Mid-Afternoon Sun on Texas Sky (5/?)
Title: Mid-Afternoon Sun on Texas Sky
Characters/Pairing: Jensen Ackles / Jared Padalecki
POV: Jensen Ackles
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
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Chapter Five: Breakfast
Rating: Hard R for m/m slash kiss, boytouching, adult themes and content, and language
Pairing: Jensen/Jared
Word Count: 2,757
Chapter Five: Breakfast
When I get to the house, Jared’s mom has a buffet of breakfast set out on the kitchen table-a huge bowl of scrambled eggs, a plate piled high with homemade pancakes (Jared swears they’re not from a box), a matching plate of waffles, an industrial-size frying pan of spiced potatoes (the cube ones you get from Ore Ida or whatever… the frozen ones from a bag)… there’s a jar of jelly, a large carafe of coffee, a plate of still-steaming, well-cooked Taylor Ham, another of mini breakfast sausages. In the corner there’s ketchup and a container of maple syrup, one of honey. There’s also milk and sugar and orange juice, a bowl of shredded cheese and diced green peppers and tomatoes.
Jared’s brother has invited friends, his sister’s much-disliked boyfriend is there, as well as Jared’s aunt (his mom’s sister) Carla, uncle Trent (“…oh please call me Tug, everyone does…”) and cousin William (“Billy”). Jared introduces me to everyone, mostly from afar, pointing and saying “That’s Aunt Carla… that’s Jack, one of Jeff’s friends…”
Everyone helps themselves to heaping plates of food and sits where there’s room-the sofa, the table… Jared’s mom put out extra chairs.
Jared and I disappear to the kitchen when he decides he doesn’t want orange juice or coffee. He helps himself to apple juice and sits down on one of the wooden barstools that line the dividing counter/table between the kitchen and living room. His mom is sitting at the end of the counter, sipping orange juice.
“Morning, Jensen.” She says, beaming. “It’s so nice to have you here.”
“Thanks for inviting me.” I take a bite of one of the sausages. Along with Jared, I probably have the least food on my plate of anyone in the room, and I still have a lot of food-eggs with shredded cheese and some of the peppers and tomatoes… a heaping spoonful of potatoes with ketchup sprinkled on top, two sausages and two piece of Taylor Ham. I also have a pile of grits with honey and butter, a biscuit and my coffee. Jared has almost the same, though he passed on the sausages and Taylor Ham, having a waffle laden with jelly and syrup instead, which makes me just sick from the sugar by just looking at it.
Jared’s up refilling his glass of apple juice, and his mom takes the opportunity to lean in close. “You know… Jared’s been so much happier lately.” She smiles. “I know it’s because of you.”
I smile around a mouthful of potatoes.
She swallows more of her orange juice and takes a bite of the biscuit. She really does look like Jared-almost like the stunted Jared of my dreams, though her hair isn’t white or graying, and her nose isn’t quite the same. Her voice sounds just as I’ve known it through the phone. “He’s told me a lot about you… you’ve been good for him.”
Jared returns and sits down. “Stop talking about me, mom.” He says jokingly, then, his voice gets more serious when he follows it with, “Besides, Jen already knows all the good stuff.”
“I’m sure. I bet he could tell me a story or two.” She says with a wink.
“I bet he could.” Jared replies quickly, before I can say anything.
“So are you going to be staying at the guest house every night, Jared? If you are, we can give your room to your Aunt Carla.”
“She’s staying with us?” He wrinkles his nose, a giveaway that he’s none too pleased about that.
“For a couple of days. I told you she’d be here for Christmas, and it is Christmas Eve, honey.”
It is. I knew it would be soon, but it just seems like it snuck up by surprise this year. I wasn’t expecting it to be December so soon… wasn’t expecting, certainly, to be spending Christmas with my… boyfriend’s family, rather than my own. It still seems odd to think of Jared as my boyfriend, even though he is. I never thought I’d have a boyfriend. I do.
I’ve done my shopping, though I should see if Jared wants to stop at the San Antonio mall at some point today. I should at least pick up fruit baskets or something for his parents and his Aunt Carla and Uncle… Tug.
“I know it is…” Jared’s voice softens, like he forgot. “Well where was she going to stay?” I can hear the sharpness in the question though he tries to hide it, and when his mom doesn’t answer right away, Jared bites out, “I see. How long is she going to be here?” He pokes at the potatoes on his plate, pushes them around in ketchup, mashes them, keeps pushing at them, eventually shoving them into his eggs with a painful screech of metal fork against china plate, and the food suddenly looks a lot less appetizing.
“Until Wednesday. It was cheaper for her to fly home on Wednesday than on Sunday or Monday.” His mom explains, finishing her orange juice. “Well?” His mom presses, either not impressed with Jared’s modern art because she’s seen it already, or she hasn’t noticed.
“I’ll stay with Jen.” He says flatly, and picks up his plate, bringing it to the sink. His mother looks at him with a typical mother expression that says ‘aren’t you going to eat that?’, and Jared says, “I’m full, ma.” He disappears, leaving me at the counter with his mother.
I follow him with my eyes as I swallow a lump of eggs and Taylor Ham, wash it down with a gulp of lukewarm coffee.
“So he says he’s told you all the good stuff.” She says quietly, and when I nod, she asks, even more quietly, “…about high school, too? The…” She trails off subtly, but her expression of sorrow and concern for her youngest son says it all.
I nod. “He did.” I don’t add that he’s said he’s told me more than her. She’s seen and heard enough, and I don’t want her thinking that either Jared doesn’t trust her enough or thinking the worst about whatever Jared hasn’t told her.
She nods this time. “I’m glad, you know.” She runs her fingers along the outside of her empty glass, picks it up, puts it back down, plays with it as if she needs something to be doing with her hands. She stares at it. “He… he’s held it all inside for so long.” She whispers.
“He had to let it out.” I echo her sentiments, and the eggs are rubbery now, and cold. The potatoes are starchy and heavy. I break apart the biscuit and nibble at it dipped in honey from the grits, watch as Aunt Carla comes over to talk to Jared’s mom, politely interrupts our conversation and drags her into the living room with the rest of the family.
I leave my dishes in the sink, refill my cup with coffee and take another for Jared before heading out with a small wave and a ‘thank you’ for breakfast. His father yells after me to see if Jared and I want to go horseback riding with him if we aren’t doing anything later. I wave, tell him I’ll let him know, then hurry along dusty earth, kicking up clouds as I go to the guest suite.
“Jare?” I call, upon climbing the stairs. I push the door open, carefully balancing both cups of coffee. “Jared?”
I get no reply. “Jared? Some help would be nice.” I kick the door closed with a grumble, put the coffee on the counter. Still no reply, and I look around the few rooms. He’s not in the small kitchenette, or in the living room. The bedroom door is closed, the way we left it when we headed to breakfast. I open it and scan the room for Jared anyway, not surprised to see the room undisturbed. I check the small bathroom too. “Jare?”
He’s not there, and I’m about to call his cell-but apparently he didn’t take it with him this morning (it’s on the bed)-when I see him, out of the corner of my eye, out of the window. He’s in the hayloft of the barn-high up, sitting in the large, glass-less window there. It might have been a door at one point, leading out to the roof, or maybe it always was a window, but I’m not sure. It’s just a gaping hole.
I don’t take the coffee-just run down the stairs and around the garage to the back, towards the barn, where I scale the ladder to the loft, walk through scattered dried hay that cracks under my feet to Jared’s side. He’s still staring out the window, doesn’t turn to me as I sit down across from him and tap his foot with mine.
“Figured you’d come after me.” He says, squinting into the winter sun.
“What happened back there?”
He turns and gives me a sad half-smile before returning his attention to the window. “It’s not Aunt Carla.” He says. “But her husband…”
“Uncle… Tug?” I ask pointedly.
“The one and only.” Jared sighs heavily, rests his elbows on bent knees. His feet are flat on the thick ledge we sit on. His back is pressed to one side, mine to the other, and he stares at me now. He looks back out over his family’s property-the line extends for miles, across dirt and rough-hewn grass to tall, lazy wheat stalks and punks that aren’t useful but make for nice décor, I suppose.
I don’t push, just wait for him to talk, content to sit with him on the sill and watch as crows and other birds fly overhead, dot the sky.
“He was here… they were staying here-he and my Aunt. They’d just gotten married when it happened.”
“The…”
“The… assault.” Jared supplies. It’s hard to keep calling it an attack, or a beating… there’s only so many words you can use, and they all somehow seem wrong. “They were just married… in May, actually… they’d been married for three weeks when it happened… and they were living here. They had a bid on a house, but…”
“I get it.” I whisper.
He smiles. “And uh…” He squints again into the sun. “You know I was in the hospital for a week… and… when I came home, they moved a bed downstairs for me-to make it easier, with my leg and all… and I guess Uncle Tug figured since I was going to be downstairs, they could just use my room. Which… not a problem really, that’s pettiness on my part… but nobody ever asked me-and it wasn’t my Aunt or my mom that said they could use it… Uncle Tug just moved their stuff right in…”
And I know that’s not really the crux of the matter, so I wait for him to go on. Jared can be petty, but that’s not something he’d make a big issue out of, or hold any dislike for someone for unless there was something else going on.
“He found out… what had happened-really happened. We’d told him it was just a random assault… I’m not sure what the story was that my mom and dad told him, but I know they didn’t tell him the truth-that it was a hate crime…” Jared continues quietly. “But he found out anyway… I don’t know how or from who… might have been from the police-he had friends down at the local precinct that handled the case.”
He picks at a loose splinter, tosses the wooden chip out the window to the dirt outside. “…told my Aunt… told my brother and sister-though they already knew so there was no damage to be done there-and uh…” He stands up, paces a little bit across creaking and cracked floorboards. “…just wasn’t very nice about it… about the whole thing.”
I stand up too. “Jare?” I ask, looking at him, puzzled. There’s got to be more than ‘wasn’t very nice about it… about the whole thing.’. He’s not telling me something… that Tug said or something else about it. I’d bet it’s something Tug said-maybe what Tug said to him. “Jared?”
He stops pacing the floor and looks at me with a pained expression. “Don’t, Jen… just… he wasn’t very nice about it, okay?”
I take a chance. “What did he tell you, Jared?” I cross the few feet to Jared’s side, turn him to face me and grip his shoulders tightly when he flinches at the question. He rocks on his heels, shakes beneath my hands. “What did he say to you?” I ask again, trying to meet his gaze, but he won’t look at me. “Jared…”
He wrenches free from my grasp, stares at me, eyes blazing suddenly. “He told me I fucking deserved it, okay?” He yells. “Told me I fucking deserved it… that I was everything they said I was… that I got what I fucking deserved… Told me I got lucky cause I was still breathing-still alive-and that I should make the most of my…” He spits the words-“…second chance…”-and that...” He takes a deep breath and struggles against me when I step into him and wrap my arms around him. “…that I should find me a woman and settle down, because there’s no place in this world for faggots.”
He says that word like it’s nothing-faggot-and I wonder how. It’s like he’s disassociated himself from that term entirely. It’s good, but at the same time, I realize why he had to, and it makes me feel even more for him.
“Jared…” I hold him tight, won’t let him go, even as he struggles against me, and he finally relaxes into my embrace and lifts his own arms to hold me.
He dips his head to rest it on my shoulder, continues talking softly. “I tolerate him… I wish him Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and all that… but I’ll never be friends with him. And my dad just doesn’t understand why… neither does my Aunt… which… is my fault in a way-I never told them what he said. I didn’t need to put that rift between him and Aunt Carla… or between him and my parents.”
I can’t understand Jared sometimes. I can’t understand, even with his explanation of not wanting to cause a rift or a fight in the family, how he’s even civil to that bastard. “You’re a better man than I’ll ever be, Jare…” I whisper into his hair, using a hand to turn his face up from my neck so I can look at him. “I’d have killed him… I want to, now…”
He smiles and shakes his head, hair tickling my neck. “See? See why I love you?” He asks softly. “Because of all this… because you want to hurt him when I don’t care… you want to hurt him for what he said to me…” He lifts his head and just looks at me. His arms don’t move from around my back, and his hands unclench their fists, and splay open across my shirt, my spine, huge and warm. “You care, Jen… and it means so much.”
I swallow, and blush, embarrassed. But he’s right-I do want to hurt anyone who hurts him. I want to kill those bastards who scarred him… sodomized-raped… him. I do care for him… care about him. And I’m starting to realize I don’t just love him, and he doesn’t just love me… I’m in love with him… he’s in love with me. We’re in love. It’s something we’re in together. And I like it.
We stand there, holding each other, until we hear his family moving outside to the patio, at which point he drags me out of the open window, guides me to a spot in a pile of hay behind the wall, and shoves me down into the haystack.
He follows me into the haystack, aligning his body with me, pressing his thigh, his knee, between my legs, his chest and mouth to mine. I think I make a sound like a horny teenager when his tongue pushes into my mouth, traces my teeth and the insides of my mouth.
He giggles, puts his hands on my shoulders and pushes me back when I try to get up. I let him hold me down and continue kissing me.
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Characters/Pairing: Jensen Ackles / Jared Padalecki
POV: Jensen Ackles
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 Five: Breakfast
Rating: Hard R for m/m slash kiss, boytouching, adult themes and content, and language
Pairing: Jensen/Jared
Word Count: 2,757
Chapter Five: Breakfast
When I get to the house, Jared’s mom has a buffet of breakfast set out on the kitchen table-a huge bowl of scrambled eggs, a plate piled high with homemade pancakes (Jared swears they’re not from a box), a matching plate of waffles, an industrial-size frying pan of spiced potatoes (the cube ones you get from Ore Ida or whatever… the frozen ones from a bag)… there’s a jar of jelly, a large carafe of coffee, a plate of still-steaming, well-cooked Taylor Ham, another of mini breakfast sausages. In the corner there’s ketchup and a container of maple syrup, one of honey. There’s also milk and sugar and orange juice, a bowl of shredded cheese and diced green peppers and tomatoes.
Jared’s brother has invited friends, his sister’s much-disliked boyfriend is there, as well as Jared’s aunt (his mom’s sister) Carla, uncle Trent (“…oh please call me Tug, everyone does…”) and cousin William (“Billy”). Jared introduces me to everyone, mostly from afar, pointing and saying “That’s Aunt Carla… that’s Jack, one of Jeff’s friends…”
Everyone helps themselves to heaping plates of food and sits where there’s room-the sofa, the table… Jared’s mom put out extra chairs.
Jared and I disappear to the kitchen when he decides he doesn’t want orange juice or coffee. He helps himself to apple juice and sits down on one of the wooden barstools that line the dividing counter/table between the kitchen and living room. His mom is sitting at the end of the counter, sipping orange juice.
“Morning, Jensen.” She says, beaming. “It’s so nice to have you here.”
“Thanks for inviting me.” I take a bite of one of the sausages. Along with Jared, I probably have the least food on my plate of anyone in the room, and I still have a lot of food-eggs with shredded cheese and some of the peppers and tomatoes… a heaping spoonful of potatoes with ketchup sprinkled on top, two sausages and two piece of Taylor Ham. I also have a pile of grits with honey and butter, a biscuit and my coffee. Jared has almost the same, though he passed on the sausages and Taylor Ham, having a waffle laden with jelly and syrup instead, which makes me just sick from the sugar by just looking at it.
Jared’s up refilling his glass of apple juice, and his mom takes the opportunity to lean in close. “You know… Jared’s been so much happier lately.” She smiles. “I know it’s because of you.”
I smile around a mouthful of potatoes.
She swallows more of her orange juice and takes a bite of the biscuit. She really does look like Jared-almost like the stunted Jared of my dreams, though her hair isn’t white or graying, and her nose isn’t quite the same. Her voice sounds just as I’ve known it through the phone. “He’s told me a lot about you… you’ve been good for him.”
Jared returns and sits down. “Stop talking about me, mom.” He says jokingly, then, his voice gets more serious when he follows it with, “Besides, Jen already knows all the good stuff.”
“I’m sure. I bet he could tell me a story or two.” She says with a wink.
“I bet he could.” Jared replies quickly, before I can say anything.
“So are you going to be staying at the guest house every night, Jared? If you are, we can give your room to your Aunt Carla.”
“She’s staying with us?” He wrinkles his nose, a giveaway that he’s none too pleased about that.
“For a couple of days. I told you she’d be here for Christmas, and it is Christmas Eve, honey.”
It is. I knew it would be soon, but it just seems like it snuck up by surprise this year. I wasn’t expecting it to be December so soon… wasn’t expecting, certainly, to be spending Christmas with my… boyfriend’s family, rather than my own. It still seems odd to think of Jared as my boyfriend, even though he is. I never thought I’d have a boyfriend. I do.
I’ve done my shopping, though I should see if Jared wants to stop at the San Antonio mall at some point today. I should at least pick up fruit baskets or something for his parents and his Aunt Carla and Uncle… Tug.
“I know it is…” Jared’s voice softens, like he forgot. “Well where was she going to stay?” I can hear the sharpness in the question though he tries to hide it, and when his mom doesn’t answer right away, Jared bites out, “I see. How long is she going to be here?” He pokes at the potatoes on his plate, pushes them around in ketchup, mashes them, keeps pushing at them, eventually shoving them into his eggs with a painful screech of metal fork against china plate, and the food suddenly looks a lot less appetizing.
“Until Wednesday. It was cheaper for her to fly home on Wednesday than on Sunday or Monday.” His mom explains, finishing her orange juice. “Well?” His mom presses, either not impressed with Jared’s modern art because she’s seen it already, or she hasn’t noticed.
“I’ll stay with Jen.” He says flatly, and picks up his plate, bringing it to the sink. His mother looks at him with a typical mother expression that says ‘aren’t you going to eat that?’, and Jared says, “I’m full, ma.” He disappears, leaving me at the counter with his mother.
I follow him with my eyes as I swallow a lump of eggs and Taylor Ham, wash it down with a gulp of lukewarm coffee.
“So he says he’s told you all the good stuff.” She says quietly, and when I nod, she asks, even more quietly, “…about high school, too? The…” She trails off subtly, but her expression of sorrow and concern for her youngest son says it all.
I nod. “He did.” I don’t add that he’s said he’s told me more than her. She’s seen and heard enough, and I don’t want her thinking that either Jared doesn’t trust her enough or thinking the worst about whatever Jared hasn’t told her.
She nods this time. “I’m glad, you know.” She runs her fingers along the outside of her empty glass, picks it up, puts it back down, plays with it as if she needs something to be doing with her hands. She stares at it. “He… he’s held it all inside for so long.” She whispers.
“He had to let it out.” I echo her sentiments, and the eggs are rubbery now, and cold. The potatoes are starchy and heavy. I break apart the biscuit and nibble at it dipped in honey from the grits, watch as Aunt Carla comes over to talk to Jared’s mom, politely interrupts our conversation and drags her into the living room with the rest of the family.
I leave my dishes in the sink, refill my cup with coffee and take another for Jared before heading out with a small wave and a ‘thank you’ for breakfast. His father yells after me to see if Jared and I want to go horseback riding with him if we aren’t doing anything later. I wave, tell him I’ll let him know, then hurry along dusty earth, kicking up clouds as I go to the guest suite.
“Jare?” I call, upon climbing the stairs. I push the door open, carefully balancing both cups of coffee. “Jared?”
I get no reply. “Jared? Some help would be nice.” I kick the door closed with a grumble, put the coffee on the counter. Still no reply, and I look around the few rooms. He’s not in the small kitchenette, or in the living room. The bedroom door is closed, the way we left it when we headed to breakfast. I open it and scan the room for Jared anyway, not surprised to see the room undisturbed. I check the small bathroom too. “Jare?”
He’s not there, and I’m about to call his cell-but apparently he didn’t take it with him this morning (it’s on the bed)-when I see him, out of the corner of my eye, out of the window. He’s in the hayloft of the barn-high up, sitting in the large, glass-less window there. It might have been a door at one point, leading out to the roof, or maybe it always was a window, but I’m not sure. It’s just a gaping hole.
I don’t take the coffee-just run down the stairs and around the garage to the back, towards the barn, where I scale the ladder to the loft, walk through scattered dried hay that cracks under my feet to Jared’s side. He’s still staring out the window, doesn’t turn to me as I sit down across from him and tap his foot with mine.
“Figured you’d come after me.” He says, squinting into the winter sun.
“What happened back there?”
He turns and gives me a sad half-smile before returning his attention to the window. “It’s not Aunt Carla.” He says. “But her husband…”
“Uncle… Tug?” I ask pointedly.
“The one and only.” Jared sighs heavily, rests his elbows on bent knees. His feet are flat on the thick ledge we sit on. His back is pressed to one side, mine to the other, and he stares at me now. He looks back out over his family’s property-the line extends for miles, across dirt and rough-hewn grass to tall, lazy wheat stalks and punks that aren’t useful but make for nice décor, I suppose.
I don’t push, just wait for him to talk, content to sit with him on the sill and watch as crows and other birds fly overhead, dot the sky.
“He was here… they were staying here-he and my Aunt. They’d just gotten married when it happened.”
“The…”
“The… assault.” Jared supplies. It’s hard to keep calling it an attack, or a beating… there’s only so many words you can use, and they all somehow seem wrong. “They were just married… in May, actually… they’d been married for three weeks when it happened… and they were living here. They had a bid on a house, but…”
“I get it.” I whisper.
He smiles. “And uh…” He squints again into the sun. “You know I was in the hospital for a week… and… when I came home, they moved a bed downstairs for me-to make it easier, with my leg and all… and I guess Uncle Tug figured since I was going to be downstairs, they could just use my room. Which… not a problem really, that’s pettiness on my part… but nobody ever asked me-and it wasn’t my Aunt or my mom that said they could use it… Uncle Tug just moved their stuff right in…”
And I know that’s not really the crux of the matter, so I wait for him to go on. Jared can be petty, but that’s not something he’d make a big issue out of, or hold any dislike for someone for unless there was something else going on.
“He found out… what had happened-really happened. We’d told him it was just a random assault… I’m not sure what the story was that my mom and dad told him, but I know they didn’t tell him the truth-that it was a hate crime…” Jared continues quietly. “But he found out anyway… I don’t know how or from who… might have been from the police-he had friends down at the local precinct that handled the case.”
He picks at a loose splinter, tosses the wooden chip out the window to the dirt outside. “…told my Aunt… told my brother and sister-though they already knew so there was no damage to be done there-and uh…” He stands up, paces a little bit across creaking and cracked floorboards. “…just wasn’t very nice about it… about the whole thing.”
I stand up too. “Jare?” I ask, looking at him, puzzled. There’s got to be more than ‘wasn’t very nice about it… about the whole thing.’. He’s not telling me something… that Tug said or something else about it. I’d bet it’s something Tug said-maybe what Tug said to him. “Jared?”
He stops pacing the floor and looks at me with a pained expression. “Don’t, Jen… just… he wasn’t very nice about it, okay?”
I take a chance. “What did he tell you, Jared?” I cross the few feet to Jared’s side, turn him to face me and grip his shoulders tightly when he flinches at the question. He rocks on his heels, shakes beneath my hands. “What did he say to you?” I ask again, trying to meet his gaze, but he won’t look at me. “Jared…”
He wrenches free from my grasp, stares at me, eyes blazing suddenly. “He told me I fucking deserved it, okay?” He yells. “Told me I fucking deserved it… that I was everything they said I was… that I got what I fucking deserved… Told me I got lucky cause I was still breathing-still alive-and that I should make the most of my…” He spits the words-“…second chance…”-and that...” He takes a deep breath and struggles against me when I step into him and wrap my arms around him. “…that I should find me a woman and settle down, because there’s no place in this world for faggots.”
He says that word like it’s nothing-faggot-and I wonder how. It’s like he’s disassociated himself from that term entirely. It’s good, but at the same time, I realize why he had to, and it makes me feel even more for him.
“Jared…” I hold him tight, won’t let him go, even as he struggles against me, and he finally relaxes into my embrace and lifts his own arms to hold me.
He dips his head to rest it on my shoulder, continues talking softly. “I tolerate him… I wish him Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and all that… but I’ll never be friends with him. And my dad just doesn’t understand why… neither does my Aunt… which… is my fault in a way-I never told them what he said. I didn’t need to put that rift between him and Aunt Carla… or between him and my parents.”
I can’t understand Jared sometimes. I can’t understand, even with his explanation of not wanting to cause a rift or a fight in the family, how he’s even civil to that bastard. “You’re a better man than I’ll ever be, Jare…” I whisper into his hair, using a hand to turn his face up from my neck so I can look at him. “I’d have killed him… I want to, now…”
He smiles and shakes his head, hair tickling my neck. “See? See why I love you?” He asks softly. “Because of all this… because you want to hurt him when I don’t care… you want to hurt him for what he said to me…” He lifts his head and just looks at me. His arms don’t move from around my back, and his hands unclench their fists, and splay open across my shirt, my spine, huge and warm. “You care, Jen… and it means so much.”
I swallow, and blush, embarrassed. But he’s right-I do want to hurt anyone who hurts him. I want to kill those bastards who scarred him… sodomized-raped… him. I do care for him… care about him. And I’m starting to realize I don’t just love him, and he doesn’t just love me… I’m in love with him… he’s in love with me. We’re in love. It’s something we’re in together. And I like it.
We stand there, holding each other, until we hear his family moving outside to the patio, at which point he drags me out of the open window, guides me to a spot in a pile of hay behind the wall, and shoves me down into the haystack.
He follows me into the haystack, aligning his body with me, pressing his thigh, his knee, between my legs, his chest and mouth to mine. I think I make a sound like a horny teenager when his tongue pushes into my mouth, traces my teeth and the insides of my mouth.
He giggles, puts his hands on my shoulders and pushes me back when I try to get up. I let him hold me down and continue kissing me.
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