all I want for Christmas is you
Title: Santa Jared (Hurry Down the Chimney Tonight) 1/2
Author: veterization
Disclaimer: I do not own these people.
Rating: NC-17
Genre and/or Pairing: Jared/Jensen (and a side of Steve Carlson/Christian Kane)
Word Count: ~17,000
Summary: AU. Jensen meets Jared Padalecki, the Santa at the store, and happens to fall for him. Festivity and romance ensues.
Sometimes, Jensen is cruelly reminded that the people he spends the most time with are people he really doesn't know at all around the holiday season.
It's almost as if Christmas shopping is built to separate the mother who Jensen knows only trusts a certain brand of toaster from the coworker Jensen only waves at during parties and occasionally happens to be sitting next to during event functions, the friend who Jensen isn't even sure if he celebrates Christmas, Chanukah, or is just one of those Atheists who believes in no sort of religion but reels in presents anyway from the sister who makes it a tradition to pin up her desired wishing list on the fridge every December.
He's grazing through the electronics aisle with a watchful eye for anything large, shiny, and particularly appealing to the eye in the vain hope to find something fitting for Chris. He's got a furled up list of names and potential gifts to go with each in one of his palms, a few of the individuals already crossed out when Jensen realized he was having trouble remembering where he knew them from, his other hand maneuvering his unfortunately barren shopping cart. It's not brimming with the unbridled potential of well-chosen presents and the promise of pleased Christmas morning squeals like some of the other carts he sees passing his own. He's considering heading straight for the frame aisle to stuff his cart full of impersonal gifts that are a symbol of a startling lack of knowledge to a friend's interests as his eyes rake over an array of iPods that look like they just marched straight out of the gay pride parade. He can't help but ruminate if perhaps Chris is that one obnoxious friend with either a habit for reckless spending or more cash that can fit into an average bank vault, therefore meaning he already owns everything he wants, making the task of shopping for him so difficult, and Jensen dismisses the idea as an excuse as to why he can't find anything for his friend after forty-six torturous minutes of perusing shelves.
He remembers Chris preparing an intriguing batch of Southern chili a few winters ago and recalls that the man likes to cook, but not only cook, but rather cook too much. He weighs the options between a Wolfgang Puck sandwich grill and a spice rack, and after a few minutes of mindless deliberation and the risk of looking uniform, snatches up the spice rack and lets the vials of basil and parsley jiggle in his cart.
It's not that he doesn't enjoy Christmastime. He normally visits his family down in Dallas and his mother creates a meal large enough to not fit on the table and his brother and him always engage in a wordless eggnog chugging competition. His home is always cozier during the holidays, the air reeking of warmth like a cheesy Disney Christmas special and the smell of cinnamon in the air. He doesn't even mind the blasting Christmas music on every radio station no matter how much he can't stand Dean Martin singing about the snow anymore, the tedious task of sweeping up pine needles from underneath his tree, or the mistletoes hung up here and there posing the threat of less than desirable encounters with strangers.
It's just the commercial part of Christmas, the ordeal of stocking stuffers and shiny wrapping paper and just the right, insightful gift for his sister that has him wanting to sleep in until New Year.
He likes lists. He likes uniform, standard lists. He puts his own wishing lists up on the billboard in his hall and makes it a yearly task to subtly send out ideas to every one of his friends or mention it on the phone. It's what he would love for people to do for him. There's nothing worse than presenting his sister with the blue karaoke set with the microphone he was positive she requested on Christmas morning, when actually, she wanted the lavender karaoke set with the built-in headset, and instead of getting his arms full of a shrieking sibling and a mouthful of hair, he gets to witness her crestfallen frown.
Jensen wheels his cart around, the spice racks repetitively knocking out a rhythm. He heads for the check-out, content with his souvenir from the maternity aisle and the array of spices, when he passes by the corner of the store decked out in woolly cotton mimicking freshly laid snow and a plastic gate squaring off a corner of the shop dedicated to a throng of people vaguely resembling a line of impatient children and their equally impatient parents in front of a crimson throne with an in-costume Santa situated comfortably on top of it.
He's always felt bad for the Santa, getting paid a presumably poor amount by the hour and having to an endure a stuffy suit with a thick pillow blanketed inside of it as well, not to mention the scratchy cheap beard taped on by the ears and constant smile that's more requirement for the sake of the elated children than a choice. It's not that he isn't a fan of children, he just isn't sure he would be up for enduring hours on end of them bouncing on his leg and rattling down a list of material toys that no child will even glance at come three months later.
Jensen glances at the line crowding outside of the gate, kids perched on their father's shoulders to attempt to a get a good glance at their childhood idol come every December. He silently blesses the heavens for the fact that he doesn't have a child of his own yanking on his sleeve and pointing insistent pudgy fingers in the direction of the line, because not only are his feet hurting up a storm after half a day's shopping, but he has other things to still finish that don't involve waiting two hours so a man in a costume can chortle at his kid.
Santa lets out a loud bark of laughter, loud enough to echo through a few of the shelves, the sort of laugh Jensen would imagine coming out of an actual Santa's lips were he not fictional along with a hint of an amused young man adjoining the feigned guffaw. He glances at Santa, a girl not older than five that's all smiles perched on his knee, his arm wrapped around her tiny back. The pillow in his suit is practically outlined and easy to spot, even though the thick fabric that makes up the suit itself. From the looks of its thickness, the suit looks like it could be a comforter instead of clothing, and Jensen's surprised to see a lack of gathering beads of moisture on Santa's forehead.
Santa laughs again at something the girl murmured and pokes her gingerly in the stomach. She giggles again and squirms on his knee as he pats her back. It's then that Jensen notices the guy's hands. Long, slender fingers with rounded fingernails and a broad palm. From far away, Jensen could practically assume that the guy has arms on his arm from the size of his palm alone. Jensen likes impressive size, and there's no denying as his eyes rake over the man's lengthy form and hands that this is impressive size.
Santa's hands make Jensen start to wonder if it'd be possible for him to unearth some of his youth and be accepted as a kid with a hefty handful of puberty to his luck so he could plant himself on the man's lap if he got into a pair of overalls and a fuzzy cap from the toddler's section, and he promptly dismisses the ludicrous idea as illogical thinking thanks to the man's hands. The girl jumps off of Santa's lap and leaps into her mother's arms with a grin so wide it's threatening to split apart her cheeks, and another child heads for Santa's lap after he wriggles his hips a little.
Jensen wonders, a little dryly, when he began resigning himself to the in-costume Santas at the store. It's not like he'd go after the real Santa were he to ever knock on Jensen's door with handcuffs and a special present that definitely can't be placed under a tree, let alone a man with a long frosty beard or a belly large enough to be used as a storage compartment during kidnapping heists. The red suit the man is wearing is certainly not flattering to his form by any means and his elderly chuckle isn't all too appealing to Jensen either. He tries to remind himself that the man took the job to make children smile, not to advertise himself off to lurking young men shopping for their mothers, and that Jensen didn't come to the store to ogle maybe, maybe not attractive men enjoying the holiday spirit to the maximum.
Santa laughs again. Jensen gets a glimpse of the guy's teeth, and maybe even the back of his throat, because Santa seems to have a laugh so strong he tips his head back when he lets it loose.
Jensen retracts his earlier statement. He wishes he had a kid.
--
Despite contrary belief, it's not very easy to forget about attractive men in Santa costumes even a week after first glimpse.
Jensen hasn't spent a Christmas with someone who feeds him holiday pudding instead of throwing it at him in over three years. He has his few drunken nights out, but whenever Chris mentions his dry spell and Jensen passes it off as a phase, Chris reminds him that thirty-six months is more of a lifestyle than a phase.
Two years ago, he had a plan based entirely on the outcome of how well his mistletoe proceeded to work. He's seen his fair share of movies. People are drawn to mistletoes, some linger underneath them until an innocuous passing by individual joins them, and then there's the unspoken rule of the glass box that encircles anyone trapped underneath it, as though walking out from a potential tinsel-induced kiss is a severe breaking of holiday rules. So he fished one out of his mother's decoration box and glued it up over his doorway.
Two weeks later, after an unfortunate run-in with Steve underneath it with Chris being the audience roaring with unsuppressed laughter at the sight, Jensen put the mistletoe back in the box it came from.
The Secret Santa gift exchange did not help in his revelation that everyone he knew was spending their holidays wrapped up in a Snuggie and their lover's arms, when the discretion that was required for Secret Santa was promptly disregarded and at least three of his coworkers approached him in the hope that he possessed the name equivalent to that of their significant other. After the fourth reassurance that he was not involved in the gift exchange of any of the couples at his workplace, he dropped out of the exchange at the expense of a new tie from Macy's.
A handful of years and a few months later that Jensen tries incredibly hard to forget the exact number of, he's still alone.
Jensen tries to find the appeal behind the Santa at the store that, with each passing day, becomes blurrier and blurrier in his memory, and all he remembers are broad palms and an uneven smile bright enough to rival the sun and all of the global warming that comes with it, and he goes from pinpointing the man's appeal to wondering if he still does Santa shifts at the store. He considers telling Chris, even at the risk of a few disturbing kink jokes and being told to go after a boyfriend who doesn't impersonate a fictional character so children rub against his lap all day, but that idea too, is stomped into the ground. Internally, Jensen hopes that the guy is secretly a pervert or a hobo in need of some holiday cash for dinner, mostly so he'll have a reason to be deterred the next time he goes to the store to finish shopping for his friends.
Jensen flips through the late night programs on the television with a lazy thumb as his eyelids slip into half-mast position. The murmuring from the characters on the TV are doing little to stop him from lulling into a slumber, but when he glances over at the sight of Chris' feet propped up on Steve's lap and a hand curled languidly at the nape of his neck where the hair gets bristly while Steve strums quietly on his guitar and leans into Chris' hand, he wishes he had already fallen asleep.
--
Jensen's nephew is, as an understatement, a handful.
If Jensen didn't know better, he'd be assuming that the kid had found his way into a lifetime supply of energy drinks and drank away until it was a part of his blood, now nothing but a puppy on speed that happens to never wear off.
He's reminded on a particularly busy Saturday afternoon at the mall that that's the reason why he normally doesn't offer to babysit.
This time, however, his nephew's hand tight in his own since the boy keeps trying to escape and run toward random displays of Christmas decorations and children's toys, Jensen had voluntarily offered to take the kid off of Josh's arms for an afternoon. Now three hours after hot chocolate was dumped unceremoniously on his shoes and had stained his socks a nice sticky, dark brown, an incident where the boy had accidentally knocked off three stainless steel pans from a shelf, and more shrill yelling than he can handle even on a day when he's intoxicated, Jensen's starting to think he needs better tactics to secure himself a boyfriend.
He's managed to calm the kid down after a few hours of endless running through malls, but the moment he sees the Santa throne in the corner of the store any and all worn enthusiasm returns to the boy like someone has just replaced his battery. The line's shorter because most children are lagging in need of a lunch fix at the current hour, but Josh's son has the stamina of a race horse and is still bouncing up and down as though Jensen needs to remove the trampoline from underneath his feet.
After a good few weeks of mulling at home and playing guitar with his friends instead of finishing the dreadful task of Christmas shopping, Jensen has to admit that he's surprisingly excited for this current moment. He's played up the Santa he remembers as a man with a laugh happier than a rainbow's with a mouth and a broad stance built as the foundation for futuristic strong, Herculean men. If there's anything that can brighten his day with a four-year-old boy, it's an attractive man.
And then, there's laughing.
It's exactly as he remembered, good enough to record just so he can play it over and over again like a lovestruck teenager grinning during his first phone call with his girlfriend. He's never heard of anyone falling in love by the sound of a good laugh, but if there's anyone he could get used to, it's this sound.
When it's their turn, Jensen is about to battle his nephew up there when the boy goes streaking straight into Santa's lap and situates himself comfortably against his knee. Up close, Jensen can see the man's face much more clearly, and there's nothing vaguely Santa-like about it. No rubicund cheeks and pointed nose, beady eyes or wrinkled forehead. He's young. Much too young to be impersonating Santa, even though his laugh is meticulous.
He hears mumbling, giggling, his nephew beaming, and then Jensen's eyes are instead yanked up from Santa's seemingly growing hands when the boy promptly rips off Santa's beard with a tugging thumb.
Jensen gapes. And gapes some more. He can hardly believe he's the guy with that kid.
He rushes ahead before any of the mothers behind him can start gasping and gossiping at his poorly mannered child and quickly deposits his nephew on the floor and off of Santa's lap. So much for the boyfriend idea.
He's raking both hands through his hair at the sight of two slightly irritated, angry spots underneath Santa's ear from where the adhesive must have come tearing off and is about to start apologizing when the sound of Santa's soft snickering breaks his train of thought.
"Well, that's one way to relieve that itch." He says, and his fingers reach up to scratch at his chin. The man doesn't actually have a foot-long pearly beard, much to Jensen's approval, nothing but soft afternoon stubble that Jensen can detect in the light.
"Uh," Jensen says, and is temporarily at a loss for words as he scrambles for the beard now in Santa's lap, "You all right? I'm sorry about him, he's not--"
"Don't worry about him, he's a nice kid." Santa chuckles again, and Jensen realizes that the guy has dropped his gruff elderly man tone and replaced it with his own soft, slightly Southern drawl. Jensen blinks and blindly holds out the beard. Santa takes it.
"That didn't hurt?" His thumb reaches out to brush against the reddening spot at his jaw, and the guy shrugs. Jensen's practically forgotten about his nephew, wavering on the spot on the floor and gaping as his mythological idol replaces his beard. Jensen mentally berates himself and his skills as an uncle.
"He's not the first kid with some grabby fingers," Santa says, and winks at his nephew. Jensen blinks. Santa proceeds to reattach his beard.
"Oh. That's good."
"Is he yours?"
The chatter of impatient parents presumably complaining about the wait with this particular troublesome child isn't even in Jensen's list of concerns as Santa jerks a thumb toward Josh's son and Jensen shakes his head.
"He's my brother's. I'd come myself but there's a height limit as to who gets to sit on Santa's lap."
The joke is wildly inappropriate and Jensen winces after he says it, mostly because no matter how morally unethical it was to use Josh's son as bait so he can spend five blissful minutes listening to the laugh of a uniformed Santa, he's not a lewd pervert bringing other people's sons to the store so he can ogle Santa's crotch. Even though in a morbid way, he is. Santa laughs anyway, as though this whole ordeal is nothing but entertainment to him. Jensen is still wrapping his head around the fact that his nephew just ripped off Santa's beard, and here he is attempting to reattach it. If it was a real Santa, it might be a lot more ludicrous, but considering that the current Santa is much too attractive to represent mythical creatures from the North Pole, it's still pretty ludicrous.
"Everyone still has something to wish for, right?"
A myriad of Santa and his reindeer, Santa and his elf, Santa and his Christmas cookies fantasies whizz through his brain like a low budget porn director is controlling it. God yes, he has things he’s wishing for his year, the scented candles and flat screen TV forgotten. Jensen smiles as the guy fiddles with his beard, attempting to stick it back onto the designated spots under his ear before the crowd starts watching and kids start bawling once they realize that the Santa they came to visit is a man in a beard.
"Guess so." Jensen shrugs, and Santa grins again. He's got a nice face. A bright smile where he pushes his tongue up against his teeth when he grins, an adorably pointy nose, and soft tendrils of brown hair sticking out from underneath the white band of his hat.
The beard comes back on, and so does the voice. There's another overdone Santa guffaw, and he smiles at Jensen's nephew before apologizing about their shortened talk. He waves at Jensen and his nephew with that monster hand of his, and with only a brief fleeting mental image of how many things that hand could possibly do, Jensen hurries out of the store with Josh's son still secured to him by the hand.
--
Jensen is done shopping for his entire family, all of his friends, and even the annoying coworkers that hog the bathrooms and call their mothers too much during working hours. He's even bought Steve's fish a Christmas present.
Still, he claims that there's no problem in some holiday browsing at the mall.
Whether it be of men or merchandise, Jensen doesn't think makes much of a difference.
Christmas is in one week, and Jensen doesn't see a lot of overstuffed shopping carts now. He sees a few last minute shoppers picking up comforters and bathroom rugs without even glancing at them, a vastly different shopping method in comparison to those who buy in May, analyze the packaging, and pick just the right shade of every product. He doesn't like the urgency behind last minute shoppers, even though he normally is one himself.
He comes later to the store than he typically would in the hope to not encounter such a bustling line stuffed with chattering children and the parents failing to shush them properly at Santa's corner, but by the time he approaches it, he's stunned to see that the corner is entirely vacant. He glances at his wristwatch and in retrospect, realizes that perhaps he did come a bit too late.
Jensen's busy wondering where those who sign up as store Santas get employed after the holidays are over, because for some strange reason, a man in a red suit with a bellowing laugh is not a large attraction in the summer as it is in the winter. The Santa Jensen remembers could get a job as an Abercrombie model if he wanted, but somehow he doubts he'll be seeing the man leaning against display cases in musky, overpriced clothing shops when December dwindles away. A part of him, the part Jensen assumes is the surviving bit of his adolescent, horny self that was intent on finding relief with Santa in the back of the store, weeps in a corner.
He's still contemplating the gorgeous Santa's future when he tumbles straight into a wall, or rather, after rubbing the spot on his forehead that just painfully shielded the rest of his face from his bump, something that isn't a wall at all.
"Oh jeez," A voice says, and Jensen finds himself having to look up, "Sorry, sorry, my fault."
Jensen let's out a garbled it's fine at the sight of the man, tall enough to have parents who bred with skyscrapers. He's about to reciprocate the apology because he was too busy daydreaming about Santa to watch where he was going, no matter how incongruous the situation seems, when the guy grabs his arm and smiles.
"You're the guy with the kid who decided he didn't like my beard, right?"
Jensen blinks, and a second later he chastises himself for not recognizing that smile sooner. Curved nose, smooth jaw, unruly brown hair that curls at his ears, and a figure that his suit definitely doesn’t do justice to. He's got broad shoulders like a wall might, a firm chest and legs that reach down into the innards of the earth, and it takes Jensen a second to even imagine the guy in his costume anymore.
"Right!" Jensen says, "Santa! You're -- yeah, that was my kid."
"Did you bring him with you or are you just enjoyin' some evening shopping before Christmas?"
Jensen wants to say that the very easily spotted lack of boisterous horsing around should answer the question wordlessly, but instead he manages a smile, "He's back with my brother. Just browsing. You recognized me?"
The guy looks at him like he's slow, and then slowly starts chuckling, "Well, yeah. You're pretty recognizable."
"I, uh," Jensen takes a moment to let that sink in. Something hot and similar to a burning blush crawls up his cheekbones and stays there. "You are too. Just never saw you when you weren't... Santa Claus." The sentence sounds like something out of a Lifetime movie, but he swallows back the need to mock the hilarity of the situation with a curve of his lips.
"Ain't that the truth," he says, and holds his hand out, his face all smiles again. Jensen feels like he'll get sunburned if he stares at it for too long. "I'm Jared."
"Jensen," He grab's Jared's hand, warm like he was holding a mug of fresh coffee a second ago. His hand looks bigger, if that's at all possible, now that it's blanketing Jensen's with his own.
"So, I was thinking. You could pay me back for your nephew tugging on my artificial facial hair, if you want?" It sounds more like Jared's propositioning that he's one the handing out any favors instead of the other way around. The blush inches up to the cusp of his ears and prickles all the way.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. You wanna get some coffee with me? I've been working pretty much all day."
Jensen takes a few moments to process that. He still can't get over how downright tall Jared is. He feels like if he finds himself staring at the man for too long, the muscles in his neck will feel the consequences and get sore. He feels a little bit like the Charlie Brown characters when they walk around with their noses in the air or even one of the kids prancing around the store and bouncing into Santa's lap himself, because in comparison to Jared, he feels so unbelievably tiny. It's not an inferiority complex, Jensen knows, but rather a bafflement at how easily he'd be able to build a nest inside Jared's arms were he ever enveloped in a full-on hug.
He suddenly remembers that Jared has asked him a question, his face all bright and stretched with a smile as if rejection is the last thing flitting through his mind right now, only awaiting Jensen's answer with a smile that could give the warmth of the sun a run for its money.
"I. I'd love to." Jensen pushes his cart unceremoniously into a nearby aisle, the corner of it smashing straight into a glittery display of Christmas cards for Grandma.
Jensen's horribly glad that he's still attracted to Jared when he isn't Santa, because if that wasn't the case, there would be a lot of self evaluation to be done.
--
Jared’s idea of grabbing a cup of coffee before the sun falls beneath the horizon and the wintertime crisp chill worms into the night happens to be preceded with steering Jensen’s shopping cart to the Christmas decorations and fawning over this year’s selection of ornaments. He’s in the middle of shaking a box of silver glass ornaments under Jensen’s nose to request his opinion on their intricacy when Jensen realizes that he’s been ogling Santa’s every movement ever since they’ve started wandering toward corner of the store bursting with artificial trees crammed together and blinking with sporadic lights and rows of snowman-themed wrapping paper. It’s empty with the exception of an elderly couple bent over the lettered stockings in the middle of late-night shopping, and now, Jared’s thousand watt smile as he twirls ornaments in his hands.
“Sorry,” Jared says, picking up a fluffy snowman jiggling on its ornamental hook and examining it, “I know I work here, but I’m normally too busy being Santa to come over to this side of the store.”
“No problem,” Jensen says, and it really isn’t. He was ready to execute his sly scheme of convincing Josh to bring his nephew to the store once more so he could try to engage Jared in conversation and breezily mention their earlier mishap with Jared’s adhesive beard to trigger Jared’s recollection of him and possibly, his awkward charm and ability to discipline children when they’re not busy tugging on artificial beards, and suddenly, Jensen’s perusing the packaged ornament section with the same man that Jensen’s spent weeks shamelessly eyeballing without so much as throwing out his most humorous jokes and luring him into a car with the promise of a free dinner and movie date.
“I like Christmas a lot,” Jared tells him, still grinning, and Jensen feels himself get momentarily lost in his beam. Now that he’s clad in regular clothing and no longer enshrouded in massive amounts of red velvet and cotton beards, Jensen is having trouble looking away. Jared is tall like a lamppost and just as bright as one, with a large grin and contagious laugh that seems to bubble out straight from his throat and go on for miles. The fact that he was meticulously imitating Santa a mere few hours ago and managed to convince a store full of children that he was the real gift giver of Christmastime and now he’s standing in front of Jensen in jeans, flip-flops, untidy brown hair curling over his ears, and a smile akin to the innocence Jensen often sees in small children barely able to wobble on their own two feet.
“I could tell,” Jensen says, and manages a crooked grin in return, “You know, from the whole, being the Santa at the mall thing.”
“Well, I’m not really planning on this being my job for the rest of my life,” Jared says with a shrug and a wink in Jensen’s direction that makes Jensen want to grab the other man by the shoulders, shove him into the tree display and molest his mouth with his own. However, Jensen’s common sense kicks in before he rushes forward and follows through on his urge, and he manages a small smile in response instead.
“You like these ornaments?” Jared asks, holding up a box of glittery rubicund ornaments shimmering in the lights, and Jensen has to force his eyes to move from Jared’s dimples to the box extended toward him.
“I do,” says Jensen, “So what do you really want to do if you’re not going to be Santa Claus for the rest of your life?”
“One day I may want to try to do the real thing and go to Hollywood. Don’t get me wrong, I love this job. My friend Chad has to be my elf assistant, which is already a serious perk, but the children are just precious. They look at me like they can’t believe what they’re seeing,” Jared’s grin turns into a snort of laughter, “And sometimes, they really don’t believe what they’re seeing and try to pull off my beard.” He dabs delicately at the spots of flesh under his ears and picks up two more boxes of ornaments before deeming them festive enough to be displayed on his tree and storing them under the grip of his arm.
“If it’s any consolation, he still believes Santa is real,” Jensen says, “Just that he’s magical enough to be able to reattach and pull off his beard whenever he wants.”
Jared throws his head back a roar of laughter and Jensen feels the tempting desire to follow suit and burst into schoolgirl giggles that pull all of the air from his lungs like a vacuum until his eyes water. Jared resurfaces and grins at him a few seconds later before toying with an enormous wreath.
“Y’like wreaths, Jensen? My momma makes them herself every year,” he looks over at Jensen, “This is my first year not flying home to Texas for Christmas. Tryin’ to make my home as Christmassy as possible.”
Jared speaks to Jensen like he’s a friend he’s known for years and can merrily chat to concerning his Christmas plans, and Jensen envies his ability to find comfort in strangers so easily. He’s almost expecting Jared to launch into his meal plan for Christmas night and what porcelain figurine he’s planning on shipping to his mother as a consolation present for not showing up to a family Christmas reunion, and in the midst of Jared’s leisurely smile and blatant comfort, Jensen finds himself sharing as well.
“I’m from Texas, too,” he says, and Jared grins like Christmas has knocked on his doorstep early.
“Really? Knew I heard an accent, man!”
He looks, Jensen realizes, scarily reminiscent of a puppy with his eyes fixated on a slab of juicy meat, ready to bounce on his hind legs and snatch up the temptation of food, which in this case, was Jensen's extensive history and memories of Texan summers waiting to be shared.
“I come back every chance I get, if even just to see my little sister and eat my mom's pie. Aww, man, even just talking about this is making me homesick. She'd put a tiny bit of cinnamon into the crust so even if it was a rainy spring night, you'd eat her pie and feel like it was fall again. I once made the mistake of bringing my friend Chad with me to Texas and now he's the biggest brownnoser to my momma just to get a slice of her pie. Man, Jensen, you'd love it."
Jared’s rambling at one hundred miles an hour, hands brandishing invisible pies as he delves further into his story. It’s like watching a small child see snow fall for the first time, or dance in the waves of the ocean, or go down a roller coaster. It's fast, nonsensical, and somehow, incredibly amusing, and by the time Jared's sharing stories of falling down three branches of his backyard's apple tree and twisting both his ankles, Jensen's grinning.
“Man, am I talking too much?”
“Dude, no,” Jensen says, and almost feels a plea for him to continue his storytelling escape from where it's gathering at the tip of his tongue, "I just... you're funny."
An enormous hand wafts up to rub at the nape of Jared’s neck as he ducks his head and grins, Jensen noticing a flash of happy white teeth before it’s out of sight. Jared steals a glance at Jensen from underneath the curtain of his bangs, falling into his forehead in a way that should be raggedy but is just handsomely untidy and makes Jensen want to press Jared up against the nearest shelf, whether or not a handful of delicate glass ornaments will shatter and suffer the price of his aggression as a consequence, and lick up the expanse of Jared’s neck until Jensen has permanently embedded his DNA into Jared’s flesh and can be satisfied with his work. It's an alluring concept, especially when Jared straightens up and presses his tongue against the line of his teeth. Jensen catches a fleck of wet, pink tongue and almost liquefies into a pile of uncontrollable hormones he seems to be unwillingly borrowing from a teenage boy sneaking into the girls' locker room after gym.
“Thanks, man.”
“And hey,” Jensen says, a part of him spontaneously itching to share his own childhood tales where someone suffers an injury and all is fixed with his mother's homemade dinners, "I can relate. I got a sister too, and she dared me and my brother to fly off of the roof of our garden shed. I only twisted one ankle, though.”
“Both of you jumped from the roof?"
“Yeah,” Jensen says, crooked smile tugging on his lips, “but hey, I wasn’t the one under the delusion that I was Batman like my brother. I just didn't want to look like a chicken in front of my baby sister."
Jared laughs, authentically laughs as if he’s genuinely humored by Jensen's bizarre accounts from his youth, stories that Chris uses as humiliation ammo and Steve can't listen through without springing up with a story ten times as wild and begin desperately yearning to interrupt. The laugh is addictive, contagious, and just like the one that Jensen heard when he first laid eyes on the most enticing, attractive man imitating an elderly mythical figure he’s ever seen don a pretend beard and matching beard. It sparks a fire in Jensen's belly that smokes up his brain and makes him giddy, high, and unbelievably excited to hear countless numbers of Jared’s anecdotes over falling into lakes at camp or eating forty-one pancakes in a Thanksgiving eating contest that resulted in being sick for two days straight. He wants to hear more ludicrous tales and watch Jared’s face light up as he mentions his mother and his brother and his vulgar comrade in crime Chad, and Jensen doesn’t realize he’s grinning like a teenager cooing over a valentine until he realizes that Jared's chatting has come to a stop.
“You got a such an awesome smile, dude,” Jared says, and Jensen notices that he’s looking at Jensen’s face as if he’s watching a priceless piece of ancient Egyptian art, sculpted to perfection, and for a moment, Jensen feels the urge to bury his head in the bristly branches of the nearest twinkling Christmas tree. He doesn't remember the last time he's been looked at quite like this, truly examined and watched in awe.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah,” Jared says, and licks his lips, that pink tongue Jensen was keeping an eye on earlier darting out to moisten his mouth when it curves up into a smile, "Man, you should be glad you don't have a mistletoe over your head right now, Jensen.”
Oh, Jensen thinks, and now he remembers That Look. It's not foreign to him, but each time it's directed at him, it's difficult to place. He's seen it filling up his car's gas tank when the slender woman wearing a surplus of lip gloss at the pump across from his noticed his shirt riding up to expose a sliver of his back when he leant over the hood of his car. He's seen it in bars, he saw it in college, and he's even see it on Chris' face once when he walked in on Jensen toweling off after a shower he forgot to lock the door for. On Jared's face, however, it's different. It's part puppy, part child watching Christmas lights turn on for the first time, part horny teenager stumbling upon online pornography, a tantalizing blend of concentration, fascination, and poorly veiled attraction that has Jensen feeling a similar magnetism buzzing through the very tips of his fingers toward Jared.
“Wow,” Jensen manages to breathe out, fully aware in the back of his mind that if his friends would be present to witness this discussion, they’d be in peals of laughter and falling into wrapping paper stands at the sight of Jensen having difficulty stringing coherent sentences together, "Y'know, you don't need a mistletoe to kiss me. I think I'd be fine with just a lamp fixture overhead."
Jared’s grin increases by a sizable truckload of watts, and suddenly, his fingers are tangling into the collar of Jensen's coat and gently tugging him forward to plant a chaste kiss on his unsuspecting mouth that lingers like a good bite of tangy apple pie. It's short, sweet, lasts two seconds, and when Jared pulls back to admire his work with a pleased beam, Jensen feels the overwhelming urge to hold hands, go sledding, and sit in front of crackling fireplaces while nursing foamy hot chocolates with the man in front of him.
“So, I don’t mean to brag," Jared starts, shifting from foot to foot and tossing a set of glittery Christmas cards into his cart, "but if I told you that I owned a collection of over a few thousand elves and a house up in the North Pole, would that impress you enough to go out on a date with me?"
“Yeah, that just about seals the deal.”
--
Jensen, never the wrapping guru in his family, notorious for snagging the crinkly bags out of the Christmas closet weeks before any of his siblings could claim them for their own to avoid the horrors of measuring wrapping paper and tackling the challenge of proportional folding, is stuck with the catastrophic task of wrapping Danneel a box of high-heeled russet boots she had been cooing over a few weeks prior while shopping for pants fit for the icy season when the phone rings.
He has scissors dangling precariously from where his teeth are securing them in the grip of his mouth, bits of tape hanging from each of the fingers on his left hand, and his remaining hand desperately attempting to keep the shoe box in place. There's still a daunting heap of unwrapped presents in the corner of the room glowering at him to hasten in his task. Jensen glowers back and lets the scissors fall from the trap of his teeth as he grabs his phone from the table.
“So, I just happen to have a batch of Christmas cookies," an eager voice says in lieu of a greeting, "Is this a great excuse for me to come over or what?"
“The other children are going to be jealous if they find out that Santa’s favoring me this year,” Jensen says. There's the tinny sound of consecutive clanks of baking sheets wafting through the phone, followed by the eager barking of dogs and the resulting shushing from Jared.
“Goodness, Sadie, I can’t get you addicted to cookies too,” he mumbles in the vague direction of the impatient barking before exhaling into the phone, “Okay, I’m coming over. Even Santa’s allowed to have favorites.”
Jensen steals a glance at the pile of naked gifts that seems to mysteriously grow by the minute like a cruel game of torturous Tetris and considers protesting, and then promptly decides that sticking bows on top of boxed shirts doesn't prioritize over eating festive cookies with a beautiful man. His mind supplies a helpful image forever etched in Jensen's memory, normally reserved for particularly stressful days at work or when he's in the shower and the steam's spurring on his hormones, of Jared's dorky, lopsided grin seconds before ducking in to capture Jensen's unsuspecting lips in a kiss in the middle of the wrapping paper aisle. Jensen lets himself lull in his reverie for a total of thirty seconds before he scoops seven rolls of haphazardly furled wrapping paper in his arms and shoves them hastily under his couch where they can hide for the duration of Jared's visit.
He’s in the middle of stowing the pile of unwrapped presents into the corner where they can hide behind Steve's DVD rack for the time being when the doorbell rings, and when Jensen opens the door, he's instantly met with a platter of enough cookies to feed an army, decorated with festive sprinkles, uneven lines of icing outlining snowmen and ornaments, and dollops of vibrant frosting. It smells of fresh cinnamon and sugar, and underneath the gust of icy wind slipping in past Jared's figure when Jensen opens the door, the soft aroma of warm baking that pulls Jensen years back to when he would awake to the scent of apple pie on Thanksgiving morning.
“Smells good, doesn’t it?” Jared says, rocking the plate under Jensen’s nose, “Hey.” He adds as a belated greeting, curling one gloved hand around Jensen’s shoulder.
If Jensen had assumed that this would have been a replay of high school, where one chaste make out session with a pretty, plump-limped girl behind the bleachers after gym morphed into awkward, thick tension for months afterward where Jensen danced on nails wondering if he still had the right to assume that his schoolboy crush wasn't unrequited, he was wrong. Jared's constantly akimbo body and down-to-earth mind doesn’t even consider beating around the bush or asking cumbersome questions prior to executing action; he pulls Jensen in close to his body and in lieu of a banal how are you today?, Jared replaces the words with a sticky kiss that tastes like the cinnamon cookies he must have been sneaking on the ride over. It's soft and ends with a swipe of Jared's tongue over Jensen's lip that has him whimpering and tugging him back down by the nape of his neck to elongate his hello. It’s Jensen's reassurance that the fleeting kiss in the store wasn't wishful thinking or an accident that Jared isn’t keen on reproducing, especially when Jared’s tongue slides against Jensen’s, wet and delicious and spicy like a slice of nutmeg pie, to seal the deal.
“Hey,” Jared repeats when he pulls back, mouth shiny when he smiles and idly rubs the pad of his thumb over his lower lip. Jensen remembers licking that lower lip. Something fuzzy like a newborn puppy persistently hops in his stomach that Jensen has difficulty ignoring. "I know I should've asked before doing that, but I just really wanted to."
“No complaints,” Jensen says faintly, aware that the loitering flavor of Christmas cookies is still resting on his lip from where Jared thoroughly kissed it. He takes the plate from Jared's hands and steps away from the threshold to let Jared step inside and follow him to the kitchen, Jared's palm splayed out on the small of Jensen's back the whole time. Bouncing about his ribcage, the puppy skips.
“Dude,” Jared says, coming to an abrupt stop three steps away from the kitchen, eyes fixed on the living room as if he’s walked in on a massacre that’s polluted the entire room, complete with blood and mangled limbs, “Where's your tree?”
Jensen looks up from his task of picking out an adequately frosted cookie to devour, following Jared's gaze to where his couches, fireplace, and where his poorly hidden stack of presents discreetly looms behind the rack of mismatched movies resides. He supposes that there are several corners of empty space where a sizable tree could squeeze in and realizes that out of three men all occupying the same house, no one had thought to take a break from mindless channel surfing, Steve pretending he didn’t have a fondness for the home shopping networks, and Chris tuning his guitar every four hours so that they could haul the tree up from the basement and string lights through the branches.
“Uh. Haven't thought about putting one up," Jensen manages to eloquently mumble mid-chew. The cookies are, actually, quite delicious, and Jensen makes a mental note reminding him to inquire if Jared handmade them or took the liberty of purchasing dough. His mind briefly supplies an image of a flour-peppered Jared donning an apron - and potentially nothing else - brandishing patterned bowls sticky with batter and teeming with an overload of chocolate chips.
“It’s December! It’ll be Christmas soon!” Jared cries, sounding akin to an elf bombarded with Christmas wish-lists hours away from a scheduled delivery on Christmas Eve, "No tree!"
Jensen wipes the cinnamon sprinkled on his fingers off on his pants and momentarily diverts his attention away from the plate of cookies tempting him from the counter.
“Is that a crime in your house?”
“Pretty much,” Jared says, circling the coffee table as if scanning the area for a spot vacant from furniture large enough to accommodate a Christmas tree.
“Is the Christmas police going to take me away if I don't put one up?"
“Sounds about right,” Jared says, shaking his head as if he’s never laid his eyes on a sight more deplorable than a house without a tree, seizing a cookie off of the plate and eating it whole before swinging an arm around Jensen’s shoulders and tugging him into his side. “So when are you free to go shopping for a tree?”
Part II
Author: veterization
Disclaimer: I do not own these people.
Rating: NC-17
Genre and/or Pairing: Jared/Jensen (and a side of Steve Carlson/Christian Kane)
Word Count: ~17,000
Summary: AU. Jensen meets Jared Padalecki, the Santa at the store, and happens to fall for him. Festivity and romance ensues.
Sometimes, Jensen is cruelly reminded that the people he spends the most time with are people he really doesn't know at all around the holiday season.
It's almost as if Christmas shopping is built to separate the mother who Jensen knows only trusts a certain brand of toaster from the coworker Jensen only waves at during parties and occasionally happens to be sitting next to during event functions, the friend who Jensen isn't even sure if he celebrates Christmas, Chanukah, or is just one of those Atheists who believes in no sort of religion but reels in presents anyway from the sister who makes it a tradition to pin up her desired wishing list on the fridge every December.
He's grazing through the electronics aisle with a watchful eye for anything large, shiny, and particularly appealing to the eye in the vain hope to find something fitting for Chris. He's got a furled up list of names and potential gifts to go with each in one of his palms, a few of the individuals already crossed out when Jensen realized he was having trouble remembering where he knew them from, his other hand maneuvering his unfortunately barren shopping cart. It's not brimming with the unbridled potential of well-chosen presents and the promise of pleased Christmas morning squeals like some of the other carts he sees passing his own. He's considering heading straight for the frame aisle to stuff his cart full of impersonal gifts that are a symbol of a startling lack of knowledge to a friend's interests as his eyes rake over an array of iPods that look like they just marched straight out of the gay pride parade. He can't help but ruminate if perhaps Chris is that one obnoxious friend with either a habit for reckless spending or more cash that can fit into an average bank vault, therefore meaning he already owns everything he wants, making the task of shopping for him so difficult, and Jensen dismisses the idea as an excuse as to why he can't find anything for his friend after forty-six torturous minutes of perusing shelves.
He remembers Chris preparing an intriguing batch of Southern chili a few winters ago and recalls that the man likes to cook, but not only cook, but rather cook too much. He weighs the options between a Wolfgang Puck sandwich grill and a spice rack, and after a few minutes of mindless deliberation and the risk of looking uniform, snatches up the spice rack and lets the vials of basil and parsley jiggle in his cart.
It's not that he doesn't enjoy Christmastime. He normally visits his family down in Dallas and his mother creates a meal large enough to not fit on the table and his brother and him always engage in a wordless eggnog chugging competition. His home is always cozier during the holidays, the air reeking of warmth like a cheesy Disney Christmas special and the smell of cinnamon in the air. He doesn't even mind the blasting Christmas music on every radio station no matter how much he can't stand Dean Martin singing about the snow anymore, the tedious task of sweeping up pine needles from underneath his tree, or the mistletoes hung up here and there posing the threat of less than desirable encounters with strangers.
It's just the commercial part of Christmas, the ordeal of stocking stuffers and shiny wrapping paper and just the right, insightful gift for his sister that has him wanting to sleep in until New Year.
He likes lists. He likes uniform, standard lists. He puts his own wishing lists up on the billboard in his hall and makes it a yearly task to subtly send out ideas to every one of his friends or mention it on the phone. It's what he would love for people to do for him. There's nothing worse than presenting his sister with the blue karaoke set with the microphone he was positive she requested on Christmas morning, when actually, she wanted the lavender karaoke set with the built-in headset, and instead of getting his arms full of a shrieking sibling and a mouthful of hair, he gets to witness her crestfallen frown.
Jensen wheels his cart around, the spice racks repetitively knocking out a rhythm. He heads for the check-out, content with his souvenir from the maternity aisle and the array of spices, when he passes by the corner of the store decked out in woolly cotton mimicking freshly laid snow and a plastic gate squaring off a corner of the shop dedicated to a throng of people vaguely resembling a line of impatient children and their equally impatient parents in front of a crimson throne with an in-costume Santa situated comfortably on top of it.
He's always felt bad for the Santa, getting paid a presumably poor amount by the hour and having to an endure a stuffy suit with a thick pillow blanketed inside of it as well, not to mention the scratchy cheap beard taped on by the ears and constant smile that's more requirement for the sake of the elated children than a choice. It's not that he isn't a fan of children, he just isn't sure he would be up for enduring hours on end of them bouncing on his leg and rattling down a list of material toys that no child will even glance at come three months later.
Jensen glances at the line crowding outside of the gate, kids perched on their father's shoulders to attempt to a get a good glance at their childhood idol come every December. He silently blesses the heavens for the fact that he doesn't have a child of his own yanking on his sleeve and pointing insistent pudgy fingers in the direction of the line, because not only are his feet hurting up a storm after half a day's shopping, but he has other things to still finish that don't involve waiting two hours so a man in a costume can chortle at his kid.
Santa lets out a loud bark of laughter, loud enough to echo through a few of the shelves, the sort of laugh Jensen would imagine coming out of an actual Santa's lips were he not fictional along with a hint of an amused young man adjoining the feigned guffaw. He glances at Santa, a girl not older than five that's all smiles perched on his knee, his arm wrapped around her tiny back. The pillow in his suit is practically outlined and easy to spot, even though the thick fabric that makes up the suit itself. From the looks of its thickness, the suit looks like it could be a comforter instead of clothing, and Jensen's surprised to see a lack of gathering beads of moisture on Santa's forehead.
Santa laughs again at something the girl murmured and pokes her gingerly in the stomach. She giggles again and squirms on his knee as he pats her back. It's then that Jensen notices the guy's hands. Long, slender fingers with rounded fingernails and a broad palm. From far away, Jensen could practically assume that the guy has arms on his arm from the size of his palm alone. Jensen likes impressive size, and there's no denying as his eyes rake over the man's lengthy form and hands that this is impressive size.
Santa's hands make Jensen start to wonder if it'd be possible for him to unearth some of his youth and be accepted as a kid with a hefty handful of puberty to his luck so he could plant himself on the man's lap if he got into a pair of overalls and a fuzzy cap from the toddler's section, and he promptly dismisses the ludicrous idea as illogical thinking thanks to the man's hands. The girl jumps off of Santa's lap and leaps into her mother's arms with a grin so wide it's threatening to split apart her cheeks, and another child heads for Santa's lap after he wriggles his hips a little.
Jensen wonders, a little dryly, when he began resigning himself to the in-costume Santas at the store. It's not like he'd go after the real Santa were he to ever knock on Jensen's door with handcuffs and a special present that definitely can't be placed under a tree, let alone a man with a long frosty beard or a belly large enough to be used as a storage compartment during kidnapping heists. The red suit the man is wearing is certainly not flattering to his form by any means and his elderly chuckle isn't all too appealing to Jensen either. He tries to remind himself that the man took the job to make children smile, not to advertise himself off to lurking young men shopping for their mothers, and that Jensen didn't come to the store to ogle maybe, maybe not attractive men enjoying the holiday spirit to the maximum.
Santa laughs again. Jensen gets a glimpse of the guy's teeth, and maybe even the back of his throat, because Santa seems to have a laugh so strong he tips his head back when he lets it loose.
Jensen retracts his earlier statement. He wishes he had a kid.
--
Despite contrary belief, it's not very easy to forget about attractive men in Santa costumes even a week after first glimpse.
Jensen hasn't spent a Christmas with someone who feeds him holiday pudding instead of throwing it at him in over three years. He has his few drunken nights out, but whenever Chris mentions his dry spell and Jensen passes it off as a phase, Chris reminds him that thirty-six months is more of a lifestyle than a phase.
Two years ago, he had a plan based entirely on the outcome of how well his mistletoe proceeded to work. He's seen his fair share of movies. People are drawn to mistletoes, some linger underneath them until an innocuous passing by individual joins them, and then there's the unspoken rule of the glass box that encircles anyone trapped underneath it, as though walking out from a potential tinsel-induced kiss is a severe breaking of holiday rules. So he fished one out of his mother's decoration box and glued it up over his doorway.
Two weeks later, after an unfortunate run-in with Steve underneath it with Chris being the audience roaring with unsuppressed laughter at the sight, Jensen put the mistletoe back in the box it came from.
The Secret Santa gift exchange did not help in his revelation that everyone he knew was spending their holidays wrapped up in a Snuggie and their lover's arms, when the discretion that was required for Secret Santa was promptly disregarded and at least three of his coworkers approached him in the hope that he possessed the name equivalent to that of their significant other. After the fourth reassurance that he was not involved in the gift exchange of any of the couples at his workplace, he dropped out of the exchange at the expense of a new tie from Macy's.
A handful of years and a few months later that Jensen tries incredibly hard to forget the exact number of, he's still alone.
Jensen tries to find the appeal behind the Santa at the store that, with each passing day, becomes blurrier and blurrier in his memory, and all he remembers are broad palms and an uneven smile bright enough to rival the sun and all of the global warming that comes with it, and he goes from pinpointing the man's appeal to wondering if he still does Santa shifts at the store. He considers telling Chris, even at the risk of a few disturbing kink jokes and being told to go after a boyfriend who doesn't impersonate a fictional character so children rub against his lap all day, but that idea too, is stomped into the ground. Internally, Jensen hopes that the guy is secretly a pervert or a hobo in need of some holiday cash for dinner, mostly so he'll have a reason to be deterred the next time he goes to the store to finish shopping for his friends.
Jensen flips through the late night programs on the television with a lazy thumb as his eyelids slip into half-mast position. The murmuring from the characters on the TV are doing little to stop him from lulling into a slumber, but when he glances over at the sight of Chris' feet propped up on Steve's lap and a hand curled languidly at the nape of his neck where the hair gets bristly while Steve strums quietly on his guitar and leans into Chris' hand, he wishes he had already fallen asleep.
--
Jensen's nephew is, as an understatement, a handful.
If Jensen didn't know better, he'd be assuming that the kid had found his way into a lifetime supply of energy drinks and drank away until it was a part of his blood, now nothing but a puppy on speed that happens to never wear off.
He's reminded on a particularly busy Saturday afternoon at the mall that that's the reason why he normally doesn't offer to babysit.
This time, however, his nephew's hand tight in his own since the boy keeps trying to escape and run toward random displays of Christmas decorations and children's toys, Jensen had voluntarily offered to take the kid off of Josh's arms for an afternoon. Now three hours after hot chocolate was dumped unceremoniously on his shoes and had stained his socks a nice sticky, dark brown, an incident where the boy had accidentally knocked off three stainless steel pans from a shelf, and more shrill yelling than he can handle even on a day when he's intoxicated, Jensen's starting to think he needs better tactics to secure himself a boyfriend.
He's managed to calm the kid down after a few hours of endless running through malls, but the moment he sees the Santa throne in the corner of the store any and all worn enthusiasm returns to the boy like someone has just replaced his battery. The line's shorter because most children are lagging in need of a lunch fix at the current hour, but Josh's son has the stamina of a race horse and is still bouncing up and down as though Jensen needs to remove the trampoline from underneath his feet.
After a good few weeks of mulling at home and playing guitar with his friends instead of finishing the dreadful task of Christmas shopping, Jensen has to admit that he's surprisingly excited for this current moment. He's played up the Santa he remembers as a man with a laugh happier than a rainbow's with a mouth and a broad stance built as the foundation for futuristic strong, Herculean men. If there's anything that can brighten his day with a four-year-old boy, it's an attractive man.
And then, there's laughing.
It's exactly as he remembered, good enough to record just so he can play it over and over again like a lovestruck teenager grinning during his first phone call with his girlfriend. He's never heard of anyone falling in love by the sound of a good laugh, but if there's anyone he could get used to, it's this sound.
When it's their turn, Jensen is about to battle his nephew up there when the boy goes streaking straight into Santa's lap and situates himself comfortably against his knee. Up close, Jensen can see the man's face much more clearly, and there's nothing vaguely Santa-like about it. No rubicund cheeks and pointed nose, beady eyes or wrinkled forehead. He's young. Much too young to be impersonating Santa, even though his laugh is meticulous.
He hears mumbling, giggling, his nephew beaming, and then Jensen's eyes are instead yanked up from Santa's seemingly growing hands when the boy promptly rips off Santa's beard with a tugging thumb.
Jensen gapes. And gapes some more. He can hardly believe he's the guy with that kid.
He rushes ahead before any of the mothers behind him can start gasping and gossiping at his poorly mannered child and quickly deposits his nephew on the floor and off of Santa's lap. So much for the boyfriend idea.
He's raking both hands through his hair at the sight of two slightly irritated, angry spots underneath Santa's ear from where the adhesive must have come tearing off and is about to start apologizing when the sound of Santa's soft snickering breaks his train of thought.
"Well, that's one way to relieve that itch." He says, and his fingers reach up to scratch at his chin. The man doesn't actually have a foot-long pearly beard, much to Jensen's approval, nothing but soft afternoon stubble that Jensen can detect in the light.
"Uh," Jensen says, and is temporarily at a loss for words as he scrambles for the beard now in Santa's lap, "You all right? I'm sorry about him, he's not--"
"Don't worry about him, he's a nice kid." Santa chuckles again, and Jensen realizes that the guy has dropped his gruff elderly man tone and replaced it with his own soft, slightly Southern drawl. Jensen blinks and blindly holds out the beard. Santa takes it.
"That didn't hurt?" His thumb reaches out to brush against the reddening spot at his jaw, and the guy shrugs. Jensen's practically forgotten about his nephew, wavering on the spot on the floor and gaping as his mythological idol replaces his beard. Jensen mentally berates himself and his skills as an uncle.
"He's not the first kid with some grabby fingers," Santa says, and winks at his nephew. Jensen blinks. Santa proceeds to reattach his beard.
"Oh. That's good."
"Is he yours?"
The chatter of impatient parents presumably complaining about the wait with this particular troublesome child isn't even in Jensen's list of concerns as Santa jerks a thumb toward Josh's son and Jensen shakes his head.
"He's my brother's. I'd come myself but there's a height limit as to who gets to sit on Santa's lap."
The joke is wildly inappropriate and Jensen winces after he says it, mostly because no matter how morally unethical it was to use Josh's son as bait so he can spend five blissful minutes listening to the laugh of a uniformed Santa, he's not a lewd pervert bringing other people's sons to the store so he can ogle Santa's crotch. Even though in a morbid way, he is. Santa laughs anyway, as though this whole ordeal is nothing but entertainment to him. Jensen is still wrapping his head around the fact that his nephew just ripped off Santa's beard, and here he is attempting to reattach it. If it was a real Santa, it might be a lot more ludicrous, but considering that the current Santa is much too attractive to represent mythical creatures from the North Pole, it's still pretty ludicrous.
"Everyone still has something to wish for, right?"
A myriad of Santa and his reindeer, Santa and his elf, Santa and his Christmas cookies fantasies whizz through his brain like a low budget porn director is controlling it. God yes, he has things he’s wishing for his year, the scented candles and flat screen TV forgotten. Jensen smiles as the guy fiddles with his beard, attempting to stick it back onto the designated spots under his ear before the crowd starts watching and kids start bawling once they realize that the Santa they came to visit is a man in a beard.
"Guess so." Jensen shrugs, and Santa grins again. He's got a nice face. A bright smile where he pushes his tongue up against his teeth when he grins, an adorably pointy nose, and soft tendrils of brown hair sticking out from underneath the white band of his hat.
The beard comes back on, and so does the voice. There's another overdone Santa guffaw, and he smiles at Jensen's nephew before apologizing about their shortened talk. He waves at Jensen and his nephew with that monster hand of his, and with only a brief fleeting mental image of how many things that hand could possibly do, Jensen hurries out of the store with Josh's son still secured to him by the hand.
--
Jensen is done shopping for his entire family, all of his friends, and even the annoying coworkers that hog the bathrooms and call their mothers too much during working hours. He's even bought Steve's fish a Christmas present.
Still, he claims that there's no problem in some holiday browsing at the mall.
Whether it be of men or merchandise, Jensen doesn't think makes much of a difference.
Christmas is in one week, and Jensen doesn't see a lot of overstuffed shopping carts now. He sees a few last minute shoppers picking up comforters and bathroom rugs without even glancing at them, a vastly different shopping method in comparison to those who buy in May, analyze the packaging, and pick just the right shade of every product. He doesn't like the urgency behind last minute shoppers, even though he normally is one himself.
He comes later to the store than he typically would in the hope to not encounter such a bustling line stuffed with chattering children and the parents failing to shush them properly at Santa's corner, but by the time he approaches it, he's stunned to see that the corner is entirely vacant. He glances at his wristwatch and in retrospect, realizes that perhaps he did come a bit too late.
Jensen's busy wondering where those who sign up as store Santas get employed after the holidays are over, because for some strange reason, a man in a red suit with a bellowing laugh is not a large attraction in the summer as it is in the winter. The Santa Jensen remembers could get a job as an Abercrombie model if he wanted, but somehow he doubts he'll be seeing the man leaning against display cases in musky, overpriced clothing shops when December dwindles away. A part of him, the part Jensen assumes is the surviving bit of his adolescent, horny self that was intent on finding relief with Santa in the back of the store, weeps in a corner.
He's still contemplating the gorgeous Santa's future when he tumbles straight into a wall, or rather, after rubbing the spot on his forehead that just painfully shielded the rest of his face from his bump, something that isn't a wall at all.
"Oh jeez," A voice says, and Jensen finds himself having to look up, "Sorry, sorry, my fault."
Jensen let's out a garbled it's fine at the sight of the man, tall enough to have parents who bred with skyscrapers. He's about to reciprocate the apology because he was too busy daydreaming about Santa to watch where he was going, no matter how incongruous the situation seems, when the guy grabs his arm and smiles.
"You're the guy with the kid who decided he didn't like my beard, right?"
Jensen blinks, and a second later he chastises himself for not recognizing that smile sooner. Curved nose, smooth jaw, unruly brown hair that curls at his ears, and a figure that his suit definitely doesn’t do justice to. He's got broad shoulders like a wall might, a firm chest and legs that reach down into the innards of the earth, and it takes Jensen a second to even imagine the guy in his costume anymore.
"Right!" Jensen says, "Santa! You're -- yeah, that was my kid."
"Did you bring him with you or are you just enjoyin' some evening shopping before Christmas?"
Jensen wants to say that the very easily spotted lack of boisterous horsing around should answer the question wordlessly, but instead he manages a smile, "He's back with my brother. Just browsing. You recognized me?"
The guy looks at him like he's slow, and then slowly starts chuckling, "Well, yeah. You're pretty recognizable."
"I, uh," Jensen takes a moment to let that sink in. Something hot and similar to a burning blush crawls up his cheekbones and stays there. "You are too. Just never saw you when you weren't... Santa Claus." The sentence sounds like something out of a Lifetime movie, but he swallows back the need to mock the hilarity of the situation with a curve of his lips.
"Ain't that the truth," he says, and holds his hand out, his face all smiles again. Jensen feels like he'll get sunburned if he stares at it for too long. "I'm Jared."
"Jensen," He grab's Jared's hand, warm like he was holding a mug of fresh coffee a second ago. His hand looks bigger, if that's at all possible, now that it's blanketing Jensen's with his own.
"So, I was thinking. You could pay me back for your nephew tugging on my artificial facial hair, if you want?" It sounds more like Jared's propositioning that he's one the handing out any favors instead of the other way around. The blush inches up to the cusp of his ears and prickles all the way.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. You wanna get some coffee with me? I've been working pretty much all day."
Jensen takes a few moments to process that. He still can't get over how downright tall Jared is. He feels like if he finds himself staring at the man for too long, the muscles in his neck will feel the consequences and get sore. He feels a little bit like the Charlie Brown characters when they walk around with their noses in the air or even one of the kids prancing around the store and bouncing into Santa's lap himself, because in comparison to Jared, he feels so unbelievably tiny. It's not an inferiority complex, Jensen knows, but rather a bafflement at how easily he'd be able to build a nest inside Jared's arms were he ever enveloped in a full-on hug.
He suddenly remembers that Jared has asked him a question, his face all bright and stretched with a smile as if rejection is the last thing flitting through his mind right now, only awaiting Jensen's answer with a smile that could give the warmth of the sun a run for its money.
"I. I'd love to." Jensen pushes his cart unceremoniously into a nearby aisle, the corner of it smashing straight into a glittery display of Christmas cards for Grandma.
Jensen's horribly glad that he's still attracted to Jared when he isn't Santa, because if that wasn't the case, there would be a lot of self evaluation to be done.
--
Jared’s idea of grabbing a cup of coffee before the sun falls beneath the horizon and the wintertime crisp chill worms into the night happens to be preceded with steering Jensen’s shopping cart to the Christmas decorations and fawning over this year’s selection of ornaments. He’s in the middle of shaking a box of silver glass ornaments under Jensen’s nose to request his opinion on their intricacy when Jensen realizes that he’s been ogling Santa’s every movement ever since they’ve started wandering toward corner of the store bursting with artificial trees crammed together and blinking with sporadic lights and rows of snowman-themed wrapping paper. It’s empty with the exception of an elderly couple bent over the lettered stockings in the middle of late-night shopping, and now, Jared’s thousand watt smile as he twirls ornaments in his hands.
“Sorry,” Jared says, picking up a fluffy snowman jiggling on its ornamental hook and examining it, “I know I work here, but I’m normally too busy being Santa to come over to this side of the store.”
“No problem,” Jensen says, and it really isn’t. He was ready to execute his sly scheme of convincing Josh to bring his nephew to the store once more so he could try to engage Jared in conversation and breezily mention their earlier mishap with Jared’s adhesive beard to trigger Jared’s recollection of him and possibly, his awkward charm and ability to discipline children when they’re not busy tugging on artificial beards, and suddenly, Jensen’s perusing the packaged ornament section with the same man that Jensen’s spent weeks shamelessly eyeballing without so much as throwing out his most humorous jokes and luring him into a car with the promise of a free dinner and movie date.
“I like Christmas a lot,” Jared tells him, still grinning, and Jensen feels himself get momentarily lost in his beam. Now that he’s clad in regular clothing and no longer enshrouded in massive amounts of red velvet and cotton beards, Jensen is having trouble looking away. Jared is tall like a lamppost and just as bright as one, with a large grin and contagious laugh that seems to bubble out straight from his throat and go on for miles. The fact that he was meticulously imitating Santa a mere few hours ago and managed to convince a store full of children that he was the real gift giver of Christmastime and now he’s standing in front of Jensen in jeans, flip-flops, untidy brown hair curling over his ears, and a smile akin to the innocence Jensen often sees in small children barely able to wobble on their own two feet.
“I could tell,” Jensen says, and manages a crooked grin in return, “You know, from the whole, being the Santa at the mall thing.”
“Well, I’m not really planning on this being my job for the rest of my life,” Jared says with a shrug and a wink in Jensen’s direction that makes Jensen want to grab the other man by the shoulders, shove him into the tree display and molest his mouth with his own. However, Jensen’s common sense kicks in before he rushes forward and follows through on his urge, and he manages a small smile in response instead.
“You like these ornaments?” Jared asks, holding up a box of glittery rubicund ornaments shimmering in the lights, and Jensen has to force his eyes to move from Jared’s dimples to the box extended toward him.
“I do,” says Jensen, “So what do you really want to do if you’re not going to be Santa Claus for the rest of your life?”
“One day I may want to try to do the real thing and go to Hollywood. Don’t get me wrong, I love this job. My friend Chad has to be my elf assistant, which is already a serious perk, but the children are just precious. They look at me like they can’t believe what they’re seeing,” Jared’s grin turns into a snort of laughter, “And sometimes, they really don’t believe what they’re seeing and try to pull off my beard.” He dabs delicately at the spots of flesh under his ears and picks up two more boxes of ornaments before deeming them festive enough to be displayed on his tree and storing them under the grip of his arm.
“If it’s any consolation, he still believes Santa is real,” Jensen says, “Just that he’s magical enough to be able to reattach and pull off his beard whenever he wants.”
Jared throws his head back a roar of laughter and Jensen feels the tempting desire to follow suit and burst into schoolgirl giggles that pull all of the air from his lungs like a vacuum until his eyes water. Jared resurfaces and grins at him a few seconds later before toying with an enormous wreath.
“Y’like wreaths, Jensen? My momma makes them herself every year,” he looks over at Jensen, “This is my first year not flying home to Texas for Christmas. Tryin’ to make my home as Christmassy as possible.”
Jared speaks to Jensen like he’s a friend he’s known for years and can merrily chat to concerning his Christmas plans, and Jensen envies his ability to find comfort in strangers so easily. He’s almost expecting Jared to launch into his meal plan for Christmas night and what porcelain figurine he’s planning on shipping to his mother as a consolation present for not showing up to a family Christmas reunion, and in the midst of Jared’s leisurely smile and blatant comfort, Jensen finds himself sharing as well.
“I’m from Texas, too,” he says, and Jared grins like Christmas has knocked on his doorstep early.
“Really? Knew I heard an accent, man!”
He looks, Jensen realizes, scarily reminiscent of a puppy with his eyes fixated on a slab of juicy meat, ready to bounce on his hind legs and snatch up the temptation of food, which in this case, was Jensen's extensive history and memories of Texan summers waiting to be shared.
“I come back every chance I get, if even just to see my little sister and eat my mom's pie. Aww, man, even just talking about this is making me homesick. She'd put a tiny bit of cinnamon into the crust so even if it was a rainy spring night, you'd eat her pie and feel like it was fall again. I once made the mistake of bringing my friend Chad with me to Texas and now he's the biggest brownnoser to my momma just to get a slice of her pie. Man, Jensen, you'd love it."
Jared’s rambling at one hundred miles an hour, hands brandishing invisible pies as he delves further into his story. It’s like watching a small child see snow fall for the first time, or dance in the waves of the ocean, or go down a roller coaster. It's fast, nonsensical, and somehow, incredibly amusing, and by the time Jared's sharing stories of falling down three branches of his backyard's apple tree and twisting both his ankles, Jensen's grinning.
“Man, am I talking too much?”
“Dude, no,” Jensen says, and almost feels a plea for him to continue his storytelling escape from where it's gathering at the tip of his tongue, "I just... you're funny."
An enormous hand wafts up to rub at the nape of Jared’s neck as he ducks his head and grins, Jensen noticing a flash of happy white teeth before it’s out of sight. Jared steals a glance at Jensen from underneath the curtain of his bangs, falling into his forehead in a way that should be raggedy but is just handsomely untidy and makes Jensen want to press Jared up against the nearest shelf, whether or not a handful of delicate glass ornaments will shatter and suffer the price of his aggression as a consequence, and lick up the expanse of Jared’s neck until Jensen has permanently embedded his DNA into Jared’s flesh and can be satisfied with his work. It's an alluring concept, especially when Jared straightens up and presses his tongue against the line of his teeth. Jensen catches a fleck of wet, pink tongue and almost liquefies into a pile of uncontrollable hormones he seems to be unwillingly borrowing from a teenage boy sneaking into the girls' locker room after gym.
“Thanks, man.”
“And hey,” Jensen says, a part of him spontaneously itching to share his own childhood tales where someone suffers an injury and all is fixed with his mother's homemade dinners, "I can relate. I got a sister too, and she dared me and my brother to fly off of the roof of our garden shed. I only twisted one ankle, though.”
“Both of you jumped from the roof?"
“Yeah,” Jensen says, crooked smile tugging on his lips, “but hey, I wasn’t the one under the delusion that I was Batman like my brother. I just didn't want to look like a chicken in front of my baby sister."
Jared laughs, authentically laughs as if he’s genuinely humored by Jensen's bizarre accounts from his youth, stories that Chris uses as humiliation ammo and Steve can't listen through without springing up with a story ten times as wild and begin desperately yearning to interrupt. The laugh is addictive, contagious, and just like the one that Jensen heard when he first laid eyes on the most enticing, attractive man imitating an elderly mythical figure he’s ever seen don a pretend beard and matching beard. It sparks a fire in Jensen's belly that smokes up his brain and makes him giddy, high, and unbelievably excited to hear countless numbers of Jared’s anecdotes over falling into lakes at camp or eating forty-one pancakes in a Thanksgiving eating contest that resulted in being sick for two days straight. He wants to hear more ludicrous tales and watch Jared’s face light up as he mentions his mother and his brother and his vulgar comrade in crime Chad, and Jensen doesn’t realize he’s grinning like a teenager cooing over a valentine until he realizes that Jared's chatting has come to a stop.
“You got a such an awesome smile, dude,” Jared says, and Jensen notices that he’s looking at Jensen’s face as if he’s watching a priceless piece of ancient Egyptian art, sculpted to perfection, and for a moment, Jensen feels the urge to bury his head in the bristly branches of the nearest twinkling Christmas tree. He doesn't remember the last time he's been looked at quite like this, truly examined and watched in awe.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah,” Jared says, and licks his lips, that pink tongue Jensen was keeping an eye on earlier darting out to moisten his mouth when it curves up into a smile, "Man, you should be glad you don't have a mistletoe over your head right now, Jensen.”
Oh, Jensen thinks, and now he remembers That Look. It's not foreign to him, but each time it's directed at him, it's difficult to place. He's seen it filling up his car's gas tank when the slender woman wearing a surplus of lip gloss at the pump across from his noticed his shirt riding up to expose a sliver of his back when he leant over the hood of his car. He's seen it in bars, he saw it in college, and he's even see it on Chris' face once when he walked in on Jensen toweling off after a shower he forgot to lock the door for. On Jared's face, however, it's different. It's part puppy, part child watching Christmas lights turn on for the first time, part horny teenager stumbling upon online pornography, a tantalizing blend of concentration, fascination, and poorly veiled attraction that has Jensen feeling a similar magnetism buzzing through the very tips of his fingers toward Jared.
“Wow,” Jensen manages to breathe out, fully aware in the back of his mind that if his friends would be present to witness this discussion, they’d be in peals of laughter and falling into wrapping paper stands at the sight of Jensen having difficulty stringing coherent sentences together, "Y'know, you don't need a mistletoe to kiss me. I think I'd be fine with just a lamp fixture overhead."
Jared’s grin increases by a sizable truckload of watts, and suddenly, his fingers are tangling into the collar of Jensen's coat and gently tugging him forward to plant a chaste kiss on his unsuspecting mouth that lingers like a good bite of tangy apple pie. It's short, sweet, lasts two seconds, and when Jared pulls back to admire his work with a pleased beam, Jensen feels the overwhelming urge to hold hands, go sledding, and sit in front of crackling fireplaces while nursing foamy hot chocolates with the man in front of him.
“So, I don’t mean to brag," Jared starts, shifting from foot to foot and tossing a set of glittery Christmas cards into his cart, "but if I told you that I owned a collection of over a few thousand elves and a house up in the North Pole, would that impress you enough to go out on a date with me?"
“Yeah, that just about seals the deal.”
--
Jensen, never the wrapping guru in his family, notorious for snagging the crinkly bags out of the Christmas closet weeks before any of his siblings could claim them for their own to avoid the horrors of measuring wrapping paper and tackling the challenge of proportional folding, is stuck with the catastrophic task of wrapping Danneel a box of high-heeled russet boots she had been cooing over a few weeks prior while shopping for pants fit for the icy season when the phone rings.
He has scissors dangling precariously from where his teeth are securing them in the grip of his mouth, bits of tape hanging from each of the fingers on his left hand, and his remaining hand desperately attempting to keep the shoe box in place. There's still a daunting heap of unwrapped presents in the corner of the room glowering at him to hasten in his task. Jensen glowers back and lets the scissors fall from the trap of his teeth as he grabs his phone from the table.
“So, I just happen to have a batch of Christmas cookies," an eager voice says in lieu of a greeting, "Is this a great excuse for me to come over or what?"
“The other children are going to be jealous if they find out that Santa’s favoring me this year,” Jensen says. There's the tinny sound of consecutive clanks of baking sheets wafting through the phone, followed by the eager barking of dogs and the resulting shushing from Jared.
“Goodness, Sadie, I can’t get you addicted to cookies too,” he mumbles in the vague direction of the impatient barking before exhaling into the phone, “Okay, I’m coming over. Even Santa’s allowed to have favorites.”
Jensen steals a glance at the pile of naked gifts that seems to mysteriously grow by the minute like a cruel game of torturous Tetris and considers protesting, and then promptly decides that sticking bows on top of boxed shirts doesn't prioritize over eating festive cookies with a beautiful man. His mind supplies a helpful image forever etched in Jensen's memory, normally reserved for particularly stressful days at work or when he's in the shower and the steam's spurring on his hormones, of Jared's dorky, lopsided grin seconds before ducking in to capture Jensen's unsuspecting lips in a kiss in the middle of the wrapping paper aisle. Jensen lets himself lull in his reverie for a total of thirty seconds before he scoops seven rolls of haphazardly furled wrapping paper in his arms and shoves them hastily under his couch where they can hide for the duration of Jared's visit.
He’s in the middle of stowing the pile of unwrapped presents into the corner where they can hide behind Steve's DVD rack for the time being when the doorbell rings, and when Jensen opens the door, he's instantly met with a platter of enough cookies to feed an army, decorated with festive sprinkles, uneven lines of icing outlining snowmen and ornaments, and dollops of vibrant frosting. It smells of fresh cinnamon and sugar, and underneath the gust of icy wind slipping in past Jared's figure when Jensen opens the door, the soft aroma of warm baking that pulls Jensen years back to when he would awake to the scent of apple pie on Thanksgiving morning.
“Smells good, doesn’t it?” Jared says, rocking the plate under Jensen’s nose, “Hey.” He adds as a belated greeting, curling one gloved hand around Jensen’s shoulder.
If Jensen had assumed that this would have been a replay of high school, where one chaste make out session with a pretty, plump-limped girl behind the bleachers after gym morphed into awkward, thick tension for months afterward where Jensen danced on nails wondering if he still had the right to assume that his schoolboy crush wasn't unrequited, he was wrong. Jared's constantly akimbo body and down-to-earth mind doesn’t even consider beating around the bush or asking cumbersome questions prior to executing action; he pulls Jensen in close to his body and in lieu of a banal how are you today?, Jared replaces the words with a sticky kiss that tastes like the cinnamon cookies he must have been sneaking on the ride over. It's soft and ends with a swipe of Jared's tongue over Jensen's lip that has him whimpering and tugging him back down by the nape of his neck to elongate his hello. It’s Jensen's reassurance that the fleeting kiss in the store wasn't wishful thinking or an accident that Jared isn’t keen on reproducing, especially when Jared’s tongue slides against Jensen’s, wet and delicious and spicy like a slice of nutmeg pie, to seal the deal.
“Hey,” Jared repeats when he pulls back, mouth shiny when he smiles and idly rubs the pad of his thumb over his lower lip. Jensen remembers licking that lower lip. Something fuzzy like a newborn puppy persistently hops in his stomach that Jensen has difficulty ignoring. "I know I should've asked before doing that, but I just really wanted to."
“No complaints,” Jensen says faintly, aware that the loitering flavor of Christmas cookies is still resting on his lip from where Jared thoroughly kissed it. He takes the plate from Jared's hands and steps away from the threshold to let Jared step inside and follow him to the kitchen, Jared's palm splayed out on the small of Jensen's back the whole time. Bouncing about his ribcage, the puppy skips.
“Dude,” Jared says, coming to an abrupt stop three steps away from the kitchen, eyes fixed on the living room as if he’s walked in on a massacre that’s polluted the entire room, complete with blood and mangled limbs, “Where's your tree?”
Jensen looks up from his task of picking out an adequately frosted cookie to devour, following Jared's gaze to where his couches, fireplace, and where his poorly hidden stack of presents discreetly looms behind the rack of mismatched movies resides. He supposes that there are several corners of empty space where a sizable tree could squeeze in and realizes that out of three men all occupying the same house, no one had thought to take a break from mindless channel surfing, Steve pretending he didn’t have a fondness for the home shopping networks, and Chris tuning his guitar every four hours so that they could haul the tree up from the basement and string lights through the branches.
“Uh. Haven't thought about putting one up," Jensen manages to eloquently mumble mid-chew. The cookies are, actually, quite delicious, and Jensen makes a mental note reminding him to inquire if Jared handmade them or took the liberty of purchasing dough. His mind briefly supplies an image of a flour-peppered Jared donning an apron - and potentially nothing else - brandishing patterned bowls sticky with batter and teeming with an overload of chocolate chips.
“It’s December! It’ll be Christmas soon!” Jared cries, sounding akin to an elf bombarded with Christmas wish-lists hours away from a scheduled delivery on Christmas Eve, "No tree!"
Jensen wipes the cinnamon sprinkled on his fingers off on his pants and momentarily diverts his attention away from the plate of cookies tempting him from the counter.
“Is that a crime in your house?”
“Pretty much,” Jared says, circling the coffee table as if scanning the area for a spot vacant from furniture large enough to accommodate a Christmas tree.
“Is the Christmas police going to take me away if I don't put one up?"
“Sounds about right,” Jared says, shaking his head as if he’s never laid his eyes on a sight more deplorable than a house without a tree, seizing a cookie off of the plate and eating it whole before swinging an arm around Jensen’s shoulders and tugging him into his side. “So when are you free to go shopping for a tree?”
Part II