(no subject)
Summary and author’s note: Future fic, Jensen gets a chance to look back and maybe reconsider. It’s a follow up to Underway and as a lot of the OC’s are mentioned it’s probably a good idea to read that first.
Standing in front of this mahogany door it finally hits Jensen that tonight is a culmination, a summation, a period at the end of a sentence he can’t remember writing.
“Come on in man! I’m glad you finally accepted, how long has it been? Years?”
“Years.”
“In. In. Jessie’s been slaving away all day. Isabelle, gorgeous as always.” Jensen smiles broadly and follows Jared through the door, hand linked with Belle’s.
It’s a home is the first thing Jensen notices. Not the, this is only temporary until the next job comes through, but this is where I plan on spending the next twenty years. The carpet is white and think and to the right rain gear is piled beneath out of use coat hooks. Harley and Sadie sniff lazily at his hands and he’s overwhelmed with a sense of could have been. He shakes it up and pulls Isabelle in. “Thanks for coming.” He whispers into her hair and she just smiles, big and wide and loving.
“Of course.”
“Jensen Ackles, Texas has missed you.” Jessie is small, 5’3” at most, and Jared just dwarfs her, but from the minute you meet her her personality swells and fills every inch of space around you. He leans down and accepts her kisses. In whisk of motion she pulls Isabelle away and he’s left at the house crossroads. Dining room and kitchen to the right, living room on the left, the door, escape behind him.
“Jessie’d kill me.”
“Yeah?” He turns and struggles to meet Jared’s eye.
“If you left after we did all that to get you here.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“This way.”
Jensen dropped acting, like he wanted to, the minute Supernatural ended. Married Isabelle like he said he would and moved back down to Richardson to run his Uncle’s ranch. Bought himself a summer house up north near Bellingham, for Isabelle. And so it went. And the years went by and he switched phones and lost numbers, and he’d see Jared here and there, Texas isn’t as big as her residents would like you to believe, but for the most part he lost contact. Because Jensen quickly discovered that a wife and a family takes a lot of your energy, and Jen was never one for facing down choices. Well and now he was here. Holiday party, old friends, neighbors family. How domestic have we become?
“So I’m just sitting there completely inebriated. . .” And Jensen wants to say, you were drunk, goddammit you were trashed, not inebriated, don’t let us grow up so fast. “. . . road trip.” Jen refuses to meet Jared’s eyes, wants to be angry that he’s telling this story, but wants to hear Jared’s side of it all the same. What will he leave out? “. . . next day. . .” Isabelle is stirring her pasta awkwardly, this part she witnessed, and most of the rest she knows, the rest of the dinner party is at attention. “. . . left Isabelle’s and headed for Montana.”
It goes on and Jensen laughs, he does, because they were funny, because Jared is funny, because there are good memories and Jared leaves out the bad ones. He gets comfortable in his chair and lets his guard down, a little. This is Jared after all, his former best friend, a person he lived and breathed for years back in Vancouver. They made it work for three years after the road trip, he can make it work for a couple of hours tonight. He can try at least.
“Can I help?”
“You sure can Mr. Ackles. Pull up a towel.” He takes the cloth from Jessie and starts in on her pile of dishes. “Dishwasher’s been broken for a couple of months, but Jared’s always flying back to L.A. and I just don’t have the energy to hunt down deals.”
“How have you been feeling?”
“Good, considering. Better. You know, there are good days and bad.”
“Jared said you were in remission?”
“Very tentative. My lasts tests were really good.”
“That’s great, I’m really happy for you, Jessie.”
“Yeah.” Silence for awhile. Just water sloshing and Jessie humming quietly. “Jen.”
“Hm?”
“Why did you decide to come down this time?” He considers smoothing this out, telling her what hosts want to hear, but over the course of the evening her wig has slipped and he thinks about who she is and what she’s been through.
“Unfinished business.”
“Jared told me, you know.” She hands Jensen another dish. “He spent three years of his life thinking he was gay, because of you.” She’s just stating facts, there’s nothing accusing in her quiet voice.
“I -”
“You have a big part of him in your heart Jensen. Do you know that? Still.”
“I’m not out. . .to win him back , I have Isabelle and. . . I just need to figure some stuff out.”
“Don’t we all. I know. Why now?”
“Well I think you’d know a little something about that.” She cocks her head and nods. Jensen hasn’t told anyone except Isabelle, who was there through it all. He can’t decide if it’s a lifted weight cluing Jessie in.
“Cancer?” He doesn’t answer, but his silence is enough. She hands him another dish.
In a rush of ‘goddammit feel something’ during the last year of filming Jared slammed Jensen against a wall and shoved his tongue down his throat. And Jensen went with it and considered it a continuation of something before and tried not to feel guilty when he laid down next to Isabelle that night.
But guilt is not the same as regret.
Jared’s stomach had been hot along his back and every thrust felt like a question, an accusation, a promise and a threat. When he came his whole body got involved and he slid down the inside of the trailer and let Jared’s weight settle in his bones. And Jared had whispered.
“I love you.” And Jensen had wanted to say that he did too, but he didn’t because he wasn’t sure anymore, wasn’t sure he did.
“You still talk to Luke?”
“Sure thing. Listen I never really apologized for that.”
“Nothing to it. How’s little Lucy?”
“Not so little, let me tell you. We went out there just this past summer for a week. Luke needed help clearing some of his backland. Full 17 years old now. Gorgeous and devoted to Luke.”
“Are he and Maryanne-?”
“No. She, just not cut out for that I think. Not that that’s an excuse but. . . “
“She just left Lucy?”
“She really loved that little girl. Really loved her, and she was a great mother. She stayed on at the house until just a few months ago. Luke’s. . . Luke is more of a man than I, let me tell you.”
“Me too. Me too.” Jared light’s up a cigarette while Jensen nods, and goes to hand him one too. “No. None of that anymore.”
“No? Just as well.” Jared leans back on his chair, and puts his foot up on the porch railing. “Hey you keep in touch with Noah?”
“Not me so much, but he and Jeff still get together now and then. I’ve seen him a couple of times in Dallas.”
“That wasn’t such a hot moment of mine.”
“No, but who’s counting.”
“Someone is.” Jensen watches the smoke drift from Jared and wonders why time always means distance.