J2 FPS fic: Dealing With A Memory
I call you on the telephone, my voice too rough with cigarettes
(I call you on the telephone)
I sometimes think I should just go home but I'm dealing with a memory that never forgets
(voice too rough with cigarettes)
I sometimes think I should just go home
I love to hear you say my name, especially when you say yes
--The Who, “You Better You Bet”
They wake up at the same time, but they don’t talk. At least, not right away.
The breakaway glass spills out around them, catching broken reflections like a shattered halo. Jensen blinks, moving his limbs experimentally. Yep, still all attached. Painful beyond belief, sure, but still attached. He hears a kind of pathetic groan-whimper from beside him, and sits up, gingerly, to look at Jared. “You okay?”
“No,” Jared says. “I think I’m dead.” And then he stops, frowning like he remembers something. Jensen knows what he’s remembering, and doesn’t want to think about it: thinking about it might make it real. Instead he says, “If you’re dead, why’m I stuck in your vision of the afterlife? Annoying me your idea of heaven?”
“More like hell.” Jared sits up and moans pathetically, and without even thinking about it Jensen gets up and walks over to help. Jared takes his outstretched hand, and it’s a motion they’ve done a hundred, a thousand times before. Except they haven’t. Not for real. Not as themselves. Hell, Jensen thinks, they’re not even friends.
But he still finds himself leaning in to support Jared like he’s meant to be there, like it’s the natural thing to do even when his own body aches like a head-to-toe hangover.
And Jared takes the offered support, with a slightly bemused expression, as if he thinks he should be surprised but isn’t, and can’t quite work out why he’s not.
They stare around the set for a few minutes. There’s a lot of noise coming from behind one of the soundstages; Jensen can hear raised voices and an occasional siren as someone new arrives. Nobody’s made it to their little corner of the set yet, though, and that’s probably a good thing; Jensen suspects that neither of them is up to whatever’s going on out there. Maybe later-it sounds important-but not now.
Jared’s looking down at him, and he can just tell that his co-star is thinking the same thing. Funny, that. Since when has he been able to read Jared so well? For that matter, since when have they ever thought the same thing?
“So,” Jared says, “you, um…you wanna get out of here?”
Maybe it’s the tiredness, but Jensen can’t repress a snort of laughter. “This is not the time for bad pick-up lines, Padalecki.”
“I meant-”
“Yeah, I know. And I agree, this is not the place we want to be right now.” Jared’s scowling just a little bit, and Jensen finds it bizarrely attractive. Which is not a thought he ever expected to have about Jared, and dear God he must be out of it, if the previous night’s hallucinations-they had to be hallucinations-are so happily jumping to the forefront of his brain.
“So do you?”
“What? Sorry.”
Jared rolls his eyes. “Jesus, Ackles. Do you want to come to my place, or not?”
Huh. He hasn’t been to Jared’s place in, well, ever. He’d made it as far as the backyard once, when the crew threw Jared and Genevieve a move-in party, but that’d been all, and really just for the sake of appearances. “Lead on, Sasquatch.”
Jared blinks. “You never call me that. Or is that what you call me in your head?”
“I call you worse things in my head,” Jensen retorts, covering up his slip. Somehow it had just felt right, dammit. Of course, considering some of Jensen’s other hazy memories, Jared’s lucky that was all it was. Does Jared remember these things, too? He can’t tell, and he’s sure as hell not going to ask.
Jared sighs. It’s a very Sam Winchester sigh. “Come on.”
They don’t talk much during the ride, either. It’s both frightening and very helpful that Jared apparently knows how to hotwire a car. Or maybe Sam knows, and that’s why Jared knows. Jensen doesn’t want to ask; he’s having a hard enough time separating his own memories from memories of himself playing Dean from memories that are apparently the real Dean’s. Every once in a while, Jared blinks at Jensen like he’s trying to figure something out, like he’s rediscovered something he’s forgotten, and Jensen guesses he’s thinking the same thing.
The Winchesters are real. Somewhere, everything, everything that they pretend to be, is real.
That’s not even the hardest part to accept.
Kripke, Jensen thinks. And Misha. Who else? Who else died, or could have died, because some angelic douchebag thought he and Jared made perfect hiding places for Sam and Dean? He remembers the feeling of being trapped in his own head, watching all the craziness unfold, and even now it makes him want to crawl out of his skin.
Fortunately, Jared’s house-palace?-is a good distraction.
“I didn’t remember this place being quite so…big.” A life-size Jared, plus another matching Genevieve, looms down at them from the wall. It’s possibly the most uncanny thing Jensen’s seen lately, and there’s some stiff competition.
Jared starts to say something, then shakes his head. “Sorry it’s too imposing for you, Ackles.”
The Dean Winchester in Jensen’s head snaps, you idiot, you hurt his feelings! And before he can think about it Jensen says, “No, man, I just meant…I like it. I like the open space. Especially after being held hostage in my own head, you know?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Jared sounds somewhat mollified. “Was it that bad for you? I thought it was kind of interesting, watching Sam work. Well, up until all the…bad parts.”
“I’m not great with small places, is all.”
Jared turns around, blinking in surprise, and Jensen realizes he’s just let someone he technically doesn’t like very much into a private corner of his life. In his head, Dean Winchester points out that Sam already knows all his secrets anyway.
“I never knew that. Are you okay? Can I help?”
Jesus, Jared cares about everyone, even his nemesis. Usually Jensen would find that incredibly annoying, but right now, still shaken from being a prisoner in his own head, not to mention the murderous angels and the deaths, the concern is actually kind of comforting. “Nah, I’m good. Thank you, though,” he adds, lest Jared should take it as being unfriendly.
Jared still watches him for a minute, and then says, “Sorry about the portraits, by the way. A fan sent them, and I thought I’d take a picture of them hanging and send it back, you know, as a thank you. Only Genevieve fell in love with them, and they stayed. It’s a sick and twisted relationship she has with ugly wall art.”
Jensen snorts in amusement, and this is, naturally, when Genevieve comes downstairs.
“Oh my God, Jared! Are you all right? Did you hear about-”
“Misha, yeah. And Eric.” Jared hugs her when she hugs him, but they don’t kiss or anything, which Jensen’s brain files under interesting. Unfortunately, he can’t blame that one on Dean; he’s been alternately fantasizing about and hating Jared since they’d met. He can even pinpoint the exact moment: the second Jared had bounced up to him and announced, “Hi! You’re Jensen Ackles! My grandmother thought you were the pretty one on Days of Our Lives! I didn’t realize you were still working in tv!” Jensen had stared at him, trying to figure out if the kid knew how many insulting things he’d just said, and had given up and walked away.
Dean Winchester says, in Jensen’s head, you don’t walk out on your family. Jensen resolutely ignores his diseased brain, and says, “uh, hi” to Genevieve.
Gen stares at him suspiciously. “Jared,” she says, “really?”
Jensen looks at Jared, who looks just as bewildered. “Really what?”
“Oh, come on,” she snaps. “I know you have the biggest crush on him, and I know you think he’s an arrogant ass, but this is not the time for angry hate sex, Jared! People are dead!”
Jared starts to say something, but Jensen’s still stuck on the part where there’s potentially angry hate sex, and misses it.
Genevieve sighs. “Look, I knew this wasn’t a real marriage, okay? I like the girls, you like the guys, but really, Jared? Him? Now? This is why you’ve been so weird the last couple of days?” She shrugs. “No offense, Ackles. Anyway, I’m going to go see if I can do anything to help, talk to Misha’s wife or whatever they need. You two, try not to get into any more trouble, okay? The show’s likely to get canceled as it is, we don’t need more controversy.” And the door slams shut behind her.
“Um,” Jared says, looking panicked,” don’t listen to her. I mean, she doesn’t know-I mean, I-”
“Hold on,” Jensen says, “Since when are you gay?”
“Since always.” Jared blinks. “You didn’t really believe that my grandmother was the one who thought you were pretty, did you?”
Actually, yes, and if six years of mutual loathing is Jensen’s own fault, he’s going to kick himself for it later. But apparently Jared’s having similar thoughts. Funny, Jensen thinks, how often that seems to happen. They’ve always been too busy cordially despising each other to notice.
“It’s not important right now,” Jared says, wandering across the living room and back. “I mean, it is important-maybe, right?-but not now. Now…Do you think she’s right, that we’re going to be canceled? Am I a bad person for thinking about us being canceled when Eric-and Misha…”
Jensen watches Jared pace like the motion is the only thing keeping him together, and a little tug of insistent remembered emotion worms its way up inside him: Jared shouldn’t be worried.
“We should do something,” Jared says. “I know you don’t like me much, and we don’t-well, anyway. It would be a nice gesture if the two of us did something for Misha’s wife, for Eric, you know…not that they’ll feel better, but maybe it’ll help?”
And maybe it’s not just memory, Jensen thinks, half-listening. Jared’s a good guy. Somehow he’s never really processed that before: under the crazed pet causes and willingness to self-aggrandize, Jared really cares about other people. He doesn’t always do or say the right thing, but he tries. He adopts bizarre animals to try to save the world, and hangs terrible portraits in his house because fans send them to him. Jared’s a good guy, and it’s Jensen who doesn’t want him to be worried, whatever the weird echoes in his head think. This isn’t Dean trying to protect Sam, real or pretend. This is just him and Jared.
He says, interrupting Jared’s stream-of-consciousness monologue about kindness to one’s fellow inhabitants of the planet, “I think we should keep the show running.”
“What?” Jared actually stops pacing to look at him.
“Yeah.” Jensen rubs a hand over his face, abruptly self-conscious. “I mean…yeah, what you were saying, sure. We should do something, not just for Misha’s and Eric’s families, but…bigger.” He pauses, but Jared’s not saying anything, so he keeps talking. “We were…we helped with something big, back there. You know it, and I know it. Sam and Dean are real, somewhere, and all this is real, and we were…a part of it, I guess. And maybe they’ll need us again. And not just that.” He’s working it out as he goes; he wishes Jared could just figure out what he’s trying to say, maybe finish some of these sentences for him, but instead Jared just looks at him with something that might be an impressed expression. A little selfish part of Jensen kind of hopes so.
“If those…angels and shit…maybe they aren’t real here, but they can, y’know. Come here. So if we keep making the show, it’s like a…public service announcement, you know? Douchebag Angel Awareness or something? Even if most people think its fiction. At least they’ll, y’know, have thought about it. Maybe…” He doesn’t say maybe we can save people, because that sounds stupid in a world without magic, but he can tell from the look on Jared’s face that they’re both thinking about the dead.
He’s more or less run out of things to say, so he just stops and waits for Jared to respond. After a minute, Jared says, “I think you’re right.”
Jensen manages a weak grin. “Bet you never thought you’d say that line in real life.”
“Ha.” Jared sits down on the couch next to him. “You are right. And also I’m sorry.”
“Huh? For what?”
“For…whatever part of the us hating each other is my fault.” Jared shrugs. “You’re not always the cynical, selfish jackass I thought you were, you know.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“Now you’re just a sarcastic jackass instead,” Jared says, but he’s smiling. “Didn’t your momma ever teach you to accept apologies graciously, Ackles?”
“Bitch,” Jensen says, because it seems to fit the moment. “And yeah, you might not be all bad, for a tree-hugging egomaniac.”
“Jerk.” Jared sighs, and looks helplessly around the room. “Everything’s gonna change now, isn’t it? No Misha, no Eric-hell, no Genevieve…”
That comment, plus Gen’s parting shot, opens up a whole range of ideas, actually, but this is neither the time nor the place for those, especially not the ones that obviously belong to Dean. Jensen, while certainly not on the straight side of the fence, has definitely never owned pink panties in his life, and just the fact that he and Jared are currently actually talking doesn’t mean that so, where’s your bedroom? would be appropriate.
Instead he just leans against Jared, and feels absurdly reassured when Jared leans back. “Well,” he says, “not everything has to change. We’re still going to do the show. I’m still gonna see your ugly face every day. That’s got to count for something.”
“Yeah,” Jared says. “Something.” But he smiles, just a little bit. Something relaxes inside Jensen when that happens: he made Jared feel better. It’s absurd how that makes Jensen feel warmer, too.
“So,” Jared adds, after a minute of companionable silence, “they’re going to be calling us, we’re going to have to go answer questions and talk about all of this in the morning…”
“Don’t remind me.”
“…I was thinking, maybe you might want to stay here tonight? There’s, you know, like fifty guest bedrooms upstairs. And you like that it’s big. I mean the house. The house is big. I mean, because you might want space?” Despite the torrent of words, Jared sounds hesitant, and maybe a little hopeful. A voice in Jensen’s head says yes, are you kidding, yes! And Jensen can’t tell if it’s Dean, wanting to stay with the person he cares about most in the world, or if it’s just his own thoughts now, shouting at him not to screw up what might be a second chance to do something right.
Jensen looks at him, messy hair and hazel eyes and the biggest heart of anybody he knows, and decides to trust the instincts that aren’t his. “Just so you know, I’m not a morning person.”
“I’ve got an alpaca.”
“I can live with that.”
And tomorrow, yeah, there will be questions and phone calls, memories that aren’t (and are) real, and a world of stress, but right now Jared’s smiling like sunshine and Jensen can live with that. There will be days ahead in which he can, maybe, decipher all the thoughts behind the shape of that smile, analyze why he suddenly cares so much about the curve of Jared’s mouth or the reasons behind Jared wanting him to stay. But that’s all for later.
Right now, Jared's smiling at him, and Jensen finds himself smiling back, and he almost wants to thank the douchebag angels.