep problems and the eating problems are all related to how he’s dealing (or not dealing) with his past.
“I…” Jared starts. I barely hear him over the thoughts of what I’m going to say next. But I do hear him, and I close my mouth. I listen. “I can’t…” He whispers. “I can’t… can’t, Jen… it’s… … …just the smell of food is enough to make me sick… and I’m so afraid… if I eat, it’s just all going to come back up a minute later…”
I don’t know what to say to him, so I don’t say anything, and Jared continues moments later.
“…at the hospital… the first couple days… I had the IV… but after… when I woke up… they wanted me to eat. And every time I tried, I’d just throw it up, remembering what happened… it turned my stomach, like a panic…” He’s still stirring the mashed potatoes, holding the bowl in one hand, stirring without looking with the other.
“Understandable… that is a panic reaction, Jare… they should have expected that… told you that you might…”
“They did…” Jared nods. “And then they’d tell me I was safe and that it was okay… that I had to eat, for my body to heal… and I’d try, but I’d end up throwing it up anyhow… “ Another long pause. “When I got home… when they let me go home… it got a little better...” He trails off, and I have an idea.
“You were scared still, at the hospital.” I say softly, encouraged when he nods. “And when you got home, maybe you weren’t so scared…”
He nods again. “Still scared… but not so much.” “And now it’s all coming back to you, like before…” I don’t want to say it, don’t want to put the words in his mouth. When he nods, I decide to take the chance, and continue. “…and that fear… it’s just the same, like it was before…” He looks at me then, thoughtfully. “It’s okay, Jared…” I reach out to him hesitantly, not wanting to startle him, hurt him. “It’s okay… you’re scared, remembering it… it’s okay to feel that, Jare… it’s okay to be scared…” He lets me rest my hand on his arm, looks down at it, then back up at me with sad eyes. “I should…” He shakes his head no. “No, Jare…” I take the plate from him and place it on the coffee table before turning back towards him. “…there is no should or shouldn’t here… there’s just you, and how you feel. And that’s all okay… nobody’s telling you that you have to feel a certain way… or that you should feel a certain way… how you feel is yours alone, it’s not for anyone to say it’s wrong or right.” “But it was so long ago… I shouldn’t…” “You blocked it out, Jare… and now you’re remembering like it was yesterday… Everything you didn’t let yourself feel back then… you’re feeling it now… it’s okay, Jared… it’s okay…” He looks at me and lifts his hands, lets them fall back to his lap, palms-up. I cover his hands with mine. “Jare… please…” He shakes his head again, no, takes his hands from mine, and his shoulders tremble. He draws away from me, pulls his knees up to his chest, feet coming to rest on the sofa. He wiggles his toes inside worn, warm gray wool socks. “How can I show you that you’re safe, Jare?” I ask. “What… what do you need to feel safe?” I break off, and then, in a whisper, “ …how do I prove to you that I won’t hurt you like that?” His closed lips curve in a wan smile. “I was never afraid of you.” He says, but I notice his use of the past tense, and when he doesn’t say anything more now, I call him on it. “But you are now.”
“I… I… I don’t know…” he stutters. “I… I just…” He sighs, like he’s about to admit something huge, something that’s going to hurt him just to say. “…I haven’t felt safe in a long time, Jen… I… I forgot what safe feels like… …and it’s just worse now… with all the memories coming back… it’s just worse…” He’s shaking-shoulders, hands-everything. His entire body is rocking back and forth and his eyes are wide and nervous, but not panicked. “…I am still scared…” He whispers. “I don’t think I ever stopped being scared…” He presses himself into the cushions of the couch, makes himself as small as possible-not an easy feat for a man his size.
“Jare…” I reach out to him, and it hurts in a way I never thought it would when he flinches away from me, recoils from my touch in a whole-bodied fashion. I lower my hand to my own knee, look down. “I won’t… you’re safe here, Jare… this is your home now… home means… home means you’re safe…”
“Home?” He asks hopefully, his voice so small that I barely hear it when he speaks, interrupting me between ‘home means…’ and ‘home means you’re safe’.
“Home.” I repeat. “Not like with mom or dad… but a second home, Jare.”
“Home…” He says it slowly, like he’s feeling it out, like he’s tasting it, trying to decide if he likes it. “…safe…” He whispers afterwards.
I nod. “If you don’t feel safe at home… it’s not really your home.”
“Home is just a place to hang your hat.” Jared says.
“No. Home is where your heart is. Home is with people who love you, with people who would never hurt you… home is where you feel safe.”
“I don’t have a home.” Jared whispers sadly.
“Sure you do. In Texas, with mom and dad, and your sister…”
He interrupts. “I didn’t… feel safe there… not after… I felt safer than… outside… but especially with my Uncle… it didn’t feel like home after the attack…”
I hate it, hate that he hasn’t felt safe in years, hate that he didn’t feel safe even at home with his mom and dad because they didn’t know, didn’t see what Uncle Tom was doing. I hate that he doesn’t feel safe with me, and I hate that I don’t know how to fix that.
He looks at me then though, as I’m lost in my own thoughts of how to fix that, how to make Jared feel safe, and says softly, “…the safest I’ve felt… in years…” I look at him, and he reaches out a hand to me, slowly, tentatively. It shakes, but his voice sounds a little stronger. “…the safest I’ve felt… is with you.”
I take his offered hand in both of mine, bring it to my lips, and raise my eyes to his. “I won’t hurt you.” I whisper, and it sounds like a promise, and I hope I can keep it. “I won’t let anyone else hurt you.” That’s a promise I can keep, or die trying.
It’s Jared who moves closer to me, leans in, lets his head fall to my shoulder. “Please, Jen…” He whispers, and it’s all he says for a long time.
It takes a long time for me to put my arms around him, in my own way afraid of scaring him again, hurting him somehow without meaning to. When I finally do, he leans into it for a little while, nuzzles his face against the skin of my neck. His breath is warm when he laughs. “…feel like such a girl…”
It makes me laugh too. “You always were, Padalecki…”
He lifts his head, and there aren’t any more tears in his eyes, just laughter, heartfelt thanks when he says, “Thanks, Jen.”
“Anytime.” And I mean it. We may have just had what Dean Winchester would call a major chick-flick moment, but when it’s your best friend-and lover’s-mental state that’s on the other side of it, there’s no choice but to get through it. Jared means more to me than someone accusing me of being less of a man than I used to be, or less of a man than they are. I think, in a way, it makes me more of a man, for being able to accept that, for being able to have this kind of moment, this kind of bond with my friend. I feel closer to Jared than I’ve ever felt to any of my other male friends, even Eddie. Closer than I ever will feel to any other friend, I bet. And I think I finally understand what my sister means, when she says she found in Katie (her best friend) a person who understands her, needs her but at the same time who she needs, someone she can trust with her heart and her soul, share good times and bad with. She says it’s different than the love she’s had with boyfriends in the past, claims it’s why she hasn’t found the ‘right one’ yet, when she finds the ‘right one’, it’ll be because it feels like it does with Katie, but the sexual aspect will be there also, the desire and the intrigue. It never made sense before. I always thought she was talking nonsense, but it makes a little more sense now. Jared yawns then, getting up from the sofa and going to the window. “m’ tired.”
“Yeah… me too.”
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