Take 512: Act Four, Part 4b
Sandy takes his hands in hers as soon as she sees him on her front porch. "Jared?"
"I think I fucked up," he says in a voice that doesn't seem to be coming from his mouth. He raises his hand to his lips to test the theory before he speaks again. "Bad."
Sandy doesn't admonish him, doesn't ask for details. There's a large part of him that's all geared up to fall head over heels for this girl, always has been. But then again Jensen.
She leads him through the house. Thankfully, her parents are nowhere in sight but he hears voices from the kitchen.
It feels mundane, but he has to ask. "Am I interrupting something?"
Sandy smiles softly. "No. That's just Mum and Dad's wash-and-dry routine."
"Oh."
Jared's feeling of surrealism grows. He feels weirdly far-away and mildly fascinated by the pitfalls of this day, like it's a morbid and entertaining drama he's watching on TV. He feels calm, braced for anything from pianos falling from the starry sky to his skin turning inside out on a whim.
He's hung out with Misha enough to recognize this as a defense mechanism, a way to cope with the memory of Jensen saying not like this.
He shapes his own mouth around the words, murmuring them to the clear night air of Sandy's backyard. They taste of strawberries and lemonade, the pepper in the Dr. Pepper. Mark had been right, he's sure now.
Sandy makes him sit on the swing. It creaks on its hinges under Jared's weight, but neither takes notice.
Jared looks at the sky. Stars upon stars jostling for space, the midnight blue backdrop of the sky like a promise. He breathes in the scent of the freshly-cut grass, the muffled voices from the house. "It's a beautiful night."
Sandy nods, looking perfectly calm. Jared loves that about her.
He takes in another deep breath. "Megan's got allergies, you know." He says, and her face twists in momentary confusion, but she nods. "So we never really got to have any pets. I, I'd have liked a dog."
Sandy nods again. She knows all this. It's Jared who needs to get his mind around it.
"But you know what Mum and Dad are like. I mentioned it to Jensen, maybe two years back, when we were passing a pet shop. Next thing I know, he's dragging me in and asking me Alsatian or Lab." Jared smiles ruefully. "He wanted to name him Icarus or something like that, but I insisted on Harley, so Jensen said okay. Back then, that was it. I said something and that was it, final judgment. I never realized until he went away, but most of Jensen's day-to-day decisions came from the need to keep me happy."
Sandy's eyes are wide and sad. Jared shakes his head to tell her not to be.
"Jared, I-" Sandy bites her lip, and reaches out to touch his face. "I don't know what to say."
"Say, maybe I've got a chance at getting that back." Jared smiles, slightly awed. "Because that's what everyone's been trying to tell me, but I never believed them because, you know. I'm an idiot."
Sandy shakes her head fiercely. "No, Jared, you had every reason to tell him to go fuck himself." Her fingers curl on his cheek, supportive. "After what he made you go through-"
Jared shakes his head, still kinda awestruck. "I think he's beating himself up about that himself. Because, I really think, I'm pretty sure, Jensen's still in love with me."
The statement hangs in the air, weightless and really kind of beautiful, and Jared feels laughter bubbling up inside him.
Sandy's eyes rake over his face, openly assessing. Jared lets his face split into the grin that's fighting for screen time, and she smiles back in response.
hen her expression twists. Jared laughs, half-wary, but mostly still deliriously happy at his epiphany. "Uh-oh, what now?"
"You, um." Sandy's clearly doubting herself. "You, uh, said. You said you fucked up."
At first, he blinks at her. "What?"
She seems to gather her courage, looks up at him steadily."Jared, when you came here, you insisted you’d fucked up." She smiles a little nervously, looking up at him through her eyelashes. "But if Jensen's in love with you, it can't be that bad, right?"
Jared nearly falls over when he remembers. He buries his head in his hands and they smell like rust, with an underlying tang of Dr Pepper. "Oh, God."
Sandy waits, her posture anxious.
"Jensen being in love with me actually makes it worse." He mumbles into his hands. "I kind of made a pass at him today."
The muffled sound effects don't work; Sandy's heard him perfectly. "You what?"
" know. But he was flirting, and I thought, maybe if I had one last night it would be enough to move on. I thought he'd be onboard just to shake me off. Turns out he was flirting because h like me and not out of habit or whatever."
There's a significant pause.
"Oh, Jared," Sandy whispers in a sigh.
Jared drops his gaze to the grass. "Yeah," he says quietly.
The breeze picks up, making his hair tickle the back of his neck like a warning.
"Maybe," Sandy ventures, "Maybe he's willing to forgive that one thing. He knows he owes you that much."
Jared shakes his head listlessly. "That's not actually the problem."
Sandy sighs again. "I know."
His stomach rolls over once more, increasing the nausea and subsequent urge to run and run until the world settles down around him.
He's outgrown that shit now, but sometimes it comes back: the momentary certainty that physically moving away would put some distance between him and his problems.
In short, he feels all of sixteen years old again, newly left behind without a proper goodbye by Jensen Ackles. And he hates it, hates how all he's doing is going in circles.
"I think you should talk to him," Sandy offers. "Tell him you want to get back together too."
Jared nods, unconvinced.
"Either way, Jared," she continues softly, "look at what you've got to gain."
He's been looking at it, actually. It kind of makes his head spin.
She smiles like she's read his mind. "You'll know what to do when the time comes. I just know you will."
Jared gets up from the swing and hugs her. She's tiny in his arms, radiating warmth and comfort.
He breaks away and plants a chaste kiss on her forehead. "Thank you."
"Good luck, Jared." She smiles. "Look for me in the audience on Friday."
"I will."
She leads him to the front door. Her father nods in greeting as he passes, being familiar with both Jared and his unusual theatre hours. Her parents love Jared, which is another reason he can't help but view Sandy as an easy way out.
On the porch, he thanks her again. She laughs gently and tells him to go get some sleep.
When he turns around, he sees Steve's car idling on the street, and Steve trying to look casual about it. He sighs, and briefly considers escaping through the back yard. But he's tired and no matter what bullshit Steve brings with him, he's also a mode of transportation other than Jared's own heavy feet.
Steve unlocks the doors when Jared draws close. He keeps his face neutral.
"Hey." Steve, in contrast, looks antsy and mildly irritated. He watches Jared slide in
He revs the engine as soon as Jared’s settled in. Jared can see him open his mouth and bite his lip against whatever he was going to say about half a dozen times, and is amused in a fatigued, secondhand kind of way.
Steve tells him, just as they take a turn into Jared's street, "Jensen sent me."
Jared rolls his eyes. "I know."
Because it doesn't really matter if Jared took the first step towards ruining something that didn't even exist yet. Jensen's default setting is to look out for him, to be the older brother and the best friend. It would annoy Jared more if it hadn't been so familiar.
Steve parks outside Jared's house. Nearly all the lights are off, and he remembers all over again that the rest of the world doesn't keep the times Supernatural does.
Steve says, "He still really cares about you, you know." he looks supremely uncomfortable saying it.
Jared nods. "Yeah, I know.”
He's not lying.
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