fic: Food Porn (6/7) R - J2 AU
ONE | TWO | THREE | FOUR | FIVE | SIX | EPILOGUE
MASTER POST
CHAPTER SIX
Chad calls at four o’clock Monday morning. “By the way, this is a surprise party,” he says like that’s an acceptable greeting. Jensen doesn’t even bother to say anything, just lays there with his face mashed into his pillows and his phone propped near his ear. “Got it, Ackles?” Chad continues. “I remind you this because we decided it’s up to you to get him here without thinking something’s up. Tonight. Eight-thirty.”
“Guh,” Jensen says. Mostly, his brain isn’t working and he isn’t sure he can even open his eyes at this hour. That, and he drank half a bottle of Patrón before he passed out, so he’s pretty sure he’s still drunk.
Chad practically growls. “Dude, I don’t even care that the two of you are whatever the fuck you are, okay? Just make this happen. Me and Sandy are taking care of the rest.”
“But they broke up,” Jensen manages to say and then he immediately wants to bang his head on the nightstand.
He can actually hear Chad’s eyeroll through the phone. “They were never together, you fucktard. They were the ‘but labels make the sex boring’ couple. And now they aren’t having sex. Why do you think he didn't have a problem working with her? Just, fuck, I don’t care what you do, okay? Promise him he can fuck you with a frozen lamb shank, promise him that you’ll fuck him with a frozen lamb shank, or, I don’t know, buy him a Zagnut and a Wild Cherry Pepsi. Just get his ass here at eight-thirty, capiche?”
“Um, what?”
“Happy Bastille Day,” Chad says and then hangs up. Jensen throws his phone at the wall and shoves his head under both of his pillows.
--
Jensen gets up properly around eleven because despite his best efforts to stay in bed all day watching daytime TV, he just can’t stand lying there. He could be out, cooking something or maybe huddling in a corner of a coffee shop, writing emo poetry or something.
He discovers that his phone is now in four pieces from its Chad-induced collision with the wall, so his first stop after the shower is the Verizon next to Frosting. He drops the crushed remains of the old Sony Ericsson on the counter and gives the salesgirl, who’s playing a game on her phone when he comes in, a hopeful look.
“Please, I need something that’ll make my life a brighter place,” he says. She raises an eyebrow at him, but she puts her phone down next to the computer behind her and gives him her attention. She’s got a long blonde ponytail and a nametag that says Blake, and she’s way prettier than Jensen, which he appreciates. “Come on, Blake, I know you won’t let me down.”
She smiles at him and cracks her gum. “Well, what are you looking for in a phone? Camera, Bluetooth, 3G capability? Maybe just a normal phone?” she adds at his blank look.
“Well, this old one was a good friend to me for a long time,” he lies, pointing at the pieces. God, he hated that phone. He is not sorry to see it go. He’s a little sad that he’ll have to go around getting everyone’s numbers again, though. “I think it’s time to move on, though. Do you have anything shiny?”
“Shiny?” she asks, blinking.
“Like, if I whip it out at a party, people will crowd around and ooh and ahh over it,” he says. Blake smirks at him. “Yeah, I know. ‘That’s what he said,’” he adds wearily.
“Well, you want shiny, you probably want LG. Very shiny.” She comes out from behind the counter and beckons him over to a display by the window. “I personally recommend the Dare. I have one. It’s like the iPhone, only smaller and shinier and… less douchey. No offense, but you look like you probably spend a lot of time being concerned about not looking douchey.”
Jensen doesn’t know what’s douchey about an iPhone except that her company doesn’t carry them (except Jared totally has one, and Jared is kind of a douche), and he’s not sure what he did to deserve her judgmental tone, but he shrugs and fiddles with the Dare floor model. It is certainly shiny. “Okay, whatever. Tell me what I need to do to make this puppy mine.”
Blake grins at him. “Let’s look you up in the computer. Ten-digit number?”
He leaves the store fifteen minutes later, kind of hating Verizon and wondering if the can-you-hear-me-now guy now owns a little of his soul. To make himself feel better, he stops into Frosting, which has just opened for the day.
Danneel sees him coming from the back room and has a Honeybear out on the counter by the time he stops in front of her.
“Fancy seeing you,” she says dryly.
He glances up from his new phone for the first time since Blake activated it, a little surprised. He looks at the pastry on the counter and smiles. “I can’t help myself,” he says absently. “Got a new phone.”
“I see that,” she says. “Shiny.”
“That was the point,” he says smugly. “I have the honest-to-god, Google-searching, email-checking, Facebook-stalking, blog-reading, porn-surfing Internet on my phone. And it came with Tetris. My life is pretty much complete. Not that I, uh, need to look at porn on here. But I could.”
She rolls her eyes and snaps her fingers under his nose. “Focus, honeybear. So it’s Monday. Isn’t Supernatural closed today? What brings you to this end of Chicagoland?”
He waves the new phone at her and takes a huge bite of what is actually just a fancy bear claw. “I murdered my old one. It had to go.”
“Should I have put out a Natural Born Killer instead?” she asks, arching her eyebrows.
He locks the screen and shoves the phone in his pocket. “What’s with these names, anyway?”
She shrugs. “Sam and I are fucking clever, shut up. Also, we may watch too many gangster movies.”
“I should fix one of you up with my boss, Eric. Have you been to Supernatural? The dining room looks like Martin Scorcese and fucking backroads Americana threw up in an abandoned factory. I don’t even know.”
“Isn’t it in an old factory, though?” she asks, brow furrowed.
“Well, yeah,” he says. “I think that’s the point. Anyway. Tonight, they’re having a surprise party for Jared-his birthday’s this weekend-and it’s my job to get him there without him suspecting anything. Except I am the least stealthy bastard alive, so you have any ideas?”
Her whole face lights up. “I’m awesome at subterfuge, I’ll have you know,” she says. There is something distinctly devious about her smile as she leads him over to the couch and starts scribbling something down on the cupcake-shaped paper.
--
When he gets home late that afternoon after a trip to Trader Joe’s, Jensen finds Jared hunched over his computer at the kitchen island, surrounded by a bunch of papers and a snarl of various cords.
“Um, hi,” he says cautiously, waving a little with his free hand.
Jared startles and looks up. Jensen watches as his expression goes from an honest smile to a shuttered look to something that’s just awkward and wary. “Hi,” he says. He takes his reading glasses off and sets them on the keyboard.
Jensen dumps his grocery bag on the counter next to the fridge and turns around. Jared stares at his chin. They’re both frozen there for a second before Jensen clears his throat.
“So you think we can get past the elephant in the room?” he says, ducking his head to catch Jared’s gaze and offering a sheepish smile. Jared blinks in surprise then nods slowly.
“Uh, yeah,” he says. He moves the glasses to the side and closes his computer. Jensen watches the Apple logo light go out. “So… how’s things?”
Jensen leans back against the counter and shrugs. “Could be better,” he says honestly. There’s an uncomfortable pause. “So, I hear you have a birthday coming up.”
“Chad better not be planning something,” Jared says abruptly. “Remember what happened last year? I will remove every piece of skin from his genitalia with a fucking salad fork-including his taint-if he tries that shit again?”
Jensen suspects that Chad’s main mission in life is to make the people around him as uncomfortable as possible, and Jared is one of Chad’s favorite people. Chad is a socially transmitted infection, but he’s sort of fun and generally a pretty good friend if you can overlook the smell and the bullshit and the pervasive douchebaggery. As far as Jensen can tell, his presence can be blamed on Sandy, who inherited him from some roommate she had in undergrad, and then she went and brought him with her to Chicago when she came to get her Master's at Northwestern. And then Chad got the job at Gilmore’s with Jared, and the rest is, lamentably, history.
Anyway, for Jared’s birthday last year, there had been blindfolds and a series of increasingly shady strip clubs involved. Jensen had been there, actually. His divorce wasn’t finalized yet and he was still living at home, so it was a chance to get out of the house and be with people who weren’t Jessica.
“It’s Jared’s birthday,” Sandy had cajoled. “He thinks you’re awesome, and I want you there because I think you’re awesome, too. Plus, you’re pretty enough to cancel out the Chad-like horror that’s going to be all over all the pictures.”
“I’m going to get hit on,” Jensen had said. “I don’t like getting hit on.”
“Well, f you don’t come I’m going to hit you. How’s that sound?” Sandy had responded, smiling sweetly. It wasn’t an idle threat; she packed a wallop for being so small.
“Fine, I’ll be there,” he’d said in his best long-suffering, the-things-I-do-for-you tone, “but don’t expect me to have bells on.”
“That would be weird,” she’d agreed. “I don’t think Chad picked any fetish clubs.”
Anyway, long story short, at the third club that night, Chad disappeared for a while and was discovered doing blow in the ladies’ room with two high school girls and Eric’s accountant, Misha. Jared, who was wasted and annoyed by the fact it was Chippendales night, punched him, triggered a brawl, and got to spend the night in a jail cell.
Jensen winces at the memory and shakes his head. “Since when has Chad ever been able to keep shit under wraps? If he was planning something, I’m pretty sure you would know. People in Indiana would know.”
“Okay, point,” Jared concedes.
“Anyway, Home Run Derby’s on tonight. I was thinking we could go out, find some dive bar, and you know, have a couple of beers, play some pool, watch Hamilton kick Longoria and that squinty Canadian guy from the Twins’ asses. Whatcha say?” He gives Jared his best I’m-really-trying-here smile and too his delight Jared smiles back.
“Yeah, man,” he says, nodding. “That sounds great. And Hamilton’s got this shit in the bag.”
Jensen pumps his fist in the air and just barely misses clocking his elbow on the refrigerator handle. “Well, get your ass up,” he says.
--
They end up at some bar not too far from home, shooting pool and laughing like old times while they wait for the Derby to start. Jared’s mostly complaining about his agent and the book, but Jensen’s just enjoying the sound of his voice.
“He’s all like, ‘Jared, I need some results soon or they’re gonna want your advance back.’ And I’m like, ‘Beav. Jim. I have writer’s block like a bitch,’ so he tells me to figure my shit out and call him. Seriously, that’s what he said to me. ‘Call me when you figure your shit out, Padalecki, and I suggest you do it quick.’”
Jensen’s about to respond when his phone rings. It’s Danneel.
“Hey, crazy man, it’s time.”
“My TV’s still full of Josh Hamilton kicking ass, so no, it is not time,” Jensen replies, rolling his eyes.
“Wrong answer, sugarplum. And who's Josh Hamilton? Anyway, now do like we planned.”
He frowns and scratches the back of his neck, schooling his features to look properly annoyed. It’s not too hard, really. “Tonight, man?” he says. “But-yeah, okay. Yes, Eric. I know… Fine. I’ll go check.”
“Don’t ya know, don’t ya know that you are a superstar!” Danneel sing-songs. And then she hangs up before he can break character and swear at her.
Jensen lets his voice go very dull and continues to fake-converse. “Yeah, I’ll see you in the morning. After your restaurant has not burned down. Jerk.” He hangs up and shoves his phone back in his pocket.
“That new phone is pretty hardcore, by the way,” Jared says. He looks like he would dearly like to steal it and play with it for a while but isn’t quite sure how to ask. The frown on Jensen’s face seems to sink in a second later and he cocks his head. “What’s wrong?”
Jensen shrugs and scowls some more. “Eric. He thinks he left some computer on in the office and you know what a cheap bastard he is. He wants me to stop by and make sure everything’s all set.”
“Oh, lame,” Jared agrees. He takes a big swig of his beer. “Well, I’m game if you are. I could give a shit about the National Leaguers, so could go for a change of scenery.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jensen says. “Come on.”
It always freaks Jensen out to see Jared trying to fold himself into the Altima. It’s not like it’s a Miata or even, like, a Mini Cooper, and it’s actually a pretty good-size four-door, and Jensen isn’t really that much smaller than him anyway, but for some reason Jared just looks too big to be allowed. They listen to Ryan Adams whining about teaching himself to grow old on the way, because Jared really digs alt country and Jensen doesn’t care.
“Dude, are they having a party at the church or what?” Jared comments, pointing at the huge bunch of cars parked in the church parking lot across the street from Supernatural.
Jensen shrugs and drives around the building to pull into his usual spot in the empty lot. “Who the fuck knows. Maybe it’s free bingo night. Come on, let’s get this over with. You comin’ in or you gonna sit out here?”
Jared raises his eyebrows. “It gonna take all night, or what?”
“I don’t know how long it’ll take. Come on, you can jack off to Jeff’s firemen calendar while you wait. I won’t even make fun of you.”
“Oh, and it makes gay jokes, great,” Jared mumbles as he unfolds himself from the car, but he’s grinning.
Jensen leaves Jared in the dry stock room, where he immediately starts rearranging cans on one of the shelves, and calls Sandy while he heads for the front of the building. She meets him in the lobby, which is decorated obnoxiously with paper streamers. She looks absolutely stunning in a floating purple dress, and he thinks she might already be drunk. He wouldn’t blame her.
“Thank you,” she says, swaying a little on her too-high heels.
“S'nothing,” he says, waving a hand. “Gimme a couple minutes and I’ll have him coming through the B-station doors right into the dining room, okay? Get everybody ready.”
She hugs him tight around the middle then scurries off to gather everybody up. He can hear people laughing and talking out in the dining room.
He gets back into the kitchen to find Jared tipped back in Jeff’s spinning chair, balancing a Sharpie on the bridge of his nose and watching a live-update of the Derby on his phone. Morneau’s hacking away at round three.
“You sure you wanna put that on your face?” Jensen asks. “You don’t even know where’s it’s been.”
“I’m gonna guess somewhere better than Chad’s ass,” Jared says, shrugging and tossing the marker back on the desktop. “So what’s up out there? You finished yet? ‘Cause I was thinking we could just head down the street, maybe see if Chris’s behind the bar at Hutton’s. How’s that sound?”
Considering that Chris, who’s Jared’s favorite bartender too, is almost certainly out in the dining room, Jensen gives a noncommittal shrug. “No. Eric’s got shit all fucked up out there. You wanna come keep me company?”
Jared gets to his feet and nods. “Yeah, yeah. Lead the way.”
Jensen notices that the line is still a mess from whatever they made for the party, so he loops Jared through the back room, cuts through the oddly cold dishroom, and up through coffee station B. Jared’s chattering on about how he thinks Eric should consider switching to Mac for the computer system, which is an old argument, and Jensen nods, not really listening. He walks backward and stops when his ass hits the double doors that lead out into the dining room. He knocks his heel against the kickplate as a signal.
Jared looks at him with concern. “What?”
“Just… happy early birthday, dude,” Jensen says.
Jared crinkles up in a smile that Jensen feels in his gut. “Thanks,” he says.
Jensen shoves the doors open and walks backward into the room. He keeps his eyes trained straight on Jared so he can watch his reaction as everybody jumps out yelling “Surprise!”
“Holy shit,” Jared breathes, looking around, his huge smile growing even brighter. He catches Jensen’s eye again and nods. Jensen smiles back. “Holy. Shit.”
Chad comes up, wearing two party hats like devil horns, bearing a big, ugly orange lei and a party hat Jensen has a feeling is going to end up on his own head. “You made it!” Chad says too loudly. He smells like Captain Morgan when he slings an arm around each of their necks to hug them. Jared thumps him hard on the back.
“Whose idea was all this?” Jared asks, looking around in awe when Chad pulls back.
“Me and Sandy, man,” Chad says, lei-ing Jared. “Oh, don’t be shy, Jenny,” he adds, grabbing Jensen before he can sneak away and snapping the hat on his head. The elastic stinks a little against the stubble under his chin.
“Gee, just what I always wanted,” Jensen says dryly, but he doesn’t take it off.
Sophia comes barreling up, followed by a crush of other people. “Look alive!” somebody yells, and then a million people are crowding in with cameras and drinks and other embarrassing adornments for Jared, so Jensen slips off too the side and heads for the bar, job done.
--
Jensen has a bottle of beer in his hand and is leaning against the doorway to the second dining room, pleasantly buzzed, when Kristen sidles up next to him and leans against the other side of the doorjamb. She’s dressed in black pants and a tight blue summer sweater that makes her eyes glow. She smells like sugar like she always does, and he thinks vaguely with a twist in his stomach that there is no way the smile on her face can mean anything good for him.
He’s been watching Jared make his way around the room, possibly with a huge, stupid smile on his own face to match Jared’s, and when she puts a hand on his arm he actually jumps.
“The way you’ve been MIA lately, I wasn’t sure you’d be here tonight,” she says.
“I wasn’t either,” he admits, “but here I am.”
She leans back and looks up at him through her bangs. “I totally get it now, by the way.”
“You get what?” he asks, absently, tracking Jared’s progress from laughing with Sophia to grabbing one of the Jasons in a huge bearhug.
“Oh, you know,” she says. He glances at her, a little thrown, but she’s smiling like she thinks he’s the most adorable thing ever. He really hopes she doesn’t decide to pinch his cheeks. Any of them.
He frowns. “I’m sure I don’t.”
“God, I forgot how dense you are,” she says, sounding a little awed. “I mean, yeah, it’s one of those things you should have on your Facebook. You know, like, ‘Activities: cooking, sleeping, looking pretty, and being stupid.’ But I guess I always forget, or I just like to keep giving you the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know. But then you go and drop your anvils of stupid on my head and then I remember.” She pushes off the wall and puts her hands on her hips. “God, go talk to him before you explode.”
He really wishes she’d stop questioning his intelligence. “What are you-”
She points at Jared very unsubtly and snitches Jensen’s beer. “This is me dropping a smarten-up anvil on your head: he’s amenable; go have sex in the bathroom already.”
Jensen chokes. “Excuse me?” he splutters. He’s glad that she’s already stolen his drink, actually, because odds are good he just avoided spitting it all over himself.
She grins, all devious and shit. “Don’t make me start making the obvious jokes about your mouth or the probably proportionality of his anatomy…” she trails off and looks over her shoulder in Jared’s general direction. Jensen swallows.
“Oh, Belly, your smile could light a room,” he tells her irritably, mind reeling. He won’t let himself actually think about what she’s just told him, so he concentrates on Ross’s birthday coming up in another week or so. He and Jess have been talking about a big birthday party at the house, and it would be the first time he’ll have spent any extended amount of time there since he moved out. He misses the house.
She pokes him and he tries to focus on her again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jenny-bean,” she replies, grinning wider. “My smile kills puppies and causes pregnant women to miscarry.” He’s about to reply when she turns around at some commotion in the lobby. “Ooh! Mike just walked in! I love that crazy kid. I’m going to get him a drink.” She walks away.
“You’re a bitch!” he yells after her.
“Remember what I said,” she tosses over her shoulder.
He leans back against the wall and shakes his head and goes to take a drink before he remembers he’s been robbed. “Fucking…” he mutters, pushing off and heading for the bar again. The hired bartender is serving some concoction to Sandy, something big and fruity and layered, and Jensen stops midstep.
Sandy is drooping against the bar, her hair is drooping against her forehead, and the look on her face is one of those show-no-weakness, fuck-off-I’m-totally-fine expressions that Jensen is the absolute master of himself. And probably for the same reason, a nasty voice in his head snarks. And he can’t do it, can’t will himself to go and have a normal conversation with her. Not tonight.
He turns, thinking about going to talk to Sophia where she’s standing with Aldis, some blond-haired guy Jensen doesn’t recognize, and Jared’s friend Milo, who works in the White Sox clubhouse and always has the best stories about the crazy superstitious shit the players get it up to when it comes to their food. From the looks of Milo’s gestures, he’s telling one of his Ozzie Guillen stories and Jensen is very sorry he’s missing it.
But then he catches Jared’s eye and forgets all about baseball or mingling. Jared’s standing near the windows with a couple of girls Jensen doesn’t know, although the tall brunette to Jared’s left looks a lot like his sister, Megan. Jared smiles at him right over the tiny blonde’s head and Jensen feels like his insides have liquefied. It must show on his face because Jared’s smile goes even brighter and that voice Jensen usually controls pretty well smacks him out of the way and says you know what? Fuck it. We’re doing this.
Before he can stop and think about it, Jensen tips his head toward the back doors to the kitchen and raises on questioning eyebrow. Jared blinks, then turns back to the girls and extricates himself from their circle. The brunette catches his hand and yanks him into a tight hug, and she shoots Jensen a grin over his shoulder. Definitely the sister, then, Jensen thinks, turning and heading for the doors.
He pauses long enough to make sure Jared’s following, then rounds the corner and finds himself in the employee men’s. He has a second to stare at himself in the mirror while Jared’s footsteps are still approaching. He doesn’t particularly like what he sees when he looks, his face pretty pale, a little tired. His lips are kind of chapped and there are bags under his eyes big and purple enough to make any of his mother’s Red Hat Lady friends giddy over the prospect of matching luggage.
“What’s-”
He turns around as Jared stops in the doorway and cuts him off with a hand up. “I think we need to talk, except there’s the part where I don’t actually want to talk.” Especially when Jared stands there looking like he does and smiling. He’s just dressed for going to a bar and watching power hitters do what they do best, and Jensen wouldn’t have him any other way (except maybe naked, but there you go).
Jared’s smile falters for a second, then his eyes go dark and he cocks his head to the side. Nonverbal question? Jensen can work with that, and he grabs Jared by the elbow to pull him all the way into the room. He shuts the door behind him and shoves him against it.
“I don’t even---”
Jared shakes his head and pulls him closer with one huge paw around his back. “No,” he breathes over Jensen’s lips then moves to nuzzle his neck. “We’re not talking about this.”
“We should, though,” Jensen gasps as Jared presses his lips to his pulse point.
“I don’t want to,” Jared growls, scraping his teeth over Jensen’s throat. “And you just said you don’t want to. So.”
“Am I Norm?” Jensen chokes out, and promptly wants to kick himself.
Jared pulls back to look him in the eye. “What?”
Jensen ducks his head against Jared’s clavicle and focuses on pronouncing each word perfectly. “On the blog. Am I Norm? Because Norm and I have a seriously disgusting amount of stuff in common if he’s not… me. And I need to know if everything about Norm applies to me.”
Because at this point, Jensen is willing to admit that it’s pretty obvious that Chef Guy has been blatantly in love with Norm for ages, which, come to think of it, probably explains an assload of Jared's recent weirdness. Not to mention Chad.
“Are we seriously having this conversation now?” Jared asks, looking a little dazed. Jensen ducks his chin and flushes. Jared huffs and tips his face back up. “Because the answer’s yes.”
Jensen’s eyes flutter closed. “Okay,” he says.
“Technically I shouldn’t be doing this now,” Jared says, wrapping both of his arms around Jensen and tugging him against his chest. Jensen groans but Jared cuts him off with a quick press of his lips. “Jeff doesn’t get back until Saturday, so I still work here. I was planning all the dirty things I was going to do to you when you got home from work that night, you know.” He turns them so that Jensen’s pressed against the door and somehow gets one of his thighs between Jensen’s. Jensen scrabbles to fist his hands in Jared’s shirt and pull him closer. “When I officially no longer worked here, so I wouldn’t feel like I was going against my moral code or some shit when I grabbed you and tore your clothes off.
“It goes against my beliefs, you know, to throw a coworker on my bed and swallow his cock whole,” Jared says, rolling his hips against Jensen’s and drawing out a moan. Jensen doesn’t even care that he has no idea where this is going. Jared grins at him and soldiers on. “Or turn him over and lick him open until he can’t even breathe ‘cause he wants it so bad, and then slide my fingers in deep and stretch him wide 'til he's just begging me to fill him up with cock, and then sink into him so slow he can’t even form words except ‘faster’ and 'Jared' and takin’ the Lord’s name in vain.”
“Guh,” Jensen says intelligently.
“And I was going to wait,” Jared whispers, cupping Jensen’s face in both hands and snaring eye contact. “I don’t like to go against my beliefs, but it’s you. You. And I don't just want to fuck you until we pass out, though that sounds mighty fucking awesome, too. No, I want to sleep in the same bed with you every night and watch you grope around for your glasses in the morning, and I want to kiss you any goddamn time I please, even if you're sick or your morning breath tastes like hamster cage.”
Jensen stares at him for a second, chest heaving. "Okay," he says finally.
And then Jared’s kissing him hard enough to bruise and Jensen’s fumbling with Jared’s stupidly complicated belt buckle, and that pounding sound is totally Jensen’s heartbeat.
“I don’t want you to feel compromised,” Jensen says, pulling back just a little so he can see what he’s doing navigating the prong out of the hole to undo the buckle.
“Oh, god, you have no idea how compromised we’re about to be,” Jared laughs, batting his hands away and pressing closer. The doorknob is jammed against one of Jensen’s kidneys and he doesn’t care even a little bit.
“What a line,” Jensen says against Jared’s mouth, which pulls open in a smile. Jensen runs his tongue over Jared’s teeth, tangles it with Jared’s own.
Jared runs his hands down Jensen’s sides, back up under his shirt to feel his skin. “We probably shouldn’t do this here,” he says regretfully, even as he’s thumbing over nipples and tracing hipbones.
“I do have to come in here and read shit sometimes,” Jensen agrees, trailing his mouth over Jared’s jaw and arching into his hands.
“You know that Chad and Sophia have sex in here all the time, right?” Jared says, voice awfully calm and reasonable considering how hard the bulge in his jeans is. Or how hard he's grinding against Jensen.
“Yep,” Jensen agrees, going back to fiddling with the belt buckle. “So are we doing this now?”
Jared pulls back and looks down at him with affection. “People are probably talking about us right now,” he says.
Jensen rests his forehead against Jared’s shoulder. “Kristen and Sophia are probably telling everyone that you’ve got me on my knees right now.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Jared laughs, cupping Jensen’s face in his hands and pressing their heads together.
“Dickweed,” Jensen tells him. “I fully intend to spend a week memorizing how you taste everywhere sometime in the very near future, but in this bathroom? In these jeans, on this floor? Not a chance in hell.”
Jared thrusts against him one more time, still laughing even as they both groan. Jensen clenches his fingers in the small of his back and then pushes him away.
“Okay, seriously, though,” Jensen says, opting to be the sensible one. He ducks around Jared and splashes cold water on his face. “It’s your birthday party out there, Jared.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re right,” Jared agrees. He leans back on the door and smiles. “Hey, let’s go enjoy my party and then go home and have awesome sex, okay?”
--
They get home sometime around one in the morning, which was early enough to horrify Chad into calling Jensen an old man but plenty late for Jared, who was blitzed out of his mind. Jensen had been careful to stay sober enough to drive home while he sat at a table with Milo, Bartólo, and Mike, and talked baseball while he watched Jared accept a drink from just about everyone at the party.
“You only have a birthday once a year!” Jared had crowed.
Now Jared’s warm and pliable, content to lean on Jensen while he tries to get him upstairs and into bed with a minimum of knocking into walls.
Jensen helps him out of his jeans, having no trouble with the belt buckle this time, and basically pours him onto the bed.
Jensen’s about to turn out the lamp on the bedside table when Jared stirs and says, “Jen?”
“Yeah?” Jensen asks, pausing with his hand on the lamp switch.
Jared gives him the sleepy, drunk smile. “Stay here tonight?”
Jensen smiles and brushes his hair back off Jared’s forehead. “Yeah, okay. I’mma go get these contacts out, though.”
He goes back downstairs and stares at his reflection in the mirror for a long time after he’s put his contacts away. He’s always liked how blurry and indistinct he looks in the mirror when it’s just his naked eyeballs, but for the first time he enjoys even more how everything snaps into focus when he slips his glasses on.
He flips the light off and heads back upstairs, shedding clothes as he goes, even though he knows he’s going too be sorry. Jared keeps the AC in his room turned to ‘Canadian winter’ from May through October, and usually has a window cracked the rest of the year. Jared claims he has to be cold when he sleeps, since he puts off so much body heat. Jensen has to say that after the recent heat wave, he is definitely looking forward to shivering in July. The AC in his room doesn’t work very well, and the house doesn’t have central air.
Jared is sitting up in bed when Jensen gets back upstairs, holding a trashcan in his lap and looking a little green.
“I should not have had that girly shit Sandy made me drink last,” he groans as Jensen comes in and sets the trashcan back on the floor and makes him lie back down. Jensen thinks that the drink was probably Sandy’s way of getting the last word in, because he noticed how soft her eyes got as she watched the two of them together. Sandy isn’t the kind of girl who holds grudges.
“Chad and I warned you,” Jensen says, pushing Jared back and pulling the covers up to his chest.
“Yeah, you did,” Jared agrees, snuggling down. Jensen rounds the bed and crawls under the sheets. Jared immediately curls himself around him, huffing a goodnight into his ear and wrapping his arms around his waist.
--
Jensen takes another personal day on Tuesday. Eric doesn’t sound surprised in the least.
They only leave the bed to get food, and for that they order pizza.
Jensen ignores every call he gets. Well, except Jessica, and he only takes that call because Jared is a dead unconscious lump next to him at the time. He gets the feeling that Jessica’s more excited about the whole thing than he is, except then he remembers how he’s naked in Jared’s bed and tells her he’ll call her later.
If he forgets… well, his life suddenly got a lot more interesting. He figures she’ll get over it.
--
He wakes up in the middle of the night a few days later to the sound of someone typing next to him. He cracks one eye open and glares at Jared, who’s sitting up against the headboard with his Pro in his lap. He’s got the blanket pulled up over his legs, but Jensen has a feeling he’s still naked.
“Morn’,” Jensen rasps, running his tongue over his top teeth and grimacing.
Jared grins down at him. “Morning, beautiful.” He reaches over and pokes him in the ribs. Jensen hears dog tags jingle somewhere near the door, but for whatever reason, no dog jumps on the bed.
“I hate you,” Jensen mutters, sitting up just enough to grab his glasses from the bedside table, then scooting closer to lean against Jared’s shoulder and squint at the computer screen. “You actually writing?”
“Yep,” Jared says, snaking his arm around Jensen’s shoulders and pulling him closer. His skin is cold. “So I’m thinking that you, my dear Norm, are a fucking awesome muse.”
“Mmmkay,” Jensen says, snuggling back down and closing his eyes. “It’s ass o’clock and I’m goin’ back to sleep. I think Jeff’ll probably call me for a ride in a couple hours, since he’s an douchebag.”
He feels Jared lifting his glasses off his nose, and then he falls back asleep to the sound of Jared typing.
--
“If you think that I’m coming to the airport to pick your hairy carcass up at four in the morning, you’re demented,” Jensen says as soon as he hits the answer button. He lets the phone lie on the side of his face and keeps his eyes closed. He thinks about the fact his back is pressed up against Jared's and smiles.
“Hello, Jensen, how are you? I’m fine, thanks. Seattle was great. It was good to be near my parents, who are fine, by the way,” Jeff laughs. “Fuck, you’re pissy for someone getting laid regularly.”
“You try getting fucked in the ass by that and then we’ll talk,” Jensen retorts, sitting up and yawning.
Jared stirs and rolls over to blink at him sleepily. “You love it and you know it,” he says.
“Yeah, well, when I’m walking around more bowlegged than usual, I think Jeff’s got a right to know why,” Jensen replies, bending down to kiss him quick and dirty, then swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and planting his feet on the floor. “Where are my glasses?”
“My table,” Jared says, pointing.
“So Tinkerbell called me to tell me that you crazy kids were fucking in the bathroom at Jared’s birthday party,” Jeff says. “I got to say, I was shocked. Scandalized, even. I mean… you know what goes on in there.”
“Kristen has a very cold soul,” Jensen says, bending down to collect his clothes from wherever they landed last night. “I think her parents probably didn’t hug her enough. Also, we didn’t fuck in the bathroom.”
Jeff snorts. “Fucking, frottage; tomato, tomahto,” he says airily. “Anyway, come get me. You know how O’Hare freaks me out. I promise not to call you Jennifer.”
“The ex laughed at you when you called to ask her, didn’t she?” Jensen says wryly.
“My ex-wife is a flaming axe-wound,” Jeff agrees. “I called yesterday and she hung up on me. And don’t even ask what she said when I implied that she might even bring the kids to come pick Daddy up. Jesus, you’d’a thought I was asking her to flame-broil them and, fuck, I don’t know, serve the little bastards over rice pilaf. Maybe with some tzatziki sauce on the side.”
Jeff’s ex is the anti-Jessica. Jensen doesn’t even know what the woman’s name is, since Jeff only ever refers to her as The Ex or The Bitch, but even Eric agrees that she’s absolutely heinous so Jensen figures she must be. Eric’s one of those guys who gets along with everyone.
What Jensen does know is that Jeff’s divorce was long, messy, and vicious, and that eventually Jeff just gave up and said she could have whatever she wanted. She got the house and Jeff’s restaurant, but she had to share custody of their two kids, who are perfect little monsters.
“Tell him to get a cab, the cheap bastard,” Jared grumbles just before Jensen leaves the room.
“I’m supposed to tell you to get a cab,” Jensen reports.
“There is no power in the universe gonna compel me to try to find a cab at four-thirty in the morning, bucko,” Jeff says very seriously. “Come on now, princess. I missed the Altima while I was away.”
Jensen can hear Jared getting out of bed and moving around upstairs.
“If I have to buy new tires again because of this little expedition, I fully expect you to subsidize them,” Jensen tells Jeff conversationally as he drops his ball of clothes on his bedroom floor and roots around for something that smells clean. He ends up with a pair of checks that aren’t stained and a t-shirt that claims he went to Northwestern that he thinks might actually have been Sandy’s sleep shirt.
“I think I’m probably good for that,” Jeff agrees.
Jared pokes his head in the bedroom door. “You know, you’d save yourself time if you’d just move your beauty products upstairs,” he says.
“Dude, trust me, we need our own bathroom space. No way am I subjecting my shit to your stench,” Jensen says cheerfully, covering the mouthpiece of his phone. He grins at him on his way into his bathroom.
“Aw, that sounds like you’re jealous,” Jared says, smacking his ass as he passes. “I’m gonna go make coffee.”
“I love everything about you,” Jensen says immediately. The look Jared gives him suddenly has him way more interested in tackling him to the floor and liking him all over than driving out to the airport to pick up Jeff.
“Focus,” Jeff says sternly. “I think I can hear your dick perking up from here and just… no. So tell me about your big gay love story instead.”
“Level of detail?” Jensen asks, raising an eyebrow at himself in the mirror. His face looks better, less puffy and gray.
“Very low,” Jeff replies. “Don’t be like Chad. Chad’s stories make me never want to think about pussy again, and I love pussy. God.”
“I don’t know, pussy can’t do much for your prostate,” Jensen says, enjoying the gagging sound Jeff makes. “Anyway, fuck you. This whole thing’s only a couple of days old and I feel like talking about it will jinx me forever.”
Jeff laughs. “Yeah, ‘cause absolutely nobody saw this coming or anything.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jensen snaps. He grabs his toothbrush and one of the tubes of toothpaste. He’s really got to think about culling some of them out. He has way too many.
“Can I be best man in your Canadian wedding?”
“Jess already claimed it,” Jensen says around his toothbrush. “Also, you are a dick.”
“Ah, so you’re wearing the dress, you Maid-of-Honor haver,” Jeff says. Jensen keeps brushing and the conversation lapses for a moment. Then Jeff snorts. “I suppose Chad is playing Jared’s best man?”
“As we’re not actually getting married, I have no idea,” Jensen says slowly after he spits. “But, yes, I imagine he would be.”
“You know, I never thought I’d say this, but I kind of missed that smelly little fucker. There was a guy there who kind of reminded me of him. Squinty and short and vile, but somehow much less fun.”
“God, they might be twins,” Jensen says. Jared appears in the bathroom doorway with Jensen’s thermos in his hands. He raises his eyebrows. “Does Chad have a brother?”
Jared gives him a funny look. “Chad has more siblings than he can even count. His parents get remarried for sport,” he says. Jensen realizes he’s walking around naked and shoots him a frown, which goes away immediately when he gets a whiff of his coffee. He moans and makes grabby hands for the cup.
“Are you orgasming over the smell of coffee again?” Jeff demands.
“You rather hear a real orgasm? ‘Cause, you know, I got a pretty, willing boyfriend in front of me wearing no clothes at the moment…” Jensen trails off.
“Oh god, no. You two keep the assfucking to yourselves,” Jeff says quickly.
Jensen looks at Jared fondly. “No problem. Don't think I want to share it, anyway.”
Jared scratches his happy trail and stretches up like a big cat. “I’m goin’ back to sleep,” he says, but he points at Jensen’s bed. It’s closer and Harley’s sacked out in the middle of the comforter.
“I’m gonna wake you up when I get back,” Jensen warns him.
“So long as you do it with your mouth on my dick we shouldn’t have any problems,” Jared says, smiling serenely. He leans in for a kiss and goes to collapse next to the dog. He stumbles over a clump of dirty clothes and lands sprawled across the bed on his stomach. Harley huffs in protest and licks his ear.
Jensen shakes his head and hits the lights on his way out of the room. “You know, Jeff, it’s really a labor of serious fucking devotion to my job that I’m willing to do this,” he says. He grabs his keys from the kitchen counter and heads outside to his car.
“You’re a saint, Jensen Ackles,” Jeff says reverently.
“I expect some kind of recompense is all I’m saying.”
“Ooh, a mercenary and a martyr? My god, you are a Biblical figure.” Jeff pauses. “I mean, as long as we totally disregard Leviticus and all, you Sodomite.”
Jensen starts his engine. “Fucker. Have fun walking back to Oak Park.”
“Oh, look at the big man with the threats,” Jeff whistles.
“It’s negative reinforcement,” Jensen says. “I figure that if I do it enough, eventually you’ll get conditioned to stop bothering me at o’fuck-thirty in the morning and maybe even become a normal person.”
“Oh, and he has plans,” Jeff says, laughing.
“This right here is you eating shit and dying,” Jensen says. He merges onto the highway and turns on the radio.
“One of the Quickfires involved bull testicles. I thought of you.”
Jensen snorts. “I grew up in the fucking suburbs,” he says. “I’ve never been near a bull in my life, you troglodyte.”
“I was talking about the balls,” Jeff says after a second. “But… okay.”
“You know, gay jokes are really only effective when the party you’re using them on isn’t currently in a relationship with another dude. You’re just being a bigot. I don’t know if we can work together anymore if you’re gonna be such a homophobe.”
“Hey, by all means, Jenny, bone him in the middle of Lincoln Park during an Obama campaign speech, I don’t care. Everybody deserves love. I grew up in hippie central. I know.”
“That might send the wrong message to the undecided voters of Illinois,” Jensen says.
“Wrigley Field during a Cards game?” Jeff suggests.
“Find me an even whiter sea of people and we’ll talk. Anyway. You’re an asshole. Let’s talk about how you’re going to make this up to me.” Somebody tries to cut him off and he leans on the horn.
“I’ll talk to Eric about giving you a raise or something. Are you here yet? God, you drive like an Alzheimer’s patient.”
“And on that note, I will call you when I’m outside the terminal. Traffic sucks ass today. What the fuck? It’s four-thirty on a Friday!”
“I see how it is. You can’t drive and banter.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jensen says grumpily. “Good-bye, Jeff.”
--
Jensen picks Ross up from school that afternoon. It’s been way too long since the last time he saw his kid and he’s going through withdrawal. Ross decides he wants chicken fingers and French fries, like he’s pretending to be a normal kid, so they go to Hutton’s.
They’re sitting with drinks when Ross puts his menu down and narrows his eyes.
“What?” Jensen asks, glancing over the top of his own menu and raising one eyebrow.
“You look happy,” Ross says accusingly.
“All apologies,” Jensen grunts, turning back to the menu. The buffalo burger sounds pretty fucking tempting.
“I mean it, though. You look younger or something. Like, you’re smiling. Do I know you?”
Jensen sighs. “I’m actually your Aunt Mac, gender-swapped.”
“Sweet,” Ross says. “Buy me Rock Band for my Wii for my birthday? Which, by the way, is three weeks from yesterday. Dad won’t 'cause he's laaaaame.”
“Cry more,” Jensen says. He sets his own menu aside and looks around for Aldis, but no dice. In fact, the only other person in the dining room is Tim, the owner, who’s eating something crunchy at the bar.
“So Mom told me how you and Jared are gay now,” Ross says.
Jensen nods. “Yes.”
“Cool. So you’re all kinds of synonyms for happy.”
Jensen narrows his eyes. “You’re not… surprised. Why are you not surprised?”
Ross rolls his eyes. “Dad. Come on.”
“What? Do I give off gay vibes that even nine-year-olds pick up on?” Jensen cries, just as Aldis approaches the table with a basket of fries and a bottle of ketchup.
“Uh… should I come back?” Aldis asks, cocking his head to the side.
“Thanks, dude,” Ross says, grabbing a fry and stuffing it in his mouth whole.
Jensen wants to thump his head on the table, but that would probably look bad for a thirty-year-old. Ross could probably get away with it, though. “No, we’re fine,” he says wearily.
“Dad’s just upset because his gayitude is totally unsurprising,” Ross says helpfully. “We’re talking our way through it.”
Aldis raises his eyebrows. “Uh, yeah. I’ll come back,” he says. He gives Jensen a look that says ‘look at you with the precocious kid’ before heading back for the kitchen. Jensen thinks harder about smacking himself in the face with the table, so he takes a fry instead.
Ross gives him a serious business look. “Look, Mom said that she wasn’t surprised, and that she’s happy for you. I’m guessing that she has a pretty good grip on things, since she was married to you. So I react like she reacted.”
Jensen stares at him, his gorgeous, brilliant little boy. “So you’re telling me that you have tailored your response to my gayness to your mother?”
Ross nods. “It's only logical, Dad," he says.
"Gee, thanks, genius spawn," Jensen deadpans.
"Seriously, Dad, I don’t think it’s a big deal. So you like dudes. Hooray!” He waves his hands halfheartedly.
“Is this because you like Jared more than me?” Jensen asks. He grabs the ketchup and pours a big puddle on a side plate.
Ross pauses for an awfully long time before shooting him a coy little smile that is so Jensen’s mother it’s not even funny. “Possibly,” he says.
Jensen has to laugh at that. “So, if my boyfriend was, say… Chad, would you be similarly not bothered by this?”
“I think you’d be more bothered than me in that case,” Ross says gently, scrunching up his nose. “I mean, gay for Chad? Really? Do girls even like Chad?” Jensen laughs and chokes on the fry he’s swallowing.
“He’s having a baby with somebody,” Jensen points out. “Then again, Sophia’s an artist, so her tastes are weird anyway.”
Aldis comes back and takes their orders, and they talk about Ross’s birthday for a while. On the way out to the car later, though, Ross stops and looks up at him.
“You know what does surprise me, though?” he asks. “That you end up with Jared and not Kristen.”
Jensen thinks about his two-year flirtation with the pastry chef, not to mention their one disastrous night, and sighs. He ruffles Ross’s hair and unlocks the car. “Yeah, me too.”
Ross shoots him that ornery smile again. "Okay, I'm also surprised that Jared broke up with Sandy for you. I mean, really?"
--
Jensen cooks for Jared’s birthday the next night. They watch the Astros beat the Cubs on the big screen and eat steak and potatoes because Jared swears that for once, he wants to eat something everyone eats.
“None of our weird classy food, okay?” he’d said when Jensen asked him what he wanted for birthday dinner. “I do want wine, though. Okay? Lots of wine.”
They sit at the dining room table, Jensen in a pair of holey jeans and an old Biggio jersey-“Hey, he’s little and scrappy and old like you!” Jared had crowed when he saw it; Jensen smacked him-and Jared wearing a truly ugly combo of ratty Underarmor shirt and Boston Celtics-green basketball shorts. Jared refused to dress up for his birthday.
Jared kicks him under the table and grins at him. “I think you’re pretty fantastic,” he says.
Jensen shrugs and kicks back. He got some grease on his shirt while he was cooking, so he’s still kind of pissed about it. He’d been more interested in pinning Jared against the counter and groping him than putting on an apron, and poor Craig Biggio paid the price. “Just as God made me,” he says.
“God done good, then,” Jared says, face crinkled up in a big smile, then he reaches across the table and snipes a chunk of Jensen’s steak. Jensen thinks about stabbing him with his fork.
"Well, that was embarrassingly heartfelt," Jensen comments, taking a sip of his wine, but he smiles.
When Jared goes to push his chair out a little while later, it snags on the edge of Jensen’s Iraqi rug and sends him stumbling sideways into the wall.
“Death to the infidel!” Jensen says, cracking up.
“I could have died just now, jerkface,” Jared says.
“Dude, that’s how I know you really like me,” Jensen says. “Your insults are startin’ to really suck.”
Jared’s grin turns absolutely filthy. “Must be all the… practice I’m getting lately, I guess,” he says. He points down. “This carpet is a lumpy piece of shit. It’s horrible, and I don’t care if it matches the walls. Either it goes or I go.”
Jensen gives him an interested look. “I have to take over the mortgage?”
Jared comes around the table and hoists him to his feet. Multiple joints crack and whatever Jared was going to say gets completely lost in a gale of laughter. “Holy shit, you even harmonized that shit,” Jared wheezes, wrapping his arms around the small of Jensen’s back and pulling them flush together. “I’m thoroughly impressed, old man.”
“Fuck you, whippersnapper,” Jensen says.
“I want some ice cream,” Jared says, pulling back. “Chocolate chip ice cream. Do we have any rock salt? I could make ice cream. I have a machine, you know.” He grins.
Jensen just pulls him closer and kisses him.
Epilogue
MASTER POST
CHAPTER SIX
Chad calls at four o’clock Monday morning. “By the way, this is a surprise party,” he says like that’s an acceptable greeting. Jensen doesn’t even bother to say anything, just lays there with his face mashed into his pillows and his phone propped near his ear. “Got it, Ackles?” Chad continues. “I remind you this because we decided it’s up to you to get him here without thinking something’s up. Tonight. Eight-thirty.”
“Guh,” Jensen says. Mostly, his brain isn’t working and he isn’t sure he can even open his eyes at this hour. That, and he drank half a bottle of Patrón before he passed out, so he’s pretty sure he’s still drunk.
Chad practically growls. “Dude, I don’t even care that the two of you are whatever the fuck you are, okay? Just make this happen. Me and Sandy are taking care of the rest.”
“But they broke up,” Jensen manages to say and then he immediately wants to bang his head on the nightstand.
He can actually hear Chad’s eyeroll through the phone. “They were never together, you fucktard. They were the ‘but labels make the sex boring’ couple. And now they aren’t having sex. Why do you think he didn't have a problem working with her? Just, fuck, I don’t care what you do, okay? Promise him he can fuck you with a frozen lamb shank, promise him that you’ll fuck him with a frozen lamb shank, or, I don’t know, buy him a Zagnut and a Wild Cherry Pepsi. Just get his ass here at eight-thirty, capiche?”
“Um, what?”
“Happy Bastille Day,” Chad says and then hangs up. Jensen throws his phone at the wall and shoves his head under both of his pillows.
--
Jensen gets up properly around eleven because despite his best efforts to stay in bed all day watching daytime TV, he just can’t stand lying there. He could be out, cooking something or maybe huddling in a corner of a coffee shop, writing emo poetry or something.
He discovers that his phone is now in four pieces from its Chad-induced collision with the wall, so his first stop after the shower is the Verizon next to Frosting. He drops the crushed remains of the old Sony Ericsson on the counter and gives the salesgirl, who’s playing a game on her phone when he comes in, a hopeful look.
“Please, I need something that’ll make my life a brighter place,” he says. She raises an eyebrow at him, but she puts her phone down next to the computer behind her and gives him her attention. She’s got a long blonde ponytail and a nametag that says Blake, and she’s way prettier than Jensen, which he appreciates. “Come on, Blake, I know you won’t let me down.”
She smiles at him and cracks her gum. “Well, what are you looking for in a phone? Camera, Bluetooth, 3G capability? Maybe just a normal phone?” she adds at his blank look.
“Well, this old one was a good friend to me for a long time,” he lies, pointing at the pieces. God, he hated that phone. He is not sorry to see it go. He’s a little sad that he’ll have to go around getting everyone’s numbers again, though. “I think it’s time to move on, though. Do you have anything shiny?”
“Shiny?” she asks, blinking.
“Like, if I whip it out at a party, people will crowd around and ooh and ahh over it,” he says. Blake smirks at him. “Yeah, I know. ‘That’s what he said,’” he adds wearily.
“Well, you want shiny, you probably want LG. Very shiny.” She comes out from behind the counter and beckons him over to a display by the window. “I personally recommend the Dare. I have one. It’s like the iPhone, only smaller and shinier and… less douchey. No offense, but you look like you probably spend a lot of time being concerned about not looking douchey.”
Jensen doesn’t know what’s douchey about an iPhone except that her company doesn’t carry them (except Jared totally has one, and Jared is kind of a douche), and he’s not sure what he did to deserve her judgmental tone, but he shrugs and fiddles with the Dare floor model. It is certainly shiny. “Okay, whatever. Tell me what I need to do to make this puppy mine.”
Blake grins at him. “Let’s look you up in the computer. Ten-digit number?”
He leaves the store fifteen minutes later, kind of hating Verizon and wondering if the can-you-hear-me-now guy now owns a little of his soul. To make himself feel better, he stops into Frosting, which has just opened for the day.
Danneel sees him coming from the back room and has a Honeybear out on the counter by the time he stops in front of her.
“Fancy seeing you,” she says dryly.
He glances up from his new phone for the first time since Blake activated it, a little surprised. He looks at the pastry on the counter and smiles. “I can’t help myself,” he says absently. “Got a new phone.”
“I see that,” she says. “Shiny.”
“That was the point,” he says smugly. “I have the honest-to-god, Google-searching, email-checking, Facebook-stalking, blog-reading, porn-surfing Internet on my phone. And it came with Tetris. My life is pretty much complete. Not that I, uh, need to look at porn on here. But I could.”
She rolls her eyes and snaps her fingers under his nose. “Focus, honeybear. So it’s Monday. Isn’t Supernatural closed today? What brings you to this end of Chicagoland?”
He waves the new phone at her and takes a huge bite of what is actually just a fancy bear claw. “I murdered my old one. It had to go.”
“Should I have put out a Natural Born Killer instead?” she asks, arching her eyebrows.
He locks the screen and shoves the phone in his pocket. “What’s with these names, anyway?”
She shrugs. “Sam and I are fucking clever, shut up. Also, we may watch too many gangster movies.”
“I should fix one of you up with my boss, Eric. Have you been to Supernatural? The dining room looks like Martin Scorcese and fucking backroads Americana threw up in an abandoned factory. I don’t even know.”
“Isn’t it in an old factory, though?” she asks, brow furrowed.
“Well, yeah,” he says. “I think that’s the point. Anyway. Tonight, they’re having a surprise party for Jared-his birthday’s this weekend-and it’s my job to get him there without him suspecting anything. Except I am the least stealthy bastard alive, so you have any ideas?”
Her whole face lights up. “I’m awesome at subterfuge, I’ll have you know,” she says. There is something distinctly devious about her smile as she leads him over to the couch and starts scribbling something down on the cupcake-shaped paper.
--
When he gets home late that afternoon after a trip to Trader Joe’s, Jensen finds Jared hunched over his computer at the kitchen island, surrounded by a bunch of papers and a snarl of various cords.
“Um, hi,” he says cautiously, waving a little with his free hand.
Jared startles and looks up. Jensen watches as his expression goes from an honest smile to a shuttered look to something that’s just awkward and wary. “Hi,” he says. He takes his reading glasses off and sets them on the keyboard.
Jensen dumps his grocery bag on the counter next to the fridge and turns around. Jared stares at his chin. They’re both frozen there for a second before Jensen clears his throat.
“So you think we can get past the elephant in the room?” he says, ducking his head to catch Jared’s gaze and offering a sheepish smile. Jared blinks in surprise then nods slowly.
“Uh, yeah,” he says. He moves the glasses to the side and closes his computer. Jensen watches the Apple logo light go out. “So… how’s things?”
Jensen leans back against the counter and shrugs. “Could be better,” he says honestly. There’s an uncomfortable pause. “So, I hear you have a birthday coming up.”
“Chad better not be planning something,” Jared says abruptly. “Remember what happened last year? I will remove every piece of skin from his genitalia with a fucking salad fork-including his taint-if he tries that shit again?”
Jensen suspects that Chad’s main mission in life is to make the people around him as uncomfortable as possible, and Jared is one of Chad’s favorite people. Chad is a socially transmitted infection, but he’s sort of fun and generally a pretty good friend if you can overlook the smell and the bullshit and the pervasive douchebaggery. As far as Jensen can tell, his presence can be blamed on Sandy, who inherited him from some roommate she had in undergrad, and then she went and brought him with her to Chicago when she came to get her Master's at Northwestern. And then Chad got the job at Gilmore’s with Jared, and the rest is, lamentably, history.
Anyway, for Jared’s birthday last year, there had been blindfolds and a series of increasingly shady strip clubs involved. Jensen had been there, actually. His divorce wasn’t finalized yet and he was still living at home, so it was a chance to get out of the house and be with people who weren’t Jessica.
“It’s Jared’s birthday,” Sandy had cajoled. “He thinks you’re awesome, and I want you there because I think you’re awesome, too. Plus, you’re pretty enough to cancel out the Chad-like horror that’s going to be all over all the pictures.”
“I’m going to get hit on,” Jensen had said. “I don’t like getting hit on.”
“Well, f you don’t come I’m going to hit you. How’s that sound?” Sandy had responded, smiling sweetly. It wasn’t an idle threat; she packed a wallop for being so small.
“Fine, I’ll be there,” he’d said in his best long-suffering, the-things-I-do-for-you tone, “but don’t expect me to have bells on.”
“That would be weird,” she’d agreed. “I don’t think Chad picked any fetish clubs.”
Anyway, long story short, at the third club that night, Chad disappeared for a while and was discovered doing blow in the ladies’ room with two high school girls and Eric’s accountant, Misha. Jared, who was wasted and annoyed by the fact it was Chippendales night, punched him, triggered a brawl, and got to spend the night in a jail cell.
Jensen winces at the memory and shakes his head. “Since when has Chad ever been able to keep shit under wraps? If he was planning something, I’m pretty sure you would know. People in Indiana would know.”
“Okay, point,” Jared concedes.
“Anyway, Home Run Derby’s on tonight. I was thinking we could go out, find some dive bar, and you know, have a couple of beers, play some pool, watch Hamilton kick Longoria and that squinty Canadian guy from the Twins’ asses. Whatcha say?” He gives Jared his best I’m-really-trying-here smile and too his delight Jared smiles back.
“Yeah, man,” he says, nodding. “That sounds great. And Hamilton’s got this shit in the bag.”
Jensen pumps his fist in the air and just barely misses clocking his elbow on the refrigerator handle. “Well, get your ass up,” he says.
--
They end up at some bar not too far from home, shooting pool and laughing like old times while they wait for the Derby to start. Jared’s mostly complaining about his agent and the book, but Jensen’s just enjoying the sound of his voice.
“He’s all like, ‘Jared, I need some results soon or they’re gonna want your advance back.’ And I’m like, ‘Beav. Jim. I have writer’s block like a bitch,’ so he tells me to figure my shit out and call him. Seriously, that’s what he said to me. ‘Call me when you figure your shit out, Padalecki, and I suggest you do it quick.’”
Jensen’s about to respond when his phone rings. It’s Danneel.
“Hey, crazy man, it’s time.”
“My TV’s still full of Josh Hamilton kicking ass, so no, it is not time,” Jensen replies, rolling his eyes.
“Wrong answer, sugarplum. And who's Josh Hamilton? Anyway, now do like we planned.”
He frowns and scratches the back of his neck, schooling his features to look properly annoyed. It’s not too hard, really. “Tonight, man?” he says. “But-yeah, okay. Yes, Eric. I know… Fine. I’ll go check.”
“Don’t ya know, don’t ya know that you are a superstar!” Danneel sing-songs. And then she hangs up before he can break character and swear at her.
Jensen lets his voice go very dull and continues to fake-converse. “Yeah, I’ll see you in the morning. After your restaurant has not burned down. Jerk.” He hangs up and shoves his phone back in his pocket.
“That new phone is pretty hardcore, by the way,” Jared says. He looks like he would dearly like to steal it and play with it for a while but isn’t quite sure how to ask. The frown on Jensen’s face seems to sink in a second later and he cocks his head. “What’s wrong?”
Jensen shrugs and scowls some more. “Eric. He thinks he left some computer on in the office and you know what a cheap bastard he is. He wants me to stop by and make sure everything’s all set.”
“Oh, lame,” Jared agrees. He takes a big swig of his beer. “Well, I’m game if you are. I could give a shit about the National Leaguers, so could go for a change of scenery.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jensen says. “Come on.”
It always freaks Jensen out to see Jared trying to fold himself into the Altima. It’s not like it’s a Miata or even, like, a Mini Cooper, and it’s actually a pretty good-size four-door, and Jensen isn’t really that much smaller than him anyway, but for some reason Jared just looks too big to be allowed. They listen to Ryan Adams whining about teaching himself to grow old on the way, because Jared really digs alt country and Jensen doesn’t care.
“Dude, are they having a party at the church or what?” Jared comments, pointing at the huge bunch of cars parked in the church parking lot across the street from Supernatural.
Jensen shrugs and drives around the building to pull into his usual spot in the empty lot. “Who the fuck knows. Maybe it’s free bingo night. Come on, let’s get this over with. You comin’ in or you gonna sit out here?”
Jared raises his eyebrows. “It gonna take all night, or what?”
“I don’t know how long it’ll take. Come on, you can jack off to Jeff’s firemen calendar while you wait. I won’t even make fun of you.”
“Oh, and it makes gay jokes, great,” Jared mumbles as he unfolds himself from the car, but he’s grinning.
Jensen leaves Jared in the dry stock room, where he immediately starts rearranging cans on one of the shelves, and calls Sandy while he heads for the front of the building. She meets him in the lobby, which is decorated obnoxiously with paper streamers. She looks absolutely stunning in a floating purple dress, and he thinks she might already be drunk. He wouldn’t blame her.
“Thank you,” she says, swaying a little on her too-high heels.
“S'nothing,” he says, waving a hand. “Gimme a couple minutes and I’ll have him coming through the B-station doors right into the dining room, okay? Get everybody ready.”
She hugs him tight around the middle then scurries off to gather everybody up. He can hear people laughing and talking out in the dining room.
He gets back into the kitchen to find Jared tipped back in Jeff’s spinning chair, balancing a Sharpie on the bridge of his nose and watching a live-update of the Derby on his phone. Morneau’s hacking away at round three.
“You sure you wanna put that on your face?” Jensen asks. “You don’t even know where’s it’s been.”
“I’m gonna guess somewhere better than Chad’s ass,” Jared says, shrugging and tossing the marker back on the desktop. “So what’s up out there? You finished yet? ‘Cause I was thinking we could just head down the street, maybe see if Chris’s behind the bar at Hutton’s. How’s that sound?”
Considering that Chris, who’s Jared’s favorite bartender too, is almost certainly out in the dining room, Jensen gives a noncommittal shrug. “No. Eric’s got shit all fucked up out there. You wanna come keep me company?”
Jared gets to his feet and nods. “Yeah, yeah. Lead the way.”
Jensen notices that the line is still a mess from whatever they made for the party, so he loops Jared through the back room, cuts through the oddly cold dishroom, and up through coffee station B. Jared’s chattering on about how he thinks Eric should consider switching to Mac for the computer system, which is an old argument, and Jensen nods, not really listening. He walks backward and stops when his ass hits the double doors that lead out into the dining room. He knocks his heel against the kickplate as a signal.
Jared looks at him with concern. “What?”
“Just… happy early birthday, dude,” Jensen says.
Jared crinkles up in a smile that Jensen feels in his gut. “Thanks,” he says.
Jensen shoves the doors open and walks backward into the room. He keeps his eyes trained straight on Jared so he can watch his reaction as everybody jumps out yelling “Surprise!”
“Holy shit,” Jared breathes, looking around, his huge smile growing even brighter. He catches Jensen’s eye again and nods. Jensen smiles back. “Holy. Shit.”
Chad comes up, wearing two party hats like devil horns, bearing a big, ugly orange lei and a party hat Jensen has a feeling is going to end up on his own head. “You made it!” Chad says too loudly. He smells like Captain Morgan when he slings an arm around each of their necks to hug them. Jared thumps him hard on the back.
“Whose idea was all this?” Jared asks, looking around in awe when Chad pulls back.
“Me and Sandy, man,” Chad says, lei-ing Jared. “Oh, don’t be shy, Jenny,” he adds, grabbing Jensen before he can sneak away and snapping the hat on his head. The elastic stinks a little against the stubble under his chin.
“Gee, just what I always wanted,” Jensen says dryly, but he doesn’t take it off.
Sophia comes barreling up, followed by a crush of other people. “Look alive!” somebody yells, and then a million people are crowding in with cameras and drinks and other embarrassing adornments for Jared, so Jensen slips off too the side and heads for the bar, job done.
--
Jensen has a bottle of beer in his hand and is leaning against the doorway to the second dining room, pleasantly buzzed, when Kristen sidles up next to him and leans against the other side of the doorjamb. She’s dressed in black pants and a tight blue summer sweater that makes her eyes glow. She smells like sugar like she always does, and he thinks vaguely with a twist in his stomach that there is no way the smile on her face can mean anything good for him.
He’s been watching Jared make his way around the room, possibly with a huge, stupid smile on his own face to match Jared’s, and when she puts a hand on his arm he actually jumps.
“The way you’ve been MIA lately, I wasn’t sure you’d be here tonight,” she says.
“I wasn’t either,” he admits, “but here I am.”
She leans back and looks up at him through her bangs. “I totally get it now, by the way.”
“You get what?” he asks, absently, tracking Jared’s progress from laughing with Sophia to grabbing one of the Jasons in a huge bearhug.
“Oh, you know,” she says. He glances at her, a little thrown, but she’s smiling like she thinks he’s the most adorable thing ever. He really hopes she doesn’t decide to pinch his cheeks. Any of them.
He frowns. “I’m sure I don’t.”
“God, I forgot how dense you are,” she says, sounding a little awed. “I mean, yeah, it’s one of those things you should have on your Facebook. You know, like, ‘Activities: cooking, sleeping, looking pretty, and being stupid.’ But I guess I always forget, or I just like to keep giving you the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know. But then you go and drop your anvils of stupid on my head and then I remember.” She pushes off the wall and puts her hands on her hips. “God, go talk to him before you explode.”
He really wishes she’d stop questioning his intelligence. “What are you-”
She points at Jared very unsubtly and snitches Jensen’s beer. “This is me dropping a smarten-up anvil on your head: he’s amenable; go have sex in the bathroom already.”
Jensen chokes. “Excuse me?” he splutters. He’s glad that she’s already stolen his drink, actually, because odds are good he just avoided spitting it all over himself.
She grins, all devious and shit. “Don’t make me start making the obvious jokes about your mouth or the probably proportionality of his anatomy…” she trails off and looks over her shoulder in Jared’s general direction. Jensen swallows.
“Oh, Belly, your smile could light a room,” he tells her irritably, mind reeling. He won’t let himself actually think about what she’s just told him, so he concentrates on Ross’s birthday coming up in another week or so. He and Jess have been talking about a big birthday party at the house, and it would be the first time he’ll have spent any extended amount of time there since he moved out. He misses the house.
She pokes him and he tries to focus on her again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jenny-bean,” she replies, grinning wider. “My smile kills puppies and causes pregnant women to miscarry.” He’s about to reply when she turns around at some commotion in the lobby. “Ooh! Mike just walked in! I love that crazy kid. I’m going to get him a drink.” She walks away.
“You’re a bitch!” he yells after her.
“Remember what I said,” she tosses over her shoulder.
He leans back against the wall and shakes his head and goes to take a drink before he remembers he’s been robbed. “Fucking…” he mutters, pushing off and heading for the bar again. The hired bartender is serving some concoction to Sandy, something big and fruity and layered, and Jensen stops midstep.
Sandy is drooping against the bar, her hair is drooping against her forehead, and the look on her face is one of those show-no-weakness, fuck-off-I’m-totally-fine expressions that Jensen is the absolute master of himself. And probably for the same reason, a nasty voice in his head snarks. And he can’t do it, can’t will himself to go and have a normal conversation with her. Not tonight.
He turns, thinking about going to talk to Sophia where she’s standing with Aldis, some blond-haired guy Jensen doesn’t recognize, and Jared’s friend Milo, who works in the White Sox clubhouse and always has the best stories about the crazy superstitious shit the players get it up to when it comes to their food. From the looks of Milo’s gestures, he’s telling one of his Ozzie Guillen stories and Jensen is very sorry he’s missing it.
But then he catches Jared’s eye and forgets all about baseball or mingling. Jared’s standing near the windows with a couple of girls Jensen doesn’t know, although the tall brunette to Jared’s left looks a lot like his sister, Megan. Jared smiles at him right over the tiny blonde’s head and Jensen feels like his insides have liquefied. It must show on his face because Jared’s smile goes even brighter and that voice Jensen usually controls pretty well smacks him out of the way and says you know what? Fuck it. We’re doing this.
Before he can stop and think about it, Jensen tips his head toward the back doors to the kitchen and raises on questioning eyebrow. Jared blinks, then turns back to the girls and extricates himself from their circle. The brunette catches his hand and yanks him into a tight hug, and she shoots Jensen a grin over his shoulder. Definitely the sister, then, Jensen thinks, turning and heading for the doors.
He pauses long enough to make sure Jared’s following, then rounds the corner and finds himself in the employee men’s. He has a second to stare at himself in the mirror while Jared’s footsteps are still approaching. He doesn’t particularly like what he sees when he looks, his face pretty pale, a little tired. His lips are kind of chapped and there are bags under his eyes big and purple enough to make any of his mother’s Red Hat Lady friends giddy over the prospect of matching luggage.
“What’s-”
He turns around as Jared stops in the doorway and cuts him off with a hand up. “I think we need to talk, except there’s the part where I don’t actually want to talk.” Especially when Jared stands there looking like he does and smiling. He’s just dressed for going to a bar and watching power hitters do what they do best, and Jensen wouldn’t have him any other way (except maybe naked, but there you go).
Jared’s smile falters for a second, then his eyes go dark and he cocks his head to the side. Nonverbal question? Jensen can work with that, and he grabs Jared by the elbow to pull him all the way into the room. He shuts the door behind him and shoves him against it.
“I don’t even---”
Jared shakes his head and pulls him closer with one huge paw around his back. “No,” he breathes over Jensen’s lips then moves to nuzzle his neck. “We’re not talking about this.”
“We should, though,” Jensen gasps as Jared presses his lips to his pulse point.
“I don’t want to,” Jared growls, scraping his teeth over Jensen’s throat. “And you just said you don’t want to. So.”
“Am I Norm?” Jensen chokes out, and promptly wants to kick himself.
Jared pulls back to look him in the eye. “What?”
Jensen ducks his head against Jared’s clavicle and focuses on pronouncing each word perfectly. “On the blog. Am I Norm? Because Norm and I have a seriously disgusting amount of stuff in common if he’s not… me. And I need to know if everything about Norm applies to me.”
Because at this point, Jensen is willing to admit that it’s pretty obvious that Chef Guy has been blatantly in love with Norm for ages, which, come to think of it, probably explains an assload of Jared's recent weirdness. Not to mention Chad.
“Are we seriously having this conversation now?” Jared asks, looking a little dazed. Jensen ducks his chin and flushes. Jared huffs and tips his face back up. “Because the answer’s yes.”
Jensen’s eyes flutter closed. “Okay,” he says.
“Technically I shouldn’t be doing this now,” Jared says, wrapping both of his arms around Jensen and tugging him against his chest. Jensen groans but Jared cuts him off with a quick press of his lips. “Jeff doesn’t get back until Saturday, so I still work here. I was planning all the dirty things I was going to do to you when you got home from work that night, you know.” He turns them so that Jensen’s pressed against the door and somehow gets one of his thighs between Jensen’s. Jensen scrabbles to fist his hands in Jared’s shirt and pull him closer. “When I officially no longer worked here, so I wouldn’t feel like I was going against my moral code or some shit when I grabbed you and tore your clothes off.
“It goes against my beliefs, you know, to throw a coworker on my bed and swallow his cock whole,” Jared says, rolling his hips against Jensen’s and drawing out a moan. Jensen doesn’t even care that he has no idea where this is going. Jared grins at him and soldiers on. “Or turn him over and lick him open until he can’t even breathe ‘cause he wants it so bad, and then slide my fingers in deep and stretch him wide 'til he's just begging me to fill him up with cock, and then sink into him so slow he can’t even form words except ‘faster’ and 'Jared' and takin’ the Lord’s name in vain.”
“Guh,” Jensen says intelligently.
“And I was going to wait,” Jared whispers, cupping Jensen’s face in both hands and snaring eye contact. “I don’t like to go against my beliefs, but it’s you. You. And I don't just want to fuck you until we pass out, though that sounds mighty fucking awesome, too. No, I want to sleep in the same bed with you every night and watch you grope around for your glasses in the morning, and I want to kiss you any goddamn time I please, even if you're sick or your morning breath tastes like hamster cage.”
Jensen stares at him for a second, chest heaving. "Okay," he says finally.
And then Jared’s kissing him hard enough to bruise and Jensen’s fumbling with Jared’s stupidly complicated belt buckle, and that pounding sound is totally Jensen’s heartbeat.
“I don’t want you to feel compromised,” Jensen says, pulling back just a little so he can see what he’s doing navigating the prong out of the hole to undo the buckle.
“Oh, god, you have no idea how compromised we’re about to be,” Jared laughs, batting his hands away and pressing closer. The doorknob is jammed against one of Jensen’s kidneys and he doesn’t care even a little bit.
“What a line,” Jensen says against Jared’s mouth, which pulls open in a smile. Jensen runs his tongue over Jared’s teeth, tangles it with Jared’s own.
Jared runs his hands down Jensen’s sides, back up under his shirt to feel his skin. “We probably shouldn’t do this here,” he says regretfully, even as he’s thumbing over nipples and tracing hipbones.
“I do have to come in here and read shit sometimes,” Jensen agrees, trailing his mouth over Jared’s jaw and arching into his hands.
“You know that Chad and Sophia have sex in here all the time, right?” Jared says, voice awfully calm and reasonable considering how hard the bulge in his jeans is. Or how hard he's grinding against Jensen.
“Yep,” Jensen agrees, going back to fiddling with the belt buckle. “So are we doing this now?”
Jared pulls back and looks down at him with affection. “People are probably talking about us right now,” he says.
Jensen rests his forehead against Jared’s shoulder. “Kristen and Sophia are probably telling everyone that you’ve got me on my knees right now.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Jared laughs, cupping Jensen’s face in his hands and pressing their heads together.
“Dickweed,” Jensen tells him. “I fully intend to spend a week memorizing how you taste everywhere sometime in the very near future, but in this bathroom? In these jeans, on this floor? Not a chance in hell.”
Jared thrusts against him one more time, still laughing even as they both groan. Jensen clenches his fingers in the small of his back and then pushes him away.
“Okay, seriously, though,” Jensen says, opting to be the sensible one. He ducks around Jared and splashes cold water on his face. “It’s your birthday party out there, Jared.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re right,” Jared agrees. He leans back on the door and smiles. “Hey, let’s go enjoy my party and then go home and have awesome sex, okay?”
--
They get home sometime around one in the morning, which was early enough to horrify Chad into calling Jensen an old man but plenty late for Jared, who was blitzed out of his mind. Jensen had been careful to stay sober enough to drive home while he sat at a table with Milo, Bartólo, and Mike, and talked baseball while he watched Jared accept a drink from just about everyone at the party.
“You only have a birthday once a year!” Jared had crowed.
Now Jared’s warm and pliable, content to lean on Jensen while he tries to get him upstairs and into bed with a minimum of knocking into walls.
Jensen helps him out of his jeans, having no trouble with the belt buckle this time, and basically pours him onto the bed.
Jensen’s about to turn out the lamp on the bedside table when Jared stirs and says, “Jen?”
“Yeah?” Jensen asks, pausing with his hand on the lamp switch.
Jared gives him the sleepy, drunk smile. “Stay here tonight?”
Jensen smiles and brushes his hair back off Jared’s forehead. “Yeah, okay. I’mma go get these contacts out, though.”
He goes back downstairs and stares at his reflection in the mirror for a long time after he’s put his contacts away. He’s always liked how blurry and indistinct he looks in the mirror when it’s just his naked eyeballs, but for the first time he enjoys even more how everything snaps into focus when he slips his glasses on.
He flips the light off and heads back upstairs, shedding clothes as he goes, even though he knows he’s going too be sorry. Jared keeps the AC in his room turned to ‘Canadian winter’ from May through October, and usually has a window cracked the rest of the year. Jared claims he has to be cold when he sleeps, since he puts off so much body heat. Jensen has to say that after the recent heat wave, he is definitely looking forward to shivering in July. The AC in his room doesn’t work very well, and the house doesn’t have central air.
Jared is sitting up in bed when Jensen gets back upstairs, holding a trashcan in his lap and looking a little green.
“I should not have had that girly shit Sandy made me drink last,” he groans as Jensen comes in and sets the trashcan back on the floor and makes him lie back down. Jensen thinks that the drink was probably Sandy’s way of getting the last word in, because he noticed how soft her eyes got as she watched the two of them together. Sandy isn’t the kind of girl who holds grudges.
“Chad and I warned you,” Jensen says, pushing Jared back and pulling the covers up to his chest.
“Yeah, you did,” Jared agrees, snuggling down. Jensen rounds the bed and crawls under the sheets. Jared immediately curls himself around him, huffing a goodnight into his ear and wrapping his arms around his waist.
--
Jensen takes another personal day on Tuesday. Eric doesn’t sound surprised in the least.
They only leave the bed to get food, and for that they order pizza.
Jensen ignores every call he gets. Well, except Jessica, and he only takes that call because Jared is a dead unconscious lump next to him at the time. He gets the feeling that Jessica’s more excited about the whole thing than he is, except then he remembers how he’s naked in Jared’s bed and tells her he’ll call her later.
If he forgets… well, his life suddenly got a lot more interesting. He figures she’ll get over it.
--
He wakes up in the middle of the night a few days later to the sound of someone typing next to him. He cracks one eye open and glares at Jared, who’s sitting up against the headboard with his Pro in his lap. He’s got the blanket pulled up over his legs, but Jensen has a feeling he’s still naked.
“Morn’,” Jensen rasps, running his tongue over his top teeth and grimacing.
Jared grins down at him. “Morning, beautiful.” He reaches over and pokes him in the ribs. Jensen hears dog tags jingle somewhere near the door, but for whatever reason, no dog jumps on the bed.
“I hate you,” Jensen mutters, sitting up just enough to grab his glasses from the bedside table, then scooting closer to lean against Jared’s shoulder and squint at the computer screen. “You actually writing?”
“Yep,” Jared says, snaking his arm around Jensen’s shoulders and pulling him closer. His skin is cold. “So I’m thinking that you, my dear Norm, are a fucking awesome muse.”
“Mmmkay,” Jensen says, snuggling back down and closing his eyes. “It’s ass o’clock and I’m goin’ back to sleep. I think Jeff’ll probably call me for a ride in a couple hours, since he’s an douchebag.”
He feels Jared lifting his glasses off his nose, and then he falls back asleep to the sound of Jared typing.
--
“If you think that I’m coming to the airport to pick your hairy carcass up at four in the morning, you’re demented,” Jensen says as soon as he hits the answer button. He lets the phone lie on the side of his face and keeps his eyes closed. He thinks about the fact his back is pressed up against Jared's and smiles.
“Hello, Jensen, how are you? I’m fine, thanks. Seattle was great. It was good to be near my parents, who are fine, by the way,” Jeff laughs. “Fuck, you’re pissy for someone getting laid regularly.”
“You try getting fucked in the ass by that and then we’ll talk,” Jensen retorts, sitting up and yawning.
Jared stirs and rolls over to blink at him sleepily. “You love it and you know it,” he says.
“Yeah, well, when I’m walking around more bowlegged than usual, I think Jeff’s got a right to know why,” Jensen replies, bending down to kiss him quick and dirty, then swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and planting his feet on the floor. “Where are my glasses?”
“My table,” Jared says, pointing.
“So Tinkerbell called me to tell me that you crazy kids were fucking in the bathroom at Jared’s birthday party,” Jeff says. “I got to say, I was shocked. Scandalized, even. I mean… you know what goes on in there.”
“Kristen has a very cold soul,” Jensen says, bending down to collect his clothes from wherever they landed last night. “I think her parents probably didn’t hug her enough. Also, we didn’t fuck in the bathroom.”
Jeff snorts. “Fucking, frottage; tomato, tomahto,” he says airily. “Anyway, come get me. You know how O’Hare freaks me out. I promise not to call you Jennifer.”
“The ex laughed at you when you called to ask her, didn’t she?” Jensen says wryly.
“My ex-wife is a flaming axe-wound,” Jeff agrees. “I called yesterday and she hung up on me. And don’t even ask what she said when I implied that she might even bring the kids to come pick Daddy up. Jesus, you’d’a thought I was asking her to flame-broil them and, fuck, I don’t know, serve the little bastards over rice pilaf. Maybe with some tzatziki sauce on the side.”
Jeff’s ex is the anti-Jessica. Jensen doesn’t even know what the woman’s name is, since Jeff only ever refers to her as The Ex or The Bitch, but even Eric agrees that she’s absolutely heinous so Jensen figures she must be. Eric’s one of those guys who gets along with everyone.
What Jensen does know is that Jeff’s divorce was long, messy, and vicious, and that eventually Jeff just gave up and said she could have whatever she wanted. She got the house and Jeff’s restaurant, but she had to share custody of their two kids, who are perfect little monsters.
“Tell him to get a cab, the cheap bastard,” Jared grumbles just before Jensen leaves the room.
“I’m supposed to tell you to get a cab,” Jensen reports.
“There is no power in the universe gonna compel me to try to find a cab at four-thirty in the morning, bucko,” Jeff says very seriously. “Come on now, princess. I missed the Altima while I was away.”
Jensen can hear Jared getting out of bed and moving around upstairs.
“If I have to buy new tires again because of this little expedition, I fully expect you to subsidize them,” Jensen tells Jeff conversationally as he drops his ball of clothes on his bedroom floor and roots around for something that smells clean. He ends up with a pair of checks that aren’t stained and a t-shirt that claims he went to Northwestern that he thinks might actually have been Sandy’s sleep shirt.
“I think I’m probably good for that,” Jeff agrees.
Jared pokes his head in the bedroom door. “You know, you’d save yourself time if you’d just move your beauty products upstairs,” he says.
“Dude, trust me, we need our own bathroom space. No way am I subjecting my shit to your stench,” Jensen says cheerfully, covering the mouthpiece of his phone. He grins at him on his way into his bathroom.
“Aw, that sounds like you’re jealous,” Jared says, smacking his ass as he passes. “I’m gonna go make coffee.”
“I love everything about you,” Jensen says immediately. The look Jared gives him suddenly has him way more interested in tackling him to the floor and liking him all over than driving out to the airport to pick up Jeff.
“Focus,” Jeff says sternly. “I think I can hear your dick perking up from here and just… no. So tell me about your big gay love story instead.”
“Level of detail?” Jensen asks, raising an eyebrow at himself in the mirror. His face looks better, less puffy and gray.
“Very low,” Jeff replies. “Don’t be like Chad. Chad’s stories make me never want to think about pussy again, and I love pussy. God.”
“I don’t know, pussy can’t do much for your prostate,” Jensen says, enjoying the gagging sound Jeff makes. “Anyway, fuck you. This whole thing’s only a couple of days old and I feel like talking about it will jinx me forever.”
Jeff laughs. “Yeah, ‘cause absolutely nobody saw this coming or anything.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jensen snaps. He grabs his toothbrush and one of the tubes of toothpaste. He’s really got to think about culling some of them out. He has way too many.
“Can I be best man in your Canadian wedding?”
“Jess already claimed it,” Jensen says around his toothbrush. “Also, you are a dick.”
“Ah, so you’re wearing the dress, you Maid-of-Honor haver,” Jeff says. Jensen keeps brushing and the conversation lapses for a moment. Then Jeff snorts. “I suppose Chad is playing Jared’s best man?”
“As we’re not actually getting married, I have no idea,” Jensen says slowly after he spits. “But, yes, I imagine he would be.”
“You know, I never thought I’d say this, but I kind of missed that smelly little fucker. There was a guy there who kind of reminded me of him. Squinty and short and vile, but somehow much less fun.”
“God, they might be twins,” Jensen says. Jared appears in the bathroom doorway with Jensen’s thermos in his hands. He raises his eyebrows. “Does Chad have a brother?”
Jared gives him a funny look. “Chad has more siblings than he can even count. His parents get remarried for sport,” he says. Jensen realizes he’s walking around naked and shoots him a frown, which goes away immediately when he gets a whiff of his coffee. He moans and makes grabby hands for the cup.
“Are you orgasming over the smell of coffee again?” Jeff demands.
“You rather hear a real orgasm? ‘Cause, you know, I got a pretty, willing boyfriend in front of me wearing no clothes at the moment…” Jensen trails off.
“Oh god, no. You two keep the assfucking to yourselves,” Jeff says quickly.
Jensen looks at Jared fondly. “No problem. Don't think I want to share it, anyway.”
Jared scratches his happy trail and stretches up like a big cat. “I’m goin’ back to sleep,” he says, but he points at Jensen’s bed. It’s closer and Harley’s sacked out in the middle of the comforter.
“I’m gonna wake you up when I get back,” Jensen warns him.
“So long as you do it with your mouth on my dick we shouldn’t have any problems,” Jared says, smiling serenely. He leans in for a kiss and goes to collapse next to the dog. He stumbles over a clump of dirty clothes and lands sprawled across the bed on his stomach. Harley huffs in protest and licks his ear.
Jensen shakes his head and hits the lights on his way out of the room. “You know, Jeff, it’s really a labor of serious fucking devotion to my job that I’m willing to do this,” he says. He grabs his keys from the kitchen counter and heads outside to his car.
“You’re a saint, Jensen Ackles,” Jeff says reverently.
“I expect some kind of recompense is all I’m saying.”
“Ooh, a mercenary and a martyr? My god, you are a Biblical figure.” Jeff pauses. “I mean, as long as we totally disregard Leviticus and all, you Sodomite.”
Jensen starts his engine. “Fucker. Have fun walking back to Oak Park.”
“Oh, look at the big man with the threats,” Jeff whistles.
“It’s negative reinforcement,” Jensen says. “I figure that if I do it enough, eventually you’ll get conditioned to stop bothering me at o’fuck-thirty in the morning and maybe even become a normal person.”
“Oh, and he has plans,” Jeff says, laughing.
“This right here is you eating shit and dying,” Jensen says. He merges onto the highway and turns on the radio.
“One of the Quickfires involved bull testicles. I thought of you.”
Jensen snorts. “I grew up in the fucking suburbs,” he says. “I’ve never been near a bull in my life, you troglodyte.”
“I was talking about the balls,” Jeff says after a second. “But… okay.”
“You know, gay jokes are really only effective when the party you’re using them on isn’t currently in a relationship with another dude. You’re just being a bigot. I don’t know if we can work together anymore if you’re gonna be such a homophobe.”
“Hey, by all means, Jenny, bone him in the middle of Lincoln Park during an Obama campaign speech, I don’t care. Everybody deserves love. I grew up in hippie central. I know.”
“That might send the wrong message to the undecided voters of Illinois,” Jensen says.
“Wrigley Field during a Cards game?” Jeff suggests.
“Find me an even whiter sea of people and we’ll talk. Anyway. You’re an asshole. Let’s talk about how you’re going to make this up to me.” Somebody tries to cut him off and he leans on the horn.
“I’ll talk to Eric about giving you a raise or something. Are you here yet? God, you drive like an Alzheimer’s patient.”
“And on that note, I will call you when I’m outside the terminal. Traffic sucks ass today. What the fuck? It’s four-thirty on a Friday!”
“I see how it is. You can’t drive and banter.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jensen says grumpily. “Good-bye, Jeff.”
--
Jensen picks Ross up from school that afternoon. It’s been way too long since the last time he saw his kid and he’s going through withdrawal. Ross decides he wants chicken fingers and French fries, like he’s pretending to be a normal kid, so they go to Hutton’s.
They’re sitting with drinks when Ross puts his menu down and narrows his eyes.
“What?” Jensen asks, glancing over the top of his own menu and raising one eyebrow.
“You look happy,” Ross says accusingly.
“All apologies,” Jensen grunts, turning back to the menu. The buffalo burger sounds pretty fucking tempting.
“I mean it, though. You look younger or something. Like, you’re smiling. Do I know you?”
Jensen sighs. “I’m actually your Aunt Mac, gender-swapped.”
“Sweet,” Ross says. “Buy me Rock Band for my Wii for my birthday? Which, by the way, is three weeks from yesterday. Dad won’t 'cause he's laaaaame.”
“Cry more,” Jensen says. He sets his own menu aside and looks around for Aldis, but no dice. In fact, the only other person in the dining room is Tim, the owner, who’s eating something crunchy at the bar.
“So Mom told me how you and Jared are gay now,” Ross says.
Jensen nods. “Yes.”
“Cool. So you’re all kinds of synonyms for happy.”
Jensen narrows his eyes. “You’re not… surprised. Why are you not surprised?”
Ross rolls his eyes. “Dad. Come on.”
“What? Do I give off gay vibes that even nine-year-olds pick up on?” Jensen cries, just as Aldis approaches the table with a basket of fries and a bottle of ketchup.
“Uh… should I come back?” Aldis asks, cocking his head to the side.
“Thanks, dude,” Ross says, grabbing a fry and stuffing it in his mouth whole.
Jensen wants to thump his head on the table, but that would probably look bad for a thirty-year-old. Ross could probably get away with it, though. “No, we’re fine,” he says wearily.
“Dad’s just upset because his gayitude is totally unsurprising,” Ross says helpfully. “We’re talking our way through it.”
Aldis raises his eyebrows. “Uh, yeah. I’ll come back,” he says. He gives Jensen a look that says ‘look at you with the precocious kid’ before heading back for the kitchen. Jensen thinks harder about smacking himself in the face with the table, so he takes a fry instead.
Ross gives him a serious business look. “Look, Mom said that she wasn’t surprised, and that she’s happy for you. I’m guessing that she has a pretty good grip on things, since she was married to you. So I react like she reacted.”
Jensen stares at him, his gorgeous, brilliant little boy. “So you’re telling me that you have tailored your response to my gayness to your mother?”
Ross nods. “It's only logical, Dad," he says.
"Gee, thanks, genius spawn," Jensen deadpans.
"Seriously, Dad, I don’t think it’s a big deal. So you like dudes. Hooray!” He waves his hands halfheartedly.
“Is this because you like Jared more than me?” Jensen asks. He grabs the ketchup and pours a big puddle on a side plate.
Ross pauses for an awfully long time before shooting him a coy little smile that is so Jensen’s mother it’s not even funny. “Possibly,” he says.
Jensen has to laugh at that. “So, if my boyfriend was, say… Chad, would you be similarly not bothered by this?”
“I think you’d be more bothered than me in that case,” Ross says gently, scrunching up his nose. “I mean, gay for Chad? Really? Do girls even like Chad?” Jensen laughs and chokes on the fry he’s swallowing.
“He’s having a baby with somebody,” Jensen points out. “Then again, Sophia’s an artist, so her tastes are weird anyway.”
Aldis comes back and takes their orders, and they talk about Ross’s birthday for a while. On the way out to the car later, though, Ross stops and looks up at him.
“You know what does surprise me, though?” he asks. “That you end up with Jared and not Kristen.”
Jensen thinks about his two-year flirtation with the pastry chef, not to mention their one disastrous night, and sighs. He ruffles Ross’s hair and unlocks the car. “Yeah, me too.”
Ross shoots him that ornery smile again. "Okay, I'm also surprised that Jared broke up with Sandy for you. I mean, really?"
--
Jensen cooks for Jared’s birthday the next night. They watch the Astros beat the Cubs on the big screen and eat steak and potatoes because Jared swears that for once, he wants to eat something everyone eats.
“None of our weird classy food, okay?” he’d said when Jensen asked him what he wanted for birthday dinner. “I do want wine, though. Okay? Lots of wine.”
They sit at the dining room table, Jensen in a pair of holey jeans and an old Biggio jersey-“Hey, he’s little and scrappy and old like you!” Jared had crowed when he saw it; Jensen smacked him-and Jared wearing a truly ugly combo of ratty Underarmor shirt and Boston Celtics-green basketball shorts. Jared refused to dress up for his birthday.
Jared kicks him under the table and grins at him. “I think you’re pretty fantastic,” he says.
Jensen shrugs and kicks back. He got some grease on his shirt while he was cooking, so he’s still kind of pissed about it. He’d been more interested in pinning Jared against the counter and groping him than putting on an apron, and poor Craig Biggio paid the price. “Just as God made me,” he says.
“God done good, then,” Jared says, face crinkled up in a big smile, then he reaches across the table and snipes a chunk of Jensen’s steak. Jensen thinks about stabbing him with his fork.
"Well, that was embarrassingly heartfelt," Jensen comments, taking a sip of his wine, but he smiles.
When Jared goes to push his chair out a little while later, it snags on the edge of Jensen’s Iraqi rug and sends him stumbling sideways into the wall.
“Death to the infidel!” Jensen says, cracking up.
“I could have died just now, jerkface,” Jared says.
“Dude, that’s how I know you really like me,” Jensen says. “Your insults are startin’ to really suck.”
Jared’s grin turns absolutely filthy. “Must be all the… practice I’m getting lately, I guess,” he says. He points down. “This carpet is a lumpy piece of shit. It’s horrible, and I don’t care if it matches the walls. Either it goes or I go.”
Jensen gives him an interested look. “I have to take over the mortgage?”
Jared comes around the table and hoists him to his feet. Multiple joints crack and whatever Jared was going to say gets completely lost in a gale of laughter. “Holy shit, you even harmonized that shit,” Jared wheezes, wrapping his arms around the small of Jensen’s back and pulling them flush together. “I’m thoroughly impressed, old man.”
“Fuck you, whippersnapper,” Jensen says.
“I want some ice cream,” Jared says, pulling back. “Chocolate chip ice cream. Do we have any rock salt? I could make ice cream. I have a machine, you know.” He grins.
Jensen just pulls him closer and kisses him.
Epilogue