A Lost Cause
Title: A Lost Cause
Fandom: CW RPS! Jensen/Chad, implied Jared/Jensen, unrequited Jared/Chad
Rating: R
Summary: Everyone's on the side that doesn't have Chad, the whole world is against him and no one wants to pick up the phone.
Notes: Lots of love and birthday wishes to wheatgerm. <3
A Lost Cause
He's in crisis and his friends are flakes.
It's so typical of them, Chad thinks as he edges away from Sophia and her hacking. She's had pneumonia for almost a month now, and if he's not careful, he'll catch a fleck of infected lung and be diseased, too.
"God," he starts in on her, because he's had it with people thinking he's the asshole when in fact he isn't the one A) spreading SARS on the set, B) turning all of North Carolina against Chad Michael Murray, and C) who gets to tell the press for the goddamned forty-sixth time that her ex is a douche. "God!"
James gives him a Look. Everyone's on the side that doesn't have Chad, the whole world is against him, and no one wants to pick up the phone.
Jared finally does after the sixth time the cell goes straight to voicemail, which, in human-speak is the non-verbal for -
"Are you not answering your phone these days?" Chad demands. Spazzy electronica is playing in the background, which could only mean that Jared and Sandy are about to get it on or he's playing Tetris. "Dude, it's important. It's real important, man."
Even he could hear the edge and desperation in his voice, see himself outside his body: slouched behind the Port-a-Potty for the food service trailer, his breath puffing white in the winter air, at the brink of frothing his way into a rant. Days like this, he misses Jared, and sometimes, even Alexis, because at least they got him. For instance, they would never let him storm off the set wearing only a sparkly purple bathrobe to shield his Little (big) Chad from the elements.
"I just answered, didn't I." See, Jared's the only guy Chad would let get away with smart-ass answers like that. "What's the problem?"
***
Thing is, he's a Romeo.
He's a lover, not a fighter. Also, he didn't think Kenzie would sic her older brothers on him, so not only is his heart broken, his skull might be, too.
Being a gentleman in the twenty-first century sucks.
"And then she said I'm not putting it in there, and that was that," Chad explains under the covers of his bed, where it's dark and lonely, like his soul. "My face hurts."
"Wow," is all Alexis says.
"And she didn't sock you in the nuts?" Jared follows up. "Dude. Where do you get all these ideas?"
This is why they rarely do three-way calls. Glowering is useless, but Chad pulls a face anyway.
"I am the victim in this," he reminds them. His friends get so easily sidetracked by negligible details. "The victim of love. Besides, I told her she didn't have to, it was just a suggestion, damn."
The next day, Kenzie files a restraining order. The day after that, she Fed-Exes the engagement ring with a list of Chad's faults - "You're vain, you're a creep and you have mental problems" - and a post-script informing him that she's dating her high school's star quarterback. By the end of the week, someone's spread the rumor that Chad likes to get frisky with goats.
Sometimes, it really does suck to be him.
***
He doesn't see Jared for a week, so he ends up hanging with Jensen.
Chad's not at all surprised by this crappy luck, because his is consistently rotten and gives him opportunities that seem okay at first but turn into fiascos that get him divorced instead of hot college co-eds like the ones who jock Jensen. Jensen, who runs away from them, because apparently, he was thrown at the wall at birth, or is possibly gay.
"I'm already involved," is all Jensen says, enigmatic and mysterious, like his romantic life is a saga.
Then again, Jensen dated a Playboy model and Jared's banging a Laker girl. Maybe that explains the elitism, and Chad marrying the 2000 Rose Bowl Queen and leaving her for the homecoming princess isn't up to par. If this was a car club, Jensen'd have the Rolls, Jared would own a Benz and Chad would be the one who traded in his Accord for a Corolla. If Paris counted, then his car for sure would be a BMW with the innards of a Datsun.
At least Alexis still keeps it real. But then again, when you date a short, smug Italian guy who pushes you off the sidewalk while walking your dog, you can't be anything but real. Chad makes a mental note to bump Alexis up to best friend status. Fuck Jared and Jensen fucking Ackles.
Yeah, Chad still secretly hates the guy. He still can't believe he got ditched for a soap actor who wore brick pants and sold "Titanic" necklace knock-offs in the nineties. It could have been worse: he could've lost out to Tom or Mike, who alternately spent the last decade in women's clothes and bald to finance a Trekkie fetish. Hand Solo, for sure, that loser.
"I'm not." Chad shakes the bangs off his face and gives the blonde bartender his best sultry gaze. His eyes probably look sapphire, fringed with gold lashes, wicked-intense. But, no, she continues slicing limes. He turns to Jensen. "She's totally missing out, man."
"That's why you have all that shit about you floating around the network and all over the Internet." Jensen orders another beer. "You can't keep your dick in your pants and you won't shut the fuck up for a minute."
***
He spends two more weeks wandering all over Vancouver, hoping for some time with Jared, but Sandy's in town and Supernatural is filming fifteen hours a day or something. So, he tries playing golf with Tom, but it's a girl sport and Chad's got no patience patting little balls with little sticks all over fancy lawns.
One day, he brings a mini-bullhorn to challenge Tom's swings and ability to suddenly putt in ponds, sandpits and behind a tree.
He and Tom are a few yards away from the fifth hole when security overreacts. They chase Chad all the way to the eighth hole in their yellow carts, jumping out and wrestling the horn from him and permanently banning him from the golf course. And because he might as well live up to being called "Mayhem" - who the hell are the people writing his IMDB profile? - he charms his way into the Smallville set, locks Mike out of his trailer and leaves one of those ransom notes - the ones where the letters are clipped out of newspapers - for Kristin Kreuk that reads, "i wanna save u Lana Lang."
Justin kicks him off the set.
"How'd you get in the Smallville lot?" Jared says on the phone.
"I'm Chad Michael Murray." Actually, he got in by telling security he was with food services.
"You are so fucking destructive."
"Come see me, then," Chad answers. He's on the fifth beer of his six-pack and watching the movie where Jared gets killed in the desert. "You're such a fucking flake, you can't find time for a friend who flew up here special to see you." He finishes off the bottle and uncaps the sixth with the edge of a silver dollar. "You need to quit playing grab-ass with Ackles and hang out with me."
The sting comes before the truth, thin and sharp. Maybe he is alone and maybe everyone's right, he's completely fucked in the head, pissing off and chasing away friends with such douchebaggery that he can't even be friends with dudes his own age, let alone get with girls who aren't teenagers or his sister. The thought startles Chad, and the pain is now full-fledged, suggesting that he ought be angry with himself and even angrier at people in general.
The truth becomes wisdom: people he love inevitably stop loving him.
"Never mind," he says when Jared can't be bothered to come up with a comeback for the ass joke. "Whatever, dude, fuck off."
***
He can't pinpoint the moment the new crazy began, but he's sure it's already happened when he wakes up in bed with Joanna Krupa.
"I might have hepatitis," she confesses and Chad nearly has a heart attack.
"Oh fuck me."
"I just did," Joanna kind of laughs, like, ha-ha, how freaking funny is my joke even though your cock might rot off or you might crap out your liver.
"Get out."
In a new level of loser lows, he finds himself standing outside Paris' house one night. She smiles coyly when she sees him, and the closer she gets the more she resembles a skinny orange man in drag. Chad hightails it out of there and secretly wishes Starving Nachos luck.
He runs into Tania Saulnier at The Whisky and they strike up a new and sexy friendship over their mutual dislike for Jensen, who dumps hot blondes for Jared, who in turn dumps his best friend Chad for an idiot thrown at the wall at birth.
Tania vomits into Chad's shoes after sex.
"It's not you," she quickly reassures him, getting greener by the second. "I get motion sickness after I've gotten too much in me."
He debates telling Tania about the hep while he cleans off his left sneaker with her toothbrush.
Alexis is not amused. "You should talk to Jared about this. Also, get tested. I am serious. Don't make me talk to you about safe sex again."
Chad hangs up on her.
***
Alexis is right.
He calls Jensen and Mike and Tom to tell them that they shouldn't let Jared listen to his messages because Chad left a ten-second foghorn wail in the voicemail. They all reject his calls.
"I'm not giving you Hartley's number," Mike flat-out says when Chad asks for it. "You're just gonna dick around some more and I refuse to be an accomplice in your mayhem."
Mike looks around and leans in close, like a doctor or scientist examining a patient that suddenly sprouted a third arm on his forehead or a new kind of germ. Chad stares back.
"Do you need an ear or something?" Mike suddenly asks, completely throwing off Chad. "You look...anguished."
They're interrupted by Justin and Erica's arrival, then Jensen, Tom and Jamie, and finally Sandy and Jared, who doesn't look annoyed - like most everyone in the booth when they notice him - but genuinely worried.
"Hey, dude," Chad says breezily, ignoring the douche brigade, trying to keep the hammering in his chest to a dull tapping because if anyone's going to nurse a seven-year dudecrush, it's not going to be him. "Don't check your voicemail, okay?"
"Um. Okay?"
Everyone at the table looks at him like he's crazy, and God, there are no words to describe how much he hates them all, and for various reasons, like for looking at him as though he's a plate of turd instead of someone they can possibly be cool with. After all, of every one in this booth, he and Jared have the longest history; they've been with the CW since it was the WB, they've been roomies; hell, they even shot a fucking movie together. If anything, the outsider should be Erica, Justin. Even Jensen.
What does Jensen have that he doesn't, anyway? Anyone who takes on roles that require getting an ass-kicking from a giant dildo deserves to get pansted for life.
"All right," Jared says after Chad gets settled in the living room and the dogs are outside playing. Sharing the same vicinity with Jared's rasp of a voice and the very physicality of his six-foot-five self makes Chad melt with pure and pathetically childish joy. "What's up with you?"
***
He loves Jared, even though Jared's a flake.
It's complicated. Chad can't quite get his mind wrapped around it, just like he can't tell his best friend in this obviously one-sided friendship that he sometimes has weird urges to kiss him, poke at the tiny hollows of his dimples, and pull the dark strands of his sloppy flyaway hair. That he misses Jared like hell and that being his right-wing man - a friend of importance - does happy things to his self-esteem, a secret blessing that puts the world in tolerable perspective. And it sucks, it sucks that that's over and done.
Kane wraps up the show successfully, which means there are still people left in the audience who are actual fans, fans who aren't Jensen or Carlson. Los Angeles is a sad place for country music.
Jared is wasted when he drapes a long and lazy arm around Chad's shoulders and makes a sex-face on their way out the door. He's happy, it's contagious and Jensen is lagging behind them with David. Chad smiles. Next thing he knows, he and Jared are cracking up for no good reason. It feels good, like old times and Australia.
"You, man." Jared forks his fingers into a "v", pointing first at his booze-darkened eyes then at Chad's red-rimmed ones. "Dude."
The night goes from good to bad when Chad runs into Jensen at the lobby of the hotel they apparently share. And because God hates him and gave him crappy luck, Chad ends up drinking some more with Jensen at the lobby bar.
Chad debates telling him about Tania and Joanna and the hep after Jensen excuses himself to the restroom. But Chad decides to be a bigger person, and instead empties a packet of sugar in Jensen's beer.
Then, two or six shots in, he reaches that mid-way point again, teetering at the edge of some new wisdom with the low lights outlining Jensen's stupid face and coloring the bar in psychedelic shades. Melancholy curls in the pit of his stomach and tickles the backs of his eyeballs.
"You're kind of an asshole, aren't you?" he says.
***
The new wisdom is that Jensen isn't really an asshole, and Chad might have a new complex to worry about.
He kisses well, thoroughly and slowly, with the slow languorous burn of a cigarette. Jensen's tongue is deliberately slow at the curve of Chad's lip, and Chad is all too aware that Jensen is completely stronger and can kick his sorry skinny ass around if he wants to. There must be a gentleman or a wuss somewhere under all those layers of superiority, Chad's sure of it when Jensen's hand trails a feather-light straight line that begins at Chad's chin and stops below his bellybutton.
"You have issues, man," Jensen breathes matter-of-fact in Chad's ear. The delivery is gentle but the implication is mean as fuck. Being this vulnerable - wanting Jensen and wanting Jared more - makes Chad shudder, feel sick and horny. "Seriously, you do."
And he doesn't argue the point. Not when Chad's unbuttoning the broken fly of his jeans with one hand while the other palms the back of Jensen's neck, pulling him closer for a harder, rougher kiss. Chad's so hard he's afraid he'll rip out of his own skin. The friction of his bare cock against Jensen's rough denim is so good, and even though tomorrow will mean his dick will be sloughed raw, Chad continues to rub and arch until Jensen grinds back.
"Off," Chad says. God, he does have issues and this, this is a crisis. He pulls at the waistband of Jensen's jeans, the pad of his thumb catching on the cotton and elastic just underneath. Boxers or briefs? Clearly, Chad's sick in the head. "Fucking get these off."
Jensen laughs. Chad’s secret hate-on flares, so he rolls Jensen on his back. Chad downs Jensen's cock without preamble, sucking down and pulling away. The pressure he's exerting triggers the beginnings of a headache, but he continues running his lips, open-mouthed along the contours of Jensen's sex, under the shaft and sweeping around and over his balls. As he's molesting Jensen, his mind goes haywire, imagining how Jared’s would be like - its taste and intimate peculiarities, how it would feel to have it pressed against various parts of Chad’s own body.
Jensen writhes, slowly fucking into Chad's mouth until Chad's suffocated by his scent, the vibration of his own moans and the length of Jensen's thighs on either side of his head. Great, tomorrow he's going to wake up with carpet burns on the back of his neck, and if Jensen doesn't let up riding his face, he might die of being brained to death with cock.
In all the times mixing liquors and bad decision-making skills led Chad to someone's bed, he's never felt this level of satisfaction. Smug, like he's putting one over someone's head; who knew Ackles was gay? As he's going down on the guy, he's already creating a blackmail file. So far it reads, "Jensen Ackles, soap star; gay; gay for Chad Michael Murray."
Jensen comes hard and with a groan that goes straight to Chad’s dick. To Jensen’s credit he doesn’t vomit into Chad’s shoes or disclose that he’s got an STD.
Instead he turns the lamp on, probably to make Chad feel shitty that his body isn’t as cut or as well-proportioned above and below the belt.
"Jared likes the lights on, don't he?" Chad blurts, just to be an asshole and regain some control over the situation. He doesn't mean it, he doesn't want it to be true.
Jensen smiles.
***
Fucking Jensen nearly makes Chad go blind, spastic and other kinds of ungraceful things he didn’t want to be when he’s around his archrival.
His jaw is sore where Jensen actually slugged him, the bastard. Chad made the mistake of pulling out and spunking in Jensen’s hair. On top of the rugburn, Chad's probably also going to end up sporting an imprint of the guy's ring on his face.
“That's some weird shit that goes on in your head,” Jensen pants as he rides Chad deeper and deeper into the mattress. “Who does that, assign labels to people like ‘My Nemesis,’ ‘The Next Addition To My Hit List,’ ‘My MILF’?”
“I really hate you, man,” Chad mumbles into the pillow that now reeks of sour tequila-flavored drool.
The hate subsides a little when Jensen kisses him, nudging his lips open, and giving a reassuring squeeze around his hips when he complies. But even the slow burn of Jensen's swollen mouth isn’t enough of a distraction from the pain and the overall discomfort of being bottom. Huh. If anyone had told Chad earlier that the end of the night will bring him some nudie-time with Jensen, he wouldn't have believed them.
Nah, he'd have said, if anyone's gonna enjoy a piece of me it's not going to be that tool.
***
He’s clean. Chad’s so sick and of people thinking he’s some malevolent element when he’s the only goddamned person around who actually says “no” to drugs.
“My face hurts,” he tells Alexis after convincing her that the tests came back negative. “I think my heart, too.”
***
“Here’s the deal,” Jensen says. They’re on his couch, and Chad’s left foot is sore where Jensen crushed it with his boot instead of telling Chad he didn’t feel like playing footsies. What an asshole. “You have to stop being a bitch.”
“Yeah,” Kreuk adds and Chad makes an effort not to roll his eyes because who invited her anyway? Doesn’t she have a sandwich to eat? Allison's also here, and Justin, Justin's watching 'Jackass' on TV. To think, Chad actually misses Mike. “On the path to enlightenment, there are some things you have to do - put out your fires so you can cross the bridge back home, back to the source.”
Chad blinks at her. “What. The hell?”
"Don't be ungrateful," Justin says without taking his eyes off the midget kicking himself in the forehead.
Later that night he recounts the badly staged intervention to Alexis and Jared.
Alexis is quiet for a minute. “Kristin has a point, you know.”
Jared is puzzled. “Since when are you and Jen buddies? I thought you thought he was a douchebag?”
“We’re all douchebags,” Chad points out.
***
Since they stopped talking, Sophia has mastered the art of going from icy to polar.
“I’m sorry,” Chad says, and lets her hang up on him for once.
***
His sister Shannon is convinced he’s gone off the deep end. “Why the hell would you want to find Mom?”
***
“You’re not really a transvestite,” he tells Hilarie.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” she sighs, exasperated, throwing her hands in the air. “What the hell are you up to?”
Kreuk is wrong. Burning bridges and leaving them behind is really the way to go.
***
“That thing about the goats, it’s not really true,” Chad tells the second assistant director and a set dresser. “I’m adventurous, sure, but I’m hygienic and respect animals.”
***
“Francis Capra is not a gang-banger.”
Kristen Bell just laughs and laughs.
***
Chad opens the door and finds Jensen standing on his doorstep.
“I didn’t invite you,” is what he wants to say, but the words die on their way down from his upjerk reflex.
“Come in,” he says, and means it.
***
He tells Jared the truth. Kind of, except for the part involving wanting to touch dicks and moving in together so Ozzie can have two parents.
Jared expresses the flattery he feels by laughing obnoxiously, slapping Chad in the chest and then slapping the arm of the sofa. “You’re a little gay for me, aren’t you? Admit it. Everyone's a little bit gay for me.”
“Shut the fuck up, dude," Chad laughs, ignoring the sharp twist in his chest. "Whatever.”
***
“You're kind of gay, though,” Alexis says when she finally visits North Carolina. “A little bit."
Her Snow White prettiness automatically makes women and girls within a three-mile radius look like gnomes. And, Chad thinks, coupled with his own chiseled and rugged good looks, he and Alexis must make a devastating couple walking around Chandler's Wharf; the chicks passing them probably want him infinity times more. You always want desperately what you can't have.
"You people don't appreciate me enough. 'Chad, you're acting like a jackass.' 'Chad, maybe you should wait for love until she turns eighteen.' 'Chad, don't make me smack your bitch ass.' It's not my fault I feel too much."
While he's gesticulating to demonstrate the depth of his emotions, Alexis takes his elbows and steers him around a lamp post. "There, there."
“Whatever,” he continues. Right now he's feeling uncertain and unstable, back to square-one again. It's hard to bear. "Tell me again."
Alexis tucks her hand in the crook of his elbow and leans her dark head on his shoulder. "You're not a lost cause. You're, um. Special."
Damn straight.
"Maybe I should change my hair," he says. "Alpha it up."
Alexis sighs.
Fandom: CW RPS! Jensen/Chad, implied Jared/Jensen, unrequited Jared/Chad
Rating: R
Summary: Everyone's on the side that doesn't have Chad, the whole world is against him and no one wants to pick up the phone.
Notes: Lots of love and birthday wishes to wheatgerm. <3
A Lost Cause
He's in crisis and his friends are flakes.
It's so typical of them, Chad thinks as he edges away from Sophia and her hacking. She's had pneumonia for almost a month now, and if he's not careful, he'll catch a fleck of infected lung and be diseased, too.
"God," he starts in on her, because he's had it with people thinking he's the asshole when in fact he isn't the one A) spreading SARS on the set, B) turning all of North Carolina against Chad Michael Murray, and C) who gets to tell the press for the goddamned forty-sixth time that her ex is a douche. "God!"
James gives him a Look. Everyone's on the side that doesn't have Chad, the whole world is against him, and no one wants to pick up the phone.
Jared finally does after the sixth time the cell goes straight to voicemail, which, in human-speak is the non-verbal for -
"Are you not answering your phone these days?" Chad demands. Spazzy electronica is playing in the background, which could only mean that Jared and Sandy are about to get it on or he's playing Tetris. "Dude, it's important. It's real important, man."
Even he could hear the edge and desperation in his voice, see himself outside his body: slouched behind the Port-a-Potty for the food service trailer, his breath puffing white in the winter air, at the brink of frothing his way into a rant. Days like this, he misses Jared, and sometimes, even Alexis, because at least they got him. For instance, they would never let him storm off the set wearing only a sparkly purple bathrobe to shield his Little (big) Chad from the elements.
"I just answered, didn't I." See, Jared's the only guy Chad would let get away with smart-ass answers like that. "What's the problem?"
***
Thing is, he's a Romeo.
He's a lover, not a fighter. Also, he didn't think Kenzie would sic her older brothers on him, so not only is his heart broken, his skull might be, too.
Being a gentleman in the twenty-first century sucks.
"And then she said I'm not putting it in there, and that was that," Chad explains under the covers of his bed, where it's dark and lonely, like his soul. "My face hurts."
"Wow," is all Alexis says.
"And she didn't sock you in the nuts?" Jared follows up. "Dude. Where do you get all these ideas?"
This is why they rarely do three-way calls. Glowering is useless, but Chad pulls a face anyway.
"I am the victim in this," he reminds them. His friends get so easily sidetracked by negligible details. "The victim of love. Besides, I told her she didn't have to, it was just a suggestion, damn."
The next day, Kenzie files a restraining order. The day after that, she Fed-Exes the engagement ring with a list of Chad's faults - "You're vain, you're a creep and you have mental problems" - and a post-script informing him that she's dating her high school's star quarterback. By the end of the week, someone's spread the rumor that Chad likes to get frisky with goats.
Sometimes, it really does suck to be him.
***
He doesn't see Jared for a week, so he ends up hanging with Jensen.
Chad's not at all surprised by this crappy luck, because his is consistently rotten and gives him opportunities that seem okay at first but turn into fiascos that get him divorced instead of hot college co-eds like the ones who jock Jensen. Jensen, who runs away from them, because apparently, he was thrown at the wall at birth, or is possibly gay.
"I'm already involved," is all Jensen says, enigmatic and mysterious, like his romantic life is a saga.
Then again, Jensen dated a Playboy model and Jared's banging a Laker girl. Maybe that explains the elitism, and Chad marrying the 2000 Rose Bowl Queen and leaving her for the homecoming princess isn't up to par. If this was a car club, Jensen'd have the Rolls, Jared would own a Benz and Chad would be the one who traded in his Accord for a Corolla. If Paris counted, then his car for sure would be a BMW with the innards of a Datsun.
At least Alexis still keeps it real. But then again, when you date a short, smug Italian guy who pushes you off the sidewalk while walking your dog, you can't be anything but real. Chad makes a mental note to bump Alexis up to best friend status. Fuck Jared and Jensen fucking Ackles.
Yeah, Chad still secretly hates the guy. He still can't believe he got ditched for a soap actor who wore brick pants and sold "Titanic" necklace knock-offs in the nineties. It could have been worse: he could've lost out to Tom or Mike, who alternately spent the last decade in women's clothes and bald to finance a Trekkie fetish. Hand Solo, for sure, that loser.
"I'm not." Chad shakes the bangs off his face and gives the blonde bartender his best sultry gaze. His eyes probably look sapphire, fringed with gold lashes, wicked-intense. But, no, she continues slicing limes. He turns to Jensen. "She's totally missing out, man."
"That's why you have all that shit about you floating around the network and all over the Internet." Jensen orders another beer. "You can't keep your dick in your pants and you won't shut the fuck up for a minute."
***
He spends two more weeks wandering all over Vancouver, hoping for some time with Jared, but Sandy's in town and Supernatural is filming fifteen hours a day or something. So, he tries playing golf with Tom, but it's a girl sport and Chad's got no patience patting little balls with little sticks all over fancy lawns.
One day, he brings a mini-bullhorn to challenge Tom's swings and ability to suddenly putt in ponds, sandpits and behind a tree.
He and Tom are a few yards away from the fifth hole when security overreacts. They chase Chad all the way to the eighth hole in their yellow carts, jumping out and wrestling the horn from him and permanently banning him from the golf course. And because he might as well live up to being called "Mayhem" - who the hell are the people writing his IMDB profile? - he charms his way into the Smallville set, locks Mike out of his trailer and leaves one of those ransom notes - the ones where the letters are clipped out of newspapers - for Kristin Kreuk that reads, "i wanna save u Lana Lang."
Justin kicks him off the set.
"How'd you get in the Smallville lot?" Jared says on the phone.
"I'm Chad Michael Murray." Actually, he got in by telling security he was with food services.
"You are so fucking destructive."
"Come see me, then," Chad answers. He's on the fifth beer of his six-pack and watching the movie where Jared gets killed in the desert. "You're such a fucking flake, you can't find time for a friend who flew up here special to see you." He finishes off the bottle and uncaps the sixth with the edge of a silver dollar. "You need to quit playing grab-ass with Ackles and hang out with me."
The sting comes before the truth, thin and sharp. Maybe he is alone and maybe everyone's right, he's completely fucked in the head, pissing off and chasing away friends with such douchebaggery that he can't even be friends with dudes his own age, let alone get with girls who aren't teenagers or his sister. The thought startles Chad, and the pain is now full-fledged, suggesting that he ought be angry with himself and even angrier at people in general.
The truth becomes wisdom: people he love inevitably stop loving him.
"Never mind," he says when Jared can't be bothered to come up with a comeback for the ass joke. "Whatever, dude, fuck off."
***
He can't pinpoint the moment the new crazy began, but he's sure it's already happened when he wakes up in bed with Joanna Krupa.
"I might have hepatitis," she confesses and Chad nearly has a heart attack.
"Oh fuck me."
"I just did," Joanna kind of laughs, like, ha-ha, how freaking funny is my joke even though your cock might rot off or you might crap out your liver.
"Get out."
In a new level of loser lows, he finds himself standing outside Paris' house one night. She smiles coyly when she sees him, and the closer she gets the more she resembles a skinny orange man in drag. Chad hightails it out of there and secretly wishes Starving Nachos luck.
He runs into Tania Saulnier at The Whisky and they strike up a new and sexy friendship over their mutual dislike for Jensen, who dumps hot blondes for Jared, who in turn dumps his best friend Chad for an idiot thrown at the wall at birth.
Tania vomits into Chad's shoes after sex.
"It's not you," she quickly reassures him, getting greener by the second. "I get motion sickness after I've gotten too much in me."
He debates telling Tania about the hep while he cleans off his left sneaker with her toothbrush.
Alexis is not amused. "You should talk to Jared about this. Also, get tested. I am serious. Don't make me talk to you about safe sex again."
Chad hangs up on her.
***
Alexis is right.
He calls Jensen and Mike and Tom to tell them that they shouldn't let Jared listen to his messages because Chad left a ten-second foghorn wail in the voicemail. They all reject his calls.
"I'm not giving you Hartley's number," Mike flat-out says when Chad asks for it. "You're just gonna dick around some more and I refuse to be an accomplice in your mayhem."
Mike looks around and leans in close, like a doctor or scientist examining a patient that suddenly sprouted a third arm on his forehead or a new kind of germ. Chad stares back.
"Do you need an ear or something?" Mike suddenly asks, completely throwing off Chad. "You look...anguished."
They're interrupted by Justin and Erica's arrival, then Jensen, Tom and Jamie, and finally Sandy and Jared, who doesn't look annoyed - like most everyone in the booth when they notice him - but genuinely worried.
"Hey, dude," Chad says breezily, ignoring the douche brigade, trying to keep the hammering in his chest to a dull tapping because if anyone's going to nurse a seven-year dudecrush, it's not going to be him. "Don't check your voicemail, okay?"
"Um. Okay?"
Everyone at the table looks at him like he's crazy, and God, there are no words to describe how much he hates them all, and for various reasons, like for looking at him as though he's a plate of turd instead of someone they can possibly be cool with. After all, of every one in this booth, he and Jared have the longest history; they've been with the CW since it was the WB, they've been roomies; hell, they even shot a fucking movie together. If anything, the outsider should be Erica, Justin. Even Jensen.
What does Jensen have that he doesn't, anyway? Anyone who takes on roles that require getting an ass-kicking from a giant dildo deserves to get pansted for life.
"All right," Jared says after Chad gets settled in the living room and the dogs are outside playing. Sharing the same vicinity with Jared's rasp of a voice and the very physicality of his six-foot-five self makes Chad melt with pure and pathetically childish joy. "What's up with you?"
***
He loves Jared, even though Jared's a flake.
It's complicated. Chad can't quite get his mind wrapped around it, just like he can't tell his best friend in this obviously one-sided friendship that he sometimes has weird urges to kiss him, poke at the tiny hollows of his dimples, and pull the dark strands of his sloppy flyaway hair. That he misses Jared like hell and that being his right-wing man - a friend of importance - does happy things to his self-esteem, a secret blessing that puts the world in tolerable perspective. And it sucks, it sucks that that's over and done.
Kane wraps up the show successfully, which means there are still people left in the audience who are actual fans, fans who aren't Jensen or Carlson. Los Angeles is a sad place for country music.
Jared is wasted when he drapes a long and lazy arm around Chad's shoulders and makes a sex-face on their way out the door. He's happy, it's contagious and Jensen is lagging behind them with David. Chad smiles. Next thing he knows, he and Jared are cracking up for no good reason. It feels good, like old times and Australia.
"You, man." Jared forks his fingers into a "v", pointing first at his booze-darkened eyes then at Chad's red-rimmed ones. "Dude."
The night goes from good to bad when Chad runs into Jensen at the lobby of the hotel they apparently share. And because God hates him and gave him crappy luck, Chad ends up drinking some more with Jensen at the lobby bar.
Chad debates telling him about Tania and Joanna and the hep after Jensen excuses himself to the restroom. But Chad decides to be a bigger person, and instead empties a packet of sugar in Jensen's beer.
Then, two or six shots in, he reaches that mid-way point again, teetering at the edge of some new wisdom with the low lights outlining Jensen's stupid face and coloring the bar in psychedelic shades. Melancholy curls in the pit of his stomach and tickles the backs of his eyeballs.
"You're kind of an asshole, aren't you?" he says.
***
The new wisdom is that Jensen isn't really an asshole, and Chad might have a new complex to worry about.
He kisses well, thoroughly and slowly, with the slow languorous burn of a cigarette. Jensen's tongue is deliberately slow at the curve of Chad's lip, and Chad is all too aware that Jensen is completely stronger and can kick his sorry skinny ass around if he wants to. There must be a gentleman or a wuss somewhere under all those layers of superiority, Chad's sure of it when Jensen's hand trails a feather-light straight line that begins at Chad's chin and stops below his bellybutton.
"You have issues, man," Jensen breathes matter-of-fact in Chad's ear. The delivery is gentle but the implication is mean as fuck. Being this vulnerable - wanting Jensen and wanting Jared more - makes Chad shudder, feel sick and horny. "Seriously, you do."
And he doesn't argue the point. Not when Chad's unbuttoning the broken fly of his jeans with one hand while the other palms the back of Jensen's neck, pulling him closer for a harder, rougher kiss. Chad's so hard he's afraid he'll rip out of his own skin. The friction of his bare cock against Jensen's rough denim is so good, and even though tomorrow will mean his dick will be sloughed raw, Chad continues to rub and arch until Jensen grinds back.
"Off," Chad says. God, he does have issues and this, this is a crisis. He pulls at the waistband of Jensen's jeans, the pad of his thumb catching on the cotton and elastic just underneath. Boxers or briefs? Clearly, Chad's sick in the head. "Fucking get these off."
Jensen laughs. Chad’s secret hate-on flares, so he rolls Jensen on his back. Chad downs Jensen's cock without preamble, sucking down and pulling away. The pressure he's exerting triggers the beginnings of a headache, but he continues running his lips, open-mouthed along the contours of Jensen's sex, under the shaft and sweeping around and over his balls. As he's molesting Jensen, his mind goes haywire, imagining how Jared’s would be like - its taste and intimate peculiarities, how it would feel to have it pressed against various parts of Chad’s own body.
Jensen writhes, slowly fucking into Chad's mouth until Chad's suffocated by his scent, the vibration of his own moans and the length of Jensen's thighs on either side of his head. Great, tomorrow he's going to wake up with carpet burns on the back of his neck, and if Jensen doesn't let up riding his face, he might die of being brained to death with cock.
In all the times mixing liquors and bad decision-making skills led Chad to someone's bed, he's never felt this level of satisfaction. Smug, like he's putting one over someone's head; who knew Ackles was gay? As he's going down on the guy, he's already creating a blackmail file. So far it reads, "Jensen Ackles, soap star; gay; gay for Chad Michael Murray."
Jensen comes hard and with a groan that goes straight to Chad’s dick. To Jensen’s credit he doesn’t vomit into Chad’s shoes or disclose that he’s got an STD.
Instead he turns the lamp on, probably to make Chad feel shitty that his body isn’t as cut or as well-proportioned above and below the belt.
"Jared likes the lights on, don't he?" Chad blurts, just to be an asshole and regain some control over the situation. He doesn't mean it, he doesn't want it to be true.
Jensen smiles.
***
Fucking Jensen nearly makes Chad go blind, spastic and other kinds of ungraceful things he didn’t want to be when he’s around his archrival.
His jaw is sore where Jensen actually slugged him, the bastard. Chad made the mistake of pulling out and spunking in Jensen’s hair. On top of the rugburn, Chad's probably also going to end up sporting an imprint of the guy's ring on his face.
“That's some weird shit that goes on in your head,” Jensen pants as he rides Chad deeper and deeper into the mattress. “Who does that, assign labels to people like ‘My Nemesis,’ ‘The Next Addition To My Hit List,’ ‘My MILF’?”
“I really hate you, man,” Chad mumbles into the pillow that now reeks of sour tequila-flavored drool.
The hate subsides a little when Jensen kisses him, nudging his lips open, and giving a reassuring squeeze around his hips when he complies. But even the slow burn of Jensen's swollen mouth isn’t enough of a distraction from the pain and the overall discomfort of being bottom. Huh. If anyone had told Chad earlier that the end of the night will bring him some nudie-time with Jensen, he wouldn't have believed them.
Nah, he'd have said, if anyone's gonna enjoy a piece of me it's not going to be that tool.
***
He’s clean. Chad’s so sick and of people thinking he’s some malevolent element when he’s the only goddamned person around who actually says “no” to drugs.
“My face hurts,” he tells Alexis after convincing her that the tests came back negative. “I think my heart, too.”
***
“Here’s the deal,” Jensen says. They’re on his couch, and Chad’s left foot is sore where Jensen crushed it with his boot instead of telling Chad he didn’t feel like playing footsies. What an asshole. “You have to stop being a bitch.”
“Yeah,” Kreuk adds and Chad makes an effort not to roll his eyes because who invited her anyway? Doesn’t she have a sandwich to eat? Allison's also here, and Justin, Justin's watching 'Jackass' on TV. To think, Chad actually misses Mike. “On the path to enlightenment, there are some things you have to do - put out your fires so you can cross the bridge back home, back to the source.”
Chad blinks at her. “What. The hell?”
"Don't be ungrateful," Justin says without taking his eyes off the midget kicking himself in the forehead.
Later that night he recounts the badly staged intervention to Alexis and Jared.
Alexis is quiet for a minute. “Kristin has a point, you know.”
Jared is puzzled. “Since when are you and Jen buddies? I thought you thought he was a douchebag?”
“We’re all douchebags,” Chad points out.
***
Since they stopped talking, Sophia has mastered the art of going from icy to polar.
“I’m sorry,” Chad says, and lets her hang up on him for once.
***
His sister Shannon is convinced he’s gone off the deep end. “Why the hell would you want to find Mom?”
***
“You’re not really a transvestite,” he tells Hilarie.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” she sighs, exasperated, throwing her hands in the air. “What the hell are you up to?”
Kreuk is wrong. Burning bridges and leaving them behind is really the way to go.
***
“That thing about the goats, it’s not really true,” Chad tells the second assistant director and a set dresser. “I’m adventurous, sure, but I’m hygienic and respect animals.”
***
“Francis Capra is not a gang-banger.”
Kristen Bell just laughs and laughs.
***
Chad opens the door and finds Jensen standing on his doorstep.
“I didn’t invite you,” is what he wants to say, but the words die on their way down from his upjerk reflex.
“Come in,” he says, and means it.
***
He tells Jared the truth. Kind of, except for the part involving wanting to touch dicks and moving in together so Ozzie can have two parents.
Jared expresses the flattery he feels by laughing obnoxiously, slapping Chad in the chest and then slapping the arm of the sofa. “You’re a little gay for me, aren’t you? Admit it. Everyone's a little bit gay for me.”
“Shut the fuck up, dude," Chad laughs, ignoring the sharp twist in his chest. "Whatever.”
***
“You're kind of gay, though,” Alexis says when she finally visits North Carolina. “A little bit."
Her Snow White prettiness automatically makes women and girls within a three-mile radius look like gnomes. And, Chad thinks, coupled with his own chiseled and rugged good looks, he and Alexis must make a devastating couple walking around Chandler's Wharf; the chicks passing them probably want him infinity times more. You always want desperately what you can't have.
"You people don't appreciate me enough. 'Chad, you're acting like a jackass.' 'Chad, maybe you should wait for love until she turns eighteen.' 'Chad, don't make me smack your bitch ass.' It's not my fault I feel too much."
While he's gesticulating to demonstrate the depth of his emotions, Alexis takes his elbows and steers him around a lamp post. "There, there."
“Whatever,” he continues. Right now he's feeling uncertain and unstable, back to square-one again. It's hard to bear. "Tell me again."
Alexis tucks her hand in the crook of his elbow and leans her dark head on his shoulder. "You're not a lost cause. You're, um. Special."
Damn straight.
"Maybe I should change my hair," he says. "Alpha it up."
Alexis sighs.