Let the Devil Down [3/?]
I made it! :)
Title: Let the Devil Down
Pairings: JP/JA, implied JP/others, implied JA/others
Rating: Adult
Disclaimer: Lies.
Words: This part: 8,541. Total so far: 21,604 (O_o)
Notes/Warnings: Implied rape, implied dub-con, violence, angst, underage sex and drinking, and lots of math. Faith issues.
Very dark, procede with caution.
Summary: Six years ago, Jensen broke one promise, made one stupid mistake. It's been haunting him ever since.
Prologue | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Epilogue
Let the Devil Down
Part III
***
Jensen can hear Jared laughing the moment he pushes open the door. High-pitched squealing is mixed in with the sound. Red hot jealousy bubbles up in his chest; Jared doesn’t laugh like that around him anymore. He’s sassy and sharp-witted and funny, but there’s always this subdued atmosphere like there’s a storm cloud hanging between them. Like Jared won’t ever consider forgiving him, and why should he, after all?
It looks like the crew is all there and assembled. Sam is standing behind the bar, clinking bottles and glasses and pretending not to watch and smile about the hubbub around her. Sandy is perched on the bar, kicking her legs. She’s grinning broadly as she watches Jared spin around the slim blonde girl who’s clinging to him, laughing and shrieking, as if she’s hanging on for dear life.
“Rock star” is once again coming from the speakers, loud enough to cover his quiet entrance. Sandy is humming along, the other two too preoccupied with playing around. Jensen has to admit the tune is kinda catchy, even if it isn’t his kind of music. And, yeah, he can understand why they dig the lyrics.
Jared sets the girl down on a barstool, large hands careful like she might break if he holds on too tight. Sandy slides over to them, slinging one arm around each of their shoulders. They go into the last chorus with gusto, huddled together like some kind of secret club, and Jensen can even see Sam’s lips moving slightly.
“I wanna be a rock star!” Jared roars, head thrown back, eliciting laughter from his friends, and now it’s Sandy’s turn to be whirled around the room. And that’s when Jared sees him, slowing down just gently enough to catch Sandy and put her down in a halfway civilized manner.
“Hi Jensen,” he says tentatively, his smile guarded and only half as wide as it was a minute ago. Sandy cranes her head around to look at him, the blonde stares. Sam frowns at him.
Sandy looks from Jensen’s face to Jared’s - smile careful but also inexplicably smug - and gives a short little wave.
“Hi Jensen,” she says cheerfully, perhaps to counter the thick layer of awkwardness that seems to have descended over them, “Have you met Addi?”
The blonde jumps and flinches a little, offering a shy smile.
“Adrianne,” she elaborates, “It’s nice to meet you.”
Sam is infinitely less polite.
“What do you want?” she growls. If she were a pit bull, she’d have her teeth buried in his arm already.
Jensen has to fight the urge to growl back.
“I want to talk to Jared,” he says instead. They both turn to look at Jared who’s toying with the hem of his shirt, watching them through his bangs. Sam snorts.
“Well, it doesn’t really look like he wants to talk to you.”
Well, if she doesn’t already know that Jensen can be as condescending as she, then she’s about to find out.
“Well, how about you let Jared tell me that himself?” he sneers back at her.
Sam gives him a deadly glare.
“I would appreciate it if you left.”
Jensen smiles humorlessly. He’s aware he’s acting like an asshole, but he can’t bring himself to care.
“And if I don’t?”
Jared in the background buries his face in his hands. Addi pats his shoulder gently, but neither she nor Sandy look away from the train wreck in the making.
“Then how about I call the cops on your sorry ass?”
Jensen bares his teeth in another unfriendly smile.
“Yeah, well, how would you feel if someone clued the police in on the underage kid working in your bar?” he spits.
He vaguely notes the two girls blanching as Sam takes a menacing step forward.
“You listen here, buddy,” she begins, but Jared steps between them, hands raised.
His voice is calm and collected as he points a finger at Jensen.
“You, shut the fuck up.”
He points his other hand Sam’s way.
“Sam, I got this, ‘kay? I’ll handle this.”
He pauses long enough for Sam to nod grudgingly before he grabs Jensen’s arm with perhaps a little more force than necessary.
“Come on, we gotta talk.”
Jared drags him out the service entrance, fingers closed painfully tight around his arm. He lets go of him as soon as they’re out the door, though, glaring at him from several feet away while Jensen rubs at what he’s pretty sure is a quickly forming bruise.
“What the hell, Jensen,” Jared says. He sounds tired.
“What?” Jensen snaps back, and even he can’t deny that he sounds defensive.
“Are you trying to ruin my life? Again?” he adds after a second’s silence, which Jensen thinks is a pretty low blow. That might be why his response is to burst out with a sarcastic sneer, “What life?”
Jared’s mouth drops open, he notes guiltily, but the man quickly catches himself again as Jensen can’t help but rant on.
“I mean, come on! Is this really what you want out of life? Going to classes that aren’t getting you anywhere, doing illegal stuff for money and slutting it up with total strangers?”
“Is that really what you think?” Jared’s voice is quiet, dangerously so. But it seems as though common sense has finally decided to catch up with Jensen again and he falls silent, scuffing the tip of his shoe against the cracked pavement.
Jared nods quietly. He stares at a spot somewhere between them, clenching and unclenching his hands and his jaw.
“Fuck you, Jensen,” he finally says, the words too calm not to hit home. “You think you can just come here and judge me? That you can walk all over my choices and my friends and the only ones who ever cared enough not to hurt me?”
Jensen feels like he’s been sucker-punched; he cared cares about Jared, more than Jared could ever possibly know, but the kid that used to cling to him like Velcro just smiles, a hard smile that is deeply unpleasant.
“You have no idea what my life is like.”
He spins on his heel and stalks away, slamming the door behind him before Jensen can say another word.
***
Even though Addi swears up and down that Sandy and Jared spend as much time fighting as not, Jared still spends most of his time when he’s not working or in class over at the girls’ apartment. He usually shows up some time before the bar opens for the night. He can hear Addi rummaging around somewhere; Sandy is in the bathroom, sitting in front of the mirror in jeans and a bra and her hands in her hair. She barely even blinks when he takes up his usual spot on the edge of the tub. He has to fold his knees somewhere around his ears to do it, but he quietly sits and watches her spear her curls with pin after pin.
He loves her hair when it’s down, the way it will fall over her shoulders or catch between his fingers when he runs his hand through it, but he can’t deny she looks damn glamorous when it’s pinned up like that. She carefully extricates her fingers and the artwork holds. She grins at his reflection and reaches for her make-up kit.
“So,” she says.
“So,” he echoes, concentrating on his hands.
“Jensen’s around a lot.” Her tone is casual, but she has her eyebrows raised like that’s somehow his fault.
“Yeah,” he mumbles as his stomach flip-flops painfully. It’s been doing that a lot lately.
Sandy has her mascara brush poised and ready to attack.
“You don’t seem to mind all that much.”
“It’s not like he’d go away if I did,” Jared snorts, but Sandy is clearly not convinced.
“Do you want him to?” she asks.
Jared sighs.
“I don’t know,” he confesses plaintively, “He messed up, he really did. And I know he feels bad about it and that he’s trying to make everything right again and he really wants me to forgive him, but. I don’t know if I can.”
Jared winces in sympathy when it looks like she’s about to stab herself in the eye but, make-up expert that she is, she lays down the brush with both eyes intact.
“Now, baby,” she says; he doesn’t know how she can still call him that after everything they’ve gone through. “What it all boils down to is, do you like him or not?”
“It’s not that simple,” Jared hisses. He sweeps a bottle of conditioner off the ledge, listening to the satisfying clatter of plastic against porcelain. “He betrayed me. He hurt me. I can’t just say, ‘Well, yeah, but you’re cute,’ and forget about it all.”
“So you do like him.” Sandy’s voice is infuriatingly calm, and a little smug, as she smudges eye shadow onto her face. Jared slumps forward, curling into himself, clasping his hands together; big, long hands, rough and clumsy.
“But I don’t even know if he wants me,” he confesses.
She pauses in the middle of straightening an eyelash and stares at him via the mirror until he looks away.
“Baby,” she says all matter-of-fact, “He wants you.”
“How do you know?” he asks, suddenly feeling shy and young and in way over his head.
“Call it female intuition if you will, Jared,” she says with a fond smile. “Or maybe it’s because stalkers tend to care about the people they’re stalking.”
“Jensen is not a stalker!” Jared bursts out indignantly. Sandy just smiles patiently until he’s gotten to the true message and blushes a furious red. He drops his gaze and picks at a frayed hole in his jeans.
“Sorry,” he mumbles.
Sandy grins, puts down her latest torture instrument and gets to her feet, stretching her arms behind her head. She slips the t-shirt over her head, mindful of her artfully piled up hair. She pulls the fabric taunt and heaves a matter-of-fact sigh.
“Okay, work. We should get a move on, Sam will skin us alive if we’re late.”
Jared nods and makes to open the door, but Sandy’s voice stops him.
“Oh, and Jared?”
She catches his arm, turns him back to face her.
“Keep an eye out for Addi, okay? She hasn’t been looking so great lately and I heard her throwing up earlier. Keep your eyes open, okay?”
Jared nods. They do that, they watch out for each other. This is his family, he reminds himself, hanging back as Sandy rushes off to collect her things and her roommate. This is all he needs.
***
Jared is in the middle of filling up three pitchers with beer for the biker gang in the corner when Sam pulls him aside. She motions for Addi to take over Jared’s task and drags him into the dark corner that’s always empty because they have to run in and out every few seconds. Jared doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that Jensen on his stool can’t see them here, but he has to lean in close to catch what Sam is saying anyway.
“You need to get rid of him, Jared,” she announces.
Jared blinks and pulls a face like he can’t understand her, pointing at his ears. She rolls her eyes, unconvinced, and tugs him down by the collar, bringing her lips close to his ear.
“Just… come in early tomorrow. We’ll talk about this.”
***
Jared stops over at the bar before class; it’s not necessarily a slip-up that he can’t stay longer than half an hour without being late, but he’s just about at his breaking point. Sam and Sandy and Professor Morgan all ragging on him about his life, about who he dates and who he likes and the future and all that shit. Work with all the people who think they’re entitled to a piece of him just because he holds the key to their oblivion. And Jensen: Jensen who just bounces into his life like he’s still Jared’s idolized hero, like nothing ever happened, and he still reminds Jared of what lies between them now, every time he sees him.
Sam gives him the expected “I know what’s going on in your head, Mister”-look, complete with a glance at her watch. Jared shrugs his bag off his shoulder and shoves his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders forward. He really wants to go back to bed, even if it’s Calc IV next.
“What’s up, Sam?” he asks quietly.
She tilts her head at him, silently saying “You know exactly what’s up,” but when he doesn’t react, she sets the cleaning supplies she’s holding down on the counter and crosses her arms in front of her chest.
“You need to get rid of your boyfriend, Jared,” she says sternly. Jared barely resists rolling his eyes. He knows she knows that there’s nothing between Jensen and him, or maybe too much, whatever; it’s not like he needs to set her straight.
“Why?” he asks, barely managing not to echo her pose. Good God, all these people need to get out of his hair. “It’s not like he’s bothering any of the customers, is it?”
Sam scowls. “I don’t particularly care for being threatened, Jared.”
Jared can’t quite keep from smiling as he imagines Jensen facing off with Sam; boy, would that be a massacre.
“Don’t worry, Sam,” he assures her airily, “You know those little terriers, the ones all the old ladies have? The ones that yip and growl and make a lot of noise because they can’t do anything else? That’s Jensen for you.”
He hopes she doesn’t notice the bitterness slowly creeping into his voice.
“He’s all talk, believe me. No bite to back it up.”
Sam regards him skeptically.
“I just don’t like having him loitering in my bar,” she says slowly, “I mean, Jared, does anybody even know what the guy does?”
Jared blinks at her. It seems so natural to once again know every little detail of Jensen’s life that he hasn’t even considered that others might not.
“Uh, I know what he does,” he offers. “He goes to school here. Psychology major, with a focus on child trauma.”
He snickers quietly to himself at that one and meets Sam’s piercing stare with a shrug.
“He’s graduating in June, has a partial scholarship and a school loan to pay tuition and some money from his parents to live off and he had to work at a copy shop for two summers straight before he could buy his bike.”
“Alright, alright.” Sam throws up her hands in surrender. “You’re like a walking encyclopedia on Jensen, I get it. I still want him gone.”
Jared blinks a little. “Why?”
Sam’s hand slows, then stops, as she raises her eyebrows at him. She stares at him, long and hard, and then a look he can’t decipher crosses her face. She picks up a rag and starts scrubbing the - perfectly clean - counter. Jared waits for a moment, but it quickly becomes clear he’s not going to get an answer that easily.
“Sam.”
Jared lifts his hands in exasperation.
“Why? It’s not like he’s hurting anybody.”
“Isn’t he?” Sam asks quietly.
It takes a moment for a moment to correctly interpret her measuring stare. He drops down on the nearest barstool with a thud and starts to snicker.
“Jensen? Hurt me?”
He bursts out laughing despite her glower, wiping his fingers over his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Sam, but Jensen wouldn’t hurt me, ever. He doesn’t have the balls.”
He can see it in her eyes that she doesn’t believe him, that she thinks it’s all Jensen’s fault, and she’s right, but not in the way she thinks.
He plucks the cloth from her fingers, scores a three-point shoot into the sink and takes her hands in his, forcing her to meet his eyes.
“I know what it seems like, Sam, but that’s not it. I know you think Jensen did something terrible to me, but it wasn’t like that. It’s more what he didn’t do, really.”
Sam stays silent, watching him with a stony expression. Jared sighs, tilting backwards on his chair, and rubs his hands over his face.
“His name was Brandon, okay?” The guy who fucked me up. His name was Brandon.”
He hopes Sam doesn’t hear how his voice catches unhappily in his throat as he says it, but she still looks skeptic and not adverse to the idea of strangling Jensen, so maybe she wasn’t listening at all.
He gets up, slings his bag over his shoulder and rests his hand on her arm for a moment.
“Just give him a chance, Sam, okay? For my sake.”
***
Jensen is late when he edges the door to the lecture hall open. The class is already assembled, in various stages of consciousness, as the teacher draws graphs on the whiteboard. He spots Jared’s shaggy head in the last row, thank God, close to the door, and manages to edge along the seats without drawing attention to himself, breathing a quiet sigh of relief as he plops down a seat over from Jared.
Jared glances up at the movement, then does a double take. Jensen is almost smug about the aghast look on his face.
Jensen treats him to a perfectly straight-faced nod as he starts to dig around for his things, even though it’s hard not to grin when Jared practically leans into his lap.
“What are you doing?” he hisses out of the corner of his mouth.
“Getting an idea what your life is like,” Jensen whispers back, settling back in his seat with his notepad and a pen when the teacher shoots them a look.
At Jared’s apologetic nod, the man - Morgan, if Jared’s lecture notes are to be believed - grins and delves right into the subject, and even though Jensen never really had a problem with math, he is instantly lost. Despite that, he can tell the professor is a really good teacher. He sets a steady pace, involves his students and lightens the mood with a joke when their eyes glaze over too badly.
Jensen kinda likes him, despite their… history, and he can tell Jared feels the same. He doesn’t interact with the class, and he’s far enough back that he’s unlikely to be called upon, but he smiles quietly whenever Morgan makes some random math-related joke that Jensen doesn’t get, head bowed to hide the amusement in his eyes.
He’s not tense here, Jensen realizes with surprise, his shoulders aren’t pulled up or slumped down and he concentrates not on the world around him but on the sheet of paper in his lap. Even when he pauses, brows crinkled, gnaws on his lower lip a little, erases and rewrites, he is more relaxed than Jensen has seen him yet. He won’t look at him, but he doesn’t push him away either, just sits and writes clean, precise little numbers that invariably turn out to be exactly what the professor writes on the board.
And Jensen - Jensen is content just watching him. Seeing him bite his lip to hide a smile, seeing him glow with pride when he gets one of the harder problems right; that right there is balm for his soul, and two hours of lecture pass more quickly here than they ever do at his school.
Jared shoves his papers into his bag the moment their teacher dismisses them. He looks like he’s trying very hard not to look like he’s running away, but Jensen can’t quite figure out why until someone calls “Jared!” across the room and Jared’s shoulders slump. He turns slowly to face the teacher down by the blackboard - who seems to be trying very hard not to laugh - and pastes a demure expression on his face.
“Yes, Professor Morgan?” he says.
Morgan waves him closer, waiting patiently until Jared has made his reluctant descent. He raises his eyebrows at Jensen still by the door, and when Jensen shows no intention of leaving, he gestures him to come to his desk as well.
“So, Jared,” he says, warm and not-quite-laughing, “Who’s your friend?”
“We’ve met,” Jensen interjects hastily, mostly for Jared’s benefit, because he’s damn sure Morgan remembers him perfectly.
Jared gives him a look, eyebrows raised, before shifting on his feet and readjusting his bag.
“Can I help you, Professor?”
Morgan sighs, even though Jensen isn’t sure why, and moves over to his notes, piling them into a messy stack.
“Yes, Jared, you can. You can tell me you’ve thought about what I said.”
Jared shifts again, gaze averted so he isn’t looking at either of the two men.
“I have.”
Morgan glances up, surprised. “You have?”
“Yes.” Another fidget.
Morgan rounds the desk once again, coming to a halt in front of Jared where Jared can’t help
but look at him; Jared has to remember that trick for later.
“And?” he asks eagerly, bouncing on his heels in a way that make him appear younger than he usually seems and reminds Jensen a lot of a younger Jared.
“And…” Jared gnaws at his lip with his teeth and catches the once-again slipping strap of his bag. “I don’t know.”
Morgan’s sigh brings out the faint blush on Jared’s face in full bloom, and he wriggles his toes in his sneakers as he stares down at them. Jensen wants to hug him, or at least reach across and massage his tense shoulders, but he doesn’t think that will be appreciated.
“Jared…” the man chastises gently. The trace of disappointment in his voice seems too much for Jared to handle and the kid looks up, speaking low and fast.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he promises, “It’s not, I’m not saying no, it’s just that, I think maybe I need to think about it a bit more, I really appreciate it, I do, I promise, but please let me think about it a bit more professor?”
Morgan smiles gently and pats Jared’s arm where Jensen hasn’t dared to.
“Okay, Jared. Think about it, yeah? I’m not asking for more than that.”
Jared nods, a warm, shy “Thank you” on his lips, and ambles towards the door when the older man pushes him towards it. Jensen makes to follow him but a large, sun-tanned hand on his chest stops him.
“Hang on a second, there,” Morgan says, low and meaningful. Jensen swallows and nods, but Morgan just turns back to his papers. Jared doesn’t notice that he isn’t following until he’s almost at the door. He pauses, his hand on the handle, and frowns as he looks around. Jensen nods at him to go and watches as Jared’s expression flits through different emotions, surprise, worry, anger, and finally settles somewhere between puzzlement and annoyance. But he leaves without a word, which is more than Jensen expected, to be honest, even if he doesn’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Morgan waits precisely until the door has softly clicked shut before he turns to Jensen with an unreadable expression.
“So,” he says.
“So,” Jensen echoes, trying hard not to fidget under the scrutinizing gaze. He can already understand Jared better than just a minute ago.
Morgan seems to note the similarity as well and curves his lips downward in an attempt to keep them from curling up.
“Still think I’m about to molest your boy?” he plows straight into the conversation. Not much for foreplay, this one.
Jensen has no idea how to answer that without either sounding offensive or like an idiot, so he avoids the subject altogether by zeroing in on the question’s least important detail.
“He’s not my boy,” he mumbles.
Morgan rolls his eyes, but Jensen wasn’t exactly being stealthy so he’s not too bothered about being found out.
“I beg to differ,” the teacher says. When Jensen just stares, he gestures at the front row of seats in exasperation. He himself takes up his perch on the carpeted stairs.
“Okay, kid, listen up.”
“Jensen,” Jensen corrects automatically.
“Okay, Jensen, listen up. In all the time that I’ve known Jared, I’ve never seen him talk to anybody. Not outside of class, definitely not in, and he’s sure as hell never established any contact. Believe me, I know. If I say he’s your boy, he’s your boy. Got that?”
Jensen nods, a little shell-shocked, and the teacher allows himself a smug little smile.
“Okay. I need you to tell me something.”
Jensen nods again, Morgan answers with the same gesture.
“Last time we saw each other, you were throwing around some pretty serious accusations.”
“Yeah… Sorry about that.”
Morgan waves away his feeble apology with a hand wave and a shrug.
“Hhmm. I need you to tell me you were just freaking out and weren’t actually serious. What you said could do some serious damage.”
Jensen nods quickly.
“Not just to my career, but to my life as a whole.”
“Yeah, sure,” Jensen assures him quickly, “I didn’t mean it, I was just… upset.”
He ducks his head, feeling his cheeks heat up, as he admits, “I’m kinda protective when it comes to him.”
Morgan leans forward, pressing his fingertips together.
“I want you to tread carefully, you hear? I happen to care about that kid.”
“Same here,” Jensen gets in, slightly raspy, and Morgan grins. He springs to his feet.
“Good! Glad we got that settled. Now shoo, I have quizzes to grade.”
Jensen stumbles for the door, slightly shell shocked by the sudden change in topic and mood, but Morgan’s hand on his shoulder stops him.
“That’s something good you’ve got going there. Don’t let it pass you by.”
***
It’s the third evening in a row that Jensen spends glued to a stool at the far end of the bar when Sam finally appears to have had enough. Jensen spends enough time in the SINKHOLE that Jared seems to grudgingly have accepted his presence, keeping his beer glass full and even cracking a joke now and then. The girls watch and giggle, gently teasing Jensen whenever Jared’s head is turned, and finally even Sam begins to view him as part of the furnishing. At least it seems that way when she tugs him off his stool and drags him somewhere where he can actually hear her.
“If you’re going to be here all night anyway…” she says, shoves a rag into his hands and shoos him off to collect empty glasses while Jay looks on and laughs. By the end of the night, Jensen has even drawn a few beers and learned how to make a mean Mojito (if he does say so himself), courtesy of the sorority chicks who are, as a rather tipsy one announces to Sandy, ‘slumming it’ and won’t drink anything else.
After closing, Jared shows him how to wash the glasses in the dangerous-looking contraption in the sink. They work side by side, shoulders bumping occasionally. Even though they don’t speak, it’s not uncomfortable. Jensen feels happier, calmer than he has in a long time, even later when they stand outside, watching the sky get lighter and lighter. Sandy and Adrianne climb onto their bikes.
“See you tomorrow, Jensen!” Sandy calls over her shoulder as they pedal off into the darkness. Jared doesn’t flinch, doesn’t scowl. He looks Zen and at ease with the world. Jensen simply can’t stop himself from asking him out for a coffee.
He should despair when he unlocks his apartment door with not even a handful hours of sleep to spare before his first class, but instead he’s humming to himself and grinning broadly, walking on clouds because Jared said yes.
***
His friends corner him after Redgrave’s lecture on child crisis therapy, when he’s just a few minutes away from being late for his meeting with Jared. Jensen barely makes it out of the classroom before Mike is suddenly in his face, looking for all the world like he’s about to nail Jensen to the nearest wall (and not in a good way). Jensen starts and backs up, succeeding only in stepping on Tom’s shoes. He turns only to find Danneel’s hand on his arm, effectively trapping him between the three of them.
Jensen bites his lip.
“So,” Mike says a little sourly, “Long time no see, huh, Jensen.”
“Uh, guys,” Jensen mumbles, not meeting anyone’s eyes, “what’s all this about?”
“You know precisely what this is about,” Tom rumbles from behind him. He sounds just as pissed off as Mike does. Crap.
Danneel managed to mask her annoyance with a smile.
“We were just wondering if you were still alive, Jensen,” she explains.
Jensen adjusts the strap of his bag where it’s digging into his shoulder.
“That’s ridiculous, guys, we see each other in class every day.”
“Exactly,” Mike snaps, “In class. What happened to our daily Starbucks hang-outs?”
“If you’re in some kind of trouble, Jensen, you know you can always come to us, right?” Tom quips from behind. Jensen almost snorts, but the tall guy sounds deadly serious. He sighs instead.
“Yes, my secret drug lab was recently raided by the Yakuza and I had to sell my soul to survive. Guys, really.”
“Laugh all you want, Jensen,” Danneel snips, “But we just couldn’t think of any other reason why you would treat your best friends like they didn’t even exist anymore.”
Jensen cringes at the words, but he pastes on his most apologetic smile and resists the urge to glance at his watch.
“Okay, guys, look, I’m really sorry I hurt your feelings, but I gotta go, I have a date.”
It’s out before he can stop himself and he’s already kicking himself by the time his three friends are all staring at him with wide eyes.
“A date?” Mike echoes, incredulous. “A date. You’re going on a date. Were you planning on ever telling us who you’re dating?”
“Well, it’s not really a date,” Jensen backtracks, “It’s more a kinda, sorta… date.”
Mike rolls his eyes. “Fine, so are you going to tell us who you’re kinda-sorta dating?”
Jensen shoots a guilty look at Danneel, and Mike gapes.
“Wait, so Danneel knows who the lucky one is but we don’t?”
“It was an accident,” Jensen assures him quickly, “If things had gone my way, she wouldn’t know either.”
He doesn’t notice the way their matching expressions of hurt only seem to deepen.
“Well, uh, she can tell you, though, okay? You’ll tell them, right? I really gotta go.”
With that, he offers them a tentative grin and takes off, speeding down the hallway as fast as he can without running.
“Bye, guys, I’ll see you in class!” he calls over his shoulder, pretending not to notice their grumbling and sighs.
***
“You did not!”
Jensen tries very hard to keep a straight face at Jared’s disbelieving squawk, but when his nod results in Jared snorting coffee out of his nose, he just has to burst out laughing.
Jared hands his coffee cup over and rests his hands on his knees, coughing and sputtering, and Jensen would totally pat his back but he’s laughing too hard. He holds on to the paper cups, though, even if he almost drops his when Jared gives him an incredulous look from underneath his bangs.
“You covered a teacher’s car in saran wrap?” he gasps when he’s regained his footing far enough to actually breathe properly.
“And most of his office, too,” Jensen adds, not, he has to admit, without a definite note of pride in his voice.
Jared snorts, wiping at his eyes.
“Okay, uh. Why?”
Jensen wrinkles his nose at the memory; he’s really glad he doesn’t have to take that particular teacher anymore.
“Well, see, there was this foreign kid in one of his classes. Not the most impressive person, kinda small, light, short spiky hair. Kinda cute, actually.”
Jensen isn’t sure how to interpret the small crease between Jared’s brows.
“Anyway, he had an accent. Not too bad, you could understand him fine most of the time, but sometimes he’d get words wrong or his pronunciation was wacky, you know.”
Jared nods, even though Jensen isn’t sure he knows at all, and motions for him to continue.
“And for some reason, the professor could not stand him. It wasn’t like he’d done anything; maybe he just rubbed the guy the wrong way, who knows. But boy, did he have it in for him. Everything the kid said, the teacher would mock. He disregarded every idea the kid had, no matter what it was, and always treated him like that student was stupid. Anyway, we figured he must have grown tired of the chicanery because he just stopped coming to class one day, but when someone said the man had straight-out told the kid that he was getting an F no matter what he did, we decided we couldn’t let that one just slide.”
“So you saran-wrapped his car?”
Jensen glances at his shoes, a little self-depreciating smile on his lips.
“Not the most brilliant or harshest of pranks, I know, but at least that way, the entire campus could witness it.”
“And you were a part of this?”
There’s disbelief in Jared’s tone and Jensen meets his eyes with a small frown.
“You don’t have to sound so surprised, Jared. I was a pretty big part of it, too - helped with the wrapping, risked being blamed for the whole thing.”
“You’re just not exactly the type to stand up against social injustice, Jensen,” Jared says softly. There’s censure in his tone, but mostly he just sounds sad. Jensen, sombered up, nods.
“But sometimes it’s just enough, Jared. Maybe I just needed some time to see that.”
Jared smiles softly in response. He shifts his drink to the other hand and starts walking again, bumping his shoulder against Jensen’s.
***
Six years ago.
Friday, 6:32 PM
Jensen pulls another shirt from the rapidly shrinking supply in Jay’s closet, glares at it and tosses it onto the ever-growing pile on the carpet.
“A Transformers shirt, Jay, really?” he asks over his shoulder. Jay glares at him in response. He’s lying on his bed, shoe- and sockless, with his arms crossed over the undershirt covering his skinny chest. He stares at the glow-in-the-dark stars pinned to the ceiling above him, and despite the embarrassed flush on his cheeks, his tone is petulant.
“Bite me,” he snaps.
“Oh ho ho, Jay, witty,” Jensen shoots back. He shakes out a dark shirt that would go great with Jay’s eyes and he almost tosses it at the kid before he notices the stick-figure dog on the back and drops it onto the floor in disgust.
“You know,” Jay announces from the bed in his perfected little bitch-voice, “If I’d ever doubted you were queer, I wouldn’t anymore.”
“It’s not my fault you can’t dress to save your life,” Jensen says, already judging the next item of clothing.
“I’d rather save my soul,” Jared huffs and shifts a little closer to the wall.
Jensen pauses for an instant, rolling his eyes at the near-empty closet, before he grins over his shoulder.
“Well, look at it this way: If I really do end up in hell, at least I’ll be able to give the devil fashion tips. Dude’s got a sense of dress almost as bad as your own.”
He doesn’t stop to gauge Jay’s reaction. He fishes the last two shirts from the shelf, a bright orange t-shirt and a green one with red spots, and, with a despairing sigh, tosses both of them onto the “Hell No!”-pile with the rest.
“I think we’re just going to have to go with the polo shirt,” he announces as he turns around.
“That’s the one I was wearing in the first place!” Jay complains, but he dutifully gets up and pulls the shirt back over his head. Jensen doesn’t stop to count his ribs this time.
“Okay, you ready?”
Jay sighs and spreads out his arms, offering himself up for Jensen’s scrutinizing gaze. The shirt is a bit too wide and a little too short, riding up his smooth belly. The jeans sag at Jay’s nonexistent ass, but at least they cover his ankles. Jensen knows that Jay has pants that are either long enough or ones that he can wear without a belt, but never both at the same time. He doesn’t comment on it, or on the fact that the kid’s sneakers are already getting holey at the tips. He likes his Jay the way he is.
“Fine,” he declares. Jay rolls his eyes and follows him to the open door, but in the hallway he turns to inspect the mess Jensen has made of his room. Clothes are spread over every surface, covering the carpet ankle-deep, tossed over the desk chair and the shelves and even the floor lamp.
“My mom’s going to kill you,” he announces to Jensen, but Jensen just grabs him in a chokehold and rubs his knuckles over Jay’s scalp until the kid is hollering “Uncle!” and twisting into more directions simultaneously than Jensen thought was possible. He drops him onto the floor and retorts to the kid’s glare by sticking out his tongue.
“Uh, no. Your mom’s going to kill you,” he corrects and bounds towards the stairs before Jay has the chance to recompose himself.
“What are you waiting for, slowpoke, let’s go!”
***
Now.
The next night, Sam hands him one of the Too busy to fcuk shirts and declares him an intern. Jared laughs, slinging an arm around Jensen’s shoulders and tugging him against his side; Adrianne claps and Sandy cheers. Jensen only refrains from kissing Sam because he’s pretty sure she’d cut his tongue off if he tried.
***
Jared hasn’t gone to sleep yet when the first bout of thunder rumbles overhead, loud and deafening, followed by the splatter of raindrops against the window. The storm is not unexpected, following the humid early spring heat of the day, which is why Jared is curled upon the futon in the girls’ living room instead of out there getting soaked to the skin.
Lightning casts striped shadows from the blinds across his body, there and gone in an instant. Another roar of thunder overhead and Jared turns onto his side.
Sandy stands in the doorway, quietly, her hair falling over her shoulder. In the sudden flash of lightning he can see how pale she is, how she flinches at the thunderclap which follows with not even a second’s delay.
“Jared,” she whispers, small and frail in her XL-shirt. He scoots over, lifting up the covers for her to crawl under and she does, shivering against his thigh. Jared wraps his arms around her and hugs her close. Despite everything that’s between them now and despite his own issues, he would never push her aside when she clearly needs his help. He’s not the type to do that to his friends.
Jensen isn’t the type either, that small, sly voice in his head whispers, but he pushes it away until it quiets down to a dull buzz that he can ignore.
He pulls Sandy flush against his chest, worrying his lip at how she lets herself be manhandled like an oversized doll. He concentrates on breathing steadily, hoping it will help, and smoothes the wild bang from her forehead.
“Shsh,” he whispers, “Shsh, it’s okay, it’s okay.”
He is not surprised and a little relieved when Addi shows up, walking straight up to the couch without hesitation. She’s rarely this straight-forward, usually lurking in the background somewhere, trying hard not to get noticed, but she doesn’t even ask before she flips the covers back and crawls up to them.
She curls up against Sandy, arm tucked around her waist just firmly enough to remind her she’s there. Jared holds tight as they pillow the shaking little brunette between them. He thinks of Jensen, can’t help it; the way he would run his hands over Jared’s shoulders, press a soft kiss against his neck and tell him that everything will be okay. Promise him what he used to promise a lifetime ago, rose gardens and diamond rings and all kinds of stupid things that Jared doesn’t believe in but likes to hear from Jensen anyway.
Yeah, it’s safe to say that he likes Jensen quite a bit.
***
“Jay.”
Jared looks up and catches the shot glasses Jensen tosses him with practiced ease. He watches Jared pour the tequila out of the corner of his eyes as he slices the lemons and gets out the salt shaker. Jared grins at him when he hands everything over, throws the shots together and a fancy flourish later, they are a few bucks richer.
“You’re getting good at this!” Jared yells into his ear, runs his hand over Jensen’s back before he turns to another customer.
Jensen could die from giddiness; every time Jared pushes past him a little too closely, hand settling on Jensen’s hip for a brief pat. He reaches over casually to wipe off Jensen’s beer foam mustache. When he reaches for the Korn bottle, his fingers accidentally graze Jensen’s ass.
Jensen is pretty sure Jared is kinda drunk, but not completely, because every time an occasional touch gets a startled yelp out of him, Jared’s smug grin is a mile wide.
Jensen, apparently, is also grinning like a loon, if his giggle female admirers from the other side of the bar are any indication. Jensen knows he’s sending all the wrong signals, but the explosion of nerves in his stomach when the manicured hand one of them lays on his arm prompts Jared to take Jensen’s other arm and tug him away.
“You should tell them they’re not your type,” he advises into his ear, but before Jensen can wrap his head around that one, Jay gathers up several pitchers of beer and strolls away.
Jensen doesn’t realize he’s just standing there, staring, until Sandy makes her way down the counter and pats his cheek with a smile.
“Careful,” she warns, wriggling her fingers, “you guys are throwing off all of our electronics, what with the crackling going on between you two.”
Jensen snorts and ducks his head, blushing a vivid crimson when even quiet Addi treats him to a dirty grin.
A new call for drinks is a welcome distraction. When the patrons are all taken care of and the girls have thankfully found someone else to harass, Jensen pops a beer bottle for himself and takes in the crowd of guests, sinking down on the only stool behind the bar to rest his weary feet.
It’s hard to distinguish faces in the gloom, so the couple sitting at one of the only illuminated tables not far from where Jared is handing out drinks to an appreciative audience immediately catches his attention. She’s pretty, in a ditzy kind of way, but the smile she casts her boyfriend is fond and real. She whispers to him and giggles - judging from her movements when she climbs over him, she’s definitely a little tipsy - but he only laughs and helps her over, waving her off to wherever she’s going with a wink and a grin.
She only gets as far as the next table though, where a couple of hardasses have been a few steps short of being trouble all night. One of them, leather jacket and a mean grin, grabs her wrist as she stumbles past and yanks her into his lap. Jensen is too far away to hear what they’re saying, but even he can see the discomfort on the girl’s face. She attempts to push herself off, but the guy holds tight, laughing into her ear. She struggles against his arms and throws a pleading look over her shoulder at her boyfriend who’s already on his way over, puffing out his chest. He takes Hardass’ arm and tugs him out of his seat; bottles clank and rattle as the girl jostles into the table.
A few tables over, Jared looks up from the cash and bottles he’s juggling. Vin at the door has apparently also spotted the two men standing chest to chest and is moving in determinately. Jensen makes slashing motions across his throat, signaling for Sam to cut the music, and when she flicks the power switch he can actually hear what the guys are saying.
“What?” Hardass mocks, “You gonna take me on? Bored of your teeth already?”
He wrestles the girl against his chest, muttering something in her hair, but when Boyfriend moves forward, he makes a point of showing off the brass knuckles on his free hand. Boyfriend falters; it’s only a slight hesitation before he sets his jaw, but of course Jared has seen it and is already closing in.
“You fucker,” he hisses, stalking towards him on endless legs, “You unbelievable bastard. You think you can just leave your girl to fend for herself? You too chicken shit to stand up for her?”
Jared’s eyes are icy cold.
“Coward,” he spits out, draws his hand back and slams his fist into the guy’s mouth.
Almost immediately, several girls start screaming. The coward in question curses and spits and even though Jensen started moving the second Jared threw his punch, the two are already wrestling long before he’s managed to weave his way through the bodies on the dance floor.
Fists are flying, and there’s definitely a hint of blood, but it’s too dark to make out whose it is. Hardass has disappeared into the crowd. People push at Jensen, towards the fight, towards the door. He barely manages to elbow his way to the empty arena that has formed itself around the two men.
Jensen sees Sam emerge from the crowd the same moment he does, the same moment Jared, distracted by the pleading girlfriend tugging on his arm, turns away from his opponent. The guy grabs a glass ashtray from the nearest table and, before Jensen can call a warning, brings it down hard on Jared’s head just when the bar owner reaches his side.
Sam curses, going down under the weight of a very dazed Jared as Sandy and Adrianne both rush forward to help. It’s Jensen, in the end, who ends up with Jared’s head in his lap as the girls run for ice and an ambulance.
Jensen is painfully aware of uneven nails and splinters in the floorboards, and how Jared’s weight is cutting off the circulation in his thigh where Jared’s torso rests on it. Jared’s eyes are closed, flutter a little. Jensen casts a scathing look at the patrons, gathered around them like they’re a show of spectacularly savage animals.
The guy with the bloody face is being tended to by his girlfriend, expression crunched up in pain. Jensen takes Jared’s hand and strokes his thumb over the blood on his knuckles.
Jared’s eyes flutter open. His pupils are wide and he seems to put more effort into focusing than should be necessary, but the slightest flicker of a smile graces his lips. He lifts his hand, his free hand, up to brush lightly over his skull.
“Ow,” he mumbles.
Jensen can’t help his small chuckle.
“Ow, indeed, you fucker,” he says, “What the hell were you thinking?”
He brushes Jared’s hair back, leans forward to hear him mutter, “Guess’a’wasn’.”
“Yeah, you got that right,” Jensen says and feels a surge of anger in his belly. “That’s what you have a fucking bouncer for, Jared, are you hearing me? He’s the guy who gets to punch customers in the face, and if you ever try something that dumb again, I will knock you out myself, you got that?”
Jensen wants to say more, a lot more, preferably a large number of swear words conveying how stupid he thinks Jared’s stunt was, but several pairs of hands push him aside. The place suddenly seems to be swarming with people in white uniforms as Jared is checked over, hooked up to machinery and lifted onto a stretcher. A large number of patrons seems to have left, Jensen notes - Sandy and Adrianne are nowhere to be seen. It probably has something to do with the cops at the door, and it’s really saying something about Jensen’s emotional state that he hasn’t heard the sirens at all.
Sam is currently trying to get the place calmed down while Vin the bouncer gives a statement to the police, so Jensen follows the white uniforms outside. Jared looks terrible, strapped down on the stretcher like someone half-dead. Jensen knows it’s just a precaution, but he still sneaks closer. He just has to see that Jared’s still breathing.
Jared smiles when he sees him, coughing awkwardly and wincing at the movement.
“At least I make your life more exciting, right?”
Jensen wants to say something witty in return, he really does, but the only thing he can come up with is, “Asshole.”
Jared reaches around for Jensen’s hand, squeezing it tightly and pressing it against his chest.
“Aw, Jen, don’t be mad.”
The pleading tone cracks Jensen’s resolve to hold a grudge for once and he pats Jared’s ankle gently.
“I’m not mad, Jay, I’m not mad, okay? Just hold still and let the doctors do their job, okay? For me?”
A nearby paramedic, a tall brunette with a curly ponytail, shoots Jensen a grateful look, climbs into the ambulance and slams the doors shut, leaving Jensen just standing there.
He feels small. Small and insignificant and damn close to hyperventilating. He doesn’t think he’s felt this alone in a really long time.
***
Six years ago.
Saturday, 6:57 AM
“What do you mean, he’s gone!?” Jensen roars.
Sophia takes a hasty step back, raising her hands placatorily as several heads turn in their direction. She reaches out a hand to tug him towards the orange plastic chairs lining the hallway, but Jensen yanks his arm free. He’s spent enough time in those chairs, thank you very much.
Sophia rolls her eyes, but he knows her too well to think that she’s annoyed at him. She’s almost as freaked out as he is.
“I mean, he isn’t in his room anymore. As in, gone. Disappeared. Vanished into thin air. Poof.”
She underlines the word with a small hand gesture, and at any other time, he would have laughed at her attempt to cheer him up; whether he found it funny or not.
Not now, though.
“Are you trying to tell me,” he says, keeping his voice dangerously low, “That they let a fucking thirteen-year-old just waltz out of here? What kind of fucking hospital is this!”
Sophia ducks her head as if she’s expecting an explosion (and she’s right to), but a movement in the corridor behind her captures Jensen’s attention. There’s doctor; he can see Jay’s dad, leaning heavily against a wall. And in the very middle of the procession is Mrs. Padalecki, expression deadly, challenging anyone to step in her way.
Then she catches sight of Jensen. She veers towards him mid-step, eyes narrowing in a way that can only mean trouble. Her voice is hard and cold.
“You.”
***
>Part 4
What do you think?
Title: Let the Devil Down
Pairings: JP/JA, implied JP/others, implied JA/others
Rating: Adult
Disclaimer: Lies.
Words: This part: 8,541. Total so far: 21,604 (O_o)
Notes/Warnings: Implied rape, implied dub-con, violence, angst, underage sex and drinking, and lots of math. Faith issues.
Very dark, procede with caution.
Summary: Six years ago, Jensen broke one promise, made one stupid mistake. It's been haunting him ever since.
Prologue | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Epilogue
Let the Devil Down
Part III
***
Jensen can hear Jared laughing the moment he pushes open the door. High-pitched squealing is mixed in with the sound. Red hot jealousy bubbles up in his chest; Jared doesn’t laugh like that around him anymore. He’s sassy and sharp-witted and funny, but there’s always this subdued atmosphere like there’s a storm cloud hanging between them. Like Jared won’t ever consider forgiving him, and why should he, after all?
It looks like the crew is all there and assembled. Sam is standing behind the bar, clinking bottles and glasses and pretending not to watch and smile about the hubbub around her. Sandy is perched on the bar, kicking her legs. She’s grinning broadly as she watches Jared spin around the slim blonde girl who’s clinging to him, laughing and shrieking, as if she’s hanging on for dear life.
“Rock star” is once again coming from the speakers, loud enough to cover his quiet entrance. Sandy is humming along, the other two too preoccupied with playing around. Jensen has to admit the tune is kinda catchy, even if it isn’t his kind of music. And, yeah, he can understand why they dig the lyrics.
Jared sets the girl down on a barstool, large hands careful like she might break if he holds on too tight. Sandy slides over to them, slinging one arm around each of their shoulders. They go into the last chorus with gusto, huddled together like some kind of secret club, and Jensen can even see Sam’s lips moving slightly.
“I wanna be a rock star!” Jared roars, head thrown back, eliciting laughter from his friends, and now it’s Sandy’s turn to be whirled around the room. And that’s when Jared sees him, slowing down just gently enough to catch Sandy and put her down in a halfway civilized manner.
“Hi Jensen,” he says tentatively, his smile guarded and only half as wide as it was a minute ago. Sandy cranes her head around to look at him, the blonde stares. Sam frowns at him.
Sandy looks from Jensen’s face to Jared’s - smile careful but also inexplicably smug - and gives a short little wave.
“Hi Jensen,” she says cheerfully, perhaps to counter the thick layer of awkwardness that seems to have descended over them, “Have you met Addi?”
The blonde jumps and flinches a little, offering a shy smile.
“Adrianne,” she elaborates, “It’s nice to meet you.”
Sam is infinitely less polite.
“What do you want?” she growls. If she were a pit bull, she’d have her teeth buried in his arm already.
Jensen has to fight the urge to growl back.
“I want to talk to Jared,” he says instead. They both turn to look at Jared who’s toying with the hem of his shirt, watching them through his bangs. Sam snorts.
“Well, it doesn’t really look like he wants to talk to you.”
Well, if she doesn’t already know that Jensen can be as condescending as she, then she’s about to find out.
“Well, how about you let Jared tell me that himself?” he sneers back at her.
Sam gives him a deadly glare.
“I would appreciate it if you left.”
Jensen smiles humorlessly. He’s aware he’s acting like an asshole, but he can’t bring himself to care.
“And if I don’t?”
Jared in the background buries his face in his hands. Addi pats his shoulder gently, but neither she nor Sandy look away from the train wreck in the making.
“Then how about I call the cops on your sorry ass?”
Jensen bares his teeth in another unfriendly smile.
“Yeah, well, how would you feel if someone clued the police in on the underage kid working in your bar?” he spits.
He vaguely notes the two girls blanching as Sam takes a menacing step forward.
“You listen here, buddy,” she begins, but Jared steps between them, hands raised.
His voice is calm and collected as he points a finger at Jensen.
“You, shut the fuck up.”
He points his other hand Sam’s way.
“Sam, I got this, ‘kay? I’ll handle this.”
He pauses long enough for Sam to nod grudgingly before he grabs Jensen’s arm with perhaps a little more force than necessary.
“Come on, we gotta talk.”
Jared drags him out the service entrance, fingers closed painfully tight around his arm. He lets go of him as soon as they’re out the door, though, glaring at him from several feet away while Jensen rubs at what he’s pretty sure is a quickly forming bruise.
“What the hell, Jensen,” Jared says. He sounds tired.
“What?” Jensen snaps back, and even he can’t deny that he sounds defensive.
“Are you trying to ruin my life? Again?” he adds after a second’s silence, which Jensen thinks is a pretty low blow. That might be why his response is to burst out with a sarcastic sneer, “What life?”
Jared’s mouth drops open, he notes guiltily, but the man quickly catches himself again as Jensen can’t help but rant on.
“I mean, come on! Is this really what you want out of life? Going to classes that aren’t getting you anywhere, doing illegal stuff for money and slutting it up with total strangers?”
“Is that really what you think?” Jared’s voice is quiet, dangerously so. But it seems as though common sense has finally decided to catch up with Jensen again and he falls silent, scuffing the tip of his shoe against the cracked pavement.
Jared nods quietly. He stares at a spot somewhere between them, clenching and unclenching his hands and his jaw.
“Fuck you, Jensen,” he finally says, the words too calm not to hit home. “You think you can just come here and judge me? That you can walk all over my choices and my friends and the only ones who ever cared enough not to hurt me?”
Jensen feels like he’s been sucker-punched; he cared cares about Jared, more than Jared could ever possibly know, but the kid that used to cling to him like Velcro just smiles, a hard smile that is deeply unpleasant.
“You have no idea what my life is like.”
He spins on his heel and stalks away, slamming the door behind him before Jensen can say another word.
***
Even though Addi swears up and down that Sandy and Jared spend as much time fighting as not, Jared still spends most of his time when he’s not working or in class over at the girls’ apartment. He usually shows up some time before the bar opens for the night. He can hear Addi rummaging around somewhere; Sandy is in the bathroom, sitting in front of the mirror in jeans and a bra and her hands in her hair. She barely even blinks when he takes up his usual spot on the edge of the tub. He has to fold his knees somewhere around his ears to do it, but he quietly sits and watches her spear her curls with pin after pin.
He loves her hair when it’s down, the way it will fall over her shoulders or catch between his fingers when he runs his hand through it, but he can’t deny she looks damn glamorous when it’s pinned up like that. She carefully extricates her fingers and the artwork holds. She grins at his reflection and reaches for her make-up kit.
“So,” she says.
“So,” he echoes, concentrating on his hands.
“Jensen’s around a lot.” Her tone is casual, but she has her eyebrows raised like that’s somehow his fault.
“Yeah,” he mumbles as his stomach flip-flops painfully. It’s been doing that a lot lately.
Sandy has her mascara brush poised and ready to attack.
“You don’t seem to mind all that much.”
“It’s not like he’d go away if I did,” Jared snorts, but Sandy is clearly not convinced.
“Do you want him to?” she asks.
Jared sighs.
“I don’t know,” he confesses plaintively, “He messed up, he really did. And I know he feels bad about it and that he’s trying to make everything right again and he really wants me to forgive him, but. I don’t know if I can.”
Jared winces in sympathy when it looks like she’s about to stab herself in the eye but, make-up expert that she is, she lays down the brush with both eyes intact.
“Now, baby,” she says; he doesn’t know how she can still call him that after everything they’ve gone through. “What it all boils down to is, do you like him or not?”
“It’s not that simple,” Jared hisses. He sweeps a bottle of conditioner off the ledge, listening to the satisfying clatter of plastic against porcelain. “He betrayed me. He hurt me. I can’t just say, ‘Well, yeah, but you’re cute,’ and forget about it all.”
“So you do like him.” Sandy’s voice is infuriatingly calm, and a little smug, as she smudges eye shadow onto her face. Jared slumps forward, curling into himself, clasping his hands together; big, long hands, rough and clumsy.
“But I don’t even know if he wants me,” he confesses.
She pauses in the middle of straightening an eyelash and stares at him via the mirror until he looks away.
“Baby,” she says all matter-of-fact, “He wants you.”
“How do you know?” he asks, suddenly feeling shy and young and in way over his head.
“Call it female intuition if you will, Jared,” she says with a fond smile. “Or maybe it’s because stalkers tend to care about the people they’re stalking.”
“Jensen is not a stalker!” Jared bursts out indignantly. Sandy just smiles patiently until he’s gotten to the true message and blushes a furious red. He drops his gaze and picks at a frayed hole in his jeans.
“Sorry,” he mumbles.
Sandy grins, puts down her latest torture instrument and gets to her feet, stretching her arms behind her head. She slips the t-shirt over her head, mindful of her artfully piled up hair. She pulls the fabric taunt and heaves a matter-of-fact sigh.
“Okay, work. We should get a move on, Sam will skin us alive if we’re late.”
Jared nods and makes to open the door, but Sandy’s voice stops him.
“Oh, and Jared?”
She catches his arm, turns him back to face her.
“Keep an eye out for Addi, okay? She hasn’t been looking so great lately and I heard her throwing up earlier. Keep your eyes open, okay?”
Jared nods. They do that, they watch out for each other. This is his family, he reminds himself, hanging back as Sandy rushes off to collect her things and her roommate. This is all he needs.
***
Jared is in the middle of filling up three pitchers with beer for the biker gang in the corner when Sam pulls him aside. She motions for Addi to take over Jared’s task and drags him into the dark corner that’s always empty because they have to run in and out every few seconds. Jared doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that Jensen on his stool can’t see them here, but he has to lean in close to catch what Sam is saying anyway.
“You need to get rid of him, Jared,” she announces.
Jared blinks and pulls a face like he can’t understand her, pointing at his ears. She rolls her eyes, unconvinced, and tugs him down by the collar, bringing her lips close to his ear.
“Just… come in early tomorrow. We’ll talk about this.”
***
Jared stops over at the bar before class; it’s not necessarily a slip-up that he can’t stay longer than half an hour without being late, but he’s just about at his breaking point. Sam and Sandy and Professor Morgan all ragging on him about his life, about who he dates and who he likes and the future and all that shit. Work with all the people who think they’re entitled to a piece of him just because he holds the key to their oblivion. And Jensen: Jensen who just bounces into his life like he’s still Jared’s idolized hero, like nothing ever happened, and he still reminds Jared of what lies between them now, every time he sees him.
Sam gives him the expected “I know what’s going on in your head, Mister”-look, complete with a glance at her watch. Jared shrugs his bag off his shoulder and shoves his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders forward. He really wants to go back to bed, even if it’s Calc IV next.
“What’s up, Sam?” he asks quietly.
She tilts her head at him, silently saying “You know exactly what’s up,” but when he doesn’t react, she sets the cleaning supplies she’s holding down on the counter and crosses her arms in front of her chest.
“You need to get rid of your boyfriend, Jared,” she says sternly. Jared barely resists rolling his eyes. He knows she knows that there’s nothing between Jensen and him, or maybe too much, whatever; it’s not like he needs to set her straight.
“Why?” he asks, barely managing not to echo her pose. Good God, all these people need to get out of his hair. “It’s not like he’s bothering any of the customers, is it?”
Sam scowls. “I don’t particularly care for being threatened, Jared.”
Jared can’t quite keep from smiling as he imagines Jensen facing off with Sam; boy, would that be a massacre.
“Don’t worry, Sam,” he assures her airily, “You know those little terriers, the ones all the old ladies have? The ones that yip and growl and make a lot of noise because they can’t do anything else? That’s Jensen for you.”
He hopes she doesn’t notice the bitterness slowly creeping into his voice.
“He’s all talk, believe me. No bite to back it up.”
Sam regards him skeptically.
“I just don’t like having him loitering in my bar,” she says slowly, “I mean, Jared, does anybody even know what the guy does?”
Jared blinks at her. It seems so natural to once again know every little detail of Jensen’s life that he hasn’t even considered that others might not.
“Uh, I know what he does,” he offers. “He goes to school here. Psychology major, with a focus on child trauma.”
He snickers quietly to himself at that one and meets Sam’s piercing stare with a shrug.
“He’s graduating in June, has a partial scholarship and a school loan to pay tuition and some money from his parents to live off and he had to work at a copy shop for two summers straight before he could buy his bike.”
“Alright, alright.” Sam throws up her hands in surrender. “You’re like a walking encyclopedia on Jensen, I get it. I still want him gone.”
Jared blinks a little. “Why?”
Sam’s hand slows, then stops, as she raises her eyebrows at him. She stares at him, long and hard, and then a look he can’t decipher crosses her face. She picks up a rag and starts scrubbing the - perfectly clean - counter. Jared waits for a moment, but it quickly becomes clear he’s not going to get an answer that easily.
“Sam.”
Jared lifts his hands in exasperation.
“Why? It’s not like he’s hurting anybody.”
“Isn’t he?” Sam asks quietly.
It takes a moment for a moment to correctly interpret her measuring stare. He drops down on the nearest barstool with a thud and starts to snicker.
“Jensen? Hurt me?”
He bursts out laughing despite her glower, wiping his fingers over his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Sam, but Jensen wouldn’t hurt me, ever. He doesn’t have the balls.”
He can see it in her eyes that she doesn’t believe him, that she thinks it’s all Jensen’s fault, and she’s right, but not in the way she thinks.
He plucks the cloth from her fingers, scores a three-point shoot into the sink and takes her hands in his, forcing her to meet his eyes.
“I know what it seems like, Sam, but that’s not it. I know you think Jensen did something terrible to me, but it wasn’t like that. It’s more what he didn’t do, really.”
Sam stays silent, watching him with a stony expression. Jared sighs, tilting backwards on his chair, and rubs his hands over his face.
“His name was Brandon, okay?” The guy who fucked me up. His name was Brandon.”
He hopes Sam doesn’t hear how his voice catches unhappily in his throat as he says it, but she still looks skeptic and not adverse to the idea of strangling Jensen, so maybe she wasn’t listening at all.
He gets up, slings his bag over his shoulder and rests his hand on her arm for a moment.
“Just give him a chance, Sam, okay? For my sake.”
***
Jensen is late when he edges the door to the lecture hall open. The class is already assembled, in various stages of consciousness, as the teacher draws graphs on the whiteboard. He spots Jared’s shaggy head in the last row, thank God, close to the door, and manages to edge along the seats without drawing attention to himself, breathing a quiet sigh of relief as he plops down a seat over from Jared.
Jared glances up at the movement, then does a double take. Jensen is almost smug about the aghast look on his face.
Jensen treats him to a perfectly straight-faced nod as he starts to dig around for his things, even though it’s hard not to grin when Jared practically leans into his lap.
“What are you doing?” he hisses out of the corner of his mouth.
“Getting an idea what your life is like,” Jensen whispers back, settling back in his seat with his notepad and a pen when the teacher shoots them a look.
At Jared’s apologetic nod, the man - Morgan, if Jared’s lecture notes are to be believed - grins and delves right into the subject, and even though Jensen never really had a problem with math, he is instantly lost. Despite that, he can tell the professor is a really good teacher. He sets a steady pace, involves his students and lightens the mood with a joke when their eyes glaze over too badly.
Jensen kinda likes him, despite their… history, and he can tell Jared feels the same. He doesn’t interact with the class, and he’s far enough back that he’s unlikely to be called upon, but he smiles quietly whenever Morgan makes some random math-related joke that Jensen doesn’t get, head bowed to hide the amusement in his eyes.
He’s not tense here, Jensen realizes with surprise, his shoulders aren’t pulled up or slumped down and he concentrates not on the world around him but on the sheet of paper in his lap. Even when he pauses, brows crinkled, gnaws on his lower lip a little, erases and rewrites, he is more relaxed than Jensen has seen him yet. He won’t look at him, but he doesn’t push him away either, just sits and writes clean, precise little numbers that invariably turn out to be exactly what the professor writes on the board.
And Jensen - Jensen is content just watching him. Seeing him bite his lip to hide a smile, seeing him glow with pride when he gets one of the harder problems right; that right there is balm for his soul, and two hours of lecture pass more quickly here than they ever do at his school.
Jared shoves his papers into his bag the moment their teacher dismisses them. He looks like he’s trying very hard not to look like he’s running away, but Jensen can’t quite figure out why until someone calls “Jared!” across the room and Jared’s shoulders slump. He turns slowly to face the teacher down by the blackboard - who seems to be trying very hard not to laugh - and pastes a demure expression on his face.
“Yes, Professor Morgan?” he says.
Morgan waves him closer, waiting patiently until Jared has made his reluctant descent. He raises his eyebrows at Jensen still by the door, and when Jensen shows no intention of leaving, he gestures him to come to his desk as well.
“So, Jared,” he says, warm and not-quite-laughing, “Who’s your friend?”
“We’ve met,” Jensen interjects hastily, mostly for Jared’s benefit, because he’s damn sure Morgan remembers him perfectly.
Jared gives him a look, eyebrows raised, before shifting on his feet and readjusting his bag.
“Can I help you, Professor?”
Morgan sighs, even though Jensen isn’t sure why, and moves over to his notes, piling them into a messy stack.
“Yes, Jared, you can. You can tell me you’ve thought about what I said.”
Jared shifts again, gaze averted so he isn’t looking at either of the two men.
“I have.”
Morgan glances up, surprised. “You have?”
“Yes.” Another fidget.
Morgan rounds the desk once again, coming to a halt in front of Jared where Jared can’t help
but look at him; Jared has to remember that trick for later.
“And?” he asks eagerly, bouncing on his heels in a way that make him appear younger than he usually seems and reminds Jensen a lot of a younger Jared.
“And…” Jared gnaws at his lip with his teeth and catches the once-again slipping strap of his bag. “I don’t know.”
Morgan’s sigh brings out the faint blush on Jared’s face in full bloom, and he wriggles his toes in his sneakers as he stares down at them. Jensen wants to hug him, or at least reach across and massage his tense shoulders, but he doesn’t think that will be appreciated.
“Jared…” the man chastises gently. The trace of disappointment in his voice seems too much for Jared to handle and the kid looks up, speaking low and fast.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he promises, “It’s not, I’m not saying no, it’s just that, I think maybe I need to think about it a bit more, I really appreciate it, I do, I promise, but please let me think about it a bit more professor?”
Morgan smiles gently and pats Jared’s arm where Jensen hasn’t dared to.
“Okay, Jared. Think about it, yeah? I’m not asking for more than that.”
Jared nods, a warm, shy “Thank you” on his lips, and ambles towards the door when the older man pushes him towards it. Jensen makes to follow him but a large, sun-tanned hand on his chest stops him.
“Hang on a second, there,” Morgan says, low and meaningful. Jensen swallows and nods, but Morgan just turns back to his papers. Jared doesn’t notice that he isn’t following until he’s almost at the door. He pauses, his hand on the handle, and frowns as he looks around. Jensen nods at him to go and watches as Jared’s expression flits through different emotions, surprise, worry, anger, and finally settles somewhere between puzzlement and annoyance. But he leaves without a word, which is more than Jensen expected, to be honest, even if he doesn’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Morgan waits precisely until the door has softly clicked shut before he turns to Jensen with an unreadable expression.
“So,” he says.
“So,” Jensen echoes, trying hard not to fidget under the scrutinizing gaze. He can already understand Jared better than just a minute ago.
Morgan seems to note the similarity as well and curves his lips downward in an attempt to keep them from curling up.
“Still think I’m about to molest your boy?” he plows straight into the conversation. Not much for foreplay, this one.
Jensen has no idea how to answer that without either sounding offensive or like an idiot, so he avoids the subject altogether by zeroing in on the question’s least important detail.
“He’s not my boy,” he mumbles.
Morgan rolls his eyes, but Jensen wasn’t exactly being stealthy so he’s not too bothered about being found out.
“I beg to differ,” the teacher says. When Jensen just stares, he gestures at the front row of seats in exasperation. He himself takes up his perch on the carpeted stairs.
“Okay, kid, listen up.”
“Jensen,” Jensen corrects automatically.
“Okay, Jensen, listen up. In all the time that I’ve known Jared, I’ve never seen him talk to anybody. Not outside of class, definitely not in, and he’s sure as hell never established any contact. Believe me, I know. If I say he’s your boy, he’s your boy. Got that?”
Jensen nods, a little shell-shocked, and the teacher allows himself a smug little smile.
“Okay. I need you to tell me something.”
Jensen nods again, Morgan answers with the same gesture.
“Last time we saw each other, you were throwing around some pretty serious accusations.”
“Yeah… Sorry about that.”
Morgan waves away his feeble apology with a hand wave and a shrug.
“Hhmm. I need you to tell me you were just freaking out and weren’t actually serious. What you said could do some serious damage.”
Jensen nods quickly.
“Not just to my career, but to my life as a whole.”
“Yeah, sure,” Jensen assures him quickly, “I didn’t mean it, I was just… upset.”
He ducks his head, feeling his cheeks heat up, as he admits, “I’m kinda protective when it comes to him.”
Morgan leans forward, pressing his fingertips together.
“I want you to tread carefully, you hear? I happen to care about that kid.”
“Same here,” Jensen gets in, slightly raspy, and Morgan grins. He springs to his feet.
“Good! Glad we got that settled. Now shoo, I have quizzes to grade.”
Jensen stumbles for the door, slightly shell shocked by the sudden change in topic and mood, but Morgan’s hand on his shoulder stops him.
“That’s something good you’ve got going there. Don’t let it pass you by.”
***
It’s the third evening in a row that Jensen spends glued to a stool at the far end of the bar when Sam finally appears to have had enough. Jensen spends enough time in the SINKHOLE that Jared seems to grudgingly have accepted his presence, keeping his beer glass full and even cracking a joke now and then. The girls watch and giggle, gently teasing Jensen whenever Jared’s head is turned, and finally even Sam begins to view him as part of the furnishing. At least it seems that way when she tugs him off his stool and drags him somewhere where he can actually hear her.
“If you’re going to be here all night anyway…” she says, shoves a rag into his hands and shoos him off to collect empty glasses while Jay looks on and laughs. By the end of the night, Jensen has even drawn a few beers and learned how to make a mean Mojito (if he does say so himself), courtesy of the sorority chicks who are, as a rather tipsy one announces to Sandy, ‘slumming it’ and won’t drink anything else.
After closing, Jared shows him how to wash the glasses in the dangerous-looking contraption in the sink. They work side by side, shoulders bumping occasionally. Even though they don’t speak, it’s not uncomfortable. Jensen feels happier, calmer than he has in a long time, even later when they stand outside, watching the sky get lighter and lighter. Sandy and Adrianne climb onto their bikes.
“See you tomorrow, Jensen!” Sandy calls over her shoulder as they pedal off into the darkness. Jared doesn’t flinch, doesn’t scowl. He looks Zen and at ease with the world. Jensen simply can’t stop himself from asking him out for a coffee.
He should despair when he unlocks his apartment door with not even a handful hours of sleep to spare before his first class, but instead he’s humming to himself and grinning broadly, walking on clouds because Jared said yes.
***
His friends corner him after Redgrave’s lecture on child crisis therapy, when he’s just a few minutes away from being late for his meeting with Jared. Jensen barely makes it out of the classroom before Mike is suddenly in his face, looking for all the world like he’s about to nail Jensen to the nearest wall (and not in a good way). Jensen starts and backs up, succeeding only in stepping on Tom’s shoes. He turns only to find Danneel’s hand on his arm, effectively trapping him between the three of them.
Jensen bites his lip.
“So,” Mike says a little sourly, “Long time no see, huh, Jensen.”
“Uh, guys,” Jensen mumbles, not meeting anyone’s eyes, “what’s all this about?”
“You know precisely what this is about,” Tom rumbles from behind him. He sounds just as pissed off as Mike does. Crap.
Danneel managed to mask her annoyance with a smile.
“We were just wondering if you were still alive, Jensen,” she explains.
Jensen adjusts the strap of his bag where it’s digging into his shoulder.
“That’s ridiculous, guys, we see each other in class every day.”
“Exactly,” Mike snaps, “In class. What happened to our daily Starbucks hang-outs?”
“If you’re in some kind of trouble, Jensen, you know you can always come to us, right?” Tom quips from behind. Jensen almost snorts, but the tall guy sounds deadly serious. He sighs instead.
“Yes, my secret drug lab was recently raided by the Yakuza and I had to sell my soul to survive. Guys, really.”
“Laugh all you want, Jensen,” Danneel snips, “But we just couldn’t think of any other reason why you would treat your best friends like they didn’t even exist anymore.”
Jensen cringes at the words, but he pastes on his most apologetic smile and resists the urge to glance at his watch.
“Okay, guys, look, I’m really sorry I hurt your feelings, but I gotta go, I have a date.”
It’s out before he can stop himself and he’s already kicking himself by the time his three friends are all staring at him with wide eyes.
“A date?” Mike echoes, incredulous. “A date. You’re going on a date. Were you planning on ever telling us who you’re dating?”
“Well, it’s not really a date,” Jensen backtracks, “It’s more a kinda, sorta… date.”
Mike rolls his eyes. “Fine, so are you going to tell us who you’re kinda-sorta dating?”
Jensen shoots a guilty look at Danneel, and Mike gapes.
“Wait, so Danneel knows who the lucky one is but we don’t?”
“It was an accident,” Jensen assures him quickly, “If things had gone my way, she wouldn’t know either.”
He doesn’t notice the way their matching expressions of hurt only seem to deepen.
“Well, uh, she can tell you, though, okay? You’ll tell them, right? I really gotta go.”
With that, he offers them a tentative grin and takes off, speeding down the hallway as fast as he can without running.
“Bye, guys, I’ll see you in class!” he calls over his shoulder, pretending not to notice their grumbling and sighs.
***
“You did not!”
Jensen tries very hard to keep a straight face at Jared’s disbelieving squawk, but when his nod results in Jared snorting coffee out of his nose, he just has to burst out laughing.
Jared hands his coffee cup over and rests his hands on his knees, coughing and sputtering, and Jensen would totally pat his back but he’s laughing too hard. He holds on to the paper cups, though, even if he almost drops his when Jared gives him an incredulous look from underneath his bangs.
“You covered a teacher’s car in saran wrap?” he gasps when he’s regained his footing far enough to actually breathe properly.
“And most of his office, too,” Jensen adds, not, he has to admit, without a definite note of pride in his voice.
Jared snorts, wiping at his eyes.
“Okay, uh. Why?”
Jensen wrinkles his nose at the memory; he’s really glad he doesn’t have to take that particular teacher anymore.
“Well, see, there was this foreign kid in one of his classes. Not the most impressive person, kinda small, light, short spiky hair. Kinda cute, actually.”
Jensen isn’t sure how to interpret the small crease between Jared’s brows.
“Anyway, he had an accent. Not too bad, you could understand him fine most of the time, but sometimes he’d get words wrong or his pronunciation was wacky, you know.”
Jared nods, even though Jensen isn’t sure he knows at all, and motions for him to continue.
“And for some reason, the professor could not stand him. It wasn’t like he’d done anything; maybe he just rubbed the guy the wrong way, who knows. But boy, did he have it in for him. Everything the kid said, the teacher would mock. He disregarded every idea the kid had, no matter what it was, and always treated him like that student was stupid. Anyway, we figured he must have grown tired of the chicanery because he just stopped coming to class one day, but when someone said the man had straight-out told the kid that he was getting an F no matter what he did, we decided we couldn’t let that one just slide.”
“So you saran-wrapped his car?”
Jensen glances at his shoes, a little self-depreciating smile on his lips.
“Not the most brilliant or harshest of pranks, I know, but at least that way, the entire campus could witness it.”
“And you were a part of this?”
There’s disbelief in Jared’s tone and Jensen meets his eyes with a small frown.
“You don’t have to sound so surprised, Jared. I was a pretty big part of it, too - helped with the wrapping, risked being blamed for the whole thing.”
“You’re just not exactly the type to stand up against social injustice, Jensen,” Jared says softly. There’s censure in his tone, but mostly he just sounds sad. Jensen, sombered up, nods.
“But sometimes it’s just enough, Jared. Maybe I just needed some time to see that.”
Jared smiles softly in response. He shifts his drink to the other hand and starts walking again, bumping his shoulder against Jensen’s.
***
Six years ago.
Friday, 6:32 PM
Jensen pulls another shirt from the rapidly shrinking supply in Jay’s closet, glares at it and tosses it onto the ever-growing pile on the carpet.
“A Transformers shirt, Jay, really?” he asks over his shoulder. Jay glares at him in response. He’s lying on his bed, shoe- and sockless, with his arms crossed over the undershirt covering his skinny chest. He stares at the glow-in-the-dark stars pinned to the ceiling above him, and despite the embarrassed flush on his cheeks, his tone is petulant.
“Bite me,” he snaps.
“Oh ho ho, Jay, witty,” Jensen shoots back. He shakes out a dark shirt that would go great with Jay’s eyes and he almost tosses it at the kid before he notices the stick-figure dog on the back and drops it onto the floor in disgust.
“You know,” Jay announces from the bed in his perfected little bitch-voice, “If I’d ever doubted you were queer, I wouldn’t anymore.”
“It’s not my fault you can’t dress to save your life,” Jensen says, already judging the next item of clothing.
“I’d rather save my soul,” Jared huffs and shifts a little closer to the wall.
Jensen pauses for an instant, rolling his eyes at the near-empty closet, before he grins over his shoulder.
“Well, look at it this way: If I really do end up in hell, at least I’ll be able to give the devil fashion tips. Dude’s got a sense of dress almost as bad as your own.”
He doesn’t stop to gauge Jay’s reaction. He fishes the last two shirts from the shelf, a bright orange t-shirt and a green one with red spots, and, with a despairing sigh, tosses both of them onto the “Hell No!”-pile with the rest.
“I think we’re just going to have to go with the polo shirt,” he announces as he turns around.
“That’s the one I was wearing in the first place!” Jay complains, but he dutifully gets up and pulls the shirt back over his head. Jensen doesn’t stop to count his ribs this time.
“Okay, you ready?”
Jay sighs and spreads out his arms, offering himself up for Jensen’s scrutinizing gaze. The shirt is a bit too wide and a little too short, riding up his smooth belly. The jeans sag at Jay’s nonexistent ass, but at least they cover his ankles. Jensen knows that Jay has pants that are either long enough or ones that he can wear without a belt, but never both at the same time. He doesn’t comment on it, or on the fact that the kid’s sneakers are already getting holey at the tips. He likes his Jay the way he is.
“Fine,” he declares. Jay rolls his eyes and follows him to the open door, but in the hallway he turns to inspect the mess Jensen has made of his room. Clothes are spread over every surface, covering the carpet ankle-deep, tossed over the desk chair and the shelves and even the floor lamp.
“My mom’s going to kill you,” he announces to Jensen, but Jensen just grabs him in a chokehold and rubs his knuckles over Jay’s scalp until the kid is hollering “Uncle!” and twisting into more directions simultaneously than Jensen thought was possible. He drops him onto the floor and retorts to the kid’s glare by sticking out his tongue.
“Uh, no. Your mom’s going to kill you,” he corrects and bounds towards the stairs before Jay has the chance to recompose himself.
“What are you waiting for, slowpoke, let’s go!”
***
Now.
The next night, Sam hands him one of the Too busy to fcuk shirts and declares him an intern. Jared laughs, slinging an arm around Jensen’s shoulders and tugging him against his side; Adrianne claps and Sandy cheers. Jensen only refrains from kissing Sam because he’s pretty sure she’d cut his tongue off if he tried.
***
Jared hasn’t gone to sleep yet when the first bout of thunder rumbles overhead, loud and deafening, followed by the splatter of raindrops against the window. The storm is not unexpected, following the humid early spring heat of the day, which is why Jared is curled upon the futon in the girls’ living room instead of out there getting soaked to the skin.
Lightning casts striped shadows from the blinds across his body, there and gone in an instant. Another roar of thunder overhead and Jared turns onto his side.
Sandy stands in the doorway, quietly, her hair falling over her shoulder. In the sudden flash of lightning he can see how pale she is, how she flinches at the thunderclap which follows with not even a second’s delay.
“Jared,” she whispers, small and frail in her XL-shirt. He scoots over, lifting up the covers for her to crawl under and she does, shivering against his thigh. Jared wraps his arms around her and hugs her close. Despite everything that’s between them now and despite his own issues, he would never push her aside when she clearly needs his help. He’s not the type to do that to his friends.
Jensen isn’t the type either, that small, sly voice in his head whispers, but he pushes it away until it quiets down to a dull buzz that he can ignore.
He pulls Sandy flush against his chest, worrying his lip at how she lets herself be manhandled like an oversized doll. He concentrates on breathing steadily, hoping it will help, and smoothes the wild bang from her forehead.
“Shsh,” he whispers, “Shsh, it’s okay, it’s okay.”
He is not surprised and a little relieved when Addi shows up, walking straight up to the couch without hesitation. She’s rarely this straight-forward, usually lurking in the background somewhere, trying hard not to get noticed, but she doesn’t even ask before she flips the covers back and crawls up to them.
She curls up against Sandy, arm tucked around her waist just firmly enough to remind her she’s there. Jared holds tight as they pillow the shaking little brunette between them. He thinks of Jensen, can’t help it; the way he would run his hands over Jared’s shoulders, press a soft kiss against his neck and tell him that everything will be okay. Promise him what he used to promise a lifetime ago, rose gardens and diamond rings and all kinds of stupid things that Jared doesn’t believe in but likes to hear from Jensen anyway.
Yeah, it’s safe to say that he likes Jensen quite a bit.
***
“Jay.”
Jared looks up and catches the shot glasses Jensen tosses him with practiced ease. He watches Jared pour the tequila out of the corner of his eyes as he slices the lemons and gets out the salt shaker. Jared grins at him when he hands everything over, throws the shots together and a fancy flourish later, they are a few bucks richer.
“You’re getting good at this!” Jared yells into his ear, runs his hand over Jensen’s back before he turns to another customer.
Jensen could die from giddiness; every time Jared pushes past him a little too closely, hand settling on Jensen’s hip for a brief pat. He reaches over casually to wipe off Jensen’s beer foam mustache. When he reaches for the Korn bottle, his fingers accidentally graze Jensen’s ass.
Jensen is pretty sure Jared is kinda drunk, but not completely, because every time an occasional touch gets a startled yelp out of him, Jared’s smug grin is a mile wide.
Jensen, apparently, is also grinning like a loon, if his giggle female admirers from the other side of the bar are any indication. Jensen knows he’s sending all the wrong signals, but the explosion of nerves in his stomach when the manicured hand one of them lays on his arm prompts Jared to take Jensen’s other arm and tug him away.
“You should tell them they’re not your type,” he advises into his ear, but before Jensen can wrap his head around that one, Jay gathers up several pitchers of beer and strolls away.
Jensen doesn’t realize he’s just standing there, staring, until Sandy makes her way down the counter and pats his cheek with a smile.
“Careful,” she warns, wriggling her fingers, “you guys are throwing off all of our electronics, what with the crackling going on between you two.”
Jensen snorts and ducks his head, blushing a vivid crimson when even quiet Addi treats him to a dirty grin.
A new call for drinks is a welcome distraction. When the patrons are all taken care of and the girls have thankfully found someone else to harass, Jensen pops a beer bottle for himself and takes in the crowd of guests, sinking down on the only stool behind the bar to rest his weary feet.
It’s hard to distinguish faces in the gloom, so the couple sitting at one of the only illuminated tables not far from where Jared is handing out drinks to an appreciative audience immediately catches his attention. She’s pretty, in a ditzy kind of way, but the smile she casts her boyfriend is fond and real. She whispers to him and giggles - judging from her movements when she climbs over him, she’s definitely a little tipsy - but he only laughs and helps her over, waving her off to wherever she’s going with a wink and a grin.
She only gets as far as the next table though, where a couple of hardasses have been a few steps short of being trouble all night. One of them, leather jacket and a mean grin, grabs her wrist as she stumbles past and yanks her into his lap. Jensen is too far away to hear what they’re saying, but even he can see the discomfort on the girl’s face. She attempts to push herself off, but the guy holds tight, laughing into her ear. She struggles against his arms and throws a pleading look over her shoulder at her boyfriend who’s already on his way over, puffing out his chest. He takes Hardass’ arm and tugs him out of his seat; bottles clank and rattle as the girl jostles into the table.
A few tables over, Jared looks up from the cash and bottles he’s juggling. Vin at the door has apparently also spotted the two men standing chest to chest and is moving in determinately. Jensen makes slashing motions across his throat, signaling for Sam to cut the music, and when she flicks the power switch he can actually hear what the guys are saying.
“What?” Hardass mocks, “You gonna take me on? Bored of your teeth already?”
He wrestles the girl against his chest, muttering something in her hair, but when Boyfriend moves forward, he makes a point of showing off the brass knuckles on his free hand. Boyfriend falters; it’s only a slight hesitation before he sets his jaw, but of course Jared has seen it and is already closing in.
“You fucker,” he hisses, stalking towards him on endless legs, “You unbelievable bastard. You think you can just leave your girl to fend for herself? You too chicken shit to stand up for her?”
Jared’s eyes are icy cold.
“Coward,” he spits out, draws his hand back and slams his fist into the guy’s mouth.
Almost immediately, several girls start screaming. The coward in question curses and spits and even though Jensen started moving the second Jared threw his punch, the two are already wrestling long before he’s managed to weave his way through the bodies on the dance floor.
Fists are flying, and there’s definitely a hint of blood, but it’s too dark to make out whose it is. Hardass has disappeared into the crowd. People push at Jensen, towards the fight, towards the door. He barely manages to elbow his way to the empty arena that has formed itself around the two men.
Jensen sees Sam emerge from the crowd the same moment he does, the same moment Jared, distracted by the pleading girlfriend tugging on his arm, turns away from his opponent. The guy grabs a glass ashtray from the nearest table and, before Jensen can call a warning, brings it down hard on Jared’s head just when the bar owner reaches his side.
Sam curses, going down under the weight of a very dazed Jared as Sandy and Adrianne both rush forward to help. It’s Jensen, in the end, who ends up with Jared’s head in his lap as the girls run for ice and an ambulance.
Jensen is painfully aware of uneven nails and splinters in the floorboards, and how Jared’s weight is cutting off the circulation in his thigh where Jared’s torso rests on it. Jared’s eyes are closed, flutter a little. Jensen casts a scathing look at the patrons, gathered around them like they’re a show of spectacularly savage animals.
The guy with the bloody face is being tended to by his girlfriend, expression crunched up in pain. Jensen takes Jared’s hand and strokes his thumb over the blood on his knuckles.
Jared’s eyes flutter open. His pupils are wide and he seems to put more effort into focusing than should be necessary, but the slightest flicker of a smile graces his lips. He lifts his hand, his free hand, up to brush lightly over his skull.
“Ow,” he mumbles.
Jensen can’t help his small chuckle.
“Ow, indeed, you fucker,” he says, “What the hell were you thinking?”
He brushes Jared’s hair back, leans forward to hear him mutter, “Guess’a’wasn’.”
“Yeah, you got that right,” Jensen says and feels a surge of anger in his belly. “That’s what you have a fucking bouncer for, Jared, are you hearing me? He’s the guy who gets to punch customers in the face, and if you ever try something that dumb again, I will knock you out myself, you got that?”
Jensen wants to say more, a lot more, preferably a large number of swear words conveying how stupid he thinks Jared’s stunt was, but several pairs of hands push him aside. The place suddenly seems to be swarming with people in white uniforms as Jared is checked over, hooked up to machinery and lifted onto a stretcher. A large number of patrons seems to have left, Jensen notes - Sandy and Adrianne are nowhere to be seen. It probably has something to do with the cops at the door, and it’s really saying something about Jensen’s emotional state that he hasn’t heard the sirens at all.
Sam is currently trying to get the place calmed down while Vin the bouncer gives a statement to the police, so Jensen follows the white uniforms outside. Jared looks terrible, strapped down on the stretcher like someone half-dead. Jensen knows it’s just a precaution, but he still sneaks closer. He just has to see that Jared’s still breathing.
Jared smiles when he sees him, coughing awkwardly and wincing at the movement.
“At least I make your life more exciting, right?”
Jensen wants to say something witty in return, he really does, but the only thing he can come up with is, “Asshole.”
Jared reaches around for Jensen’s hand, squeezing it tightly and pressing it against his chest.
“Aw, Jen, don’t be mad.”
The pleading tone cracks Jensen’s resolve to hold a grudge for once and he pats Jared’s ankle gently.
“I’m not mad, Jay, I’m not mad, okay? Just hold still and let the doctors do their job, okay? For me?”
A nearby paramedic, a tall brunette with a curly ponytail, shoots Jensen a grateful look, climbs into the ambulance and slams the doors shut, leaving Jensen just standing there.
He feels small. Small and insignificant and damn close to hyperventilating. He doesn’t think he’s felt this alone in a really long time.
***
Six years ago.
Saturday, 6:57 AM
“What do you mean, he’s gone!?” Jensen roars.
Sophia takes a hasty step back, raising her hands placatorily as several heads turn in their direction. She reaches out a hand to tug him towards the orange plastic chairs lining the hallway, but Jensen yanks his arm free. He’s spent enough time in those chairs, thank you very much.
Sophia rolls her eyes, but he knows her too well to think that she’s annoyed at him. She’s almost as freaked out as he is.
“I mean, he isn’t in his room anymore. As in, gone. Disappeared. Vanished into thin air. Poof.”
She underlines the word with a small hand gesture, and at any other time, he would have laughed at her attempt to cheer him up; whether he found it funny or not.
Not now, though.
“Are you trying to tell me,” he says, keeping his voice dangerously low, “That they let a fucking thirteen-year-old just waltz out of here? What kind of fucking hospital is this!”
Sophia ducks her head as if she’s expecting an explosion (and she’s right to), but a movement in the corridor behind her captures Jensen’s attention. There’s doctor; he can see Jay’s dad, leaning heavily against a wall. And in the very middle of the procession is Mrs. Padalecki, expression deadly, challenging anyone to step in her way.
Then she catches sight of Jensen. She veers towards him mid-step, eyes narrowing in a way that can only mean trouble. Her voice is hard and cold.
“You.”
***
>Part 4
What do you think?