Birthday Fic!
Happy birthday vickita! ::twirls you and throws sparkly things::
You said J2 was your happy place of late so here's the boys getting slightly schmoopy plus a side order of Chris and Steve just for you!
Jared/Jensen
adult
2,561 words
Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax
"Steve's playing in LA this Saturday."
Stretched out on the sofa, head back, eyes closed, a half empty bottle of beer cradled in one hand, Jared made a non-committal noise.
"And since Chris is shooting Leverage in the Valley," Jensen continued, lifting Jared's bare feet, sliding under them, and replacing them on his lap, "I thought maybe the four of us could get together for a meal at Steve's place before the gig. He's always bitching about how he never gets a chance to cook anymore."
At the other end of the sofa, Jared sighed. "You want us to get off work at stupid o'clock on Saturday morning, fly to LA, have dinner with two guys who hate me…"
"Steve doesn't hate you. In fact, there's a number of pictures out there that suggests Steve's a little fonder of you than I'm exactly comfortable with." He was hoping that would evoke a smile. It didn't.
"Steve hasn't spoken to me since Dallas. That was before the reason…" Long fingers sketched air quotes. "…Sandy and I broke up hit the net."
Jensen tightened his grip around Jared's ankle. Normally the more gregarious, Jared had closed them into a circle of two since the stories had started circulating and Jensen, while not adverse to having all Jared's attention, knew it couldn't -- shouldn't -- last. "Fuck, Jay, Steve has barely spoken to me this summer. He's been busy. I've been busy. You've been busy. Chris has been…"
"Chris hates me." Eyes open now, Jared's beer bottle hit the coffee table with a crack. He tried to get up but Jensen held his feet in place.
"Chris…" Chris had been furious -- not that he had any right -- and Jared had unfortunately been there for shouting during the "What the fuck is your boy up to?" phone call. Jensen rubbed his thumb over the soft skin of Jared's arch and tried again. "Chris is sometimes a little old fashioned about women. If we told him…"
"No." Jared's eyes narrowed. He stared at Jensen for a long moment then he sighed again. "You want us to tell them over dinner, don't you?"
"I was thinking it might be an idea," Jensen admitted. "I don't like it when people I love think wrongly of other people I love." He frowned. "Person I love."
Jared's brows disappeared under his bangs. "Think wrongly?"
Slapping the sole of Jared's foot, Jensen growled, "I fucking hate it that they think less of you because of gossip and rumor."
He felt the sofa shift as Jared sat up but he kept his gaze locked on his hands. Looking at Jared right now would give it all away. Give him away. All of him. Then he felt Jared's fingers against his jaw, turning his head, and it was too late.
Hazel eyes widened. "You really do."
"I really do." Might as well admit it since Jared already knew the answer. He wondered how long it would take before they stopped finding new ways to say I love you. And how long before it changed the world every damned time.
Folded almost in half, Jared grabbed a double handful of Jensen's t-shirt and dragged their mouths together. Somehow Jensen managed to get himself up and spread out over the other man like a blanket without breaking contact for more than a couple of seconds at a time. Jared could spend hours necking like a teenager and Jensen had been amazed to discover how much he enjoyed the touching and the kissing and the constant buzz of low level arousal.
Finally pushing Jared over the edge into crazed fucking was fun too.
Here and now though, he kept it gentle and, when Jared was pliant under his hands, murmured, "I know I can't do anything to change the way strangers think, and I hate that too, but Chris and Steve are like family and it's eating at me that they think you'd actually be such an arrogant ass." He skated a hand along Jared's ribs just to feel him shiver then added, "They know how the business works and they've never sold me out to the Enquirer. Not even when they were short beer money."
"Not even then?"
"They're a lot classier than they look."
Jared huffed out a laugh. "Fucking hope so." Then he rested his palm on the small of Jensen's back, tucked his fingers under the waistband of his jeans and said, "So you should tell them over dinner."
Elbow braced against the sofa, Jensen lifted himself up until he could see Jared's face. "Me?"
"Dude, I'm not flying to LA just to eat dinner…" Although Jared's tone was all glib apology, his expression could only be called skittish. Shading into terrified. "…and you know that if we show up at Steve's gig together, people will talk."
***
"All right, let me get this straight…"
Jensen waited and, sure enough, Chris didn't disappoint.
"…not that there's a lot of that going around -- Padalecki had a little breakdown at his sister's graduation watching everyone playing happy families, suddenly realized what getting married actually meant, told Sandy he couldn't marry her because he loved you, begged her not tell anyone the real reason, and Sandy, understandably both heartbroken and pissed, didn't, in fact, take a steak knife to his nuts, but let it be known that they broke up because he was sleeping around on her…"
"Not a lie," Steve pointed out, coming out of the kitchen and sitting back down.
Chris nodded in acknowledgement. "Except that instead of random cocktail waitresses," he continued, "it was our boy Jenny here. And the J-man wasn't being a total fuckwad who couldn't keep it in his pants, he was confused and dealing with the whole surprise I'm gay thing…"
"Except that apparently he still couldn't keep it in his pants."
Jensen turned to glare at Steve. "You're not actually helping."
Steve ignored him, leaning back and flipping the crust off his garlic bread over and over on his plate. "And what is it about sex with Jensen that makes Jared gay?"
"Hey! Last time I checked, I had a dick."
"It's not about your dick."
Chris looked confused. "I thought it was all about Jenny's dick."
"Sleeping with Jensen doesn't make Jared gay," Steve snorted. "He still likes girls. That makes him bi. Why is it no one ever goes to bi as the default? I mean it's pretty simple, he was having sex with men and women; that's bi. It's not like you're hetro one week and gay the next for fucksake."
"You are."
Steve threw the crust at him.
"Besides," Jensen broke in, moving his plate before Steve could reach for more ammo, "I thought you preferred to be called enthusiastically non-discriminating?"
"He does," Chris agreed for him, "but that just means he can't make up his Goddamned mind. And we're not talking about Steve." His raised hand cut the incipient food fight off before it could really get going and his expression cut off any protests. Despite popular belief, Chris didn't force the alpha dog issue very often so, when he did, he got the full attention of his audience. "I get why Jared's letting the rumors stand. I do. He can't very well explain his real reason for breaking the engagement, not unless he wants to come clean with the big gay love which would screw up both your careers. But I still think, big gay -- I'm sorry, bi-- confusion aside, he behaved reprehensibly toward Sandy."
"He knows that."
"Good." Eyes locked on Jensen's face, Chris added, "You weren't much better."
Jensen felt his cheeks flush. "I know that too." Maybe it was a mark of how pissed she'd been at Jared but Sandy actually had behaved quite civilly toward him. "I wish with all my heart you'd never slept with him but you're not his conscience and you didn't break any promises to me," she'd said. "He did. So tell the son of a bitch I want my annotated copy of Dante's Inferno back."
Steve planted his elbows on the table, dropping his chin into his cupped hands. "If you knew it was wrong, why'd you do it?"
The flush deepened. "I couldn't not."
"Then it had fucking well better be love, Jensen. The real fucking thing." Chris' voice dropped into the low growl that meant an ass-kicking was next on the agenda. "This had better be forever, boy, because that's the only thing that excuses this."
Forever? They'd barely talked about now. Mostly, they just tried to get through the day without giving themselves away. Legs pressed together in the car on the way to and from the set. Quick kisses in shadowed corners, careful not to ruin their makeup. A little groping below the camera line in the Impala. Nights when they were too exhausted to sleep and too wound up to keep their hands off each other. Lazy weekends on the sofa reading and watching the game and making out like they had all the time in the world. Jensen thought about living without all that, about going back to how it had been or, worse yet, having to live a life without Jared in it at all, and realized he couldn't.
"It is," he said. When Chris raised an eyebrow, he added, "Forever. It is forever."
After a long moment, Chris snorted. "You sound surprised."
"Shut-up."
"So why'd your one true love let you face us alone?"
"He didn't want to fly down to LA just for dinner and he thought if we showed up at Steve's gig together, people would talk." Jensen ran his finger along the edge of the table, eyes locked on the motion. "He's been talked about a lot lately; it's left him kind of raw. Been there. Understand where he's coming from."
"But," Chris said quietly and Jensen shrugged.
"So, this is putting a strain on your friendship?" Steve asked when the silence extended just a little too long.
"No. Yes. Maybe." Jensen rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "I don't know…"
"No shit."
"…we're second guessing everything we do outside the bedroom." He turned to glare at Chris. "Where things are amazing, thank you very much."
"Dude, I wasn't asking. But I am wondering…"
"We trade off. He's so big…" Grinning, Jensen held his hands about a foot apart. "I couldn't walk if he topped all the time."
"Oh God!" Chris threw his napkin across the table at Jensen, who batted it out of the air, and said to Steve, "Get me some fucking bleach so I can wash out my brain!" When Steve cheerfully flipped him off, he turned his attention back to a snickering Jensen. "I was not wondering that. I was wondering, if tonight, those people who talk, they wouldn't notice you two weren't alone? That I was there, riding shotgun?"
"Does the word threesome mean anything to you?"
Chris blushed, actually blushed, as he muttered, "You spend too much fucking time on line."
"Means something to me," Steve put in, eyebrows waggling suggestively.
"Oh Christ, that's the last thing I need. The image of the three of you all tangled up in some big gay puppy pile. There are days when I think me and Clooney are the last two straight, single men in California."
Jensen glanced over at Steve. "You want to tell him or should I?"
"Shut-up."
Steve was cool, he'd just needed an explanation, and Chris, well, he was willing to let true love excuse bad manners but yeah, he'd always be a bit disappointed in the way Jared and him had gotten together but he was willing to be happy for them in spite of that and so, just to sweeten the pot…
"Has it occurred to you that Sandy's single now?"
***
This was how Steve should be seen, Jensen realized, in a crappy bar with dubious air conditioning where the soles of his shoes stuck to the floor but the light was so bad he couldn't tell why. Seeing Steve in a well lit, hotel ballroom, up in front of a horde of screaming Supernatural fans, that was just a weird collusion of two parts of his life. Only thing missing were the clouds of cigarette smoke but Jared had got him to finally, completely quit so the absence of temptation was probably a good thing. Well, Jared and Canadian winters. There was nothing like grabbing a smoke thirty feet from the door to a bar, huddled over trying not to freeze his nuts off to make a nicotine addiction less attractive. Next time Steve was trying to quit, he should play north of the border for a few months.
They'd tucked themselves up against the wall in the back of bar so as not to draw attention away from Steve. Not that any of this crowd would be particularly interested in the second lead in a genre TV show on the CW for fucksake. They were here for the music.
Suddenly realizing he was standing by himself, Jensen turned to look for Chris, spotted him chatting up a girl with blonde hair and pale blue eyes and the kind of laid back look that said born and bred Californian. Or stoned out of her gourd. He glanced toward the stage where Steve was messing with his tuning and grinned. Not that they were mutually exclusive.
He froze when a hand closed over his shoulder. Thawed when he realized whose hand it was. Turned under the familiar grip. "Jared?
Jared dipped his head and gave Jensen a look made of half apology, half defiance. "I got thinking that I should be able to go to a bar with my best friend to see one of our friends play. That what we have now should be more than what we had before or what the hell was the point of all the crap I put myself and Sandy and you through?"
What indeed? Jensen grinned. He didn't really care why Jared had decided to come. He was just happy he had. "That was amazingly articulate."
Dimples flashed. "Like it? I worked on it all the way down here on the plane. I have notes."
"Notes?"
"You know, pros, cons, how to charge a Blueboy subscription to Chad's credit card."
Odds were good Jared actually had made notes, the big goof. "I guess we're ready to sit down and do that interview with the Advocate then."
"Seriously?"
He'd been kidding. He thought he'd been kidding. But looking at Jared and the heat in his eyes, he was suddenly back at Steve's table saying, "It is forever." and he had to swallow hard before he could answer. "Seriously."
And the whole damned world changed again.
Jared studied him for a long moment, then he nodded, his smile not the big, bright flashy one but the softer, sappier one only Jensen got to see. "Plenty of time to do that when the show's over." He wrapped a long arm around Jensen's shoulders and tugged him close. "Let's not destroy our careers any more than absolutely necessary."
"Sounds fair." Almost without him willing it, Jensen's right hand rose to cover Jared's heart. "People are still going to talk."
"Let them."
-end-
You said J2 was your happy place of late so here's the boys getting slightly schmoopy plus a side order of Chris and Steve just for you!
Jared/Jensen
adult
2,561 words
Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax
"Steve's playing in LA this Saturday."
Stretched out on the sofa, head back, eyes closed, a half empty bottle of beer cradled in one hand, Jared made a non-committal noise.
"And since Chris is shooting Leverage in the Valley," Jensen continued, lifting Jared's bare feet, sliding under them, and replacing them on his lap, "I thought maybe the four of us could get together for a meal at Steve's place before the gig. He's always bitching about how he never gets a chance to cook anymore."
At the other end of the sofa, Jared sighed. "You want us to get off work at stupid o'clock on Saturday morning, fly to LA, have dinner with two guys who hate me…"
"Steve doesn't hate you. In fact, there's a number of pictures out there that suggests Steve's a little fonder of you than I'm exactly comfortable with." He was hoping that would evoke a smile. It didn't.
"Steve hasn't spoken to me since Dallas. That was before the reason…" Long fingers sketched air quotes. "…Sandy and I broke up hit the net."
Jensen tightened his grip around Jared's ankle. Normally the more gregarious, Jared had closed them into a circle of two since the stories had started circulating and Jensen, while not adverse to having all Jared's attention, knew it couldn't -- shouldn't -- last. "Fuck, Jay, Steve has barely spoken to me this summer. He's been busy. I've been busy. You've been busy. Chris has been…"
"Chris hates me." Eyes open now, Jared's beer bottle hit the coffee table with a crack. He tried to get up but Jensen held his feet in place.
"Chris…" Chris had been furious -- not that he had any right -- and Jared had unfortunately been there for shouting during the "What the fuck is your boy up to?" phone call. Jensen rubbed his thumb over the soft skin of Jared's arch and tried again. "Chris is sometimes a little old fashioned about women. If we told him…"
"No." Jared's eyes narrowed. He stared at Jensen for a long moment then he sighed again. "You want us to tell them over dinner, don't you?"
"I was thinking it might be an idea," Jensen admitted. "I don't like it when people I love think wrongly of other people I love." He frowned. "Person I love."
Jared's brows disappeared under his bangs. "Think wrongly?"
Slapping the sole of Jared's foot, Jensen growled, "I fucking hate it that they think less of you because of gossip and rumor."
He felt the sofa shift as Jared sat up but he kept his gaze locked on his hands. Looking at Jared right now would give it all away. Give him away. All of him. Then he felt Jared's fingers against his jaw, turning his head, and it was too late.
Hazel eyes widened. "You really do."
"I really do." Might as well admit it since Jared already knew the answer. He wondered how long it would take before they stopped finding new ways to say I love you. And how long before it changed the world every damned time.
Folded almost in half, Jared grabbed a double handful of Jensen's t-shirt and dragged their mouths together. Somehow Jensen managed to get himself up and spread out over the other man like a blanket without breaking contact for more than a couple of seconds at a time. Jared could spend hours necking like a teenager and Jensen had been amazed to discover how much he enjoyed the touching and the kissing and the constant buzz of low level arousal.
Finally pushing Jared over the edge into crazed fucking was fun too.
Here and now though, he kept it gentle and, when Jared was pliant under his hands, murmured, "I know I can't do anything to change the way strangers think, and I hate that too, but Chris and Steve are like family and it's eating at me that they think you'd actually be such an arrogant ass." He skated a hand along Jared's ribs just to feel him shiver then added, "They know how the business works and they've never sold me out to the Enquirer. Not even when they were short beer money."
"Not even then?"
"They're a lot classier than they look."
Jared huffed out a laugh. "Fucking hope so." Then he rested his palm on the small of Jensen's back, tucked his fingers under the waistband of his jeans and said, "So you should tell them over dinner."
Elbow braced against the sofa, Jensen lifted himself up until he could see Jared's face. "Me?"
"Dude, I'm not flying to LA just to eat dinner…" Although Jared's tone was all glib apology, his expression could only be called skittish. Shading into terrified. "…and you know that if we show up at Steve's gig together, people will talk."
***
"All right, let me get this straight…"
Jensen waited and, sure enough, Chris didn't disappoint.
"…not that there's a lot of that going around -- Padalecki had a little breakdown at his sister's graduation watching everyone playing happy families, suddenly realized what getting married actually meant, told Sandy he couldn't marry her because he loved you, begged her not tell anyone the real reason, and Sandy, understandably both heartbroken and pissed, didn't, in fact, take a steak knife to his nuts, but let it be known that they broke up because he was sleeping around on her…"
"Not a lie," Steve pointed out, coming out of the kitchen and sitting back down.
Chris nodded in acknowledgement. "Except that instead of random cocktail waitresses," he continued, "it was our boy Jenny here. And the J-man wasn't being a total fuckwad who couldn't keep it in his pants, he was confused and dealing with the whole surprise I'm gay thing…"
"Except that apparently he still couldn't keep it in his pants."
Jensen turned to glare at Steve. "You're not actually helping."
Steve ignored him, leaning back and flipping the crust off his garlic bread over and over on his plate. "And what is it about sex with Jensen that makes Jared gay?"
"Hey! Last time I checked, I had a dick."
"It's not about your dick."
Chris looked confused. "I thought it was all about Jenny's dick."
"Sleeping with Jensen doesn't make Jared gay," Steve snorted. "He still likes girls. That makes him bi. Why is it no one ever goes to bi as the default? I mean it's pretty simple, he was having sex with men and women; that's bi. It's not like you're hetro one week and gay the next for fucksake."
"You are."
Steve threw the crust at him.
"Besides," Jensen broke in, moving his plate before Steve could reach for more ammo, "I thought you preferred to be called enthusiastically non-discriminating?"
"He does," Chris agreed for him, "but that just means he can't make up his Goddamned mind. And we're not talking about Steve." His raised hand cut the incipient food fight off before it could really get going and his expression cut off any protests. Despite popular belief, Chris didn't force the alpha dog issue very often so, when he did, he got the full attention of his audience. "I get why Jared's letting the rumors stand. I do. He can't very well explain his real reason for breaking the engagement, not unless he wants to come clean with the big gay love which would screw up both your careers. But I still think, big gay -- I'm sorry, bi-- confusion aside, he behaved reprehensibly toward Sandy."
"He knows that."
"Good." Eyes locked on Jensen's face, Chris added, "You weren't much better."
Jensen felt his cheeks flush. "I know that too." Maybe it was a mark of how pissed she'd been at Jared but Sandy actually had behaved quite civilly toward him. "I wish with all my heart you'd never slept with him but you're not his conscience and you didn't break any promises to me," she'd said. "He did. So tell the son of a bitch I want my annotated copy of Dante's Inferno back."
Steve planted his elbows on the table, dropping his chin into his cupped hands. "If you knew it was wrong, why'd you do it?"
The flush deepened. "I couldn't not."
"Then it had fucking well better be love, Jensen. The real fucking thing." Chris' voice dropped into the low growl that meant an ass-kicking was next on the agenda. "This had better be forever, boy, because that's the only thing that excuses this."
Forever? They'd barely talked about now. Mostly, they just tried to get through the day without giving themselves away. Legs pressed together in the car on the way to and from the set. Quick kisses in shadowed corners, careful not to ruin their makeup. A little groping below the camera line in the Impala. Nights when they were too exhausted to sleep and too wound up to keep their hands off each other. Lazy weekends on the sofa reading and watching the game and making out like they had all the time in the world. Jensen thought about living without all that, about going back to how it had been or, worse yet, having to live a life without Jared in it at all, and realized he couldn't.
"It is," he said. When Chris raised an eyebrow, he added, "Forever. It is forever."
After a long moment, Chris snorted. "You sound surprised."
"Shut-up."
"So why'd your one true love let you face us alone?"
"He didn't want to fly down to LA just for dinner and he thought if we showed up at Steve's gig together, people would talk." Jensen ran his finger along the edge of the table, eyes locked on the motion. "He's been talked about a lot lately; it's left him kind of raw. Been there. Understand where he's coming from."
"But," Chris said quietly and Jensen shrugged.
"So, this is putting a strain on your friendship?" Steve asked when the silence extended just a little too long.
"No. Yes. Maybe." Jensen rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "I don't know…"
"No shit."
"…we're second guessing everything we do outside the bedroom." He turned to glare at Chris. "Where things are amazing, thank you very much."
"Dude, I wasn't asking. But I am wondering…"
"We trade off. He's so big…" Grinning, Jensen held his hands about a foot apart. "I couldn't walk if he topped all the time."
"Oh God!" Chris threw his napkin across the table at Jensen, who batted it out of the air, and said to Steve, "Get me some fucking bleach so I can wash out my brain!" When Steve cheerfully flipped him off, he turned his attention back to a snickering Jensen. "I was not wondering that. I was wondering, if tonight, those people who talk, they wouldn't notice you two weren't alone? That I was there, riding shotgun?"
"Does the word threesome mean anything to you?"
Chris blushed, actually blushed, as he muttered, "You spend too much fucking time on line."
"Means something to me," Steve put in, eyebrows waggling suggestively.
"Oh Christ, that's the last thing I need. The image of the three of you all tangled up in some big gay puppy pile. There are days when I think me and Clooney are the last two straight, single men in California."
Jensen glanced over at Steve. "You want to tell him or should I?"
"Shut-up."
Steve was cool, he'd just needed an explanation, and Chris, well, he was willing to let true love excuse bad manners but yeah, he'd always be a bit disappointed in the way Jared and him had gotten together but he was willing to be happy for them in spite of that and so, just to sweeten the pot…
"Has it occurred to you that Sandy's single now?"
***
This was how Steve should be seen, Jensen realized, in a crappy bar with dubious air conditioning where the soles of his shoes stuck to the floor but the light was so bad he couldn't tell why. Seeing Steve in a well lit, hotel ballroom, up in front of a horde of screaming Supernatural fans, that was just a weird collusion of two parts of his life. Only thing missing were the clouds of cigarette smoke but Jared had got him to finally, completely quit so the absence of temptation was probably a good thing. Well, Jared and Canadian winters. There was nothing like grabbing a smoke thirty feet from the door to a bar, huddled over trying not to freeze his nuts off to make a nicotine addiction less attractive. Next time Steve was trying to quit, he should play north of the border for a few months.
They'd tucked themselves up against the wall in the back of bar so as not to draw attention away from Steve. Not that any of this crowd would be particularly interested in the second lead in a genre TV show on the CW for fucksake. They were here for the music.
Suddenly realizing he was standing by himself, Jensen turned to look for Chris, spotted him chatting up a girl with blonde hair and pale blue eyes and the kind of laid back look that said born and bred Californian. Or stoned out of her gourd. He glanced toward the stage where Steve was messing with his tuning and grinned. Not that they were mutually exclusive.
He froze when a hand closed over his shoulder. Thawed when he realized whose hand it was. Turned under the familiar grip. "Jared?
Jared dipped his head and gave Jensen a look made of half apology, half defiance. "I got thinking that I should be able to go to a bar with my best friend to see one of our friends play. That what we have now should be more than what we had before or what the hell was the point of all the crap I put myself and Sandy and you through?"
What indeed? Jensen grinned. He didn't really care why Jared had decided to come. He was just happy he had. "That was amazingly articulate."
Dimples flashed. "Like it? I worked on it all the way down here on the plane. I have notes."
"Notes?"
"You know, pros, cons, how to charge a Blueboy subscription to Chad's credit card."
Odds were good Jared actually had made notes, the big goof. "I guess we're ready to sit down and do that interview with the Advocate then."
"Seriously?"
He'd been kidding. He thought he'd been kidding. But looking at Jared and the heat in his eyes, he was suddenly back at Steve's table saying, "It is forever." and he had to swallow hard before he could answer. "Seriously."
And the whole damned world changed again.
Jared studied him for a long moment, then he nodded, his smile not the big, bright flashy one but the softer, sappier one only Jensen got to see. "Plenty of time to do that when the show's over." He wrapped a long arm around Jensen's shoulders and tugged him close. "Let's not destroy our careers any more than absolutely necessary."
"Sounds fair." Almost without him willing it, Jensen's right hand rose to cover Jared's heart. "People are still going to talk."
"Let them."
-end-